I don’t know where else to go. I don’t know how to find Seemy. I don’t know what to do.
So I go home.
It’s past four when I get back to my apartment building, and between the clouds and the rain it’s starting to get dark already.
“Seta get back?” I ask Chuck. He nods and pulls a spare set of keys to our apartment from his top drawer.
“You don’t look well, Nan,” he says.
“I’m not,” I tell him, walking to elevators.
I hear his chair squeak as he gets up, and a moment later he’s next to me. “When’s your mother coming home? Do you want me to call her?”
I jab at the elevator call button again. “No. I’m fine. Just a touch of the flu or something.”
“You’re shaking,” he says, taking my hand as I reach for the button again. I pull my hand away.
“I’m just cold,” I snap.
“It’s sixty degrees out,” he shoots back.
I blink at him. The elevator doors open, and I get in and press the door button. “I’m fine,” I tell him as the doors close.
The familiar sound of the locks on our apartment door clicking into place behind me is so reassuring, my eyes go blurry with tears. I move quickly through the apartment, turning on all the lights and cranking up the heat. Everything looks the way it should look, but nothing feels the way it should feel. I want the sight of my cereal bowl in the sink and the Tick’s Legos on the coffee table to comfort me with their sameness, but they look like scenes from someone else’s life. I want, more than anything, to feel okay again, to have this terrible feeling inside me go away.
I’m going to call Mom and I’m going to tell her everything. Even the familiar sound of her disappointment would be a comfort. She can be as disappointed as she wants to be, I don’t care—I just want her to help me find Seemy.
I go into the bathroom first, and that’s where I find my backpack.
It’s just lying in the middle of the fuzzy purple bathmat, where I always drop it when I rush in after school to pee. It feels like so long ago that finding it was the most important thing in the world to me.
I rip open the main part of the backpack and then drop it to the floor. My hair, a rainbow rat’s nest, spills out onto the floor. I reach down, touch it lightly with my fingertips. It feels like me, only less alive.
I find my ID in the front pocket. The picture on it was taken the first day at my new school. I sit on the edge of the tub and stare at it, flipping it over and over in my hands.