HERE’S THE WEIRDEST PART: DAD WILL say something like that at night and the next day he’ll seem really, truly better. In the morning he’s in a great mood, asking everyone about their day ahead. When we get home from school, he’s in the kitchen fixing us all a snack. After we eat, George gets on the computer to watch YouTube videos, which he’s allowed to do if he’s earned sixteen stars at school. Even though it’s October and way too early for Christmas, he types in Santa Claus and watches videos of people dressed up as Santa doing dumb things. George loves Santa and everything Christmas related and could watch these videos all day long. Usually our parents make him wait until after Halloween before he’s allowed to start obsessing over Christmas, but this year those old rules don’t apply so much, I guess.
Dad stands behind George, watching the videos, laughing along with the jokes. He’s leaning against his cane, but otherwise he looks more like his old self than he has in a while. If this was two months ago, Mom would probably say, “Oh, Brian, don’t encourage him.” With her friends, she sometimes said, “I feel like I have four boys.” Since his accident, she never makes that joke of course. But now Dad looks so normal, she almost could. George laughs at the video of Santa sneezing on some sugar, then Dad laughs, too. It’s so great to see, I laugh along. Dad turns and sees me. “Hey, Benny, there you are! I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“What about bringing your bike to the track? You know, the one at the high school?”
Why won’t he let this go? It’s like his brain is caught in the loop of what he was thinking right before it broke. “I don’t think so, Dad,” I say.
“Why not?” He makes a sad face. “You need to push yourself a little, Benny. Don’t be afraid. I wasted too much time as a kid being scared of sports.”
No, Dad, I want to say. You weren’t scared enough.
When Mom comes back in the room, I don’t say anything. She asks George and me to take Lucky for a walk before dinner. Usually I would tell her it’s Martin’s turn because I’m pretty sure it is, but today I don’t mind getting away from Dad, who can’t stop obsessing over this bike-riding thing.
One of the few things that hasn’t changed since Dad’s accident is the program Mom started last year where we’re all supposed to do six chores a week to get our allowance but we get credit if we help George do a chore. When I tell him what we’re doing, George gets off the computer and finds Lucky’s leash.
Once we get outside, I can’t stop thinking about this weird obsession everyone has with my bike riding. I ask George how he got so good at bike riding. He doesn’t answer, of course. George almost never answers a question like this. I know he heard it, though, because he says “Bike riding!” and jogs a little ahead of me.
Walking with George isn’t like walking with other people. You don’t walk side by side and you don’t really talk to each other. When George is outside, he likes saying lines from whatever he’s been watching lately. If you ask him what it’s from, he always acts surprised, like he can’t believe you just heard what he’s thinking. I don’t think he realizes how much he says out loud.
After two blocks, I put my hand on George’s elbow because there’s someone up ahead with a dog. I warn him because sometimes, when another dog is around, George will get scared and drop Lucky’s leash. “Look,” I say and point. “Dog ahead.”
As we walk closer, I hear George say, “Lisa Lowes!” into his hand and I realize he’s right: it is Lisa Lowes walking toward us.
It’s too late to pretend we haven’t seen her. “Benny!” She smiles like she’s happy to see me. Her dog pulls her over to sniff Lucky. “I miss you! I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!”
I blush because I know exactly how long it’s been: four weeks. “We miss you, too,” I say. I have to be careful and remember to say “we.”
She looks at George, who has bounced away from us and onto someone’s lawn so he doesn’t have to say anything. “Do you think George remembers me?”
I can’t believe she’s asking this because of course he remembers her. He’s only walking away because she makes him nervous. “Oh sure. Don’t you remember how he cleared your plate the last time you ate at our house?”
She gives me a strange look like, What are you talking about?
Then she looks at George, pacing on someone’s lawn, talking into his hand, which he sometimes does. “He should probably get off of there, right?”
She doesn’t say it very nicely. Unfortunately, she’s probably right but there’s a zillion things George shouldn’t do and he does them anyway. Walking on other people’s lawns isn’t the worst of it. I’m sorry, it just isn’t.
Still, she looks at me like I should do something.
I shrug. “Somebody will say something if they mind. Mostly people don’t mind.”
She turns away, shaking her head, like something else is wrong.
“Lisa? Are you okay?”
“Did Martin tell you that he and I got in a fight today?”
“No.”
“He thinks we need to give each other space.” For a second I thought she was crying but now I see that she’s definitely not. She’s too mad. Her lips are folded and her arms are crossed. She looks a little bit like Poison Ivy from Batman, planning her revenge. “He’s such a jerk. He really is. He’s not going to have a lot of friends after this.”
I’m not going to tell her that I’m pretty sure Martin’s friends don’t care too much about her one way or the other.
“I’m talking about friends that matter,” she says, almost as if she heard what I was thinking. “Not those stupid old friends of his. Those guys are losers. He should have listened to me when I told him to stop hanging out with them.”
I can’t believe she’s saying this. She doesn’t even look pretty anymore. Her face is all scowly.
“They make him seem like a loser. I’m sorry, but they do. Nobody could believe I was going out with him. None of my friends are going to be friends with him anymore. He probably thinks they will, but they won’t.”
I’m not sure what to say. I almost want to tell her that Mr. Norris never liked her all that much, but I don’t. Instead, I look up and see that George isn’t on the lawn anymore. I look down the street, then back up. I don’t see him anywhere. I’m holding Lucky’s leash, so I can’t call the dog to figure out where George is. I turn back to Lisa. “Did you see where George went?”
She turns around to where he was on the lawn, then turns back and shrugs. “No.”
She doesn’t look nervous, but maybe she doesn’t understand that George can’t just leave if I’m in charge of him. “I have to find him,” I say. We’re standing near an intersection, which means he could have gone up any of the four streets. “He doesn’t usually wander away unless he hears something like a lawn mower. Or a leaf blower.”
I stop and listen. Nothing.
My heart feels like it’s bouncing around in my stomach. I move up the street. He isn’t anywhere.
When I turn back, I can’t believe it. Lisa isn’t helping me look, she’s staring down at her phone, reading a text. “Can you help me please? I really need to find him.” I sound more scared than I mean to. I can’t help it. I am scared.
I’ve never lost George before.
“Do you want me to call Martin?” I can tell by her voice, she’s not even worried. She just wants to call Martin.
“No,” I say. “Martin’s back home. What can he do from there?”
I think about what our mom does when George gets lost. Usually she doesn’t panic at first. She says you have to think like George and remember what was on his mind when he wandered away. “He was talking about Santa Claus,” I say out loud.
Lisa gives me a funny look to remind me that George is too old for Santa. “He loves Christmas,” I explain.
She looks more confused. What does this have to do with where he might have wandered off to? I can’t explain, so I don’t bother. “George!” I call again from the middle of the intersection. The problem when George gets lost is that he never answers when he’s called. He gets too interested in whatever he’s looking at or listening to. Once we lost him for almost an hour on a picnic in the woods. Finally we found him next to an anthill, poking it with a stick. He hadn’t been that far away. He just hadn’t realized he should have called back.
“George, if you hear me, say here I am!” I scream, then stop and listen.
Nothing.
“Don’t you want to use my phone?” Lisa offers. “You could call your mom? Or the police?”
He’s been missing for maybe ten minutes now. I’m not going to do either one of those things. “Just forget it, Lisa. I’ll look myself. You can go home.”
Apparently she’s been waiting for me to say this because she sticks her phone in her pocket and says, “Okay, I probably should. I’m sure my mom is wondering where I am.”
I look at her and can’t believe it: she doesn’t care about George, or me. A minute later, she’s gone.
I walk up one street, calling George’s name. I look down the driveways where he might have wandered if something in a garage caught his eye. This is the other problem with George. He has no sense of personal space or private property. He’ll wander into people’s garages, whether we know them or not.
I look for open ones that he might have gone into. “George?” I call into one.
“Who?” a gruff voice answers.
There’s an old man bent over his toolbox, standing in the back.
“Sorry!” I say. “I’m looking for my brother.”
“He’s not here.”
“Okay.”
I go back to the corner where I first lost him and start to get really scared. It’s getting cold outside and windy, too. Leaves are blowing into the street, which makes me more scared. That’s another thing George loves. He follows blowing leaves sometimes.
Lucky pulls at the leash in the direction of our house, but I can’t go back without George. I hold my breath and listen again.
Nothing.
“George!” I scream, standing at the corner where I was talking to Lisa. I run up another street in the opposite direction. “Lisa!” I can’t believe she ran off and left me without helping. Or maybe I should believe it. Maybe that’s what Martin and Mr. Norris were trying to tell me.
Up ahead I see something that makes me even more afraid: there’s a house where someone has left the front door open. George loves open front doors. They’re his favorite thing about Halloween. He thinks it means he’s welcome to walk inside, which he always used to do until Mom and Dad made a rule: no walking past the candy bowl ever.
Now there’s just an open door and no candy bowl to stop him.
If he came this direction and saw this front door, he would definitely walk inside.
I already know what would happen if a stranger screamed at him for being inside their house: he’d start to giggle. He always does when he’s in trouble, and it makes everything worse. No one understands why George laughs when everyone is angry at him. I go up to the porch of the house with the open door and call softly, “George?”
I hear voices inside.
I call again. “George? Are you in there?”
Another terrible thought occurs to me. If he knows he’s in trouble at home—really big trouble—George will hide, sometimes for hours.
It’s happened once before. He got so angry when the computer crashed that he stomped on the mouse and cracked it into pieces. Then he felt so bad, he hid in the basement behind the boiler. When we finally found him, he’d fallen asleep there and wet his pants. He wasn’t giggling nervously then. That time, he just cried and cried until finally Mom and Dad put him to bed. I wonder if George might be in this family’s basement, too scared to say anything or get himself out.
I have to ring their doorbell and ask. I have no choice. It’s my fault if he’s down there. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted talking to Lisa. I should have kept my eye on him.
A woman comes to the door. She’s my mother’s age, but she’s got blond hair and she’s more dressed up than my mother ever gets. She’s wearing pearls and a light-blue sweater.
“Yes?” she says.
Behind her, I hear a weird sound. Maybe the TV is on because it sounds like someone crying. I can tell the woman is surprised to see the door open. She looks at me funny like maybe I opened it.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I say. Something about this woman is scary. My voice is shaking. “I’ve lost my brother and I noticed your door open. Sometimes he walks inside a house if a door is open.”
She makes a face like someone should teach my brother better manners. “How old is he?” she says.
I can tell she expects me to say three or maybe four. “Twelve,” I say. “But he’s autistic. I’m so sorry.”
She steps out on the porch. “And you think he might be inside our house?”
“I’m so sorry. I should have kept a better eye on him. It’s my fault.”
“You know kids shouldn’t walk into other people’s houses.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I don’t care what he’s got, someone better teach him that.”
I’m surprised by how mean she sounds. Usually when you tell people George is autistic, they at least pretend to be understanding.
“I know,” I say. “We’re trying.”
“If he walks into someone’s house, they could think he was a burglar and shoot him. It’s allowed, you know.”
I wish I could disappear. “He’s never done it before. It’s possible he’s not in your house at all.” I sound stupid. We’re George’s family, which means we know him best, but if you don’t have autism, it’s impossible to understand the way George thinks.
I wish this woman would be more understanding. I’m a kid who made a mistake. If she’d let me in her house, I could look around for two minutes and see if George is here. It wouldn’t take me long. I could guess where he might hide. I think about asking her if I can just look around her basement for two minutes, then I’d be done and she wouldn’t have to worry about me or my brother anymore.
But before I ask, I see a surprise: Lisa is standing behind her. Apparently, this is her porch I’m standing on. And her mean mother I’m talking to.
“What are you doing here?” Lisa says, not very nice.
“I’m still looking for George. I can’t find him.” I can’t help it. My voice is back to shaking. Maybe I just want her to understand it’s a little bit her fault, too. She was standing there when he walked away from us. If she hadn’t distracted me, I would have seen which street he went up at least.
“He’s back at your house. I just talked to Martin. They’re wondering where you are.”
She stares at me funny, like she can’t believe I don’t know this, but how was I supposed to know it if I’ve spent the last half hour running around looking for him?
“Did you tell them what I was doing?”
“No. I wasn’t thinking about it because Martin and I just broke up for good. We’re not speaking anymore so I couldn’t call him back and tell him.” She takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes, like she’s trying not to cry. “That’s all, Benny. I sort of forgot about you. Sorry.”
She says it so fast, I can’t believe her mother doesn’t make her apologize again, only this time sound like she means it, please.
But she doesn’t.
Instead they look at each other like maybe her mother has just been saying, Martin’s family is strange. I don’t think you should get involved with any of them.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for except maybe to have someone say something nice.
No one does.