The Summer We Lost Alice (6 page)

Alice and I gather up the dishes and carry them to the kitchen. Alice skips over to the trash can and pulls out a cereal box.

She sneaks it upstairs like it's some kind of prize.

* * *

Alice sits on her bed fondling some plastic buttons that pass for diamonds.

"These jewels are all I have left of the royal treasure," she says. She wears the cereal box on top of her head like a crown. She is the Queen of Bohemia, held prisoner in a high tower by her own scheming family. They've stolen the rest of the treasure and buried it where she can never find it.

I
sit on my bed and sulk, my back to Alice. She got me into trouble with Aunt Flo and I don't get to watch TV for God-knows-how-long. Now she's wearing a stupid cereal box on top of her head and pretending to be the Queen of Bohemia. What is wrong with her, anyway? I haven't said a word to her since she crowned herself.

"Tonight, we'll make our escape," she says. "The moon will be full, so we won't need flashlights. They won't be expecting us to make our break so soon.

"I had this tower designed myself, to hold my enemies. I know the secret way out. I'll have to hide these jewels so nobody can steal them, in case we're caught. We may have to put them up our butts."

I laugh despite myself.

She looks at me sadly. "I'm sorry I got you into trouble. You've always been loyal to me. You're the only person in my whole kingdom I can trust."

I ignore her apology, but I'm not mad anymore. I
lay back and stare at a spider on the ceiling. I don't say a word for a long time, maybe fifteen seconds.

"I might know how to get the treasure back," I say. I look
over at her, and she smiles at me.

"Do tell!" she says. (Nobody in Wichita says "Do tell."
Nobody else in Meddersville, for that matter. Only Alice.)

I reach under my bed and pull out the sack containing the leash I bought at the drug store. I hold it out for Alice to take.

She opens the sack. When she sees what's inside, her eyes get narrow.

"What's this for?" she says.

"For Boo. We can put it on him and give him a ball or something. Then he'll take us to his hiding place. You can get your stuff back. The treasure, I mean."

Alice thinks about it for a moment. She chews her lower lip and curls her hair in her finger and stares into space, seeing the adventure before it even happens, seeing it in her mind. She takes out the leash and tugs it between her hands, testing its strength. She looks up at me.

"Baron," she says. She's never called me "Baron" before. "Baron, you are a genius. The royal treasure will be restored. You have pleased us. You may kiss my hand."

I do.

* * *

We're in the backyard. The sunlight has already faded when I snap a picture of the Queen of Bohemia and the Royal Mascot.

Alice wears the cereal box on her head. Boo sits beside her scratching at a Royal Flea. I wait for him to finish before taking the picture. This is a historic moment as the queen prepares to flee the castle and recover the royal treasure. I push the shutter button on Aunt Flo's camera and the flashbulb goes off. Queen and Mascot are immortalized on film.

I would take more photos but the
queen and I discovered earlier in the day that a flashbulb would flash if you threw it against something hard, such as a bedroom floor, or a wall, or a head, and I am down to my last bulb.

It will be twenty-five years before I see the result of my work. By then, Alice and Boo will have disappeared and been presumed dead, and a picture that was supposed to make us happy will bring longing and regret and a bittersweet memory of the way things were, for one incandescent moment, before we learned how cruel the world at its worst could be.

Aunt Flo tells us it's dark and time to come in.

We're thinking
it's dark and time to go out.

AUNT FLO
and Uncle Billy sleep like the dead, which makes it easy to sneak out any time after the news.

Catherine goes first. She runs down the front walk and hurries along the sidewalk to the end of the street where Sammy has parked his car. She gets in and they drive off.

Alice and I sneak out the back door with Boo. Alice fastens the leash onto his collar. She holds on tight and tells me to do the same.

"It'll take both of us to hold him back," she whispers. "Anybody who lets go gets left behind."

She waves a rubber dinosaur under Boo's nose, then tosses it a few feet away. Boo pounces. He clamps the dinosaur in his jaws and runs for the woods, me and Alice dragged along behind like whalers who've harpooned the beast of their dreams.

Boo chokes against his collar, his throat chuffing as he barrels along. He bursts through hedges like the dinosaur he holds in his teeth. He runs through streets and alleyways, down sidewalks, around houses. The night air is intoxicating.
No pausing this time, not even to sniff the bucket of stink bait outside the Clements' garage or the dead squirrel in Mrs. Ingram's rose bed. He runs like a dog on a mission, as if he, too, has been sucked into Alice's fantasy. His feet churn up backyard gardens and toss dirt clods in our faces. We do our best to hang on, stumbling and bumping heads, falling, getting up, persevering.

We race through yards and
past the town limits and out to the sleeping lake, wind our mad way through picnic tables and around trash cans and between the trees. We're dying, Alice and I, but we hang on. There is a kingdom at stake.

Boo runs into the road where a car is parked, lights out as if lying in wait. Alice gasps. It's Sammy's car, and Catherine is in it.

"Boo, no!" Alice says. She pulls back hard on the leash. Our feet scuff in the dirt. Boo's claws scratch for purchase, his legs pump, but our headlong rush comes to a momentary halt. Boo barks his protest. His voice cuts through the quiet night like a foghorn. He rears on his hind legs, straining at the leash, rampant, howling.

The headlights of the lurking car come on and fix us in their beams. Catherine leans forward and peers through the windshield at us. Her face is stony, lips tight. She clutches her shirt close around her chest, but not before I see that it's unbuttoned and her bra hangs loose from her shoulders. Alice glares back at her, shoots her a look of sisterly defiance. In one instant, a pact is made.

Don't tell.

Boo's claws bite into the asphalt
. Alice relents and I'm yanked nearly off my feet. The chase is on again.

We skirt the lake and run past a cabin and a mobile home. I have no idea where we are, but Boo knows. It's dark, but he could make this journey blindfolded. I realize that Boo, also, is in thrall to forces stronger than his own will. It's his elemental nature that guides his legs, that commands them to bear him and his prize to a place as sacred to him as Stonehenge or the elephant burial grounds or the mountains of the moon.

I'm gasping for breath and there's a stitch in my side, but I'm determined not to let go of the leash. I no longer care about finding the royal treasure, as if I ever really did, but I care a lot about not disappointing Alice.

Now we're running through the graveyard alongside the nursing home. Boo darts between the headstones, his tongue lolling and saliva dangling from his lips. I wonder if the dead can hear our footsteps thundering on the roofs of their graves. I wonder if Mrs. Nichols, the witch, can see us, if she'll come after us. I glance over at the enormous, stone house. Lights glow through the dusty windows. The house is watching us.

My foot encounters a brass vase of dead flowers and I go down. The leash slips through my fingers. I slide on the wet grass. My knee bangs against something hard and I cry out.

Alice throws a look at me. She yells out my name, but she hangs onto the leash and Boo keeps running and she staggers along behind him. I stand up. Pain shoots through my leg. My head swims and I fall again. The earth spins beneath me. I reach for a headstone to keep myself from flying off into space. I look up, searching for Alice. I see her in the distance, her and Boo, but they swirl away like leaves in a whirlwind, sucked into the black woods.

"Let go!" I yell. "Alice! Let him go!"

I don't know if she hears me. I climb to my feet. I limp after them, my knee burning. I struggle to stay upright on the careening landscape.

"Alice!"

I reach the edge of the woods. I stop and listen for footsteps.

I hear nothing. Something rushes through the branches over my head. I look up, but whatever it was—an animal, the wind, a ghost—has already moved on.

Then I hear her voice. She calls out to me:

"Ethan, run!" she cries.

I glimpse her for a second, a tiny shadow in the distance. My heart leaps. I run toward her as fast as I can with my bunged-up knee.
Tears well in my eyes. I wipe them, and when I look for her again, she's gone.

I scream her name and listen hard for an answer. The woods are deadly still. I venture a few more paces into the woods, calling for Alice. I stop. If I venture any further, I'll only get myself lost.

I limp back to the graveyard and sit with my back against a headstone. Now and again I call out Alice's name. I yell for Boo.

Again and again I walk to the edge of the woods and call out for Alice. Again and again I hear only the rustle of leaves or the scurrying of tiny, animal paws in the brush.

Despite my best efforts, I begin to cry. I wish as hard as I can that this is only a dream. I order myself to wake up, but the pain in my knee and the burning in my throat tell me this is one nightmare I can't escape. It's a nightmare of my own creation, and it's unbearably real.

I hate this town and I hate my mother for bringing me here. I hate Boo and his secret place. I hate Alice for leaving me alone and the leash for not breaking and Catherine for not stopping us when she had the chance. I hate myself for coming up with this stupid idea in the first place.

It's all my fault, and there isn't anything I can do to make it go away. All I can do is wait.

I wait until I know that waiting isn't good enough. I have to do something, no matter how much trouble I get into. I'm not sure
if I can find my way back to Aunt Flo's and Uncle Billy's. I have to tell someone. I have to ask for help.

I stand for the longest time looking at the nursing home.
The witch's house. The lights are on. Someone is up. It's the witch. I can't go there, but that's where Alice is, I'm certain of that. Who else but a witch could make a kid disappear like that? I have to tear myself away and quit staring at those windows.

I walk in a direction that I hope takes me toward the town, following the road. I stop at the first house I come to, one of the squat, tiny places near the lake. The windows are all dark. I knock until a light comes on
. I sit on the porch and wait for the door to open. I'm shivering even though it isn't cold. I have no idea what I'm going to say to whoever answers the door.

The porch light comes on, blinding me.

UNCLE BILLY has put on a pair of work pants but he wears his pajama top as a shirt.

Gone from his eyes is the twinkle that I have come to expect as part of him as much as his nose and his ears and his hair. Looking at him now, his mouth down and his eyes so serious, I barely recognize him as Uncle Billy. He's an impostor, someone who's been called in to do this thing, whatever horrible thing is going to be done to me, because the real Uncle Billy would never do it.

Aunt Flo wears an old house dress. It's buttoned wrong but nobody tells her that. I expect her to be angry, but she isn't. She rubs one hand with the other, or they flutter around her face like bats. She doesn't know what to do with them. She doesn't know where to look. Her eyes dart all around, as if they'll spot Alice hiding in a corner, playing a cruel game. She sits down and then she stands up again immediately. She says, "We have to
do
something! Why's everyone standing around like statues? We have to
do
something!"

"I've called the sheriff," says the woman whose house this is. She's the one I woke up by pounding on her door. I think she lives alone because there's no man in the house, at least, there's no man in the living room where all of us are. I don't think he would sleep
through something this big. There are pictures of this woman and a man on the table beside the sofa. I think he must be dead or he would be here.

"There's no use going off half-cocked," Uncle Billy says. "When Sam gets here, we'll start a proper search."

"Men!" Aunt Flo says, pacing. "You always have to do things
properly
! You can't just put a nail in a wall, you have to drill a hole! And you never have the right tool, so you don't do anything! It's just an excuse, that's all it is! An excuse to not ever do anything!"

"Now, Flo," Uncle Billy says, "calm down." He reaches for her but she holds up her arms to fend him off.

"Don't touch me, you useless ... useless—" Words fail her and she turns her back on Uncle Billy. She pulls a wad of tissue out of her pocket and places it over her nose and mouth, like people do in the movies when they're knocking somebody out with chloroform.