Gone, Gone, Gone (2 page)

Mom always tried to open windows because of the smell, but I’d stop her because I was afraid they would escape. Every day I breathe in feathers and dander and urine so they will not escape.

My mother sometimes curls her hand into a loose fist and presses her knuckles against my cheek. When she does, I smell her lotion, always lemongrass. Todd will do something similar, but it feels different, more urgent, when he does.

The animals. They were with me when I fell asleep last night. I didn’t notice I was sleeping in my shoes, and I didn’t notice when they left.

This is why I need more sleep. This is how things slip through my fingers.

My head is spinning with fourteen names I didn’t protect.

“We’ll find them, Craig,” Mom says, with a hand on the back of my head. “They were probably just scared from the noise. They’ll come back.”

“They should have stayed in the basement,” I whisper. “Why did they run away?”

Why were a few open doors enough incentive for them to leave?

I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I suck.

“We’ll put up posters, Craig, okay?” Mom says. Like she doesn’t have enough to worry about and people to call— insurance companies, someone to fix the window, and her mother to assure her that being this close to D.C. really doesn’t mean we’re going to die. It’s been thirteen months, almost, since the terrorist attacks, and we’re still convinced that any mishap means someone will steer a plane into one of our buildings.

We don’t say that out loud.

Usually this time in the morning, I take all the different kinds of food and I fill all the bowls. They come running, tripping over themselves, rubbing against me, nipping my face and my hands like I am the food, like I just poured myself into a bowl and offered myself to them. Then I clean the litter boxes and the cages and take the dogs out for a walk.
I can do this all really, really quickly, after a year of practice.

Mom helps, usually, and sometimes I hear her counting under her breath, or staring at one of the animals, trying to figure out if one is new—sometimes yes, sometimes no.

The deal Mom and I have is no new animals. The deal is I don’t have to give them away, I don’t have to see a therapist, but I can’t have any more animals. I don’t want a therapist because therapists are stupid, and I am not crazy.

And the truth is it’s not my fault. The animals find me. A kitten behind a Dumpster, a rabbit the girl at school can’t keep. A dog too old for anyone to want. I just hope they find me again now that they’re gone.

Part of the deal was also that Mom got to name a few of the newer ones, which is how I ended up with a few with really girly names.

But I love them. I tell them all the time. I’ll pick Hail up and cuddle him to my face in that way that makes his ears get all twitchy. I’ll make loose fists and hold them up to Marigold and Jupiter’s cheeks. They’ll lick my knuckles. “I love you,” I tell them. It’s always been really easy for me to say. I’ve never been one of those people who can’t say it.

It’s October 4th. Just starting to get cold, but it gets cold fast around here.

God, I hope they’re okay.

I’m up
way too early now that I don’t have to feed the animals, but I don’t know what else to do but get dressed and get ready for school. It takes like two minutes, and now what?

A year ago, back when it was still 2001 . . .

Back when we still clung . . .

Back when I slept upstairs . . .

There was a boy.

A very, very, very important boy.

Now . . .

There’s Lio.

Lio. I knew how it was spelled before I ever heard it out loud. It sounds normal, like Leo, but it looks so special. I love that.

I started talking to Lio back in June. I’m this thing for my school called an ambassador, which basically means I get good grades and I don’t smoke, so they give out my email and a little bit about me to incoming students so I can gush about how cool this place is or something like that.

He sent me a message. He said he’s about to move here, he’s going to be at my school, we’re the same age, and this is so creepy stalker, but you like Jefferson Airplane and I like Jefferson Airplane too, so cool, do you think we could IM sometime?

So he did and we are and I do and we did.

Lio is, to sum him up quickly, a koala. I realized that pretty early on.

He gets good grades, but he smokes, so he could never be an ambassador. There are a few reasons it’s really, really stupid for Lio to smoke, but that doesn’t seem to stop him. I don’t know him well enough to admit that it scares me to death. And really, it seems like everything scares me to death now, so I’ve learned to shut up about it.

He’s not a
boy
to me, not yet, because
boy
implies some kind of intimacy, but Lio is a boy in the natural sense of the word, at least I assume so, since I’ve never seen him with his clothes off and barely with his coat off, to be honest. Though I can imagine. And sometimes I do. Oh, God.

He wears a lot of hats. That’s how we met for real, once his family moved here. I thought he’d come looking for me as soon as school started, but I couldn’t find him anywhere, which was immediately a shame, because I was beginning to get sick of eating my lunch alone every day.

Then Ms. Hoole made both of us take our hats off in honors precalculus last month, on the third day of school.

“Lio, Craig,” she said. “Your hats, present them here.” And of course I didn’t give a shit about my hat, because I had found Lio.

Lio didn’t say anything, but his eyes said,
bitch,
and when
he took his hat off I could see his hair was a chopped-up mess of four different colors, all of them muted and faded and fraying. Lio has a head like an old couch.

After class, he didn’t go up to collect his hat, so I got both and brought his to him. He was rushing down the hallway, unlit cigarette between his fingers.

I said, “Lio?”

He looked at me and nodded.

I smiled a bit. “You weren’t listening? I’m Craig.”

He bit his bottom lip like he was trying not to laugh, but not in a bad way. In a really, really warm way, and I could tell because his eyes were locked onto mine.

There was a whole mess of people and he was still walking, but he kept looking at me.

“I like your hair,” I told him, because it was difficult not to make some sort of comment.

Lio leaned against the wall and studied me. And even though I know now that Lio’s really uncomfortable without a hat on, and he was really mad at Ms. Hoole for taking it and really mad at himself for being too afraid of talking to go up and ask for it back, he didn’t pull the hat back on right away. He kept it crumpled up in his hand and he watched me instead.

And he covered his mouth a little and he smiled.

So here are some facts about Lio:

He has either five or six older sisters, I can’t remember,
and one younger sister, and they are all very nice and love him a lot and call him nearly every day, except for his little sister, Michelle, and the youngest of the older sisters, Jasper, who are in middle school and high school, respectively, and therefore live with him and therefore only call him when he’s in trouble or they want to borrow his clothes. I’ve only met Jasper. She is a senior, and much prettier than Lio. They all have cell phones, every single one of them, because they are from New York, and Lio says everyone has them there, and I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m really jealous.

He likes Colin Farrell, so when that movie
Phone Booth
comes out next month, we’re going to go see it together. I don’t know if this is a date or what, but I’ve already decided that I’m going to pay, and if he tries to protest I’m going to give him this smile and be like “No, no, let me.”

He used to be a cancer kid—bald, skinny, mouth sores, leukemia. That was when he was five until he was seven, I think. He got to go to Alaska to see polar bears because of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He said one time that the thing about cancer kids is no one knows what to do with them if they don’t die. He’s fine now, but he shouldn’t be smoking cigarettes. He had a twin brother who died.

Today I come up to Lio’s locker and he nods to me. The principal gave us American flags to put up on our lockers on September 11th, for the anniversary. Most of
us put them up, but we also took them down again afterward, because they were cheap and flimsy and because it’s been a year and patriotism is lame again. Lio still has his on his locker, but three weeks later it’s started to fray. My father gave his school flags too. He’s an elementary school principal. My mother is a social worker. My family is a little adorable.

Lio’s flag flaps while he roots through his locker. He takes out a very small cage and hands it to me. I’m excited for a minute, thinking he’s found one of the animals, maybe Peggy, the guinea pig. Even though there’s no way she could fit in there, I’m still hoping, because maybe maybe maybe. But it’s a small white mouse. Really, really pretty.

But it makes my head immediately list everyone that I’ve lost.

Four dogs: Jupiter, Casablanca, Kremlin, Marigold.

Five cats: Beaumont, Zebra, Shamrock, Sandwich, Caramel.

One bird: Fernando.

Three rabbits: Carolina, Hail, Michelangelo.

A guinea pig: Peggy.

“Made me think of you,” he says, softly.

Because Lio says so few words, every single one has deep, metaphorical, cosmic significance in my life. And my words are like pennies.

I talk to the mouse very quietly on my way back to my locker. I think I’ll name her Zippers. I’m not sure why. I’m
never sure why I choose the names I do. Maybe I should let Mom handle all of them, although she’d probably name this one Princess or something.

I should ask Lio what he’d like her to be named. Or where he got her. He doesn’t know about the deal I have with my mom, and I feel no need to tell him.

I set her cage on top of my books.

Lio’s there a minute later. He bites his thumbnail and fusses with his hat. His hair’s still a mess, but it has nothing to do with the cancer. He’s just sort of a psycho with his hair.

“My therapist says I’m a little fucked up,” he explained to me one time, when I barely knew him, and that explanation terrified and intrigued me all at the same time. He sniffled and rubbed his nose. “Yeah.”

Once I told him therapy is bullshit and he seemed offended, so I don’t tell him that anymore, even though I still believe it.

“My animals are gone,” I tell him now.

He looks up.

“Someone broke into my house last night. They broke the windows and left all the doors open, and all my animals left. They just ran out the doors or something . . .”

He watches me. Sometimes he does this, looks at me when I’m in the middle of talking, and it’s like he’s interrupting without saying a word, because I can’t think with
those eyes all blue on me. I can’t think of anything else to say, and it makes me want to cry. Usually I can handle this, because I’m only talking about my brother or a class or my day. But right now it’s a little more than I can stand.

I need Lio to say something.

But he doesn’t. He reaches out and touches the tip of my finger with the tip of his finger.

Bing.

I swallow.

He says, “Did you look under the couch?”

Even stuff like that sounds profound from him, and I hate that all I can do is nod while I’m trying to get my voice back, because I always like to give Lio more of a response when he talks to me, since it’s so hard to get words out of him.

“Yeah,” I say eventually. “We looked under the couch.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lio’s never seen my animals because he’s never been to my house, but he’s heard enough about them. Plus there are pictures of them all over my locker. I touch a Polaroid of Jemeena, this excellent hamster I had who died a few months ago. I couldn’t bring myself to get any more hamsters after her.

I look at Lio.

I haven’t been to Lio’s place either. He says it’s still full of boxes, because their apartment is so big that they don’t
even notice them taking up space. I think he’s just used to his old tiny apartment in New York.

“I need to put up posters after school,” I tell Lio. “Will you come help me?”

He nods.

“Thanks.” The bell goes off and I close my locker door. “I hope they’re still alive.”

“It’s not cold yet.”

He probably wouldn’t say that if he’d gone a whole night with wind pouring into his house. Getting out of the shower felt like a punishment. I say, “I know. They could probably have survived last night, I hope. What if maybe someone stole them off the street? I hope not.” I breathe out.

He nods a little. “We’ll find them.”

We start walking to class, and this girl passing us waves to Lio, this tall blond girl with glasses and a pretty smile.

I say, “She’d be really hot if she were a boy.”

Lio watches her go and nods slowly. I wish I knew what that meant. It would be something else to think about.

Todd is at my locker after second period. He substitute teaches here sometimes, so it’s not that weird to see him, even though I didn’t know he was working today. The substitute teaching thing isn’t his real job. Really, he works nights at a suicide hotline, which pays even less than substitute teaching. He’s taking classes to get his masters in environmental science. Then he’s
going to save us all before the world explodes.

He holds up a paper bag. “You forgot your lunch.”

This is why people need sleep. “Thanks,” I say. I bet Mom made him bring it to me. She’s pretty intense about lunch. She still packs mine every day, because she wants me to get a lot of vitamins or whatever. I usually end up giving half of it to Lio and eating chips instead. I’m not going to tell Todd that.

“You doing okay?” he asks.

“What?”

He says, “Just checking in,” and he gives me a hug with one arm and then leaves. I open my lunch bag like I think there’s going to be some explanation of why he was so affectionate, I guess because I wish it were something better than
because he feels sorry for you and your lost animals.
But it’s just an apple and a sandwich and a bag of walnuts. I rip off a bit of the apple for Zippers and stuff everything else into my locker before I head off to my next class.