Disappearance at Devil's Rock (2 page)

I
t's 2:35
A.M
., and Ames police officers Ed Baker and Steve Barbara interview Josh and Luis in the Griffin home. Josh has never felt so childlike, as though the two rigidly uniformed men are representatives of the unknowable and indifferent adult universe that will soon engulf him. The officers are monolithic, even sitting as they are with the boys huddled around the granite-topped kitchen island. Josh is lost inside of his own head; the questions the officers ask and the answers he gives them don't lead to anywhere recognizable.

Both sets of the boys' parents are at the breakfast table a few feet away. They halfheartedly sip their coffees and avoid looking at each other or their sons. They listen quietly, stirring when the boys admit that they were drinking earlier, that they took beer out of Josh's dad's always-stocked fridge in the garage and out into the park with them. The parents shake their heads and adjust their sitting positions. Perhaps, under much different circumstances, one or more of the parents would try to play it cool, wink, and wistfully say, “Boys will be boys.”

Josh's mom is the only one to speak after the beer revelation. She
whispers “We're sorry” to Luis's parents. Josh hears Mom even as Officer Baker launches into follow-up questions asking if they used pot or other drugs (the answer is no, and Luis practically screams it). Mom's apology strikes Josh as such a weird thing to offer to Luis's parents, because Luis is right there in their kitchen and he's okay.

As the interview continues, the boys map out their route and destination on a large map of the state park. The officers do not offer any assurances or promises that Tommy will be found and that he will be okay. They want one of the boys and a parent to accompany them into the state park now, to show them the exact location of where they spent most of the night before Tommy disappeared. Luis volunteers. Josh is ashamed at how relieved he is. He doesn't want to go.

Luis and his father leave with the two police officers to go the state park. Luis's mother follows them out of the house to drive home by herself and call his college-aged sisters. Luis forgets his DC shoes sweatshirt, leaving it hanging on the back of the barstool chair in which Josh is sitting.

It's now 3:35
A.M
. Josh is alone in the house with his parents. Dad rearranges the suddenly empty chairs around the kitchen island.

Mom goes out to the floodlit back deck and returns a few minutes later, just off the phone with Ms. Sanderson. No word on Tommy yet. She shuts the slider and locks it, then yanks hard on the handle to double-check that the slider is locked. She says, “Oh, maybe I should leave it unlocked. Just in case Tommy comes back here.” She shrugs.

Then she tells Josh to go upstairs and get ready for bed. He doesn't argue. He needs her on his side. After they came home from the park to find Mom waiting for them on the back porch, Josh knew she could smell the beer on them because of the way she narrowed her eyes and abruptly leaned away as they tried to explain what they were doing and what happened. He only had a couple of sips (he dumped most of it out like he usually did when no one was looking), but the taste and smell is still there, trapped and stinging the back of his throat.

Josh goes upstairs, closes the bathroom door behind him, and locks it. Fighting the rising urge to vomit, he washes his face in cold water.

Dad stays in the kitchen. He washes dishes by hand that don't really need to be washed right this second, including a small collection of plastic superhero cups he and his friends drank water and soda from earlier. Josh can hear Dad talking to himself even with the bathroom door closed. He's really talking to Josh, or talking to the Josh from two hours ago. Josh nods along to his father's spiel while brushing his teeth: Yes, of course, Josh is supposed to be the responsible one, the level-headed one, the one who should know better, the one who was supposed to do the right thing, not the one to be sneaking out of his own house and drinking beer and then participating in whatever idiocy it was they were up to in the park, and now, now something has happened, likely something terrible, and they will never be able to change that or take it back.

Josh brushes his teeth for an extralong time, the mint starting to burn his gums and tongue, and waits for his father to stop talking.

Mom is already in Josh's bedroom. She yawns and wipes her eyes as he walks in. Mom is loving, loyal, and intensely serious and has become more so as Josh has gotten older. The lamp with the long, adjustable neck clipped to his headboard is on. In its spotlight, she looks pale and too skinny. Her thin lips are pressed together, hiding inside her mouth. Gray roots are starting to show at the top of her head at the point where her hair parts. The gray practically glows in stark contrast to her thick, straightened, jet-black hair. Josh usually points out when it's time for the dye job with his self-proclaimed comedian's wit and charm. He's been told more than once that he'll be a politician someday. It's supposed to be a compliment, even though all the adults he knows do nothing but bash politicians.

“Did you wash your face?” Mom won't meet his eyes. She talks down to the pillows. “You need to shower first thing tomorrow.”

Josh says, “Yes. Okay, I will, Mom.” He changes into a clean T-shirt and shorts, turning away from Mom as he does so, embarrassed by the baby fat that softens his chest and stomach. He shimmies past her and climbs into bed. The wooden frame creaks as he adjusts his position, turning away, lying on his side, facing the wall. He's exhausted from trying to read silent adult faces and keep eye contact. “You'll wake me if anyone calls about Tommy, right?”

“Yes. Of course. Try to get some sleep.”

Her saying that and the way she says it, to his back or into his back, threatens to make him cry again. He says, “Can you stay in here with me for a little while?”

“Just a little while.” She rubs his back. Her hand is light but distracted.

There's no way he's going to fall asleep. He's never felt more awake in his life. He'll pretend he's asleep eventually.

Mom turns off the lamp and continues rubbing his back. Black clouds form and dance in his vision as he stares at the wall a foot or so from his face. She says, “Oh, Josh, what happened out there?”

“I don't know, Mom. I really don't.” He blinks hard, balls the blanket up next to his mouth. Josh has been friends with Tommy since the summer before first grade. They met at the Ash Street playground, the one with a play area covered in wood chips that found a way to worm inside your sneakers. Josh's mom and the other moms whispered about a boy shyly going about the serious business of climbing the play structure shaped like a pirate ship. He still remembers how carefully the boy turned the pirate wheel and swept errant wood chips off the captain's deck with his feet. The moms called this boy the
Boy Without a Father
, and Josh wanted to know his story, wanted to know how that could possibly happen, because everyone had a mom and dad, right? Mom said she didn't know how that had happened, but it sure was sad. She encouraged Josh to go play with
the
Boy Without a Father
because he really needed a good friend, a good friend like Josh.

Josh doesn't dare imagine where the
Boy Without a Father
is now.

Mom says, matter-of-factly, that if no one hears from or finds Tommy by early morning they'll all help search the park.

Josh doesn't want to go back to the park ever again. He wants to close his eyes and make everything like it was earlier in the summer.

It was late June. The day after the day after their last day of seventh grade. Josh and Luis rode their bikes up and down the Griffins' long driveway, jousting with Josh's replica sword and pickax from the video game Minecraft as they passed each other. That got boring fast, and it was too hot to shoot hoops. They sat on a shady patch of grass that outlined the driveway and checked for messages in Snapchat and Instagram.

Tommy pulled into Josh's driveway riding his black, dinged up mountain bike one-handed. He kept the bike seat as low as it would go, so his knees practically knocked into his chin as he pedaled. Tufts of dark brown hair stuck out of the ear holes of his helmet, and his bangs hung over his eyes. Tommy hopped off the bike without stopping and stuck the landing between Luis and Josh with a gangly, on-the-verge-of-disaster-at-all-times athleticism that only he seemed to possess. He put his long, skinny arms around their shoulders and said, “What's up?” His bike continued on a wobbly ghost ride and crashed into the front bushes.

Josh said, “My mom will stab you in the eye if she saw that.” He was half-joking, and he checked to see if Mom was watching them through the bay window.

Luis: “Stabby stab stab!”

Tommy said, “Catchphrase,” and tried to twist Luis's arm into a chicken wing, which then became a wrestling match on the front lawn.

Tommy was taller, stronger, more physically mature. Of the three boys, he was the only one with a dusting of teen acne and a voice that had fully dropped into a voice-crack-free lower register. Luis was hunger-strike thin, the shortest kid in their grade, and so he still looked and, with his high-pitched voice, sounded like a fifth grader. The usual jokes and taunts from the boys at Ames Middle School were a daily trial, and he was instantly labeled “adorable” by the older girls, and the meaner of that crew would pinch his cheeks and muss up his black hair as though they were patting a puppy.

Outsized as he was by Tommy, Luis was tenacious and didn't quit, didn't ever quit. He weaved himself between Tommy's legs and timbered him to the ground.

Tommy laughed and shouted, “Bruh! Bruh! Get off! You're twisting my knee!” Tommy's “bruh” was an affected accent on
bro
.

Luis shouted, “Get some!” stood up, and thumped his robin-sized chest with both hands.

Tommy groaned and complained about the pain as he overexaggerated a ruinous limp toward his bike, its front tire stuck in the bushes like the sword in the stone.

Josh pulled out a map of Borderland State Park from his back pocket. He said, “Yo, shit-stains, I got the map.”

Luis and Tommy started singing the “I'm the map” song from
Dora the Explorer
. Josh pointed to a dark green blob labeled Split Rock and told them that was where they were going to hang out. On the way they would use previously unexplored trails, which was a bonus because they wouldn't be as crowded as the main walkways.

Luis said that Split Rock was too far away, and one of the trails they'd have to take was called Granite Hills Trail, which meant it was
superrocky, which meant they'd have to walk their bikes half the time, which would take forever and result in general suckage and ass-pain for all involved. Tommy and Josh ignored his protests. Luis was a contrarian if a proposed activity or idea wasn't his originally, and he'd complain long and loud to be on record as having complained. To Luis's credit, he was never a told-you-so guy and he wouldn't revisit his earlier objections even if he did turn out to be on the right side of history. Not to his credit: After the fact, Luis often enthusiastically co-opted the ideas he'd initially rejected.

Josh grabbed his blue backpack full of Gatorades and granola bars from the base of the basketball stanchion. The boys walked their bikes through Josh's backyard and into the thick woods abutting the Griffin property. Last summer the boys had worked hard cutting a skinny path through the brush that lead into the southwest section of Borderland State Park and to its Western Trail. Normally, they'd follow the Western Trail back toward the main entrance and ride to the Pond Walk, which circled the Upper and Lower Leech Ponds, and from there take other well-worn paths designated as easier hiking or mountain bike trails. Today, they followed the Western Trail deeper into the northern, more rugged, and less traveled section of the park in search of Split Rock.