“Yeah,” says Enzo like it’s no big deal. “This is pretty much the only place to shop around here. I mean, unless you want to rock a straw hat.”
“Right. From the grocery store.”
“Dude, I tried on those shorts once. It felt like I was wearing pants made of mosquitos. I was scratching my butt for weeks. People thought I had diaper rash.”
He laughs, and holy Aliens this guy must be untouchable if he can survive a diaper rash rumor. It’s weird, too, because aside from the normal clothes and gleaming white shoes, Enzo’s just as much of a weirdo as me. It’s nothing obvious, just something a fellow weirdo knows—his smile is totally unrestrained, he walks a little too fast.
We leave the clothes at the counter for my dad to buy later and head across the Square to the Gamers Grotto. I try to ignore the dancing apples in the fountain, but they’re impossible to avoid.
“Creepy, right?” Enzo says.
“I thought it was just me.”
“I don’t know why they don’t just take it down after what happened,” he says, shaking his head.
I didn’t make the connection until now—the dancing apples are an homage to the factory that built the park that left a hole in Raven Brooks wide enough to fall through. It seems like no matter how much I try to skirt the issue that no one wants to talk about, it’s impossible not to topple down that hole. The tragedy of Golden Apple Amusement Park has clouded the entire town.
Now that I’m closer, I can see a small plaque has been added to the sculpture, a memorial protected behind glass. It’s Lucy Yi, posed against a standard school-picture backdrop, her straight black hair smoothed behind a thin headband. Her hand is propped under her chin, a gold bracelet with a gleaming apple charm dangling from the links in a painful show of irony. Below her picture reads:
The sound of girls laughing wafts over my head, and for just a second, I swear it’s coming from behind the glass of Lucy Yi’s memorial.
Then one of them says, “I dare you to go say hi,” and I look across the Square and see a group of younger girls crowded around a table at the frozen yogurt shop. The shortest one emerges, slapping one of her friends away, then brushing the hair from her face to wave to me. I recognize Mya and wave back before turning again to the fountain.
“Did you know her?” I ask Enzo. “The little girl who … ?”
Enzo looks down and nods. “Everyone did.” Then he looks up with a crooked smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, then in the direction of Mya and her friends. “Welcome to Raven Brooks, where everyone knows everyone.” Then he claps me on the shoulder like his dad did to my dad and pulls me closer. “Whether you want to know ’em or not.”
He chuckles, but I don’t think he was kidding.
“But enough about that,” he says. “Now, we game.”
He’ll get zero argument from me on that front. I may not know all there is to know about Raven Brooks or Golden Apples or expensive clothes, but I speak fluent Gaming.
Dad and Miguel lean against the coffee stand outside reliving their college days while Enzo and I fight for territory in Mortal Realm until my eyes blur. I’ve nearly forgotten that I’m the shiny new kid when I see Aaron from the corner of my eye entering the Grotto. He stalks in quietly, but I feel like the whole place comes to a standstill as soon as he steps through the door.
I lift my chin at him and give him a little half wave, but I don’t think he sees me because he just walks behind a display of remote control cars locked in a glass case.
“You know him?” Enzo asks me, and I can’t tell if he’s impressed or disappointed.
“Yeah, he lives across the street from me,” I say, watching Enzo carefully before adding, “He’s cool.”
Enzo doesn’t say anything. He just sets the remote down on the console and edges around me to look for his dad.
“You guys hang out?” Enzo asks, not looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say, knowing that’s not the right answer, and I can feel the slim chance of normality slipping away from me. The thing is, up until now, Aaron’s been the only one who actually wanted to hang out with me, and I’m not about to sell him out just because Enzo is … well, whatever Enzo is. I still can’t get a read on what’s bothering him about Aaron.
“Just watch your back around him,” Enzo says, and all the confidence he exhibited earlier seems to melt away. That’s what’s bothering him—he’s afraid of Aaron.
“What, does he kill cats or something?” I heard once that’s how you know someone’s going to be a serial killer.
“I don’t know,” Enzo says, and I swear to the aliens, he’s actually not sure.
“He has, like, three cats around his house at all times!” I say, and I can’t believe I have to convince Enzo that my new friend isn’t a serial killer. “He’s really nice,” I say, although “nice” isn’t quite how I’d describe Aaron now that I think about it. Still, he’s no Jack the Ripper.
But it’s clear to me that there’s no convincing Enzo. He’s already picking up his shopping bag and abandoning the game he was going to buy.
I follow him out the door and toward our dads, who have actual tears in their eyes from laughing so hard.
“Oh man, why has it taken us this long to get back in touch?” my dad says to Mr. Esposito, absently ruffling my hair.
“I don’t know, but I’m glad you’re here,” Mr. Esposito says, and Enzo and I scuff our shoes on the ground until the dads finally give each other a half handshake, half hug, and say they’ll see each other Monday.
“Did you find some clothes?” Dad asks, and I nod, guiding him toward Gear and away from Gamers Grotto, where I can’t see Aaron at all anymore.
“Enzo seems nice,” Dad says, and he’s right. Enzo does seem nice. But I’m not thinking about how nice Enzo is right now. I’m thinking about how afraid he seemed of Aaron, how surprised he was that I wasn’t afraid.
I pretend to be in a good mood on the way home, but I do it for Dad. I haven’t seen him like this for a long time. When I get to my room, though, I don’t even want to pull the tags off my new clothes or work on my audio manipulator (basically my coolest invention yet—to the untrained eye, it’s a simple microphone, but when the unsuspecting speaker talks into the microphone, bam! Fart noises. It’s part of my bodily functions line of inventions).
I was hoping that the trip to the Square would help me take my mind off of my bizarre night with Aaron, but between the fountain shrine to Lucy Yi and the way Enzo reacted to seeing Aaron, it’s like the universe is begging me to relive it.
I keep thinking back to the look on Enzo’s face when he saw Aaron, how he drew away from me when I told him we were friends. Sure, Aaron’s family is a little weird, and his dad almost made me have an accident on their kitchen floor, but it wasn’t Mr. Peterson who walked into the Grotto today. It wasn’t Mr. Peterson I had to convince Enzo wasn’t a serial killer. It was Aaron.
And if Enzo was afraid, it’s hard for me not to wonder if I should be afraid, too.
Aaron and I are doing reconnaissance, which is a cooler way of saying we’re doing research. That might make my scientist mother and journalist father proud if it were reconnaissance for science or journalism.
But Aaron and I are doing research for my fart machine.
“Okay, walk me through it one more time,” Aaron says.
“It’s an audio-initiated voice manipulator programmed to distort the vocal reception based on tonal input.”
It’s by far my most sophisticated machine to date, something I haven’t had a lot of time to play with ever since Aaron and I started spending every waking minute picking locks at the factory. To be honest, it feels good to be sharing something with Aaron that I know how to do better than him.
Aaron presses the top of his head like it hurts. “So how does it work?”
“I just told you,” I say, trying not to get frustrated.
“No, you just said a bunch of words and strung them together into a sentence. Tha
t doesn’t mean you explained anything.”
“How do you know so much about locks and you can’t follow the mechanics of an audio manipulator?”
“How do you keep talking so much without making any sense?”
“Boys, if you don’t mind, I would prefer you maintain a peaceful tone in my store. My patrons have come to expect a heightened state of consciousness when they visit.”
Aaron tries to stuff a laugh, but it escapes in a snort. I elbow his rib and shove him behind a display of healing crystals.
“Sorry, Mrs. Tillman.”
The natural grocer is the first place our reconnaissance has taken us. We’re in need of supplies, and we have reason to believe we’ll find the best ones here.
Mrs. Tillman smiles a tight smile and turns with the stiffness of someone who commands herself to relax.
“Heightened state of consciousness?” Aaron hisses.
“Dude, quiet down.”
“The only heightened anything in here are her wackadoodle prices. She used to buy goat cheese from the llama guy and let Girl Scouts sell cookies under her awning.”
“Goat cheese?” I ask.
“Yeah, I guess he’s got goats, too. Anyway, that’s not the point,” Aaron says. “She used to be nice. Then she goes to this silent retreat, doesn’t talk for two weeks, and when she comes back, she’s selling all these expensive, bogus vitamins and five-dollar ‘candy bars.’”
He puts air quotes around “candy bars,” and I have to laugh because this is the first time I’ve ever seen Aaron get vocally worked up about anything, and apparently he’s got it out for phony, New Age capitalism.
I pick up a bar from a large endcap display. The bar is way heavier than it should be, and indeed it’s marked $4.95, the word SURVIVA emblazoned across the packaging.
“Are these the fart bars?”
Aaron snorts again. “Yeah. Seriously, you’ve never smelled anything like it. Picture a toxic waste dump filled with dirty diapers in a sulfur pit.”
We each grab three bars before making our way to the counter. It’s six weeks’ worth of allowance, but it’s money well spent. All in the name of research.
“Thirty-two ninety-five,” Mrs. Tillman says, this time not even bothering with her tight smile.
“Thanks, Mrs. Tillman,” Aaron says, matching her frown with an extra-wide smile.
“The drugstore by the Square sells candy bars that might be more within your … budget,” she says before handing us a paper bag, and this time she does smile.
On the way back to Aaron’s house, I turn to him.
“So we’ll be testing out the audio synthesizer—”
“At the natural grocer. Absolutely,” Aaron says.
“Good,” I say.
“Good,” he says.
* * *
That night, after two Surviva bars and Mom’s famous cabbage rolls, I’m passing enough gas to rocket me to Mars. If only my audio synthesizer were complete, I’d be able to test it. But like a dummy, I left my power drill at Aaron’s house, and besides, he’s the only one with a recorder.
Just then, like it can hear my thoughts, the high whir of a drill floats across the street from the direction of Aaron’s house.
“Oh man,” I grumble, stumbling toward the window. “You’re gonna burn out the battery.”
I haven’t unpacked my charger yet, and because I sort of ignored Mom’s warning to label all my boxes, it’s anybody’s guess where or when it’ll turn up.
I cup my hands against the window and peer across the street to Aaron’s room, but his bedroom light is off. If he’s messing with my drill, he’s doing it somewhere else in the house.
Since I’m way too bloated to go to sleep anytime soon, I slide my window open and pop the screen from its frame. The turquoise house came equipped with an unexpected bonus right outside my room—a trellis sturdy enough to act as a ladder. I’m not exactly the kind of kid who sneaks out of the house when his parents are sleeping, but it’s just across the street, just to retrieve my drill. Besides, it’s easier than waking my parents up and explaining why I need the drill anyway.
I hear the whir of the drill again, but it stops by the time I’m across the street. The streetlight in front of my house flickers, and for a second, I’m standing on Aaron’s lawn in the dark. It’s the first time I’ve been here this late at night, and it occurs to me that I haven’t been invited. The light in Aaron’s room is still off, and suddenly, it feels like I’ve gone from hanging out to trespassing.
The drill revs up again, and I see the faintest light seeping out from the crack of the basement door. The streetlight flickers back on, and I find myself standing closer to the boarded-up basement door than I realized I was. I peer closer at the myriad of locks, only what I see now that I’m closer is more unsettling than any lock.
There are handprints all over the door, smears of black grease that creep around the edge of the door, half covered by the boards and bolts, some with tiny scratches at the tips of the fingerprints, like claw marks made by dragging fingernails.
Suddenly, the drill’s motor cuts out, and the whir sputters, the telltale sign of a dying battery. Then a heavy footfall lands on the steps leading up from the basement, methodically making their way up the stairs.
Straight for the door.
I bolt as fast as I can across the street, the streetlight clicking off just as I reach my house, and all at once, I can’t see the trellis against the wall. I hear the rattle of locks behind me, thumping against the heavy basement door as they’re slowly unlocked.
Groping through the vines in my front yard, I finally find a wooden slat and grab hold of it, wedging my foot in the one beside it before pulling myself up into the window. I reach the ledge of my windowsill just as the streetlight clicks on again.
Just as I hear the basement door swing open behind me.
I don’t turn around. I fall through the open window and take cover on the floor, my heart pounding against the floorboards as I listen for movement across the street.
Heavy footfalls thud against the grass, muffled in the humid, still night. The air is so dense, it feels like whoever is across the street is stealing my breath.
The footsteps leave the grass and move to the sidewalk, closer, their soles cracking over the tiny pebbles on the asphalt. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for whoever is outside my window to say something, to clamp on to the trellis and climb into my room, to laugh. To do anything at all.
Instead, the person with the heavy step stands perfectly still in the middle of the road, waiting.
I don’t know how much time passes. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. All I know is that just when I think I’m going to die of suffocation from all that thick air, the steps recede to the sidewalk, then to the lawn, then to the basement door, where the hinges creak to a close and the locks secure whatever secret is worth locking up in Aaron’s basement.
I peer over the windowsill, and when I’m sure no one is still lying in wait in the middle of the street, I resecure my screen and close my window. I lock the latch, but I wish I had a few more locks than that.
It wasn’t Aaron, I’m positive of that. Whoever wanted me to know they knew I was there, they had a much heavier step, a heavier frame.
“Bigger bones,” I whisper, and a chill rattles my whole body.
Because whatever Mr. Peterson is doing in his basement, he wants to be sure I know it’s none of my business. There’s no doubt in my mind—tonight was a warning from my new friend’s dad.
And Mr. Peterson doesn’t strike me as the type to warn someone twice.
The rattle on my trellis wakes me from a restless sleep.
It was the grocery store again, the cold metal grid of the cart against my bare legs. The towers of canned goods. The giant brown doors with their rubber stoppers on the ground. I got out of the cart this time, and when I pushed the doors open, I didn’t see the grocery aisles that I thought I would. It was just endless tunnels in every direction—dar
k, winding passages leading to nowhere. I’ve never felt more afraid.
I overheard my grandma once say to my mom, Keep a leash on that wolf. He sees too much at night. For as much as I’ve always hated my nightmares, my grandma hated them more, which is strange because I never even told her about them. She always just knew. I wish my mom had figured out how to put that leash on me.
Between the nightmare and the specter of Mr. Peterson still too close to ignore, I launch myself from my bed and head straight for the window, determined to face down whatever threat is rattling the trellis.
Except there’s no one there.
“Must have been a cat,” I tell myself. The neighborhood cats have taken to climbing the trellis lately, a fun new development to set my already frayed nerves on edge.
I’m just about to go back to bed when I hear the crinkle of paper. I open the window and lift the screen from the frame, leaning as far as I can over my window without falling out. There, trapped between a rung of the trellis and the vines that weave through it is a carefully folded piece of notebook paper.
I teeter out onto the trellis, still shaky from my dream, and my foot loses its grip on the slat just above the piece of paper. I catch myself, but barely, and I’m rewarded with a sharp scratch from a splintered adjacent rung.
I grasp the note, holding it in my mouth until I’ve climbed back to my window and replaced the screen.
I smile, even though my hands are still shaking from my climb and my arm is burning with a new scrape and my head is still swimming with visions of dark, endless tunnels.
* * *
I arrive at 7:59. Aaron is already there, lying in wait, pick in hand.
“Ready?” he asks.
“I have no idea,” I say.
“Well, just answer me this: Can you be stealth?”
“Um … yes?”
“I need a firm commitment here, Nicky.”
I’ve never seen Aaron more serious, which is why I can’t keep myself from laughing.
“Dude, this is mission-critical, Navy SEAL–level action. I need to know—are you in?”
Missing Pieces Page 4