“The school has called a meeting tonight,” I say. “For the parents of Sammy’s class. Will you come?”
“Not sure.” Sam checks his watch. “Josh said he’d drop by in half an hour, and then I have a couple of back-to-back calls. Think you can handle it on your own?”
I sigh. In a city like Atlanta, every day comes with a built-in crisis. Why should ours be any different? “I always do.”
Sam drops a distracted kiss on my lips and takes off for the study, and I head up the stairs.
In the hallway, noise spills out opposite bedroom doors, a hair dryer from Mom’s room competes against automatic gunfire from Sammy’s. I stop in his open doorway and look inside, where it’s gloomy and dark, the curtains drawn tight against the midafternoon sunshine. The only light comes from the giant flat screen, flickering images of a wartime scenario seen from behind night-vision goggles. It casts the room in an eerie green.
Sammy is slumped in the gaming chair before his unmade bed, surrounded by a rabbit’s nest of toys and dirty clothes. By his bare feet, a half-eaten bag of popcorn has burped up its contents onto the hardwood floor, next to a collection of empty Gatorade bottles. The maid powered through here just days ago with a vacuum cleaner and a cleaning rag, and now it looks like she’s never been.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Sammy starts, and the game pauses in midshriek, plunging the room into silence. He peeks around the side of his chair, eyeing me suspiciously like he’s been doing ever since yesterday, when I showed up muddy and still half-delirious with terror in Dahlonega.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Turn that off for a minute, will you? I want to talk to you.”
“But I’m almost to the next level.”
“Well, then save it. You can do the next level later.”
“That’s not how it works. If I stop before I kill all the juvies, then I have to start this level all over again.”
I give him a look. “Either turn it off yourself, or I will.”
With a sigh, Sammy turns back to the TV and punches a couple of buttons on the joystick. He tosses it onto a pile of clothes, then folds his arms across his chest, waiting.
I snap on the bedside lamp, straighten the comforter and drop onto the end of his bed. “Sweetheart, come here.” When he still doesn’t move, I pat the mattress.
He approaches the bed like it’s a plank hanging over the side of a pirate ship, ready to drop him, blindfolded and bound by the wrists and ankles, into a churning ocean. When Sammy was little I couldn’t keep him off my lap, but now there are no more unsolicited kisses, no more spontaneous cuddles on the couch. How did this happen? When did sitting beside me become something I have to force my son to do?
He sinks onto the mattress, careful to maintain a good six inches between our thighs, and this new and unwelcome lack of affection breaks my heart. I tell myself that this is only a phase, that it’s only a matter of time before he clambers back onto my lap, but so far, the evidence proves otherwise.
“Why don’t you come downstairs for a while? I’ll make us something yummy, and we can watch a movie.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“What? You’re always hungry.” I press my palm to his forehead. “Hmm, no fever. What about a headache? Let me see your tongue. I bet it’s spotted.”
“Mo-om,” he says, but he’s biting down on a smile.
“Seriously, baby. You can’t stay up here all day and play video games. Your butt will become one with that stool, and then what? We’ll have to call you Sammy The Gaming Chair.”
“Well, you always said you wished I came with a volume knob.”
“Ha-ha, very funny, smarty-pants.”
The truth is, I love this about him—his cheeky sense of humor, his ability to make me laugh out loud even when I don’t want to. I want more of it, more of this time.
But more than that, I want answers. Mom’s right; there’s something Sammy’s not telling me, something he feels bad about, and I think I know what it is.
“Sammy, how come you were in Ethan’s sleeping bag instead of your own?”
His head whips to mine, his chin jutting in defense. “I didn’t want to trade. It was Jessica James’s fault. She started it.” His voice is sharper than it needs to be in the quiet room.
“Started what?”
“Well, Jessica took Naomi’s sleeping bag, and then Naomi took Chloe’s and Chloe took Valerie’s, but then mine didn’t fit where it was anymore, and I had the best spot in the whole cabin. Ethan’s was shorter, so Jessica told us to switch bags.”
“And what did Ethan think of this arrangement?”
Sammy bobs his shoulders. “Ethan’s a crybaby.”
And so, it seems, that we are back full circle.
“Miss Emma told me the two of you had an argument. What about?”
“He said I stole his rocks, but I didn’t. He stole mine. Miss Emma made us put ’em in one big pile and take turns choosing, but it wasn’t fair. He got my prettiest one.”
“So was taking his sleeping bag some kind of payback?”
“No.” His answer is too immediate and vehement. “I already told you, that was because of Jessica, not me.”
“Still. You went along with it.”
He slumps on the bed, slapping his arms across his middle with a huff, and I know that stance. That stance means he’s done talking.
I sigh and nudge him off the bed. “Time for a shower, big guy.”
Sammy sputters out a protest, but I herd him into his bathroom anyway. I flip on the water and stand guard until he strips and steps into the steam. Once his hair is good and lathered up, I head back into his bedroom.
A place that as far as I can tell hasn’t seen sunshine for days.
I shove open the curtains, heavy strips of thick navy velvet that block out all but tiny strips of light. A bright afternoon sun pours through the glass, painting yellow streaks across the messy bedroom carpet. Unmade bed. Half-empty water bottles and wrappers everywhere. Dirty clothes strewn about in chaotic clumps—an impressive amount of them considering Sammy has been in the same T-shirt and shorts for two days. I fetch the laundry basket from his closet and start collecting.
I’m digging a pair of underwear from behind the curtains when the TV chirps. I straighten, see a flashing envelope on the corner of the screen, the universal icon for messages.
I frown and set the laundry basket on the bed.
I am not one of those out-of-touch mothers. I read the newspaper articles, watch the late-night news reports about freaks lurking behind computer screens in their mother’s damp basement, luring young children into sketchy chat rooms or worse. I am neither naive nor complacent, and I’m sure as hell no Pollyanna. When I signed Sammy up for Xbox Live, I cranked every available parental control up to maximum security. The games Sammy plays have no bad language, and though he may obliterate a locust or two, no human blood is shed. I limited his interactions with other humans to three of his school friends: Ben, Liam and Noah. Nobody else is allowed in.
So who’s GamerJoeATL?
I pluck the controller from the floor and fumble around with the buttons, trying to remember how to navigate the screen with the joystick. After a few tries, the message opens with a musical beep.
In the tomb hurry.
At least it’s not some creepy predator sending a selfie of his private parts, I think, right before anger bites at my skin. My clever, sneaky son figured out a way through my firewall. The little shit hijacked my password.
I scroll through the names on the friends screen, twenty-four in all, most of them fairly generic handles like Joe’s, all but three of them unfamiliar. By the time I get to the last one, I’m fuming.
I settle the controller on the dresser, unhook the console from the wall and march it into my closet, where I shove it onto the hi
ghest shelf. Even if Sammy dragged over a chair, even if he carted the stepladder up from the garage, he’d never be able to climb this high. Then again, I’ve already underestimated him once. I bury the thing under a pile of sweaters and push it all the way to the back of the shelf. I step back and study my handiwork, satisfied. Nobody but me will even know that it’s there.
I return to Sammy’s room, where he’s still under the shower, a dark blur behind the fogged-up glass door. I lean against the counter, folding my arms across my chest. “Sammy, how come you’re getting messages on your Xbox?”
Sammy’s form freezes behind the glass. “I am?”
“Yes. Which I’m pretty sure you already know. What I’m trying to understand is why. I didn’t approve anybody named GamerJoeATL, or for that matter, any of the other twenty-plus names I saw on your friends list. Would you like to explain to me how they got through?”
He clears a spot on the glass with a palm, blinking out at me with wide, guilty eyes. “What’d he say?”
“Something about a tomb and to hurry.” Sammy slams off the water and throws open the door, yanking the towel from the bar. “But listen to me. You and I set things up so you could only play with the friends I approved of, remember?”
He throws the towel across his shoulders, superhero style, and skids across the tiles.
“Samuel Joseph Huntington, get your buns back here right now,” I call out, but he’s already disappeared around the corner.
I’m not going to get too worked up. I’ve already pulled the magician’s trick, leaving nothing but a couple of wires dangling from the wall. I straighten the towels and follow behind, stepping into his room right as his voice slices the air.
“Mom!” He turns to me, stiff with animosity. “Where is it? Where’s my Xbox?”
“I put it away.”
“But you can’t just take it. It’s mine.” Sammy’s fists, his whole body is clenched. His face is burgundy with rage, his chest heaving like he just ran a marathon. His eyes, for once not hidden behind his glasses, shimmer with tears.
I sink onto the foot of his bed. “You knew I didn’t want you communicating with people I didn’t approve of online, and you did it anyway, so I took it away. Indefinitely.”
“Mom, no. Please. I need it.”
It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. “Nobody needs an Xbox, Sammy. In fact, if I had known a video game would elicit this type of behavior, I would have never given you one.”
Sammy’s protests start up all over again, his cries increasing in volume and pitch.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but this is your punishment for being sneaky. For doing things behind your father’s and my back. Online safety is that important.”
Sammy’s tears are flowing freely now, fat crocodile streams sliding unchecked down his cheeks, and they’re as shocking for their intensity as for the way he doesn’t bother to hide them. All these years, Ethan’s greatest sin has always been that he’s a crybaby, and now Sammy is stepping into his knockoff Nikes.
“It’s important,” he wails.
“Actions have consequences, Sammy, and yours could have put you in danger. You could have put this whole family in danger.” I pause as a new question whispers through my mind: What if one of those handles doesn’t belong to a child? What if it belongs to a predator, one who listened in on Sammy and his school friends talking about going to Dahlonega? Someone who doesn’t know the kids could easily mix up the two. “Did you tell any of your online friends you were going to the mines with your class?”
“No.” He swipes the back of an arm across his mouth, but he doesn’t quite meet my gaze when he says it.
I turn on the edge of his bed, putting us face-to-face. “Are you sure? Think about it. Did you tell anybody on the game that you and your class were going to Dahlonega?”
“They’re all friends from school. They all knew. Half of them were there with me.” Hope swells in his voice, as if offering up this answer might sway me somehow, might right some of his wrong. “Mom, please.”
When I don’t give in, Sammy loses it. He throws his head back, wraps both arms around his stomach and lets loose. His mouth opens in a clean note of grief that hurts my heart. This is not the sound of a child crying. This is something I’ve never heard before, a wailing, a keening eruption of soul-piercing sound.
“What is going on with you?”
Sammy never cries, and I don’t understand where these tears are coming from now. This can’t all be about a stupid video game.
“What happened to Ethan is not your fault. You know that, right?” When he doesn’t respond, I rub a hand over his hair, tilt his head to look at me. He looks at me with my husband’s dark eyes, heavily lashed and pleading. “What that bad man did to Ethan has nothing to do with you. This is not your fault.”
My words only make him cry harder.
“Oh, sweetie, come here.”
I tug him to me, and he doesn’t struggle, but he doesn’t give in, either. He just stands there between my legs and cries his little heart out. The anger that’s been simmering in my chest for this ridiculous temper tantrum scatters like smoke, and my heart twists on the knife edge of a sword. I wrap the towel around his still-damp body and hold on tight, then rock him back and forth until his sobs fade into hiccups.
Mom was right. There’s something Sammy is not telling.
But there were sixteen other kids in that cabin, sixteen other sets of parents. Somebody must know something.
KAT
41 hours missing
“Holy shit,” Lucas mutters under his breath. He takes in the thick carpeting, the oak-paneled walls, the underlit chandelier hanging in the foyer, swiped from some old French château. “This place is fancy.”
I thought the same thing the first time I walked up the columned steps of Cambridge Classical Academy, a school Andrew was determined his son attend after reading they boasted the highest percentage of Ivy League graduates in all of Atlanta. The public school up the street was suddenly not good enough. Andrew wanted to pay more than twenty thousand dollars a year for his son to walk these hallowed halls next to the kids of CEOs and bankers, of socialites and trust fund babies. I balked at the thought of Ethan among the children of the one percent. He was already so different from the other kids. How would he ever fit in?
“Your network is your net worth,” Andrew said when I voiced my objections, quoting from the title of a bestselling business book. “Fake it till you make it.” Andrew was a big fan of one-liners.
“This way,” I say, leading Lucas down the east-wing hallway to the largest of the conference rooms, the one they use to impress prospective parents. Polished cherry table that seats a crowd, Promethean board as big as the wall. Andrew had taken it all in with excited, eager eyes, but to me it had seemed excessive.
But tonight, Lucas and I aren’t here to be impressed but “informed and supported.” When I read the email for tonight’s get-together to Lucas, he rolled his eyes.
“They’re covering their asses,” he said, and if I didn’t believe him then, the security guard at the door, who shoved a confidentiality agreement in our hands with orders to sign here, told me Lucas was right.
At the end of the hall, a hum of excited voices spills out into the hallway. Both male and female tones, the words clattering on top of each other like football players in a pile, shoving the others aside to be heard. There are too many to make out more than just a word or two: Police. Father. Ethan. I stop on the carpet and take a deep breath, swallowing down my nerves.
“How many people are here again?” Lucas asks.
“Supposedly just the parents of Ethan’s class, so what’s that—thirty-five or so?”
But Lucas isn’t wrong. The volume coming from that room makes it sound more like a mob, and I hesitate on the Oriental carpet. If Lucas’s prediction is right, if tonight is one
big charade so the school can cover their asses, I don’t want to be part of it.
Then again, it’s not like there’s anything else I can be doing, other than pacing my floors and waiting for an update from Mac, who’s parked himself at gate E34 at the airport, where Andrew’s plane is scheduled to touch down any moment now. After Brandon’s announcement that Andrew owns a tent, Mac and his men did another sweep of Andrew’s home, where they found nothing. No tent. No camping equipment. Not even a muddy pair of shoes.
“There’s no sign he’s ever even thought about camping,” Mac told me when they were done. “And we looked everywhere. In every closet. In the basement and attic. If Andrew owns a tent, he’s not storing it at his house.”
“His office, maybe?”
“We’re working on the warrant right now. If it doesn’t come through by the time he lands, we’ll go straight from the airport to his office and persuade him to use his key.”
“And you’re sure he’s on the plane?” DL919, landing at Hartsfield sixteen minutes late, at 7:43 p.m.
“Positive. I got both verbal and visual confirmation from the captain. My partner and I will be intercepting Andrew at the gate.”
“What about the neighbor kid? Did he tell you anything else?”
“Nothing useful, though his mother had a lot to say about you, trespassing on private property.”
The restraining order, coming back to bite me.
“We don’t have to stay, you know,” Lucas says, his hand warm and reassuring on my lower back. “We can go home and wait for Mac to call.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to go home and wait. I want to act, to search, to fight. I want to do anything other than continue to sit around, feeling helpless. “Let’s do this.”
We step into the doorway, and the voices fall away into a painful quiet. Fifty pairs of eyes, maybe more, stare up at us, their expressions a mix of pity and bald-faced curiosity. Fifty or more bodies crammed around the table, lined up in folding chairs against all four walls. Parents, of course, and by the look of the others’ buttoned-up expressions, their attorneys. Of course they would bring their attorneys. I scan the faces for Sam and Stefanie, but neither of them are here. Miss Emma is noticeably absent, as well.
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