by Norah Olson
Graham grabbed the bowl of olives and we followed him upstairs. Through the maze of rooms and hallways into his back bedroom.
“What’s up, you guys?”
“Not much,” I said. “You’ve heard about Brian, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s so messed up. I was just talking to him last week.”
Becky said, “That’s why we’re here. We thought maybe you had something on your film that would be a clue. You filmed a lot at that park, right?”
“Yeah, and at the school and all around there. You’re right. I didn’t even think there might be something on the films.”
“Can we watch them?” Declan asked.
“Hell yeah!” he said.
We sat on the floor in his room and he opened his Mac Air and looked at it for several minutes. “Yeah, okay, all the files are here. And the raw stuff before I edited it into the main movie. Let’s take this to the screening room.”
We followed him down another long hallway to the back stairs and then went up to the third floor, to the tiny dark theater where Declan and I had first seen his work and where Declan had first got the idea to christen him “Art Dullard.”
But now we were all nervous and anxious to see the movies. I really felt like we were going to find Brian’s kidnapper. That Graham might have even captured him on film. Graham attached his laptop to the projector and then Brian’s soft round face filled the screen. Becky took a sharp breath and then started crying.
“What are you up to?” Graham’s voice asked on the audio.
“I’m headed to Professor Xavier’s house,” Brian said.
“Oh yeah? What are you going to do there?”
“Meet up with my friends, because we all have the X-Gene.”
“You’re an X-Man?”
Brian nodded and held out his arm for the camera to inspect. He had drawn the word X-Man on himself in magic marker.
Graham’s voice said, “That’s awesome, dude.”
In the background when the camera pans back you can see there are several people sitting in the park. A guy reading the newspaper, a couple walking past, Brian’s mother and baby sister perched on a bench across the way.
“Wait,” Declan said. “Go back and pause it.”
Graham did and we looked at a guy wearing a blue sweat suit, who seemed to be looking right at Brian as he walked past.
“What time is that on the footage?”
“Four forty-three,” Graham said.
Declan pulled a little notebook out of his pocket and wrote something down. We did that for every part of the film where some stranger appeared or someone seemed to be looking at Brian.
The film was just Graham talking to Brian. Asking him questions that were the little-kid version of what he had asked Becky when he filmed her.
“Where do you live? How old are you? What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite show? Where do you go to school? Where do you like to play? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
All his answers were kinda cute and funny because he had a squeaky voice and he talked a lot—for every answer he would practically give his whole life story.
“My mom used to pick me up because she was working, but now she’s home with the baby and I walk home by myself and have to be really quiet because she’s taking a nap but usually my mom takes a nap too before our gramma gets there and then she has to go to work again. I can even go home by myself when no one’s there. I’m Wolverine.”
“How do you get home from school?” Graham asked.
“I take Sunnyside Drive and then my friends keep going to Demerest Parkway and I turn down Hendy Creek by myself.”
“Do you ever walk along the creek?”
“Sometimes.”
Declan and I exchanged looks. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking. I felt my heart pounding and like I was going to throw up.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait a minute. Who besides us has seen this movie?”
Graham shrugged. “Anybody can buy it from my site.”
“What?” Becky asked, suddenly shocked.
“I have a site and you can buy any of my stuff about Rockland or my experimental stuff; once the payment processes, the file downloads. I told you, people have spent hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for my films. I wasn’t lying. I need to make money so I can do my major feature-length film.”
Declan looked like he was going to be sick. “Graham,” he said. “Do you know who downloads the films—is there a record?”
“I guess. It’s all through PayPal and my Amazon wish list. People buy me things from my wish list and then they get the movie. The ones of kids talking are pretty popular because I guess everyone loves kids. I actually thought I’d film Brian for a long time—like over his life, so you can see how he changes. Like in the documentary 35 Up. Have you seen it?”
“Graham,” Becky said, her voice shaking. “This movie has all of Brian’s personal information in it.”
“I know. It’s amazing how much he talks.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, you sold this thing and it has the kid’s address and everything on it.”
“Yours does too,” he said. Still seeming not to get it.
Becky glanced at me with incredulous fury and was about to say something to Graham but Declan cut her off.
“We have to take this to the police and find out who downloaded the movie,” Declan said.
Then Graham started to look freaked-out. “Oh my God, no way! We cannot take any of this to the police.”
“We have to!” I shouted. “Are you crazy? This kid could be out there and maybe they could find him right away because of this.”
Graham stood up and started pacing around.
“No,” he said. “No way. I didn’t do this so someone would hurt Brian. This is just a movie.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why so many people were buying your movies?” Declan asked.
“Because they’re good!” Graham said. Then he looked sheepish and shrugged like maybe he did know. “Whatever,” he said defensively. “This is my job and my art; I’m not going to go to the police and have them take everything away from me. This is just what happened with the stuff me and Eric made. Why can’t people understand art when they see it?”
Declan and I exchanged shocked looks.
“What kind of movies did you and Eric make?” Declan asked.
“Beautiful movies,” he said. “Beautiful, beautiful movies.”
He called me in the middle of the night and his voice was rough with sleep or sleeplessness.
“You can’t let them do this to me,” he said. “You understand how I feel and what I’m doing. I don’t know why everyone tries to blame me for the things that go wrong.”
“Shhh,” I whispered into the phone, and then slipped out of bed and into the bathroom so I could have more privacy. “What’s going on?”
“You can’t let them take this stuff to the police. I had nothing to do with what happened to Brian.”
“Shh. Shh. Shh. It’s okay.”
“Meet me outside,” he said. “Down in my backyard by the fountain.”
I would have said no but he sounded so upset and frightened I agreed. “Okay,” I said. “Ten minutes.”
I had never done anything like this in my life but I had never heard someone sound so afraid before. I put on my sweatshirt and wool socks, then grabbed my shoes and carried them down the stairs so I wouldn’t make noise. Then I crept quietly over the creaky floors to the back door and slipped out.
The sky was a deep black-blue and stars shone brightly down. The moon was a little silver crescent. I could see him already beneath the fountain staring into the woods. He was wearing a black hoodie with a flannel shirt under it and his same Diesel jeans. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The water in the fountain was burbling. It shone liquid and lovely in the starlight. Even though he was upset and I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing I had an incredible sense of freedom being outside in secret
with no one around.
When he saw me, he ran forward and held me in his arms. Rested his head on my shoulder. I could feel how much he needed to be hugged and we stood that way for a long time.
“What’s going on?” I said finally.
He looked at me annoyed and confused for a moment and then shook his head. “Please, you have to know I had nothing to do with anything bad that may have happened to Brian. I thought he was a nice kid and a really interesting subject.”
I laughed a little at the way he said it. “Yeah,” I said. “I know you did.”
“Don’t let Declan and Becky go to the police.”
“I can’t make Syd and her friends do anything,” I said.
He held both my hands and squeezed them and looked intently into my face.
“You can, though. You can influence her. You can talk to her. Listen, you and me understand each other. I know we do. We know what it’s like to be shy and outside and different and see things that other people don’t.”
He was staring at me so intensely and his face was beautiful and pale in the starlight. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes looked dark and frightened like an animal’s.
“I don’t know anything about this,” I said. “If you have some information the police need maybe you could just give it to them yourself. You can explain that you were working on this documentary. You just give them what you have. I don’t think they would take it away from you.”
He looked like he was thinking about it. “I’m afraid,” he said.
“Don’t be afraid. People know you don’t mean any harm. You could be a hero.” I watched a wave of relief pass over his face.
“I don’t know how I got to have you in my life,” he said. And then he held me and kissed me. He laid the blanket down in the dewy leaf-strewn grass and then we lay down together beside the burbling fountain. He put his hands inside my sweatshirt and I held his head and kissed him.
Being beside him, and taking care of him that way, made my heart race and when he pressed himself against me I did not say no. I did not push him away. I held him tight and felt our hearts beating in unison. Felt our hearts beating as one. And I knew then I would protect him. Just like I had always protected Syd.
When I slipped back into my room at three a.m. she was awake. Sitting up in bed with her arms folded.
“Where were you?”
“I went for a walk,” I said. Already feeling like this was some kind of weird role reversal.
“A walk into Graham’s backyard?”
I could feel my face flushing. She took Sparkle Pig from her bed and threw it at me. “What the hell are you doing, Ally? What is going on?”
“Graham’s worried you and your friends are going to report him to the police.”
“Don’t you ever wonder why he is so freaked-out about the police?”
“No,” I said. “Lots of people are freaked-out by the police. You and your pothead friends are freaked-out by the police.”
“Don’t you wonder why he goes to school only when he feels like it and he’s always hanging around with his cameras and he acts so spaced-out?”
“We both know the answers to those questions,” I said simply. I was not going to get into her hysterical immature way of being. And frankly I didn’t care. It might have been one of the most special nights of my life and I wasn’t going to let her ruin it with her negative way of thinking.
“Ally,” she said. “I’m worried about you. Graham has made a bunch of weird movies and he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with them or with selling them to strangers online. He made one of Brian and he made one of Becky and God knows who else. We watched some of them yesterday and thinking that anyone could get ahold of these is really scary.”
“It’s no different than Facebook,” I said. “It’s the same as having a Tumblr account.” Which were things I had heard Graham say before.
“It’s very different from Facebook,” Syd said.
“Listen,” I said. “He knows what the right thing to do is and he’ll do it. It’s not up to us to go to the police or mess with his life.”
“Oh my God, Ally! It’s totally up to us. If we have information and we do nothing about it and something happens to Brian, it will be our fault too. We will have helped the person who took him.”
“That’s assuming the person who took him had any knowledge of Graham’s movies, which they probably didn’t.”
“But even if there is only the slightest chance they did, it should be reported.”
“He’s going to go to the police himself.”
“What? How do you know?” Syd asked.
“Because I asked him to,” I said simply. “Because he knows it’s the right thing to do. You can’t blame him for being scared. After the way his whole life was turned upside down.”
“How was his whole life turned upside down?” she asked. “I don’t think anyone has any clue what happened in Virginia.”
“I have a clue,” I said quietly
“What?” she whispered fiercely. “Ally, tell me.”
“He and Eric made some movies and they got in trouble for it. The same kind of thing I guess where they were young and Eric’s family thought the movies were really offensive. Also they were filming and not paying attention and they crashed the Austin. I think actually they may have crashed the Austin on purpose because of how it would look on film and then that’s where all the trouble started. After that they found all the other movies and Eric’s family made a big deal of it and sued Graham’s family and they haven’t seen each other since even though they were friends since they were three. Can you imagine not being able to talk to Becky ever again?”
“Yes, okay, I get that some weird shit happened, but what were the movies? Do you think they were . . . Do you think they were like porn or something?” Even as she said it, I could see it interested her more than disgusted her.
“No,” I said. “I don’t. He’s too shy, you don’t know him like I do. I think they were probably something as silly as Becky smoking or Brian talking about X-Men. Just nothing. He said they thought they were making something that expressed how beautiful life was, but people twisted it the wrong way. He said he has only one copy of the movie left that no one knows about and he’s going to make it part of a bigger movie and then sell it—maybe get an art agent or a gallery interested in his stuff. But he’s had to hide all these things and if he had to go to the police, it would ruin everything he’s worked for and get him in more trouble and probably make his parents take his camera away.”
She was very quiet, thinking. I came over and lay on her bed next to her. She wasn’t really mad. We were both exhausted and I was flushed with the joy of being with Graham; I could still feel the amazing warmth of his skin against mine. I sighed and she ran her fingers through my hair.
“Ally,” she said. “He didn’t make one of those movies of you, did he?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered, exasperated at her questions. “It doesn’t matter if he did. They’re just movies. They’re art. They’re documenting our lives. Everybody with a Twitter account does the same thing.”
I looked up at her and saw her concerned face. Neither of us had the energy for another fight. She was quiet, lost in thought. But when she spoke again she only said, “I’m sorry I threw Sparkle Pig.”
I said, “That’s okay. It’s better than when you stabbed him with the sewing scissors.”
“He needed surgery,” she said, starting to laugh a little. “He needed weight-loss surgery.”
And then I don’t know why but I just threw my arms around her and squeezed her tight. I said, “I love you, Syd.”
“Oh God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Hey, what’s this about? Why are you all sentimental? Are you getting your period?” Then she looked down into my face. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she said slowly. “Did you and Graham . . . ? Did you?”
I nodded and she smiled a confused smile at me and shook her head and then
she kissed me on top of my head. “I love you too, Ally, and I know you’re in love.” She was silent for a time, and then she said, “But please. Don’t let him come between us.”
He came in at about seven thirty in the morning, looking restless and unwashed, but dressed like some kind of movie star. Like he could buy the whole town. And he didn’t act like any kid his age. He was distant and confident. Someone used to telling people what to do—or at least getting what he asked for.
He had a laptop computer with him and he said he had something to show me. Something that might help people find Brian Phillips.
I knew about this kid. I got a buddy in Virginia sent me a juvenile file on him. And I know he had been in some serious trouble. I guess you’d call it serious trouble. It was either trouble or tragedy—so I was ready for something screwy the minute he opened his mouth.
I had him come into the interrogation room, fully expecting him to confess to something I did not want to hear. In a case like a missing child you have no time to spare. You get answers as fast as you can and you make sure you get the details. He wasn’t with his parents or a lawyer, so I was pretty sure we could get him talking. We’d had two days of dead ends and hell looking for Brian, and his mother’s worry was weighing on everyone. Heartbreaking.
He opened the little computer and then clicked on a file and a movie of Brian came up.
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
“I’m making a documentary about the town and I have footage of Brian talking. I posted this online and I think someone may have seen it and used it to kidnap him.”
The words were like a punch to the gut. I was infuriated with this rich little prick, and at the same time I knew this was the strongest lead we had on the case.
“Do you know who’s seen it?” I asked.
“A lot of people,” he said. “I have these names, but I don’t know if they’re the people’s real names or not.” He handed me a piece of paper with a list of names on them.
And I straightaway handed it to Evans. “Check these names against the sex offender registry,” I told him. And I could see the kid cringe even as I said it.