No one else was ever able to explain what had happened to Jon. Nothing was ever found and no one seemed to have heard or seen anything the night Dettie left him behind. Sam had his mother call the police to check up every week. He wrote letters to different stations at every town along the roads they had driven on—even to places in and around Perth itself, but he received few replies. A bulletin had been circulated along with a sketch a police artist had made from Sam’s description, but no one ever came forward and no new information appeared.
Jon had just vanished.
It was like that with tourists from overseas, one officer told him in a letter, two months after Sam had returned home. Often a traveller will just get on a plane and fly home without telling anyone, not thinking anyone will miss them. Most of the time there’s no one to tell. The police kept assuring Sam that they would make some inquiries in London, but nothing seemed to come of it. He was just gone. Somewhere. And to Sam it seemed that nobody else was that concerned. Jon returning home—being fine—was all just another comfortable fiction everyone was constructing to avoid dealing with whatever was real. Strangely, even Katie started to believe that nothing was wrong. Sam wondered whether anyone would have believed Jon existed at all if they hadn’t found his shirt and sign in the car.
Sam had kept the paddle-pop sticks from the boomerang Jon had given him. He made sure to remember the way they had slid together, fixed in place, bending into each other. And once he was home he had wound them together again himself and fixed them with glue. The boomerang hung from his ceiling now, and he would watch its shadow turn slowly above him each night as he lay in bed. He still remembered watching those sticks shudder above him as the car tore along those endless patchy asphalt roads, spinning in the sunlight. Sometimes he wondered if he would always feel that vibration running through his skin.
It was a surprise to Sam to consider that his mother had never known Jon. In a few days he had become such an indelible part of his life, and yet she’d never even seen his face. Perhaps never would. Ironically, after all of Dettie’s panic about him, Roger and Sam’s mother had drifted apart over the following months, and when Sam let his imagination loose he couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened between Jon and his mother if they had met.
In many ways it was because of Jon that Sam asked to work with Tracey again. Because Batman doesn’t have superpowers, he had wanted to tell Jon. He has to work for it.
Although he tried them both for a time, he discovered that he didn’t like either oesophageal speech or the electrolarynx that Tracey lent him to try. Trying to swallow air made his stomach feel sick and sore, and the electrolarynx’s unnerving sizzling sound still made him uncomfortable. But more than that, he felt like they were both just attempts to keep using old words—the same feeble words that the people around him kept using. Filled with soothing lies and misleading euphemisms.
Instead he wanted to learn sign language. To take on a new language, one that was fresh to him, while he got by, for the time being, with the old. His mother didn’t quite understand, but she was completely supportive, and even learnt along with him as best she could. He worked with Tracey after school, and his mother bought him a few books for home.
Over many weeks, practising every day, he slowly became quite good. He even started signing in his dreams. It turned out that most of the signs Jon had shown him were at least a little bit different. In Australia they taught Auslan. Some of the signs were similar—thank you was much the same, as was mother, and scared was just one hand tapping the chest, not two—but even when they were different, Sam tried to remember what Jon had taught him as well, as best he could.
The more he practised, the more he liked the way it felt to sign. The rhythm of it running through his body. The muscles in his arms tightening or easing depending on how expressive he wanted to be. Sharing simple conversations with other members of Tracey’s Auslan class. Recognising expressions. Pressing his meaning into the world with action.
Sam’s mother announced that she was going to visit Dettie a week before she went. It was winter, half a year since their aunt had been hospitalised, and Katie had been asking, more and more frequently, to see her. There was no obligation for Sam to go, if he didn’t want to. His mother said that she would absolutely understand.
Except Sam wanted to go. Because he still wanted to know. Needed to know. For himself. For her. So that it could end, whatever the answer.
He would ask her, this time in person. She had never told anyone else—but somehow Sam knew that she would tell him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that if he asked her, if it was him, if he was right in front of her—not on the phone—she would say it. He would look her in the eyes, and she would look back. For once he wouldn’t break her gaze, and he would ask her.
And he would see the truth in her face.
He practised his question for the entire week. As he showered and dressed and had breakfast, he practised it through. He wanted it to be automatic. Clear. Even if she didn’t understand him at first. He wanted to sign it properly.
What happened to Jon?
He’d also written it down on a piece of paper, so that his mother could read it aloud for him too—but he was going to ask it. He would feel it through his chest and up the back of his neck. He would ask and she would tell him.
By the end of the day he would know.
When they arrived at the hospital, Dettie was sitting by a window, her shoulders slumped, the blanket over her lap sliding halfway onto the floor. She seemed smaller than ever. Thin, and slumped, and pale. Her hair was cut short and her eyes were watery as she peered through the television screen and the game show flickering on its surface. A small plate of colourful boiled lollies lay on a plate beside her chair. Beside it, a cup of tea waited. None of it appeared to have been touched. For the first time that morning Katie hesitated, her excitement choked. They stood for a moment, watching their aunt’s slow, deliberate blinking, the slight lolling of her head. Sam could feel his mother squeeze his shoulder. She didn’t need to say anything. Together they stepped forward, and Sam raised his hands.
And then he spoke.