“I was in the office at the front of the house, checking my email.”
The chair banged back down onto four legs and scraped along our tiled floor as Officer Campen stood up.
“Can I see?”
I took a step back so that I was in the hallway again.
“See what?”
“The window where you saw the boy when you were checking your email. Get an idea of how much you could see from there, okay?”
He didn’t wait for an answer and walked straight upstairs, shoes and all. His sweaty hand squeaked along our banister. I needed him to leave.
“In here?” he called and turned right, into the office. I quickly followed and stood guarding my room across the landing. I could hear the Wallpaper Lion growling quietly behind the door.
“You’ve got a good view of the whole road from here, haven’t you?” He placed both disease-ridden hands onto the sterile white windowsill and looked around.
“So you haven’t noticed anyone different hanging around? Any cars you didn’t recognize? Anything that was a bit strange?”
I thought of Casey pushing him in the pond but kept quiet.
“No. Nothing.”
He turned away from the window, looking around the room.
“Mum expecting again, is she?” he said, nodding toward the elephant mobile.
I shook my head, but he ignored me and headed back downstairs.
“Our neighbor went out running,” I said as I followed him.
“Which one was that then?” said Officer Campen as he picked up his hat and notebook.
“Mr. Jenkins, next door at number seven. He left at …” I took my own notebook out of my back pocket. “12:51 p.m.”
The policeman narrowed his eyes.
“You wrote it down?”
I nodded and quickly stuffed the book back into my pocket. What did I do that for? The policeman narrowed his eyes at me.
“Why would you write something like that down, eh? Something so trivial? Are you sure you didn’t see anything?”
The phone began to ring, and we both stared at the black receiver lying on the kitchen work surface; the little red light blinked on the top.
“You going to answer that?”
I didn’t move as the phone made three more rings. Officer Campen leaned back on the kitchen counter and folded his arms, watching me. I swallowed, my mouth bone-dry, as I walked toward the receiver. Phones harbored some of the worst germs imaginable owing to their intricate parts. I’d owned one cell phone in my life, but it hadn’t lasted long. Disinfectant and cell phones aren’t really made for each other.
I reached out, trying to hide my trembling hand, when the answering machine cut in and my mum’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Hello, you have reached the Corbin household. We’re obviously out somewhere having fun, so leave us a message and we’ll call you back. Ciao!”
She never says ciao in real life. In fact, I’ve never, ever known her to say it at any other time apart from on our answering machine. Another, deeper woman’s voice began to speak.
“Oh hello Mr. and Mrs. Corbin, this is Debbie from Dr. Rhodes’s office. I just wanted to confirm with you that Matthew’s first therapy appointment is tomorrow at ten. We look forward to seeing him then.”
Officer Campen reached for his hat, avoiding my eyes.
“Right, I’d better move on and knock at your neighbor’s. Mr. Jenkins, did you say his name was?” He didn’t wait for an answer and strode toward the front door, opening it quickly. After hearing that message he couldn’t wait to leave.
“Hopefully we’ll find him soon; we usually do. But we might need to come back and talk to you again, and your parents when they’re home from work, okay?”
Putting his hat on, he walked away and turned toward Hannah and Mr. Jenkins’s house. I pushed the door closed with my foot and ran upstairs to grab my cleaning things and made a start on the windowsill in the office before the germs spread too much. A trumpet blast announced that I had an email.
To: Matthew Corbin
From: Melody Bird
Subject: Police
Matty! Have you heard? Teddy’s gone missing!
M x
It appeared that she’d forgiven me for practically throwing her out of my house earlier. I quickly typed my answer; my fingertips felt dirty hitting the keys without any protection.
To: Melody Bird
From: Matthew Corbin
Re: Police
I know. The police just knocked on my door and asked me a load of questions. Did you see anything?
Matthew
I looked out on the cul-de-sac as a small crowd formed in the middle of the road. I took my notebook out again as I waited for her reply.
Teddy Dawson has gone missing. There are police everywhere and it looks like they are organizing a search party. Gordon, Sue, and Claudia are all taking part.
Gordon was wearing a white, wide-brimmed hat and clutching a bottle of water. He looked like he was about to go off on safari. A policewoman was pointing toward the top of the road as he nodded, taking in her instructions.
Hannah was talking to Officer Campen on her doorstep, and I caught the odd sentence.
“… he went out about one o’clock for a run and hasn’t come back yet … usually stops at the gym … works on his abs … teaches PE at the school …” I couldn’t see from the window, but I imagined her Californian smile was there as she talked about how great her husband was.
Old Nina was peering around her front door, head down, clearly terrified to be exposed to the outside world like this as another officer talked to her. The trumpet blasted again.
To: Matthew Corbin
From: Melody Bird
Re: Police
No, I didn’t see anything. Did you?
M
To: Melody Bird
From: Matthew Corbin
Re: Police
I saw him playing in the front yard earlier. That’s all.
Matthew
Mum’s car crawled along the street, and she parked outside Old Nina’s house because our driveway was blocked. She rushed over to the search party and her hand went up to her mouth. Melody’s reply flashed up on my screen.
To: Matthew Corbin
From: Melody Bird
Re: Police
Oh wow! You’re probably their best witness! And you didn’t see anything strange? Nothing at all? What about that kid Casey. Was she playing too? Wasn’t Mr. Charles with him?
Mel.
I groaned. I should have kept my mouth shut.
To: Melody Bird
From: Matthew Corbin
Re: Police
No sign of Casey or Mr. Charles. Mr. Jenkins went for a run and that was it.
Matthew
Our front door opened and Mum yelled up the stairs.
“Matthew! Have you heard? Isn’t it awful?! I’m going out with the search party now. I’ll speak to you later! Okay, darling?”
She didn’t wait for an answer and the door banged shut. I watched her hurry to join the group and link her arm in Sue’s as they headed down the road toward town.
A van pulled up, and two men went around the side of Mr. Charles’s house carrying some electrical equipment and some plastic pipes. I went back to my room.
One of the men was putting a black cylinder into the middle of the pond while the other walked to an outdoor socket on the patio and plugged it in. The pump began to hum, and after a few seconds water began to gush out of a long blue pipe onto the flower bed where it puddled in the bone-dry earth. Within minutes the pond was empty, and one of the men took his shoes and socks off and rolled up his trousers before stepping down into the dirty sludge. As he raked about in the mud I wondered if he’d find the dead chick that Teddy had thrown in there.
“Stop! Stop! What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?! There’re fish in there! You’ll kill them!”
Mr. Charles was running down his yard, waving both of his
fists in the air. He’d changed clothes and was wearing a white vest over some pale blue trousers. A forest of gray hair smothered his shoulders.
“Who said you could do that? I didn’t give permission for you to touch my pond!”
The man on the lawn spoke to him quietly. It was obvious without draining it that Teddy wasn’t in the pond, so I can only assume they were looking for clues.
Mr. Charles ignored the man and went into his shed and came out carrying a large black bucket, which he filled from an outside tap. He then struggled with it toward the empty pond as the man in the sludge stood waiting with something scooped in his hands. I saw a sliver of orange as he dropped the fish into the bucket and Mr. Charles crouched down to inspect it.
“There are five more in there, you know. And I want every one out alive!”
Mr. Charles was really shouting now. The man on the lawn put a hand on his shoulder as he tried to calm him down, but Mr. Charles shrugged him off. He went back to the patio and began to fiddle with a yellow hose that was on a wheel fixed to the side of his house. The man in the pond scooped out two more fish as Mr. Charles marched back down to the garden with the trigger of the hose in his hand as it unraveled behind him. He stood there, aiming the hose at the pond, and waited.
Ten minutes later the pond had been fully searched, with only one more fish making it into the bucket. The men gathered up their equipment and headed back to the front of the house, shaking their heads.
Without a word Mr. Charles pulled the trigger on the hose, and a sharp blast of water hit the plastic pond liner. He stood there, motionless, until the pond was full once more.
At 6 p.m. I watched as two sniffer dogs ran excitedly around the neighborhood, their tails circling madly. They looked like they were onto something, only to turn around and head off in a different direction. They stopped and sniffed at a lamppost outside Penny and Gordon’s house as Frankie yapped frantically from the window of number three. Melody’s arms appeared briefly around the net curtain as she lifted the dog out of sight. The handlers directed them around the cul-de-sac as they searched each yard, and then they headed down the alleyway toward the graveyard.
The computer made a trumpet sound and an email appeared on the screen.
To: Matthew Corbin
From: Jake Bishop
Subject: Old Nina Took Teddy!!!
Old Nina’s got him. She’s a witch. She’s probably baking him in a pie right now!!!!
Jake
I stared at the message. Apart from the occasional yells of abuse, I hadn’t really had much to do with Jake Bishop lately. In fact, this was the first contact I’d had with him without him calling me a freak or a weirdo for about two years. I wasn’t really sure what to say.
To: Jake Bishop
From: Matthew Corbin
Re: Old Nina Took Teddy!!!
Of course she’s not a witch! Did you see anything?
Matthew
I looked back over my notes. Jake had sped off on his bike after Old Nina had pointed her finger at him when he was hassling Melody. That was the last I knew about his whereabouts.
To: Matthew Corbin
From: Jake Bishop
Re: Old Nina Took Teddy!!!
The only thing I’ve seen is your stupid gawping face staring out of that window of yours. What do you do up there all day exactly?
I deleted the email without answering.
Even I found it hard to believe, but Jake and I had once been best friends. Mum got to know his mum, Sue, when they realized they were living one house apart and both expecting babies around the same time; me at the end of October and Jake at the beginning of November.
They began having coffee together, and when we would both kick at the same time, they used to joke that we were trying to talk to each other. I arrived on my due date and Jake apparently fidgeted constantly, driving his mum mad, until he was born ten days later. Sue used to tell that story every time I saw her.
“He was so keen to meet you, weren’t you, Jakey? Ten days he had to wait though! Ten days before he could meet his new best friend.”
Our mums carried on meeting up while we laid in our bouncy chairs, apparently babbling to each other, but then, over the weeks, Sue realized that something wasn’t quite right with Jake. I thrived and outgrew my onesies, whereas he struggled to put on any weight and his skin was constantly red and sore. After months of hospital visits, the doctors discovered that he had a ton of allergies. Not long after that Jake and Leo’s dad left, leaving Sue alone and on constant alert in case her son came into contact with anything deadly.
When we started school it became clear that for his entire education he was going to be haunted by a bright yellow medical bag that followed him wherever he went. The other kids were fascinated at first.
“What’s in that bag, Jake?”
“How many needles are in there?”
“Is it really true that you could die if you ate the wrong thing?”
But after a while the novelty wore off and Jake’s allergies and raw skin made him a target. He turned up at birthday parties with his own specially prepared parcel of food, his mum terrified that a stray nut might have accidentally brushed against the cheese sandwiches and he’d go into anaphylactic shock. As soon as the adults were out of the way, the snide comments would start.
“You eating your baby food again, Jakey-boy?”
I’d give him a smile. Not quite sticking up for him, but at least letting him know I wasn’t siding with them, and anyway, I’d already started hanging around with Tom more, so we weren’t as good friends as we used to be.
Things got worse for him in fifth grade when the whole grade went on a trip to a London museum. As we filed onto the bus I saw there was an empty seat next to Jake, as usual. The understanding was that if you sat too close to him, then you could catch his scaly skin. I’m pretty sure nobody actually believed this, but no one was brave enough to say that.
“Matt! You can sit here if you want,” Jake said, his eyes pleading with me as I edged down the aisle. Tom was already in the backseat, beckoning me over.
What I should have done was dive into the seat beside Jake and prove to everyone that it was fine. There really wasn’t anything contagious about him.
But I didn’t.
“Sorry, Jake. I said I’d sit with Tom.”
I kept my face blank and carried on walking.
Everyone was chattering with excitement as we pulled onto the highway when our teacher, Mrs. Chambers, suddenly heaved herself up out of her seat, making the bus tilt to the left.
“Oh my God! Driver, turn around! I’ve forgotten Jake’s medical bag.”
A united groan rumbled around the bus as we returned to school and waited for Mrs. Chambers to heave herself down the steps, get herself to the school office, unlock a filing cabinet, clamber back onto the bus, and throw the despised yellow bag into an overhead locker.
The bus pulled away as Mrs. Chambers edged herself along the aisle, her large bosom leaning over Jake.
“There’s no need to panic—we’ve got your medicine and EpiPen now, okay? Off we go, driver! We’ll still be there in time for lunch!”
I looked along the gap in between the seats and the windows; I could see Jake, two rows ahead, slumped with his head resting against the glass.
“Why do you have to spoil everything, Jake?”
“That stupid bag! Haven’t you grown out of it by now?”
That September we started middle school and Jake and I were put into different classes, so I didn’t see him much anymore. I hung around with Tom, and Jake surrounded himself with some horrible kids from older years and gained some kind of admiration by becoming the school rebel. I regularly saw him slouched on the desk outside the principal’s office, picking at the dried flakes of skin on his forehead and jutting out a foot every now and then to try and trip someone up. I guess in a weird way, he’d stopped being bullied by becoming the bully.
Monday, July 28th. 6:14 p.m. Off
ice/nursery.
People known to be at home at the time of Teddy’s disappearance:
Mr. Charles
Casey
Hannah
Sue Bishop
Old Nina
Gordon and Penny
Claudia
People known to be out:
Sheila and Brian Corbin (working)
Leo Bishop (working)
Mr. Jenkins (jogging)
People unaccounted for:
Jake
Melody
I stared at the names as I tapped my pencil on the desk. It didn’t look like much, but it was a start. Teddy couldn’t have gone far on his own—I was certain of it. If he’d wandered off, surely they would have found him by now?
I looked out on the cul-de-sac as the police bustled around, busy gathering evidence to try and piece together the mystery of what had happened to the little boy.
But they didn’t know the neighborhood like I did. They didn’t see the things I saw.
I looked down at the pile of pink petals that Teddy had been picking, now gathered in a small mound by the gatepost, and I knew what I was going to do.
I was going to work out who took Teddy Dawson.
I was shaking as I stood over the bathroom sink. It had been hours since I’d last washed my hands. I’d lost track of things and not kept on top of keeping clean, and now I was in danger of becoming ill. And if I became ill, then who knew what that could lead to? I washed my hands over and over and over until my eyes streamed from the pain. I went to my room and was going to put a pair of latex gloves on, but I had to save them.
“Someone’s got him, Lion,” I said to the wallpaper. “Someone has taken him. I’m sure of it.”
The Wallpaper Lion looked back at me sadly.
“I need to be alert. I need to keep an eye on things, see if I can spot any clues. You need someone like me, watching things. I was the last one to see him! If I hadn’t seen him, they wouldn’t have known he was in the front yard at all, would they?”
I began a new page in my notebook.
The Goldfish Boy Page 7