Disappearance at Devil's Rock (9 page)

L
uis doesn't want to do this. Sure it sounds weak, cowardly, particularly given what happened to his friend, but he's not sure he'll make it through. The odds of his throwing up in the backseat during the short ride over to the Sandersons are much greater than, say, an asteroid cratering into their car. He'd rather the asteroid.

It was only a half an hour ago that Mom shook him awake, yanked the bed covers off of him like an angry magician, and told him to take the world's fastest shower. Luis bolted upright, in a total panic thinking about the police, more police, and more and more interviews, and maybe this time they wanted to bring him into the station. Would Mom make him shower before they threw him into a cell? Or was she waking him because his parents gave in to a media request? When Luis asked, “Why?” Mom said they were visiting the Sandersons and yes they were doing it right now because Elizabeth was going to be out for most of the day. Luis's parents were in such a rush they didn't even get on him, like they usually did, when he turned down offers
of cereal, Pop Tarts, and blueberry muffins, saying he didn't want any breakfast and he wasn't hungry.

Luis's short black hair is still damp from the rushed shower. Even though it's already humid and the temperature is pushing into the eighties, Luis wears a blue, logo-less hoodie sweatshirt at least one size too big. Most of his clothes (including his baggy camo shorts) fit like hand-me-downs from ogre-sized older brothers. Luis has no older brothers, but two older sisters who tower over him literally and figuratively. He does love them and he enjoys their company when they're around, which isn't often anymore. His sisters already left for school two weeks ago; they both attend colleges in the southwest. They called last night to ask him how he was doing and to say they were sorry his friend (they didn't say Tommy's name) was missing and hoped and prayed that he'd be found soon. His older sisters are smart, cool, and fun in their own way, but they have always seemed like adults to Luis; like younger, newer versions of his parents with motivations and decision-making processes alien and unknowable.

Luis has had no time to prepare for the impending visit to the Sandersons, and that's probably for the better. Luis would've been more of a basket case than he is already. Of course, now that they're minutes away, Luis is actually hungry. His stomach stings in little starbursts of pain that radiate throughout his midsection and up into his esophagus. He considers asking Mom if she has something to eat with her. When Luis was younger, she used to keep small sandwich bags of dried plantains and other fruits in her bag and offer them to him as surreptitiously as a drug dealer. More annoying than the OCD frequency with which she asked if he wanted a snack was her exaggerated look of pouty defeat when he invariably said no.

Luis's fingers twitch for his phone, and he wishes he could escape to its digital hideouts and numb himself with Minecraft or Madden football. On the way out the door his dad made him put his phone in
his mother's purse. That they still treated him like a small child was an argument for another time, when or if this nightmare with Tommy ever ended. Tommy. Even thinking about where Tommy was and what might've happened to him stirs that hive of angry wasps in his stomach.

Tommy's house appears as they round the final corner, and it looks exactly the same, looking like it always has, which is a surprise to Luis. How in the world could it be the same place without Tommy around to be in it?

Josh and his parents beat them to the house. Their black, freshly washed SUV is parked next to the mailbox, and they are already standing on the front stoop and standing so that they face the closed front door.

Dad says, “They said they were going to wait for us.” He sounds pissed. The Fernandezes and Griffins have done many of their official statements and interviews as a group. They've also been eating lunch and dinner together, spending the recent long summer afternoons and shrinking nights at each other's houses; the parents watching the boys while drinking all the wine, the boys quietly watching the same movies they've watched countless times before. They have become a reluctant team, a team Luis didn't think anyone rooted for.

Dad pulls up tight behind the Griffins' SUV. Mom's door is open before the car is fully stopped. She speed-walks across the front lawn, moving like a broken robot alternating short strides with big, uneven steps that threaten to topple her over. Luis climbs out of the car and he sinks into the grass, which is still damp from the morning dew. His feet and ankles are instantly wet. Tommy's only been missing for a handful of days but the long, snarly grass looks like it hasn't been mowed in weeks. Now that he's closer to the house, almost standing in its shadow, Luis thinks it does look different. He can see this place
easily becoming the neighborhood haunted house, the one the kids tells stories about, and they'll tell them so often you'll have no choice but to believe them.

Dad edges Luis forward with a slight shove and a “Come on” that has an exasperated edge to it. Luis's father is older than everyone else's dad; his late fifties is a decade and a half older than Mom. He and Mom are the same height, five foot seven, but physical opposites otherwise. Dad's hair has gone totally gray. He's thick through the chest, shoulders, and arms. His legs are as skinny as picket fence posts. Dad is generally kind, particularly to strangers, and loyal to a fault, but he craves confrontation like the morning's first cup of coffee.

Elizabeth Sanderson opens the front door. She is dressed for a jog: black yoga pants, sneakers, blue short-sleeved outer shell. Elizabeth offers Josh's mom a weak smile that instantly collapses like a long-neglected bridge, and they embrace. Josh and his dad stand to the side, their heads down and hands folded in front of them. Luis's mom climbs up the brick stairs, puts a hand on Josh's dad's shoulder before stepping in front of him. Elizabeth hugs Luis's mom next. Luis is still slowly walking across the front lawn.

Mom and Elizabeth continue to hold each other. She looks over Mom's shoulder and she locks eyes with Luis. It's not the hardness, the completeness of her stare that makes him feel so small, smaller than he always feels. It's how quickly she looks away from him. Luis imagines his smallness as a condition without a cure, and it's accelerating. He'll shrink so that the grass is over his waist and then over his head, and he'll continue shrinking until the grass stalks are as large as redwoods, until he's down in the dirt with the ants and the ticks and the spiders, and then he's even too small for them to bother with, and maybe it would be okay living down here alone in the secret roots of the world.

Kate hovers back at the borderline of the kitchen and living room, running her foot along the crack between the hardwood and tile. Luis, Josh, and both sets of their parents are inside her house, grouped together in the small entryway that spills into the living room. They shouldn't be here. Is it unfair of her to think that they're here to make themselves feel better? Nothing they can say or do will help make Tommy come back. Kate didn't quite articulate it in that way earlier when Mom announced who was coming over, but it was implied in her “Mom, you should've said no.”

Kate hates the Griffins and Fernandezes right now. She blames them and hates them, all of them, even Luis, whom she's had an obvious crush on forever. Luis has always made her laugh, and whenever the three boys were together in the house, Luis was nicer to her than Tommy was. Tommy would snap at her, tell her to leave them alone and go play with her own friends, and he wouldn't even look at her when he'd say it. Luis would be the one to say, “Don't listen to him” and “Let her watch us play Mario Kart.” A week ago Luis and his big brown eyes, jet-black hair, and sneaky smile would've sent an embarrassed and exhilarated Kate and her just-got-up morning wear (baggy sweats, dingy T-shirt, no training bra) retreating to her bedroom. Look at Luis now, hiding behind a wall of parents, and slouching next to Josh, both boys with their heads down and their hands in their pockets, like cowed prisoners. Two stupid-ass little boys. The stupidest. That's all they are, and they lost Tommy. They took him and they lost him.

Everyone is standing and not quite sure what to do or where to look. Mom insists they sit on the living room couch and be comfortable. Mom sits first but no one follows her lead, so she stands back up.

Kate stares at the boys, daring them to look her way. Neither of them have yet.

Nana, taking over the hostess role, politely asks if anyone wants any coffee, water, something to eat.

Mrs. Fernandez says, “No, no thank you,” and the other adults mumble similar sentiments.

Nana disappears into the kitchen and tends to the coffeemaker anyway.

Sighs and awkward smiles are passed back and forth until Mom breaks the Antarctic ice and says, “Thank you, guys. For—for coming over. It's good to see you.”

Kate seethes. No, it's not good to see them standing like their presence in and of itself is some sort of apology or admission of guilt that's to be absolved by this weak-sauce act of contrition. And even worse, now they're making Mom do the talking.

The two dads blurt and bumble over each other's words and it amounts to nothing at all, the drowsy buzz of a couple of dying bees. Mrs. Griffin nods, folds and unfolds her hands, and smiles the watery smile of the fuck-up, of the coward who knows what should be said but won't or can't.

Mrs. Fernandez says, “It's so good to see you too, Elizabeth. And Kate. And please, thank you for having us. We won't keep you long. And—” She pauses, and sighs, and then talks again but the sentences don't quite work and the accents are in the wrong places and so are some of the words. “You must—you're so busy. We know. I mean. I can't imagine, what, you know, and all you have to do. We thought it important. The boys, the boys—” She pauses again after saying “the boys” twice, like it's a recognition that
the boys
no longer refers to the three friends. “They wanted to say that . . . they wanted to say something to you. To you both.”

Kate stuffs earbuds into her ears. There's no music playing yet. She has “Heart Shaped Box” queued up in case of emergency and she needs to drown them all out.

The parents part, eager to offer up a sacrifice, and the two boys step forward, toward Mom. Josh's eyes are puffy and he's already crying, his lower lip caught in an earthquake, and it's clear he can't face her, that he won't be able to say anything.

Mom is stone-faced, unreadable, and stares at Josh, daring him to say something, anything. Josh covers his eyes with his hands and his head tilts toward the floor like Mom's stare has weight, forcing his head down to never look up at anyone again.

Kate's anger softens and now she's scared. What is Mom going to do or say? Is she going to start screaming at them all and blame them for Tommy's disappearance? Pre–summit meeting, it was what Kate wanted, but now she wants Mom to endure whatever it is they have to say and then let them leave without any fireworks so they can handle this on their own. Is Mom going to tell them that she believes Tommy is dead and that she sees Tommy's ghost and he leaves her written messages?

Luis says, “I'm—I'm sorry, Ms. Sanderson.”

Mom visibly twitches at the sound of her last name. Luis hasn't called her anything but Elizabeth in all the years he's been Tommy's friend. In recent months he has been greeting her with playful variants of
How the heck are you, Elizabeth?
Luis isn't a total mess like Josh is, but his voice is so off, or turned off. This is not Luis talking. The real Luis's voice is a live wire; words crackling with energy, wit, and sometimes anger, always challenging you in some way. This Luis drones on in a toneless dirge like a talking head reading a teleprompter with news of an impending calamity that cannot be avoided or prepared for.