Emmy & Oliver

by Robin Benway

  “Are you angry with your father?”

  “What was it like seeing your mother again?”

  “Do you know where your father might be?”

  “What’s the first thing you’re going to do now that you’re home?”

  Oliver’s door opened and he stepped out.

  He was a stranger.

  Taller, broader, dark hair, just like my mom had said. He was glaring at the cameras as Maureen put her arm around him. Maureen had seemed smaller and frailer ever since that day Oliver hadn’t come home from school, but next to her son, she looked tiny. I tasted blood and realized I was biting my lip too hard. Caro was crying next to me and Drew put an arm around each of us, hugging us tight. He was shaking. I think we all were.

  When Oliver looked up and over at us, I made a noise in the back of my throat. I hadn’t seen him in ten years, but I had seen his face every night in my dreams, his little seven-year-old face that seemed way too young, and when his eyes met mine, I knew that it was him. He had the same frown, the same eyes, the same posture.

  “I wonder if anyone checked his shirt tag,” I wondered out loud, and before anyone could ask what I was talking about, Oliver disappeared into his house, the door shutting behind him.

  And that was it. He was home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Give Oliver space.”

  That was the mantra for the next week, at least as far as my parents went. On the advice of several psychologists and therapists, Maureen, Rick, the twins, and Oliver all went on virtual lockdown. “It’s time for us to be a family once again.” My mom read one of Maureen’s group emails out loud one night as my dad and I were cleaning up after dinner. We had gotten a lot of these emails over the years—various “thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers” emails that Maureen had sent to friends and family members—but this was the first one that had an ending to it.

  “Maybe Oliver doesn’t need space,” I said, drying a wineglass and trying not to get fingerprints all over it. “Maybe he wants to just be alone and not hang out with his old and new family. No one wants to be locked up with Molly and Nora.” They were Oliver’s half sisters. I babysat them every so often for money that my parents thought I was saving for college and I was actually saving for a new wet suit and board.

  “According to the therapists, they need some intense bonding time,” my mom replied, delicately swiping her finger across the phone to turn it off.

  “I’ve spent plenty of time alone with the twins,” I replied. “Oliver will be crawling out through the chimney in a day if they put him through that.”

  “We need intense bonding time!” my dad said. “Pizza night on Friday!”

  “I have a work thing,” my mom said.

  “I have a ‘don’t want to hang out with my parents’ thing,” I added.

  “You love hanging out with us!” my dad chided me. “We’re cool. Your friends love us.”

  It was, unfortunately, true. Caro and Drew thought my parents were great. And they were. Most of the time. But when it came to curfews or personal freedom, my parents were dictators.

  “Anyway,” my mom said, ignoring my comment, “we just have to be patient. I’m sure we’ll all have a chance to see Oliver again soon. He just needs some space.”

  “Space?” Caro frowned when I told her that. We were in my bedroom the next night, doing our English homework. It was a group project and luckily we could pick our own partners. Of course I chose Caro. She organizes her Post-it notes by color and size. You can’t go wrong in a group project with someone like her.

  “Space,” I replied, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “It’s not really space if you’re on lockdown with your own family.” Caro seemed dubious and I saw her glance out my window toward Oliver’s, where the blinds had been permanently shut. “That sounds like the opposite of space.”

  “Not all of us have five siblings like you,” I told her. “And it’s not lockdown. He’s not in prison.”

  Caro raised her eyebrow right back at me. “Would you want to be holed up with Maureen, day and night?”

  Caro had a point. Maureen was not an easygoing person. It seemed mean to make fun of her for it, though. “She went through a horrible trauma ten years ago,” I chided Caro. “No one would be mellow after that.”

  “I know, I know,” Caro said. “She just makes me nervous.”

  “This from someone whose pencils are all sharpened to equal lengths.”

  Caro paused, then threw a Post-it pad at me, giggling when I ducked. “You’re lucky,” she said. “It could have been a pencil.”

  “Space,” Drew said thoughtfully when I told him what my parents had said. “Didn’t he have enough space for ten years?”

  “Not if he was in New York,” I said. “They tend to pack ’em in there.”

  “I heard that he lived all over,” Drew said. “I read it online.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” I grumbled.

  Apparently, some cousin of Maureen’s who lived one town over had leaked Maureen’s email to the press. Oliver’s news story wasn’t as exciting as it had been the week before, but new information was new information.

  “They called him Colin.” Drew went on like I hadn’t said anything. We were sitting on the sand after surfing together, perched on our boards. The sun was an hour or so away from dropping into the ocean, which meant I had thirty minutes before we had to leave and get back before my parents became suspicious.

  “Colin?” I repeated, and Drew nodded sagely. “Wow. Okay. Why Colin?”

  “No clue. I read it online. But I don’t know what staying inside with Maureen and her husband, Ray—”

  “Rick.”

  “Whatever. I don’t see how that’s going to help Oliver. They can’t keep him hidden the same way his dad did and call it progress.” Drew brushed his hair out of his eyes. The wind always picked up at sunset and we were both suffering for it.

  “He needs to reassimilate,” Drew continued. “Jump into the deep end of high school and get it over with.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Do you think he wants to see us, though?”

  Drew glanced at me. “Why? Don’t you want to see him?”

  “Well, of course I want to see him!” I scoffed. “He was gone for ten years, it’d be nice to get to know him again.”

  But the truth was that I had seen Oliver. The night before, after Caro left and my parents went to bed (“Lights out soon!” my mom had said, which meant I had an hour or so before she checked on me again), I snuck into my closet, stood on a rickety old step stool, and felt around on the shelf for an old shoe box. It was shoved so far back that I could barely touch it, but as soon as my fingers grazed the top, I managed to pull it down.

  I have things hidden all around my room. I don’t think I would describe myself as a sneaky person, but if I count off all of the secret hiding spaces I have, well, you might describe me that way. The more something needs to be hidden, the sneakier I become. My babysitting cash lives in the back of the closet, in the pocket of a winter coat that I have worn exactly once. My old surfing magazines that I got at the used-book store are stashed in my third desk-drawer down, covered up by piles of printer paper and used-up ballpoint pens.

  The shoe box is my oldest hiding spot and it holds just two things, things that no one knows about, not even Drew or Caro, not even my parents.

  The first is a copy of my application to UC San Diego.

  I had been thinking about applying for a while, ever since junior year when someone mentioned that they had one of the best surfing teams in the nation. San Diego was only about ninety minutes south from where we lived, so it wasn’t like I would be leaving my parents for the other side of the country. It was just far away enough, where I could have some space.

  The same space, in fact, that I was giving to Oliver.

  I pulled out the application once more, feeling the paper’s crispness in my hands. I had printed it out at the public library just so it would f
eel real, a reminder that I had actually applied to college. It felt more real that way, more possible. Caro and I had talked about going to community college together, then transferring to a university after two years, but I wanted out now. I didn’t want to wait anymore.

  The second secret was at the bottom of the shoe box, a piece of paper folded and refolded so many times that it was starting to tear a little at the creases. Unlike the application, the paper was as soft as bedsheets, and I ran my thumb over the edge before carefully opening it up.

  DO YOU LIKE EMMY, YES NO??? it said. Caro’s handwriting was precise and exact, just like it is now, and the word yes was circled. It was the only thing I had left of Oliver after the kidnapping, the only thing that was truly mine, and I had kept it that way for ten years. I used to look at it for hours at a time, holding it in my pocket and pulling it out when I was alone in my room. I had thought that if I kept it close, it would bring Oliver back home, and now was the first time in ten years that I held it while knowing where Oliver was in the world.

  The idea took my breath away.

  After I put the shoe box back up on the shelf and went to get ready for bed, I realized that I could see into Oliver’s room. The blinds had been blown askew by the wind, leaving a part of the window bare, and I could see him sitting in his desk chair, his profile illuminated by a light coming from across the room. He was holding his lip between his fingers, toying with it absently, and I suddenly remembered him doing that in second grade whenever he was nervous, usually while we were dividing up for kickball teams. (He hadn’t been the best athlete.)

  His hair was dark and longer than it had been when we were kids, and he looked sort of like some of the surfers that Drew and his brother, Kane, hung out with on weekends, strands of hair tucked behind his ear. His face was the same, just bigger, and his gaze was intense.

  Creeping across the floor (and feeling like a stalker), I managed to turn off the light switch before tiptoeing back over to the window. My room was totally dark so there was no way Oliver could see me, but I hunched down below the windowsill, anyway. I felt like a hippopotamus in one of those nature documentaries, when they’re submerged in water and you can only see their eyes.

  Oliver was watching a movie. That’s what had his attention. It was projected from his laptop onto a white sheet that he had taped up over his bookshelf, the same bookshelf that Maureen had dusted for ten years. It was something older, maybe from the sixties, with dramatic music that floated out even through his closed window. Whatever it was, Oliver was entranced. I probably could have been standing inside his room and he wouldn’t have noticed me, but I stayed hidden, anyway.

  Suddenly, the space that had always been between us felt too big. For the first time in ten years, I could see Oliver right in front of me, but he was still much too far away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Oliver’s first day of school didn’t go well.

  My day didn’t start off great, either. First thing, my mom cornered me in the kitchen. I was shoveling Frosted Flakes into my face while reading the back of the cereal box. (Those mazes are getting more and more difficult, I swear.)

  “So,” my mom said in a way that made me look up from the box with my eyebrows already raised. “Oliver’s going to start school today.”

  “Today?” I repeated. “But it’s raining out.”

  What does that have to do with anything? I immediately thought, just as my mom said, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know, shouldn’t it be sunny? Rain on your first day is not a good omen. These are not good omen skies.”

  My mom eyed me. “Have you been drinking coffee again?”

  I had. She wasn’t supposed to know about that.

  “So it’s Oliver’s first day,” I prompted her, ignoring the question. “And?”

  “And it would be nice if you were nice to him.”

  “I thought we were giving him space. And if we’re not, why wouldn’t I be nice?” Then I added, “I’m very nice. I’m nice to everyone who deserves my niceness.”

  “I just mean that I’m sure it won’t be an easy transition for him.”

  “So be nice, but don’t tell him that I’m being nice?”

  “Emmy. He’s probably nervous.”

  “He should be,” I muttered. Oliver was pretty much starting off his first day of public high school as a quasi celebrity. And to attract that kind of attention in high school often meant disaster.

  “What?” my mom asked.

  “Nothing,” I muttered.

  “Well, I know that Maureen is just a wreck. She’s convinced that Keith is just going to show up on campus and spirit him away again. I’ve told her that’s not going to happen and Oliver needs to go to school, get back into the routine of things, but you know Maureen.”

  I wondered if my mom even realized I was still in the room.

  “Anyway,” she suddenly said. “You’ll be nice to Oliver.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, I’ll be very nice to Oliver. Do you want me to carry his books for him? Open his juice at snack time?”

  My mom tried to swat me with the dish towel, but I was already dumping my bowl in the sink and dodging away from her. “Oh, you missed!” I cried. “Too bad, so sad! And you should be nice to me. Take your own advice!”

  “Drive safely!” she called after me. I could tell she was trying not to laugh. “Have a glorious day at school! There, are you happy?”

  “Elated,” I yelled back. “Bye!”

  Outside, I fired up my car and let it run for a minute while I got situated and threw my bag into the backseat. It was actually a minivan, a bright-blue used one that my parents had gotten me for my seventeenth birthday, sort of the sad twin to Drew’s spectacular VW. “For being such a perfect daughter!” my mom had said, which made me feel a little guilty about the fact that I was using the thing to sneak around, surfing. “Don’t you want something a bit . . . sportier?” my dad had asked when we were at the lot. But I had done my homework. I knew that my surfboard would fit perfectly in that car. And I had been right.

  The rain was falling harder now, smearing dirt and sand and salt into rivulets that blocked my view. I turned on the windshield wipers a few times, then rolled down my front windows so I could at least see out of them.

  In the next driveway over, Oliver was doing the same thing from the passenger seat of his mom’s car.

  Our eyes met as his mom started the engine. She was talking to Oliver while putting on lipstick in the rearview mirror, her eyes steady even as her hand shook a little bit. I couldn’t hear everything that she was saying, but a few words stuck out: positive attitude, give it a chance, have to try.

  My mom probably helped her write that motivational speech.

  Oliver was still looking back at me, both of us not moving to roll the windows back up. He looked bleary-eyed and tired, like me. I wondered if he needed coffee. Does he even drink coffee?

  Maureen rolled her lipstick back down, tucking it into her purse before frowning into the mirror and fluffing her hair. (The rain wasn’t doing anyone any favors, hair-wise.) Oliver hadn’t looked away yet. He was inscrutable, just like those age-progression pictures of him on the missing children databases. I couldn’t read his face at all and it was . . . weird.

  So I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out at him.

  The minute I did that, I realized that I was an idiot. A first-class idiot that clearly had no idea how to interact with people—or how to roll her window back up and avoid getting rain all over the car’s interior, for that matter. Who just crosses their eyes at someone? Four-year-olds, that’s who. Four-year-olds and people who need corrective lens wear.

  But Oliver’s face suddenly split open into a confused smile, like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but liked it, anyway. His eyebrow arched as he started to roll the window back up and I quickly did the same, my cheeks on fire.

  The second I ran into Caro in the hallway, I grabbed her arm.
“Ow and hi,” she said, taking her arm back.

  “You won’t believe what I just did,” I said to her.

  “I probably will, but try me.”

  “So I saw Oliver in the driveway this morning—”

  “Why was he in the driveway?”

  “He’s starting school today. Anyway—”

  “He is?” Caro gasped, now grabbing my arm. (She was right, it hurt.) “Oh my God, is that even a smart idea? Everyone knows who he is!”

  “I know, right?” I said. “I tried to tell my mom the same thing, but she didn’t get it.”

  “Moms never do,” Caro said in sympathy. “Okay, so you saw him in the driveway, heading straight toward this torture chamber, and . . .”

  “And both of our windows were rolled down.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And he wouldn’t stop looking at me.”

  Caro widened her eyes a little. “He wouldn’t stop looking at you? Or you wouldn’t stop looking at him?”

  “Caro, that’s not important. We were both looking at each other, and it was really weird, so I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue at him.”

  Caro just shrugged. “It sounds cute. You’re adorable when you cross your eyes. What’d he do?”

  “He smiled,” I admitted. “And then we rolled up the windows because it was raining.”

  “Well, you were wrong, I totally believe this story,” she said as we arrived at her locker. “Why does it always smell like old sandwiches around here?” she muttered as she spun the lock. “Someone’s hoarding food and it’s disgusting. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that your reputation with the most famous person in our school is still intact. He smiled and that’s a good sign.” Caro gave me a meaningful glance. “You should cross your eyes more often. You’ll have a date to prom like that!”