If bad stuff happens to the people you care about, you’ll know. If bad stuff happens to the person you care about more than anything else in the universe, you’ll definitely know. It’s always that way in books, right? But what I’m thinking when the captain gets home around five fifteen like he always does is I’m crazy hungry and he’s gonna make mac and cheese like he always does and I like mac and cheese but I’m tired of it and …
Stupid, you’re so stupid and ungrateful, and, Mac and cheese if you please, mac and cheese if you please, and, Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, maybe he will, maybe he won’t.
Captain Johnson Milwaukee is a creature of habit, just like me. He’s taller, but not by much. He’s balding, and his thin hair is a mix of gray and brown. His uniform is black with silver buttons, and the patch on his sleeve and the badge on his chest have bright orange flames so people know he’s all about putting out fires instead of chasing bad guys. He’s slightly overweight, but I don’t care and he doesn’t care. What I like most about him is that he’s relaxed and calm, and he’s decisive in a quiet, confident way.
Yelling at fires doesn’t put them out. That’s one of Dad’s mottos.
Act now, panic later. That’s another Dad-ism.
When my parents got divorced, I was twelve and I got to choose, and I decided to live with Dad because it’s just easier for two guys, and because his sayings help keep my brain straight, and because the colonel lives on base when she’s not deployed and I don’t want to live on base and I’m pretty sure the colonel would go crazier than me if she tried to take care of me every single day. The captain won’t go crazy. The captain helps me stay as sane as guys like me ever get, so when he gets home and hangs his hat in its spot by the pole on the door, gives me a point-and-shoot gesture, winks, and says, “Mac and cheese,” I go put the water on to boil.
I know which pan to use. I know exactly how much water to pour into it, and I know how to pretend I’m putting in the pinch of salt he wants but doesn’t need because he used to smoke and his heart and blood pressure don’t need extra problems. We’re two guys living alone, and we’ve got this easy-cooking thing down to cups, teaspoons, and stir-in-the-sauce-and-bring-to-a-boil.
“Want some sausage in the mac and cheese tonight?” Dad calls from his bedroom, which is just off the kitchen in our little two-bedroom apartment.
“Sounds good.” My voice is all flat even though I mean to sound light and who-cares or anything except flat or thank-God-not-just-boring-mac-and-cheese-again. The flatness happens because of my alphabet. Dad’s used to it. He never gripes when my face and voice go blank. He knows why. The colonel’s not so good with that whole acceptance thing.
I grab the sausage out of the fridge and pull off the wrapper before he pays much attention to the fact it’s marked lean and healthy. When the colonel shops for us at the PX, that’s what she buys, and I’m not arguing with her about it. I’m not arguing with the colonel about anything ever, if I can help it.
Dad heads into the kitchen wearing his jeans and a black fire department T-shirt that shows his paunch. The darkness of the fabric stands out against the simple color scheme of our apartment walls—white and white and more white. The cabinets are light wood and the flooring in the kitchen is light white vinyl, and all the energy-saver lights are bright, so the theme of light-light and bright-white stays unbroken. Dad doesn’t smell like fire smoke or cigarette smoke, so I know he’s not been doing anything dangerous today. The only scent in the kitchen is the wet-metal smell of water starting to boil, and that’s when the phone rings.
It’s bad. Whatever it is, it’s your fault, you loser. It’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s awful, awful, awful. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it won’t be. But maybe it is?
I ignore the voices as Dad answers, because they always say the same stupid stuff when the phone rings or the doorbell chimes or there’s a knock or a registered letter. Fifty-one million people in the world with my alphabet, and I had to get neurotic voices. I guess that’s better than angry voices or really paranoid voices. I have no idea how many types of voices there are, but mine usually run to the doom-and-disaster side of things.
Dad’s standing at the counter behind me and the water’s boiling. When I turn to glance at him, I see him looking at his watch.
“No,” he says. “She’s not here, Ada.” His brown eyes flick to my face, then to his watch, and back to me. “What time did you get home, son?”
“The usual,” I tell him, then process that he’s talking to Ada Franks, Sunshine’s mother. “By four thirty.”
Dad’s thick, dark eyebrows—which haven’t thinned like his hair—do this funny pinch thing when he’s listening and thinking at the same time. “Okay,” he says to Ms. Franks, then to me, “Did Sunshine come home with you?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think she went with Drip, or did she say she was headed anywhere in particular?”
“We all left from the corner, same time we usually do, and no, of course she wasn’t headed anywhere.” Weird. Sunshine should be home by now. Way past, in fact. And Sunshine never goes anywhere without me or Drip or her mom and sometimes her brother, Eli, because of the whole shy-and-doesn’t-talk-much thing. Everybody knows that.
Stupid moron. You should have walked the girl home. You owe her that much, don’t you? Owe, owe, owe the girl, owe the girl all daaa-aaay. Nobody owes. Everybody owes. Do you owe her anything?
“Jason doesn’t remember anything unusual.” Dad sounds matter-of-fact, but I catch the tone. The unsaid you know what I mean. Because, of course, I might not remember things right. I might think a little crooked.
I do think a little crooked, but I remember this afternoon just fine.
Don’t I?
“What happened when you tried her cell?” Dad asks Ms. Franks, which isn’t as strange as it might sound. Sunshine has a cell even though she doesn’t talk on it ever, not even to her “safe” people. Her mom got it for the GPS locator function in case Sunshine ever got lost and couldn’t make herself say or write her name or address for whoever found her, but she hates that phone and she hardly ever carries it.
“I see.” Dad directs his frown at the kitchen counter. “It’s in her room on her desk. Well. That doesn’t help very much.”
He keeps pinching his eyebrows, and I’m feeling weirder and wondering what’s going on and maybe if once, just this time, Bastard is right and I should have walked Sunshine home. I’ve hardly ever done that, but after what happened last Saturday—
Don’t get all different Jason please you have to be the Jason I’ve always known or the whole world will just blow up and I won’t be able to stand it and I promise I won’t be different and please and I’m saying yes okay whatever you want I’ll give it to you but she’s still crying and squeezing her locket and I don’t know if she’s crying because I know or because of what happened or if I don’t know everything because when a girl cries what does anybody know but nothing nothing nothing and I wish she’d stop and why don’t I know how to help her stop please please don’t cry anymore Sunshine
—For a second, I’m stuck in then instead of now because time can do that to me, it can stop making sense, it can stop having the periods and commas and paragraphs and chapters that divide life into yesterday, today, and tomorrow or even a few hours ago.
She made me promise.
She made me promise I wouldn’t say a word, that I wouldn’t even think a word about it, and it turned into black clouds in my head because I promised I’d forget it and that was last Saturday. This is Monday. Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I tick the days off with my fingers as Dad pinches his eyebrows and asks Ms. Franks if she’s called here or if she’s called there, and no she’s not here and no she’s not there and nobody’s seen her since the bus, nobody’s seen Sunshine in more than an hour and that’s just not normal.
Piece of trash. Bastard’s growling now, and somebody hit his repeat button, so he’s doing it over and over with Whiner in the background singing, Owe, owe, owe, woe, woe, woe and the No-Names just keep whispering Saturday and promise in different tones, in different volumes. Some of them are loud.
“No, you don’t have to wait,” Dad says to Ms. Franks. “She’s a vulnerable child. Her diagnosis—yes. Chief Smith won’t mess around with any twenty-four-hour rules in a situation like this. If he’s not there and any of the junior officers give you the run-around, you call me straight back.” Then he stops again and pinches his brows so tight they make a salt-and-pepper V between his eyes. “Yes, you might want to call your husband and tell him to come back home as soon as he can manage it.”
His frown gets worse. He starts trying to get words in, but he can’t, and his hand pats the counter like he’s trying to comfort Ms. Franks through the phone. He keeps saying stuff like “I know,” and “We’ll be there,” and “Probably just some mix-up.”
When he hangs up, he calls Drip’s mom, who’s just getting home from work. Ms. Taylor checks with Drip, but Drip hasn’t seen Sunshine, either, and Drip gets on his cell and starts calling his older brothers to find out if they’ve seen her, and I imagine each call like a pebble dropping into liquid air, making huge circles and ripples across our white walls and white floors and into other walls and over cars and across people’s ears, and maybe one of those ripples will land on Sunshine and she’ll start sparkling like a quest diamond in a video game. She’ll be the thing on the screen that we all run toward and grab and hold, but in my own head it’s not a pebble that drops into my mind as Dad tells me when each of Drip’s brothers says no, no, no, we haven’t seen her, we don’t see her around anywhere, no, it’s not a pebble that drops into my mind, it’s a giant rock, it’s a prehistoric meteor, and it doesn’t drop into my mind, it explodes through my whole body, it craters my entire awareness, vaporizing the lake of my mind and wiping out everything for miles and miles and miles.
Sunshine—my Sunshine—
She’s … missing.
“Son?” Somebody’s got me by the shoulders and I’m trying to pull away, but I shouldn’t, because it’s the captain. I know this because nobody else calls me son, not even the old guys at school who call all the other male students son. I’m the one they don’t want to claim. I’m the one nobody claims except Dad and the colonel and Drip and Sunshine.
“Come on, Jason.” Dad doesn’t shake me, but he holds me so tight I realize I’m shaking myself with all my twisting around. “Come back to me.”
Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, FREAK, freak, FREAK—
The voices yell so loud I wish covering my ears would help but I know it won’t. I don’t hear the voices in my ears. I hear them in my mind. “Freak,” I echo, seeing nothing but the meteor-scorched white, white walls and then slowly like it’s being drawn in midair, the outline of my father, and he smells funny, like melting iron.
“I don’t like it when you call yourself that name,” Dad says, and he doesn’t sound funny, and that’s a totally Dad thing to say, so I’m pretty sure he’s Dad and not some sudden iron-stinking demon.
“Freak’s what I am,” I mumble. “It’s okay.”
Old argument.
Name-calling hurts, Dad always says, even when you do it to yourself.
Name-calling doesn’t hurt because I do it to myself. That’s what I say.
The voices in my head get quieter, enough for me to breathe and think and see time in a straight line and see my father standing there with his fire department T-shirt.
He looks worried as he turns me loose. “What happened just now, Jason?”
“I … don’t know.” But yes, I do know. I flaked out. I freaked out. I freaked out because I’m a freak. My own personal f-word sets off Bastard, Whiner, and the No-Names all over again, yelling and singing and whispering freak, freak, freak, FREAK, but I keep it together this time.
“Sorry,” I say to Dad. “I guess I got stressed.”
Dad studies me for a long second or two, then lets out a breath I didn’t know he was holding. “You … absolutely sure nothing happened with Sunshine today?”
What does that mean? What does he mean?
Tell him nothing happened, you stinking puke. Lie to him. Or tell him it’s your fault. Tell him you only wanted her to stop crying. It’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to. Nobody wants to cry. Everybody cries. Do you cry?
It doesn’t feel like nothing happened even though I know nothing did, but when the voices start, it’s hard for me to keep track of real and right now instead of fears or pretend memories. I don’t say anything to Dad because my brain gets stuck on the my-fault thing and wondering where Sunshine is and if somebody took her, and if somebody took her why they took her and why there have to be takers in the world to leave people like me with nothing.
“… probably nothing, but in case it is something,” Dad’s saying as he turns off the pan that boiled dry, making everything smell like hell metal.
“What?” It’s an effort not to shake my head, but rattling my brain doesn’t stop the smell or the voices, either.
“We need to go to Sunshine’s apartment,” he says, exasperated, like he’s said it before already. “It’ll be helpful for you and Drip to tell me and Chief Smith and Sunshine’s mother everything you can remember about today. If Sunshine really has gone missing, then the key to what happened, to where we should look for her, might lie somewhere in the last couple of days—especially the last couple of hours.”
The last couple of hours or days … oh.
But … no.
He can’t mean that. That’s a secret. That’s our secret, mine and Sunshine’s.
You piece of crap. It’s your stinking fault. I told you you’d go to hell. Straight to hell. The devil’s waiting for you, Freak. Freak, freak, freak. There is no freak. There’s always a freak. Are you the freak?
Okay, not this. Not right now. When the voices get loud, and especially when they turn to heaven and hell, things are starting to get shaky. I don’t need shaky right now. Sunshine doesn’t need shaky.
It’s hard isn’t it when they talk so loud Sunshine says and it’s last year again and things are still as simple as they ever get for us but she says I don’t want you to have to go back to the hospital because Derrick and I miss you too much and it’s boring and I’m so sorry you have to go through it Jason and I tell her thanks because most people can’t imagine but I think Sunshine can imagine because she has her own problems even if she doesn’t talk about them ever and sometimes I want her to but sometimes I’m scared she will and I won’t know what to do and I won’t know what to say and I’ll let her down and I’ll hurt her and
Did I hurt her?
No.
But …
Last Saturday is such a mess in my head.
No.
I promised. Don’t talk about it, don’t even think about it, let it go, put it away because I promised and I always keep my promises to Sunshine but maybe I should try because this is an emergency and emergencies change things but when I try my head gets louder and louder and I can’t stand it and I can’t think and I can’t see anything at all but black swirly clouds and the clouds are talking and—
“Son, is there something you need to discuss?” Dad’s voice makes me jump.
“No. I—the pills.” I rub my right ear and the sound of my fingers against my skull eases everything for a few seconds, everything but the horrible pound-hurt-pound in my chest where my heart’s supposed to be. “It’s hard to think sometimes.”
Dad gives me a little smile, so I know I’m acting calmer than I feel, which is good. I think. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and something flickers in the brown depths as he studies me.
Monsters. Dad has monsters in his eyes. God, how stupid is that? Get a grip. Keep a grip.
“I know your medication muddles your thinking,” Dad says. “And Chief Smith will understand. You just do your best. Let’s head over to Sunshine’s house. I’ll call your mother on the way.”