by Amanda Stern
After the cop goes, I hightail it upstairs to my mom, who’s back on her bed, reading. I peek out my window, hoping maybe the boy is playing in the Houston Street playground, but the park is empty. The only person there is the lady on the corner. Maybe she saw Etan Patz! Maybe Ciggy or Sasquatch saw him, or the Italian ladies who hang their boobs out the windows. I wonder if the policeman asked them. I look in my closet. Nothing. On my way down to the garden, I stop and look into every room, but he’s not here. Maybe he already went back to his mom? I’m confused and disappointed that the cop didn’t know how or where to look for the boy. We’re supposed to trust cops, but this one did everything wrong. Maybe they just sent a bad one to our house. I walk right into a feeling of doom, but I remind myself of all the times I worried bad things would happen and they didn’t.
Later, when I’m in our little garden, I can hear Antsy Stevens talking with her husband Walter. Cops came to their house, too, and also only went to the roof.
“He just disappeared,” Antsy Stevens says. “Into thin air.”
“Who are these monsters who keep kidnapping little kids?” Walter asks.
A vine of chills wraps around me. My mom says that people don’t just disappear into thin air. She promises she won’t evaporate when I’m not with her, that terrible things don’t happen to little kids. With Marci Klein it was different, because the person who took her was her babysitter. Strangers don’t take kids. It’s just not possible, but I overheard Antsy say it, and Walter, too, and they’re grown-ups. I run to my mom’s room and climb next to her in bed.
“Someone took him,” I say. “A monster kidnapped him.”
“I think he just ran away,” she says, rolling her nap breath over in my direction.
“Antsy and Walter said he was kidnapped.”
“They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Why did the cop go to the roof?”
“I guess he thought he’d have a better view.”
“Why didn’t he look in the closets?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but you don’t need to worry. Nothing bad happened to him. He’s probably already home. You’ll see. Tonight on the news, they’ll tell everyone there was nothing to worry about.”
That night on the news, they show the same photo of the little boy. The anchor tells everyone the boy is six, and yesterday morning he walked to his school bus stop alone for the very first time, but he never got on the bus, and he didn’t make it to school, and now it’s been more than twenty-four hours. When I hear how long it’s been, that he disappeared yesterday, and not today as I had thought, I get light-headed and my brain drops into my stomach with a tangled, dreaded flump. My body knows he didn’t run away. My mom is wrong; he’s probably in a cold, damp dungeon right now, crying for his mom and unable to get warm. Why couldn’t anyone find him? Why didn’t the people who protect us protect him? Maybe the Guardian Angels will find him. They patrol the subway, which is very dangerous, and do karate and arrest people. Maybe they’ll do a better job than the cops. Every time I spot their red berets, I know I am safe.
“I’m sure he’s just at a friend’s house, and they just don’t realize everyone is looking for him,” my mom says. “I’m sure they’ll find him.”
I want to believe this, but I know she’s wrong. I don’t understand why we both heard the news say one thing and she’s still saying another. Not knowing who to believe makes his disappearance scarier. On the street, police loudspeakers are yelling, “Have you seen this little boy?” They describe what he looks like, what he was wearing, the bag he was carrying. She says the police know what they’re doing. She promises, but I saw, with my very own face, the cop doing only wrong things and not being a good looker at all. On the street there’s a jangle of leashes, a stampede of paws scouring the sidewalk as bloodhounds try to sniff their way to the boy. That night a spotlight swipes past my bedroom window. Since the cop left, my house has smelled different to me, like cold clouds in winter.
How will Etan survive being away from his mother for so long? Someone has to save him. What if all the adults believe what my mom does, that he’s fine? Then no one will be looking for him. Maybe only kids know how to find other missing kids. Maybe I’m amazing at it. When I think about his mother, I feel myself spin, because I know what must be in Etan’s head right now. I feel what he and his mother must be feeling, knowing that it’s a trillion times worse because it’s actually happening, instead of just my worries.
Maybe I can help her. I will help them find him. I will look and look and look until he appears. Then my mouth suddenly fills with the metallic taste of Shallow Countdown: My mom is sending me away to camp, for two entire months. Now that Etan is missing, I know I can’t leave. If I leave, they’ll never find him, and if I’m sent away, they may never find me.
When I wake up the next morning on my mom’s safe couch, my first thought is that they found him overnight. But in the kitchen, my mom is on the phone talking about him. He didn’t come home. It’s officially Day Three. On the street side, kids have been biking around, calling his name, but he never answers. I imagine him underneath the street, down below the grates on the sidewalk, huddled up and hungry, crying and scared of the dark. I look for him in all the right places, but even I don’t find him. He’s not in our house. My dread expands, rushes down my street and the surrounding blocks, crashing over rooftops and breaking onto the sidewalks like a twenty-foot wave. What if my whole neighborhood is unsafe?
On the kitchen table, the newspaper says they’re doing a rooftop-by-rooftop, backyard-by-backyard search, but they didn’t search our backyard. The article says he disappeared between 8:00 a.m. and 8:10 a.m. How can such a big thing happen in such a small period of time? It’s the between time I’m most afraid of, and it was in the between time that he went missing.
Bad things don’t happen to kids my age, but they do because Etan vanished; he’s disappeared. I’m seeing it with my own eyes. Where do you go when you vanish? What even is “thin air,” and how does it decide who to take? If you’re missing, do you still exist? Is “gone missing” the same as death, or worse? I don’t know why someone would take that little boy. Doesn’t anyone know what being scared feels like? And if they do, why do they want other people to feel that same horrible way?
Now when the church bells stop chiming they leave a trace in the air, a gloomy after-clang, the sound of olden times when townspeople watched the day’s execution.
The spotlights continue to pass by my window, pinning my eyes open each time I am supposed to sleep. The helicopter goes in circles. People are crowded outside the gun club across the street from my house. What if Etan is there? I slide my blanket off the bed, tuck my pillow under one arm, push my fingers into my mouth, and make my way to my mom’s room.
“Can I sleep in here?” I ask my mom. “I have a headache.”
“Do you want to take something?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“You should take something.”
After I take some Tylenol, I climb onto her couch, and when I’m finally tilting toward sleep, Melissa’s puffy face appears in my head and I open my eyes wide but close them again, turning onto my side, not wanting to follow the breadcrumbs my brain is dropping for me.
At school all we can talk about is Etan, and we’re worried, except for some jerk kids who pretend they’re not scared. Imogen and I are going to look for him after school on our bikes. Josh M. is absent, and soon everyone is worried that maybe he’s been kidnapped. Maybe the kidnapper is taking all the kids, coming for us one at a time until no kids are left. When is he coming to get me? I imagine cars following kids as they walk home, and then the kidnappers grabbing them and throwing them into the trunk. I make sure to walk as far away from the actual street as possible. If the world doesn’t do bad things to kids, did the world change its mind? Did someone overhear me worrying about people disappearing and get their own ideas? If the world isn’t a safe place to live in, where wi
ll we go?
Before, we had no rules downtown, and now there are too many. A specialist comes to our school to talk about “Stranger Danger.” We have to peel off our shiny gold name decals; tear our identities from jackets, shirts, and backpacks; unstitch each embroidered letter of our names. Everything of Imogen’s has her name on it. If a stranger knows your name, they can trick you. They can pretend they know you because they know your name. How would someone even think about that? Imogen’s been undoing her name tags for days. If we think someone is following us, we shouldn’t stop at our house, but keep going and walk into the first open store to ask for help. Otherwise, the stranger will know where we live and come back and kill us. Do not talk to strangers, do not accept candy, which could have poison or razor blades in it. I picture myself with a mouth full of blood, a Jolly Rancher drowning on my tongue. Some adults are monsters, but kids aren’t monsters. I look at all my classmates suspicious now. Who among us will grow up to be that bad?
Etan is six and I just turned nine, but he is braver than me because I don’t want to go anywhere without my mom, and he wanted his mom to stay behind while he walked alone to the school bus. Tuesday, my school takes the day off to hang missing posters all around the Village. I keep thinking about what we were doing on Friday morning while Etan was getting disappeared, and I feel ashamed of myself that I was doing regular things while someone was in trouble. If I had known, I would have done something. It’s too painful to miss home, and if I can stop that feeling from happening inside others, I will. But on Friday, I did what I always do and got dressed, ate cereal, tried to get out of going to school, ate lunch, had library, then spelling bee, and came home. By the time I got home it was 3 p.m., and Etan had already been missing for seven hours, and no one knew a thing about it, not yet. Not even his parents. Why didn’t the school call his mom? Why didn’t the bus driver? In those hours when he was in trouble, and maybe even being tortured, we were running and laughing and eating candy and being carefree. We were happy when we should have been scared. Why didn’t I feel the tugs inside me when someone was in such bad trouble? This is what happens when you’re not paying attention. Melissa and I call and remind each other of our secret kidnapping code, feeling lucky we came up with one, but sad for Etan that he didn’t think of it.
People claim to have seen him all over the Village. The guys at Prince Street Lumber say he’d been there with a friend. People saw him on the subway and in a candy store. It’s been five days, then suddenly seven, and I don’t have an appetite. If he was on the subway, then why didn’t the Guardian Angels protect him? Are they not looking in the right places either?
Everyone around me keeps living regular life, which feels unbearable to me. Someone kicked the earth and shook everything out of place. More and more cops are out on the street, but they just stand there.
Did Etan’s mom tell him what to do if anyone kidnapped him? I can’t stop imagining his terror, that absolute, end-of-life feeling.
“What should I do if someone tries to kidnap me?” I ask my mom.
“No one is going to kidnap you,” she says.
“But what if? Just pretend. I need to know what to do. If someone drove slowly after me, opened their car door, and pulled me inside, what would I do?”
“Never talk to strangers,” she says.
“I know that. I know all the things not to do, but just say something happens; what I need to know is what to do!” I am getting so frustrated.
“Do not raise your voice at me!” my mom snaps.
I fly away. “Sorry.” I start to cry and run to my bedroom. Later, she comes up to check on me.
“I promise you,” she says, rubbing my back while I lie facedown on my pillow. “No one is going to take you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, or me, or anyone you love. You don’t need to worry about it. Do you feel better now?” she asks.
I nod. But I don’t feel better. I feel worse. More afraid than before. Only my mom knows how to protect me, but she won’t tell me how to do it, and I won’t know what to do when she’s not there.
The Guardian Angels promised to make the streets safer, but they didn’t, so how am I supposed to believe them anymore? They didn’t guard Etan Patz. Why aren’t the grown-ups finding him? They found Marci Klein. They found her before the day was even over. Maybe her cops should be in charge here. As soon as we find him, we can go back to the world where kids don’t vanish. I have to bring him back home.
When the cops come to our house again, they take Eddie in the police car to interview him because he saw Etan in Washington Square Park, walking with an older man. Eddie always gets everything I want: broken arms and casts; and now he’s going to be the one to find Etan. I watch him in the car, making sure the cops don’t take my brother away like someone took Etan. But he comes back right away. He didn’t see the right boy, and I feel guilty for being relieved.
The Lester boys have friends over, and we start a game of freeze tag. As I tag one of Arthur’s friends, I instantly recognize his choppy, self-cut bangs, his after-nap look. I freeze him, looking back to make sure he can’t move, and sprint through my house and down the street to the cop at the end of the block to tell him I found Etan Patz. He doesn’t believe me, but I drag him back. I will save all the kids from all the kidnappers. I will save the world.
Triumphant, I point to the boy with the crescent smile.
“That one?” he asks. “Near the rope?”
“Yes,” I answer, annoyed at his hesitation. “That’s Etan Patz.”
“That’s not him.”
I don’t know why he is saying this to me, so I insist. Close to tears, I tell him again he’s the one.
“No, Etan Patz is white.”
“White?”
“Not Chinese,” he says softly.
His words make no sense. White, Chinese, what does it matter—that little boy is Etan Patz. I stare at the Chinese boy. He smiles back at me. I blink up at the cop. “Even now? It’s still not him?”
“Even now,” he says, and then he puts his hands on his hips and walks away from me forever.
I know the boy isn’t Etan. I knew he wasn’t Etan even when I tagged him, but maybe he would become Etan because that’s what I really wanted. Because what if we never find out what happened to him? The not knowing will be the worst part. His mother and father don’t know. His sister and brother don’t know. No one knows where Etan is, and nothing is safe anymore.
The street side of life brought a bad omen that changed the entire world: I’ve been right all along and the adults have been wrong. If adults can’t save us kids, then they can’t save themselves either. I really can’t ever leave home again. Not for school, or camp, or my dad’s house. If I don’t find the boy, he will die. I look up at the watercolors painting over the blue sky. The night is fast-forwarding its heaviness and I feel it coming for me.
June 1981
Dr. Rivka Golod
Summary of Test Results
In the area of auditory perception, Amanda performed poorly on a test of sound discrimination. She consistently confused the high-frequency sound V, and the f. An audio metric examination is indicated to rule out a possible high-frequency loss, although clinically there does not appear to be any hearing acuity problem. As on other tests, the likelihood that anxiety is interfering is high, and should not be discounted.
If Time Were a Dog
While I don’t think I want to have a baby on my own, there’s an urgency inside my thirty-nine-year-old body telling me I need someone to mother. I’ve been trying to write my second novel, and hoping my manuscript would be what I parent, but I can’t stop thinking about making a human family. It’s been six years since my first book came out. That’s forty-two years, if time were a dog. My reading series has brought me many unexpected opportunities. One is that I got over my stage fright. I used to think the worst that could happen to me onstage if I did badly was that I’d die, but then I bombed onstage two shows in a row, and not only did I not
die, I experienced a certain glory in surviving; and just like that, I was suddenly much less afraid. The second was the offer to write children’s books for an editor who attended one of the events. Because I have failed, so far, to publish a second adult novel, and I am instead under contract for a nine-book series for kids called Frankly, Frannie—I have deemed myself less valid than the writers around me, despite the fact I love children’s books, and their authors. This makes facing the second book harder. My “real” writing is what fills my life with purpose, and it’s this specifically set-aside time a “real” writer utilizes to their advantage. However, I discover it’s also the perfect time to binge-watch TV shows on an illegal streaming site that’s probably infecting my computer with malware and stealing all my secrets, but who cares, because Nurse Jackie! Also, this is probably a good time to adopt a dog.
“You gave yourself three months to finish your novel,” my therapist reminds me.
“I can do both,” I tell her.
She shrugs. “It’s your life.”
I log on to Petfinder and scroll through all the cute dogs. I can already feel how much better my life will be. We’ll play Frisbee in the park, race around the house, and collapse on the couch in a giggling out-of-breath heap of love. I apply for a gorgeous dog. She’s part beagle, part shiksa, and I’ve decided to name her Pilot, and raise her as a Jew.
My friend Laurie drives me to New Jersey to pick her up. At the shelter, Pilot walks right over to me, without knowing who I am, and that means she’s my destiny. I bend down to meet her face-to-face. She won’t look in my eyes, yet there’s something about her that’s profoundly familiar, that calls to me.