IT WAS THE SUMMER that no one slept. During the last sticky week in July, the air abandoned us, failing to stir and stream through our streets and between our crooked alleys. The grass in our lanes stood tall and still, barely rooted to an urban soil of gravel and discarded candy wrappers. The narrow brick row houses that lined Palmerston Avenue and Markham Street—painted electric blue or yellow or lime green—became buffers to the city noise. A persistent hum was all we heard.
I can pinpoint the very moment it all started to change, when the calm broke: when news that twelve-year-old Emanuel Jaques had disappeared spread through our neighbourhood in the whispered prayers of women returning from Mass. They gathered along their fences and on their verandas speaking in hushed tones that went silent whenever children drew near. We ignored their anxious looks and their occasional shouts to get home and lock the doors.
Manny, Ricky, and I had agreed to meet in the Patch, a square of unpaved lane covered in rocks and waist-high weeds that grew amidst the dumped garbage the city wouldn’t take. We’d piled old tires and torn at cardboard boxes to construct a fort in the Patch’s corner. With our fortress built, we huddled inside, Ricky scooching close to me, his shoulder touching mine. I was eleven, almost twelve, and everything I said or did was an attempt to show everyone around me that I wasn’t a kid anymore. We could start our own search for Emanuel, be the ones to bring him home. Manny stabbed at the cardboard ceiling with a screwdriver, puncturing holes of blue sky. Ricky imagined how we’d look in the newspaper, HEROES splashed above our photo. His enthusiasm for my idea began to chip away at Manny, whose interest was heightened by the mention of a possible reward.
We weren’t exactly sure where to begin, but we figured we’d have a better chance of finding a missing boy than a bunch of clueless adults who worked all day, and most nights. We’d ride our bikes into the heart of the city, comb the Yonge Street strip until we found him.
Worry about what had happened to Emanuel, the Shoeshine Boy, was closing in on us. Our parents had told us to be afraid, warned us of the dangers lurking on the city’s main drag. But we wouldn’t let their fears stop us. They didn’t understand, but Manny, Ricky, and I did. As long as we stuck together we were untouchable.