The Leaving (4 page)

As the line rang, she went into her brother’s room and lay down on his Scooby-Doo bedspread. Apparently he’d loved that show—and supposedly she’d watched it with him, but she didn’t remember; when she’d gone back to watch some episodes a few years ago, she’d found Shaggy annoying.

“Hey,” Sam said sleepily when he answered.

“Hey,” she said beneath a sky of glow-in-the-dark constellations.

“Everything okay?”

“They’re back.” She’d spotted the Big Dipper on the ceiling. “My brother and the other kids.”

“
What?
” That quickly, he was wide awake.

“Well,
he’s
not back.” And there, the Little Dipper. “Not yet, but we’ve heard they’re back.”

“No way,” he said.

“I know.” The bed smelled lonely. “My mom’s sitting on the front steps. Waiting. She heard that they don’t remember anything.”

“How is that even possible?” Sam said.

“I have no idea. It’s all just . . . crazy. Right?”

Sam had only moved to Fort Myers a few years ago, so he didn’t really understand
how
crazy it was, not having lived through it all the way everyone else had. Not the way she and Ryan had. Sam had seen the movies, but that was all.

Avery didn’t actually remember much about the day it happened; she’d been only four years old. But she learned everything she needed to know eventually.

For starters, her parents had given her endless lectures about strangers—they still did—and why she should fear them, because she didn’t want to end up like her brother—abducted by some crazy guy and held hostage somewhere or, worse, killed or sold on some foreign sex-slave black market—did she? And, “
S
orry, Ave, but we’re not sugarcoating this for you. This is your reality. The world is a horrible place. The Bogeyman and Slender Man may not be real, but there are worse, real things to fear. And not just guns and ISIS but quiet, messed-up people who can take a bunch of kids and make them go poof.”

When she was old enough, she went online. She knew about the small bus a few people saw behind the school that day and that the bus company claimed no knowledge of it. She’d read about the search parties in all the nearby swamps and on beaches, the accusations thrown at the school security guard, the lawsuits filed against the school district and the bus company (her parents had initiated the claims), and
the suicide, a few weeks later, of the school principal. She’d also read countless supposedly moving profiles of each of the kids, which said dumb things like how they loved music and sports and playgrounds and princesses and all had sparkling personalities.

Of course they did!

THEY WERE FIVE!

Avery had even been on TV the day it happened. She’d watched that clip once, then never again. Her four-year-old self, clinging to her once-beloved Woof-Woof and saying, “I really want Max to come home.”

Brutal.

Now she was impatient for him to get on with it.

She said, “What do you think is taking him so long?” and knew it sounded ridiculous.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

Back up on the terrace, the woman—her mother, her
mother
—was waiting for her, holding pajamas.

“The night before you disappeared,” she said, “you told me you were going on a trip. Your exact words were that you were going ‘to the leaving.’ Do you remember that?”

Scarlett closed her eyes.

/
        /
            //
          /
                /
     /

“I don’t.” She opened them. “And we just disappeared? Like . . . how? Did you look for us?”

“Of course!” Now looking tight, defensive. “It was the first real day of kindergarten.”

“What does that mean, ‘real day’?”

“The first day all the kindergartners went to school. They do a staggered start, with some of the kids going one day and then the rest another day. So it was the first day
all
the kindergartners were there together.”

“And?”

“And at the end of the day, you weren’t on the bus you were supposed to be on. People
say
there was a bus at school—like a small one, a short bus—that you all got on, but they never found it, but I knew right away it was something else. Some people spotted a craft up by Venice.”

/     /

“A spaceship?”

      / /

“Yes, ma’am.”

The wind blew a few strands of Scarlett’s hair into her mouth, and she pulled them away. “Do other people think that? Aliens?”

“Everyone has their own ideas. Come on. I’ll show you.”

Soon, newspaper clippings were spread out on the dining room table. Article after article about the mysterious abduction, many of them beginning with lines like, “Just months after a school shooting that took the lives of fifteen children, another tragedy has rocked the town of Fort Myers Beach.”

    /
     /
             /
                    /

Awful.

But not her problem.

In a photo array, she recognized her younger self among the “Victims of The Leaving.”

“They called it The Leaving?”

The woman—

Her
mother
nodded and showed her a glossy page ripped from a magazine. “Because of what you said, yeah.”

Reading from the page . . .
directed by . . . starring
. “There was a
movie
?”

“There’ve been a couple. None of them any good.”

Scarlett reached for her own hair, pulled it. “We were
five years old
! We didn’t
leave
.
”

The . . .
mother
stared at her for a minute, then reached out and put a palm on her cheek. “I always knew they’d bring my baby back.”

Scarlett said slowly, “
We got out of a van tonight. A van
.”

Her mother snatched her hand away—“You should rest”—then started gathering up the articles and returning them to a folder on the kitchen island.

But Scarlett was looking back at those photos of the victims . . .

. . . and counting,

and . . .

“Wait.”

Six photos.

One of her.

Then Lucas.

Kristen.

Sarah.

Adam.

She pointed at the last one.

More confused than even before.

    /
         /
          /

“Who’s Max Godard?”

Lucas

He hadn’t even wanted to go back to the house, but that was where the agents dropped him and he didn’t have any better ideas.

A light above the front door sensed him and turned on, and moths seemed to materialize just to flit in its light.

The door was locked, the inside lights all off.

He knocked.

Then again, more loudly, when nothing happened.

Then again.

There were three cars parked beside the house.

Knocked one more time and the door swung open.

She had blond hair and her eyes were too far apart and her T-shirt—the only thing she was wearing, legs long and tan—read BRUNETTES HAVE MORE FUN. She stared at him for a moment, then called out, “Ryan?”

They waited.

A moth flew at her and she ducked. “So you’re the brother.”

“And you are . . . ?” he said.

“The girlfriend.” Her stare was unflinching—unnerving, really. “Miranda.”

“You think I could come in?” he asked.

“I don’t know . . .” Then louder: “Ryan?”

A voice from down the hall: “Let him in.”

Lucas stepped past her and into the living area just as Ryan appeared and sat on the couch. Lucas sat at the other end. Miranda inserted herself between them.

“I don’t even know what to say.” Ryan rubbed his face with both palms. “What
happened
? You escaped? What?”

Lucas mirrored his brother’s gesture. “I guess we were let go. There was a van that dropped us off. We had maps to help us get home.”

“Why now?” Ryan was shaking his head. “Where were you? Who had you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.” Lucas looked at his brother for a long minute and thought Ryan’s eyes had the exact same color and tilt as the ones he saw reflected back in mirrors, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked in a mirror.

“Well, who was driving the van?” Miranda asked.

“I don’t know! I can’t explain it. It’s like we woke up on the van right before we got off.”

Ryan was staring at him. Then he said, “I really have no idea what to say to you. It feels unreal. And now Dad . . .”

Dad.

Dead.

Didn’t even know how to feel.

Losing something that had already been lost.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said. “You have to believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Ryan said, now covering his face with his hands, shaking his head. “It’s . . .
insane
! And I guess I have to call people and . . . what do I even say? ‘Well, there’s good news and bad news. Lucas is back but Dad’s dead.’” Then he looked up and said,
“Actually, who do I even have to call? Dad’s parents are dead. Mom’s parents are dead. They were both only children. So I guess cross ‘making phone calls’ off the list.”

They had no one?

“I go for a bunch of tests tomorrow, so maybe someone can figure out what’s happening.” Lucas leaned forward, head tilting down, the dizziness starting up again.

CAROUSEL OCEAN GOLDEN HORSE TEETH

He tried to push past or through it. “They took blood and all, to check for drugs in my system. Because I actually do have one really vivid image stuck in my head, and I don’t know if it was a hallucination or what’s going on.”

“What?” Miranda perked up. “What is it?”

ROUND AND ROUND

“Riding on a carousel by the ocean.”

Ryan stood up. “You remember a
carousel ride
? But not who took you for
eleven years
? What about me? Do you remember
me
?”

FIGHTING BASEBALL WRESTLING RUNNING FROGS KIDS SUN

“Do you remember Mom?”

SMILING

SUNGLASSES

WHITE TEETH

FRECKLED SKIN

BLACK HAIR.

“And Mom
dying
?”

METAL.           SKID MARKS.

SIRENS.

“Do you remember Dad? Because I barely remember him before he went off the deep end with the rocks, myself.”

Lucas couldn’t form an answer.

The rocks.

The deep end.

Off it.

HORSE TEETH NEEDING POLISHING.

“What is it?” Lucas asked. “The rocks.”

“That’s Opus 6. Dad’s life’s work. His ‘song for the missing.’ He said he was going to keep building it in tribute until you all came home.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucas said, vaguely recalling that his father had been a builder and dabbled in sculpture. “Six?”

“For the six of you.”

“No.” Like someone was manually spinning his brain. “Five.”

“Who didn’t come back?” Ryan asked.

“How should
I
know?” Lucas near-screamed.

“This gets better by the minute.” Ryan shook his head and stood—“I always thought I’d be happy to see you”—and left the room.

After a moment, Miranda said, “He’ll come around.” Lucas lifted his head.

She turned to face him squarely, stared at him as if through clear glass holding back some exhibit of oddity on the other side. “You really don’t remember
anything
?”

She waved a hand in front of his face, like it might wake him from a trance.

“I’ll get sheets for you,” she said finally. “There’s a room down that hall.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I need a shower.”

“There’s towels on the shelf behind the door.” She walked off.

The water wasn’t hot enough to wash away the day.

The skin beneath his right hip bone burned when he turned to face the showerhead.

He looked down.

Saw blood.

Black ink.

Angry, puffy skin.

Had to sit down, afraid he might pass out.

Had to take a few deep breaths.

Then looked again.

And saw this: