Dead to You (7 page)

I watch, horrified. Awed. When it ends, I just stare at the screen. After a minute, Cami turns it off and I ask, quietly, “Can I watch it again?”

She peers at me. Pulls off her mitten and touches my cheek. Her finger comes away wet, shiny. “You sure?”

“Yes,” I breathe. I want to see it again.

Cami rewinds and I watch it again. All of it. I watch how sad they are, how much they are weeping over me. I drink it in.

“God,” I say when it’s over. I slump back in the seat and fling my arm over my face, wiping my cheeks and eyes. “God. I had no idea.”

“No idea of what?”

I roll my head from side to side on the back of the bench seat, staring at the ceiling of the minivan. “No idea anybody cared like that,” I say.

Cami is quiet for a while. And then she says, “A lot of people cared. Tons.” She turns sideways toward me on the bench seat, rests her elbow on the back, and just looks at me. “How could we possibly not care?”

I don’t want to explain. I already sniveled in front of her. I’m not going to do that again. She probably thinks I’m a freak. “I guess because nobody ever found me,” I say. “How would I have known anybody tried?”

“We tried.”

“I know that now.”

“Good.”

And then it’s awkward, the two of us alone in a quiet, slowly darkening minivan. Two strangers who used to be friends. But I can feel something here between us. Different from any of the other girls. Deeper. Maybe I’m imagining it. Or maybe this just means something, to have these ties that go back so many years. Maybe you don’t have to remember something for it to be true. For it to exist.

She’s looking at me, a little afraid about her feelings, maybe. A little guilty. Probably thinking about the boyfriend. But wanting it—this thing between us. That’s probably the best way for her to be, though. Wanting. The wanting always keeps you on your toes, makes you fight for more. I know that well enough.

“I should go,” I say. “Homework.”

“Yeah, me too.” She bites her lip and looks down. I hope she’s not looking at my crotch.

I scramble up, suddenly self-conscious, and bump my head. “Shit.” I start laughing uncontrollably, but manage to contain it so I don’t quite sound like a lunatic. Score.

She laughs and climbs up over the seats to turn off the minivan’s engine. Pulls the keys out. “See you tomorrow?”

I shrug, open the slider door, and hop out. She follows. The freezing wind flips my hair off my face. “If I don’t get abducted,” I say with a grin, but it doesn’t really sound funny. “Thanks for showing me the tape. That was . . . that was cool of you.”

She stands there, head cocked and tape in hand, like she’s trying to decide something. “You want it?” She holds it out to me.

“Nah. I’m good.” I’ve seen enough. More than enough, probably. I turn and grab my backpack and trudge home through the yards, past the snow family that does not include me, and into my house.

Gracie’s stirring mushy chocolate ice cream in
a bowl when I walk in the kitchen. Mama looks up sharply. Comes over and hugs me a little too tightly, and then pushes back. “Where were you?” she asks.

I set my backpack down in a chair. “I went over to Cami’s after school.”

“Oh,” Mama says. She presses her lips together and turns her face away. I can see her take a deep breath and let it out.

“Why, what’s up?”

“You’re sposta call Mama if you’re going to be late, even one minute. That’s the family rule,” Gracie says.

Mama nods, grim-faced. “I didn’t tell you, Ethan. I guess I didn’t expect you to go anywhere on your first day.”

“Blake didn’t tell you? He saw me go.” I grab Gracie’s spoon just as it’s going up to her lips and shove the glob of ice cream into my mouth.

“Hey!” she yells, and slams her elbow into my hip. “Mama! Efan stole my ice cream and got his gross germs on my spoon!”

But Mama’s distracted. I grin at Gracie, pushing melted ice cream through my teeth. She scowls and takes her bowl with her to get a new spoon, grumbling, and then she moves to the other side of the table.

I swallow it and turn back to Mama, realize she was really worried. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I should have thought of that.”

“Yeah, it’s sort of a family thing, after what happened.” Mama glances at Gracie, and I know that means not to say anything scary.

“I can see why you’d want to know where everybody is,” I say. And I
can
see it now. After the tape. “But I don’t actually know the phone number here.”

“It’s on one of the papers I gave you this morning, remember? I told you. I showed it to you.” She looks freaked again and her voice is on the fringe of yelling. “You have that sheet, right? Please check.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. I’m sure she’s right. “Yeah, I have it. Sorry, I just forgot.” I watch her cautiously.

She waits for me to check, so I do. Sure enough, there it is. I feel her eyes boring into me. And for a second, I wonder why I ever left the freedom of the street.

She smiles, finally. “Good. I’m getting you a cell phone tomorrow. Please make sure you always let me know where you are. And can you memorize the home phone number? Please?” She’s calmer now.

“Great. Okay. I will,” I say. A cell phone? I have exactly no one else to call. It will be like a leash to my mother. Nice. Quite the reality check seeing the overprotective side of her.

And then we just stand there, quiet, awkward, so I start my homework at the table so Mama can hawk all over me.

I want to talk about things. I do. But it’s so hard. We can’t do it when Gracie’s around, and when we’re alone, it’s so hard to start the conversation. It’s like the words weigh a thousand pounds each. So I don’t say anything.

At dinner, all five of us sit around the table like a TV family and talk about our days. I have never, ever done this before. With Ellen, it was so laid-back—we ate whenever we had food, wherever we happened to be standing. Once again, I feel like I’m on a TV show. I wonder what each of them is thinking. If it’s as weird for them as it is for me.

I help with the dishes afterward, and then go and hide down in the basement for a few hours, making my space more comfortable with an old quilt I find in the bottom drawer of a beat-up dresser. And then I look for more treasures in my Ethan boxes. The building blocks and collectible cards and books, all neatly packed. Shoe boxes filled with school report cards and math papers and art projects Mama saved. And the photos. I stare and stare at myself, trying to absorb that part of my life, those first seven years. But it’s all still so cold. Looking at the photos is like looking at pictures of myself superimposed in strange settings. I memorize everything.

It’s each of us in our beds, in the dark, when Blake says, “You’re hooking up with Cami, I suppose.”

I hear jealousy in his voice, but I might be wrong. “No,” I say.

“Why not?”

I open my eyes and stare into the darkness. “She’s got a boyfriend.”

“No she doesn’t.”

“Yeah, he just doesn’t ride the bus.”

“Oh.” Blake doesn’t sound convinced.

Silence.

“So,” I say. “You want to tell me what it was like?”

Blake is so quiet, I think he’s sleeping. But then, after a while, he says, “I was just really mad at you. That’s what I remember. Being mad.”

“It’s okay.” I just want him to say it and get over it, so things aren’t so weird.

“Why did you do it? Why did you go with strangers in that car?”

“I don’t know, Blakey.” I heard Gracie call him that once.

There’s another pause. “You used to call me that. You’re the one who started that nickname.”

“I know,” I lie. I just want him to love me.

To forgive me.

He’s quiet for a minute. “You have no idea how you wrecked everything. Mama and Dad started fighting all the time. Crying. Nobody gave a crap about me. It was all about you. And then when we finally got a little bit used to you being gone, me all alone with them, Mama not crying ten times every day, there was the baby.”

“I’m really sorry.”

I hear Blake roll over, turn his back to me, and then he says, muffled, “It’s still all about you. Always will be. Both of you. You guys are like . . . I don’t know. The Lost Boy and the Miracle Girl who took his place.”

I lie awake in bed for a half hour, thinking, before I
climb out and go to the kitchen for a drink. Russell is roaming the house, stalking shadows. I picture him on the street, where we’d be enemies competing for food. Inside, we are friends. I give him a cat treat, take my water with me, and wander to the living room, where I see a soft glow of light.

Mama’s still up. She’s in her bathrobe in the dark, watching a late show with the sound on low. The only light is from the TV. She motions for me to come.

I sit down next to her on the couch. “Hey.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Nope. You?”

Mama smiles. “Same. This is all really crazy, isn’t it. You doing okay?”

The TV flashes. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“I set an appointment for you to see a psychologist. The one that CPS recommended to me is on vacation this week, so we’re in for next week. Okay?”

I bite the inside of my cheek and say the right thing. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“I know it’s got to feel really strange to be here. We’re all so glad you’re back, Ethan. We really are. It’s just going to take some adjusting for all of us.”

Adjusting. It’s pretty much all I do—I am an expert. “I’ve made adjustments before.”

“Have you? Like what?”

And there it is. An opening. I feel her lean toward me just a fraction. Eager, but not pushing me.

I take a breath and let it out. Deciding. “The woman who . . . had me. Um . . . Eleanor.” I’m not sure why I want to keep protecting Ellen’s name, but I do. “After a while, after everything—having me for all those years—she got rid of me. Couldn’t afford to keep me anymore. She drove me out to Nebraska to a youth home. You can drop your kids off there in Nebraska, did you know that? No penalty. Leave ’em for good,” I say. “And people do it. She did that.”

Mama wears an intense look. She’s quiet, but I can tell she’s disturbed, and I like that, actually. Is that sick?

“So,” she says. “You had to adjust from Eleanor’s home to the group home.” Her words are clippy and her accent gets sharper. I can tell that she has a thousand other questions, but she holds them in.

“Yes.”

“That must have been hard.”

I remember it. Remember Ellen pulling up to the door in the darkness, leaning over me to read the letters on the glass. Telling me to go on, it was okay, that she’d be back for me in a few days, once she got a job and could get us a new place in Omaha. Touching my cheek, telling me she loved me, and I could see in her eyes that she meant it. I believed her. I did.

And then I had to live it down. All the other abandoned loser kids mocking me. Up in my face. They knew. Even my girl Tempest said Ellen wouldn’t be back. But I was stupid. It was months before I believed them. Before I believed that Ellen could ever do anything so horrible to me. When I fell apart, they all fucked with my head even more.

“It was hard,” I agree.

“Then what happened?” She asks. Her voice is soft, like she’s scared I’ll run away if she asks it too loud.

“I stayed awhile longer and got beat up a few times. Learned how to fight back. But that’s where I started thinking that maybe, you know, maybe there was a family, a long time ago. Before Eleanor. Finally I ran away and lived on the streets for about a year before I found you.”

Mama squeezes my knee, and then she hugs me. “I’m glad you found us. We tried so hard to find you. We really did.”

“I know.” I hug her too. Something thaws inside me. It’s starting to feel real, being here.

Mama hangs on, clutching the back of my shirt. I can hear her crying a little on my shoulder, and then she starts sobbing. I pat her back. It’s awkward and I hope it stops soon. I can’t take this every day. But she’s a nice lady, and she’s my mama no matter what I remember about her, so I let it happen.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, sniffling. “I’m so sorry I didn’t watch you better. I wish I could have that minute back. Over and over I wish it. I can’t forgive myself.”

“Mama, it’s okay,” I say.

And for a moment, it is.

At breakfast Dad looks at me with a half smile
that says Mama told him everything. I’m glad not to have to repeat it. I down some coffee and grab my backpack, trying to decide what my Cami approach will be today. I think I’m going to pretend I’m not interested.

Blake and I head out to the bus stop and it’s so cold my nose hairs freeze. Cami’s there already, hovering near the other girls. Blake goes to his friends and I stand by myself, feeling a little bit like my day of fame is over. Not sure I like that, actually. I mean, I don’t like the attention, but I don’t like nonattention even more. Tomorrow I’m bringing earbuds, even if I don’t have a player to plug into. I can fake it.

I don’t sit with Cami, even though she’s sitting alone like she’s waiting for me. I want to, but there’s the little matter of the asswipe, and I’ve decided I can’t handle it, personally. I just can’t. It’s a stability thing. I have to pretend I don’t like her, or I could get a little freaky. And I’m not going there.

At school, I see the dude everywhere, now that I know what he looks like. He even says hi to me once. He’s in half my classes and my lunch hour.

I take my tray and go up to him like the ballsy homeless Ethan would do. “Hey,” I say. “Can I sit?” He’s bigger than me.

Asswipe shrugs. “Sure.”

I eat a few bites in silence. Drink some milk. “I’m new,” I say.

“You’re that abducted kid.”

“Right.”

“Who abducted you? Was it, like, for a reward? Your parents loaded?” He’s got this sincere look, like he doesn’t even know he’s asking stupid-ass questions.

“No . . . she just wanted a kid, I guess. Really bad.”

He laughs loud at this, and other large guys join us and sit down quietly. “Sh’yeah. That’s a pretty nutty thing to do, swiping somebody else’s kid just because you want one. Was she a total loco?”