Grounded for a week
That’s all I hear from Kennedy the next day. Meanwhile, if my school has called about me skipping a day, it doesn’t seem to register. Or else no one has checked the messages. Though from the way my parents looked this morning, my guess is it wouldn’t make their Top 10 list of Things That Require Attention, either way.
When I arrive home from school, Dave, Clara, and Mike are there, along with the remainders of their day: three energy drinks on the desk, two sandwich wrappers, and an open bag of Doritos. I can feel Clara’s eyes on me as I walk past, but I don’t look. I have to tap the table in front of Mike to get his attention. He reminds me of a college kid pulling an all-nighter, only he’s in his forties and he does this all the time. Sometimes I wonder if this is my future, the sibling left behind, a life dedicated to searching.
God, I have to find him.
Mike looks up but doesn’t remove his headphones at first. “My parents?” I ask.
He holds up one finger, then points to the headphones, like maybe he’s listening to a message.
“They left,” Dave says. “With some dude in a suit.” I close my eyes. Agent Lowell. “Think it was about the picture,” he continues, obviously the master eavesdropper.
Clara perks up, opens her mouth to talk just as my parents walk in the front door, clearly disoriented.
They thank the group working in the living room, then excuse them for the day. They drift through the downstairs, my mom tossing her purse onto the couch as she wanders to the sink and sticks her mouth directly under the faucet. That is, for the record, the most un-Mom-like move.
I’m transfixed.
I jump when my dad puts his hand on my shoulder, and then tense. This is the parent move I am familiar with. I’m even more shaken by this than by the un-Mom move. Because I know what this means. Nolan, we have something to tell you.
“Dad,” I start, before he can say something, sucking us back in. The reason I was looking for him when I got home from school. I pull him to the kitchen, pointing to the new picture up on the wall. “That kid on the end. My friend was here yesterday, and she says she saw him around here.”
He narrows his eyes, steps closer to see the details. If he thinks anything of me having a girl in the house when they were gone, he doesn’t say, doesn’t seem to care. “Hunter Long,” he says slowly, like he’s pulling the file up in his brain. “Here? Is she sure? When did she see him?”
“In the fall.”
He nods slowly. “Seems unlikely. But we’ll make a note. Give me her name tomorrow.”
But he’s not paying attention. Usually, when they get a bite of promising information, their movements quicken, their eyes brighten, fueled by the hope.
My dad turns away from the photo, letting out a sigh. “Nolan, we have something to tell you,” he says, and my stomach continues its precipitous plummet. No point in prolonging this, but still, I plan my escape route.
I back out of the room so I’m hovering between the dining room and living room. “Uh-huh,” I say.
“The photo of Liam appears to be authentic,” my dad says. “The photo is proof.”
My mother appears then, her eyes glassy, her weight leaning slightly to the right, and for a second I wonder if she’s been drinking.
“Proof of what?” I ask.
“Proof that the park wasn’t where he disappeared from,” she says, the faraway look still in her eyes.
I shake my head. It has to be the park. It’s where I’ve centered everything. Every test. Everything I’ve been looking for. My brother and his dog disappear without a trace. A forest of ghost stories and legends. Some crack in the universe. Everything happened against his will; he didn’t choose to go anywhere, without telling us.
I feel sick, like the world has tilted. I can’t orient myself. No. They’re wrong.
“They’ve enlarged the photo for us,” my dad says, gesturing to the living room. “Agent Lowell is asking all of us to take a good look again. To think about where it was taken.”
The room is practically spinning. It feels like I’m falling, like something is slipping from my grasp—
“Nolan,” he says, like he’s repeating something he’s already said.
It’s then I notice the printout on the living room table. Enlarged Liam, in the center of the room.
I picture my brother, in the corner of this very room. The fever dream. His mouth moving. Help us. Please.
I picture him over the sink the morning he disappeared, the drop of blood. The hiss of pain, the razor clattering in the sink.
“Someone went to a lot of trouble to disguise where the email was sent from,” my dad adds. “They’re still working on it, at the field office.”
It’s then I think: They won’t find anything. It’s a thought that suddenly feels absolutely true: from somewhere beyond, my brother did this. He’s been trying to reach me, with the dream, the email, the signal; and now he has.
When my parents leave the room momentarily, I snap a photo of the printout with my phone, and I text it to Kennedy.
This is the photo that was sent to my brother’s old girlfriend.
And then I walk up the steps to my room, staring at the photo on my screen, at the grainy pixels. It’s just trees. Trees, and my brother, and Colby’s tail in the corner.
My phone rings in my hand, but it’s a video call. When I hit Accept, I see Kennedy sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, with notebooks and papers spread out all around her, empty boxes in the background. The phone must be propped up on one such box.
She leans closer to the screen for a moment, then shakes her head. “You don’t look that much like him.” Then she looks down again, shifting a few papers around.
“So I hear,” I say. I’ve been told that most of my life. Liam really was the golden child, both in actions and looks. We were like opposite sides of the same coin: his hair was a dark blond to my fully brown; his eyes blue to my brown; his face perfectly symmetrical, whereas my nose still bent slightly to the left after getting too close to a swing in Little League. I bet I’m as tall as him now, though. The thought hurts my stomach.
She stops moving then, looks up from the work around her. “That wasn’t a slight. I was just picturing someone more like you.” Her eyes flick away and she turns her face to the side, her hair falling over her features so I can’t read her expression.
She goes back to multitasking, or whatever it is she’s doing. She called me, but it’s like she’s expecting me to lead the conversation here. “Uh,” I say, “what are you up to?”
“Well, there’s definitely no signal coming through anymore. So I’m looking through all of Elliot’s things, seeing if I can figure anything out. See where it came from. Trace it back.”
“Any luck?”
“Not really. I wish I could get back there, though. I want to try rebooting the electricity. It seems that’s what knocked it out the first time. You?” She pauses, tipping her head over, twisting her dark hair up into a haphazard ponytail on the top of her head, as if she needs it out of her way to think clearly.
“Well?” she asks, still upside down.
When I forget to answer, she flips her hair back and looks at me head-on.
“Sorry, was just waiting for you to finish.”
She gives me a look like I’m ridiculous. “Can you not do your hair and speak at the same time?”
“I don’t really think about my hair all that often.”
She smirks, then flips her hair back and forth, like a joke. But now it’s all I can think about. Dark hair, cascading over my vision. I clear my throat.
“Sorry, nothing here, either. I told my parents about the photo of Hunter Long, but he was reported missing this past winter. Still, can I give them your name?”
“Sure, though I don’t think I’ll be much help. I saw him in the fall.”
“Sorry, Kennedy, about last night. I hope I didn’t get you in even more trouble.”
She winces. “I’m in trouble, but it’s not your fault. My idea, my plan. Sorry you got caught up in it.” She smiles then. “Could be worse. At least I still have my phone.”
She goes back to the papers, but I don’t want her to hang up. “Can Lydia find out what’s in the signal?” I ask.
“Eh. She’s, like, a computer expert. Heard she got suspended in middle school for hacking into the school email and sending out a snow day closure alert. So yeah, she’s crazy talented, but I don’t think she has the right equipment.”
“And Elliot won’t talk to you. Do you think he would talk to someone else?”
“No, I don’t. His trial is coming up, and the lawyers are focused on helping him remember….” She sighs, her thoughts drifting. But then she sits straighter, leaning closer to the screen so her brown eyes look twice their normal size. “There are people at the college who can do this, though. My mom worked there. They know me.” She looks quickly over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “But I have to talk to Joe first.”
Her head twists to the side, and she leans even closer so all I see is the side of her cheek, half her mouth, as she whispers, “I have to go.”
And then the screen goes black.
Long after everyone should typically be asleep, I hear my parents across the hall. My mom’s voice, high and fast. My father, trying to calm her. The tension fills the house, until it reaches my shoulders and I need to act.
They don’t hear me walking by their room, past the closed door. They don’t hear me on the stairs, or heading out the back door. If they notice the engine starting, they don’t come out to stop me.
There’s no one at Kennedy’s old house right now. All the lights are off, and the front door is locked. I go around back, let myself in the way Kennedy taught me yesterday, keeping a flashlight low and away from the windows.
Tell me what to do, I think, closing my eyes. “Liam,” I whisper into the emptiness. Nothing comes. I thought my brother wanted me here. I thought he was sending me a message, to come.
Nothing answers. Not even a flicker of a sign. The air conditioner kicking on, or a gust of wind rattling something in the vents. It’s just an empty house, in an empty field, under an empty sky.
I pull out my phone instead of my equipment and make a call. Kennedy’s face appears, barely decipherable in the grainy dark surrounding her. She sits upright. “Nolan?”
“I’m here,” I say. “Tell me what to do.”
She rubs her eyes, runs a hand down her face, then tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. I’ve woken her. She’s still in bed. “At my house?”
I nod.
“Okay,” she says, keeping her voice low. “Reboot the house. Let’s see if we can restart things to pick up the signal again. It’s the only thing I can think to do. There has to be something more. Something more than just pi, if that’s even what it is.”
She leads me with the sound of her voice to the garage, even though I’ve been here before. Still, I give myself over, letting her lead the way. When she instructs me to shut down the fuse box and flip it back on again, I listen. She sends me to the shed next, to make sure the computer is back online. “It should—running—and then…”
“Kennedy?” I shake the phone in the dark, as if I can jar her back into focus. “Hold on, you’re breaking up.”
The feed continues to cut in and out as I walk in the dark. But even as she disappears, I think I hear her voice.