The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) Page 3

  He tried not to tell us. He shook his head. He said it wasn’t important. He swore he couldn’t remember saying it to me. But I knew he was lying when he told us he didn’t know what it meant, and if I knew he was lying, our parents also knew he was lying. The police officers didn’t seem to understand why he was being so evasive either.

  “We are not leaving this room until you tell us,” Mom said.

  “I can’t,” Aidan said. Then, “I won’t.”

  And Mom said, “You better.”

  Officer Pinkus was the only one who said we didn’t have to rush. “There’s no reason to force the issue,” she told my parents, told Aidan.

  But Mom was relentless. “We thought you could be dead, Aidan. Do you understand that? Can you imagine how that felt? So please, just tell us where you were, so we can move on.”

  “I can’t,” Aidan said.

  And I, either my brother’s greatest ally or his worst betrayer, stepped over to the table and gently asked him the one question that nobody else had thought to ask.

  “How did you get there, Aidan? How did you get to Aveinieu?”

  It was then, only then, that Aidan gave in, revealing the one truth he knew none of us would be able to handle.

  9

  “The dresser,” Aidan said. “I got to Aveinieu through the old dresser.”

  10

  Officer Ross laughed.

  Officer Pinkus looked concerned.

  Mom said, “What?”

  Dad asked, “What are you saying?”

  Officer Ross said, “Very funny.”

  Officer Pinkus said, “I don’t think he means it as a joke.”

  Mom asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Dad said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  And Aidan, looking like he’d lost control of his story and was about to lose even more, said, “It’s another world. They call it Aveinieu.”

  11

  “Are you sure it’s not called Narnia?” Officer Ross chuckled.

  “Michael, stop,” Officer Pinkus chided.

  “It wasn’t Narnia,” Aidan said. “But it was…somewhere else.”

  “Stop, Aidan,” Mom said.

  “Enough,” Dad warned.

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Aidan told him. “You said you’d believe me, no matter what.”

  “So now you’re testing me—is that what this is?” Dad asked.

  I spoke up. “I don’t think that’s what this is.”

  “Not now, Lucas,” Dad said. Then he turned back to Aidan. “I hope you’re not finding this funny, Aidan. Because I’ll tell you, none of this has been funny for us. What your mother said is true—we were terrified. And this joke of yours isn’t making it any better.”

  “There’s nothing else I can tell you,” Aidan said. I think if he could have chosen to disappear again at that moment, he would have. Gratefully.

  “When you say it was another world, do you mean a fantasy world or a world just like ours?” Officer Pinkus asked seriously.

  “A fantasy world.”

  “Were there unicorns?” Officer Ross asked, not seriously.

  I could tell the answer from the look on Aidan’s face.

  “There were unicorns, weren’t there?” I said.

  But nobody was listening to me.

  “Please don’t humor him,” Mom told Officer Pinkus. “We’ll never get the truth if we humor him.”

  Officer Pinkus took a deep breath and pushed her chair back a little.

  “Aidan, Lucas,” she said, “could you give me a moment with your parents? Maybe go up to your room? I’m going to ask Officer Ross to stand outside the door to the kitchen to make sure you’re not eavesdropping—so please stick to your room until we come to get you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Without another word, Aidan stood up and left the room without me.

  12

  It’s important to know that even though my brother was only a year older than me, he had a history of making me believe things I shouldn’t have fallen for.

  He told me Santa had gotten lazy, and was sending presents to our parents via Amazon. So when my parents sat me down to tell me the truth about Santa, I ended up yelling at them, “Don’t lie! I know you work for him!”

  He told me tooth fairies were retired dentists. It felt plausible.

  He told me our grandfather had been on Normandy for D-Day. He even showed me a photo that he swore was Papa on the beach. I believed it and was so excited to talk to our dad about it, but Dad only laughed and said, “Lucas, your grandfather wasn’t even born in 1944.”

  He told me there were monsters under the bed. Monsters in the closet. Unicorns in the backyard, but every time I went to the window, they’d magically vanished. He swore they could hear me coming. He said the only way they wouldn’t sense my presence would be if I rolled my tongue. But I couldn’t roll my tongue. He knew that.

  All those times he’d made me a sucker were still inside me, a big ball of resentment mixed with embarrassment for falling so foolishly for whatever he’d told me. So as much as I wanted to believe him now, I also didn’t want to regret believing him later.

  I didn’t want to fall for another story.

  And this had to be a story.

  I kept telling myself that.

  It wasn’t a question of whether it was true. I knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  The question was:

  Why was he making things up?

  13

  “I knew they wouldn’t believe me,” Aidan said when we got back to our room. “And the stupid thing is that I couldn’t think of a better lie. I couldn’t think of a single other place to tell them that would’ve worked. There are too many cameras around, you know? I couldn’t just say I walked to the train station and got a train to the city—they’d check the security cameras at the station and see I was never there. Or if I said I hung out in the woods for a week—they’d ask me where, and what I lived on, and since I don’t know anything about living in the woods for a week, they’d see through me in about two seconds.”

  “You could’ve said I hid you,” I volunteered. “That I brought you food. They asked me that a lot.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you needed my help?”

  Aidan didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t mean, why would you help me. I mean, why would I leave in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  Aidan stopped and looked at me now, saw that my question wasn’t about the cover story, but was about the real story instead.

  “Do you really want to know?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Imagine you’re up in the attic. Imagine you feel a strange wind hitting your body and then realize it’s coming from the crack between the doors of the dresser. You go over to the dresser and open the doors, right? So you do that, and this dresser that’s been empty for ages, that is solid wood and has nothing but a wall behind it—what if this time you open it up and instead of it being empty with a wall in the back, you see white clouds in a green sky? The wind is blowing in from that space, and when you reach your arm in, you don’t hit the back of the dresser or the wall. No, you reach out into the air. And when you stick your head in, you look down and see that there’s a ladder right underneath you, leading to what looks like a silver path. What do you do then? This opening has never been there before. You have no idea how long it will last. Do you step through the opening and go down the ladder or do you slam the doors shut and run for help? You might have run for help, Lucas. But I went down the ladder. And I’ll tell you this, to answer your question: I wasn’t thinking at all about leaving anything behind. I was only thinking about what I might be moving toward.”

  * * *

  —

/>   Did I believe him at that moment?

  Yes. But the same way I’d believe the author of a fantasy novel I was reading. If the book is good enough, you feel like everything is true. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also entirely made up.

  * * *

  —

  The next thing I said was stupid.

  “So when did you see the unicorns?” I asked.

  I didn’t mean it as a joke. I was serious. But Aidan thought I was making fun of him.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand. And I should probably assume that anything I tell you is going to be repeated to them, anyway.”

  “That’s not fair!” I protested.

  “I should’ve just lied,” he said. “I should have come up with a better lie.”

  * * *

  —

  The problem was: He’d given us a mystery to solve. And solving that mystery meant different things to each of us. For the police, it was as simple as closing a case. But for me and Mom and Dad and other people later on, it was much more personal.

  For me, the mystery was confused with all the other times Aidan had lied to me, all the other times he was able to do something that I wasn’t able to do. I also felt that if I were the person to solve the mystery, everybody would be really impressed with me. I would be the great detective who’d cracked it.

  Which meant that when Aidan said I should have come up with a better lie, I heard it as him saying this whole dresser story was a lie that wasn’t working, and he’d wished he’d told another lie that had worked. Even though when he’d told me about the opening and the green sky, I’d been able to imagine it was true, now I was back to wondering what the real story was, what Aidan was hiding.

  Until he told the truth, he’d be getting all the attention. Unless I discovered the truth and told it first.

  * * *

  —

  “Tell me what really happened,” I whispered, as if all the adults were leaning against the other side of our door, listening.

  Aidan gave me a hard stare, then reached for his phone.

  “I have nothing more to say to you,” he told me. Then he resumed a game he’d left off seven days before.

  He didn’t get much further, though. About ten minutes later, Officer Ross knocked on our door and told us to go back to the kitchen.

  14

  I had imagined them turning the kitchen into an interrogation room, moving the reading lamp from the den so it would shine in Aidan’s face as the cops pummeled him with questions, wearing him down enough to discover where he’d buried the truth.

  But instead, Officer Pinkus was already up from the table, clearly about to go. Officer Ross hung back in the doorway, looking at his watch.

  “Your parents and I have had a really good talk,” Officer Pinkus said once Aidan and I had sat down. “And we’ve all agreed that the most important thing right now is to return to normal as smoothly as possible. You and your family have been through a lot this past week—but you’re back now. I am taking you at your word that you left here of your own free will, and that there wasn’t anyone else involved. I can’t stress enough how important it would be for you to tell us if you’d been abducted or even if you’d voluntarily gone with someone else. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” Aidan said. “It was just me. I wasn’t kidnapped. I didn’t meet up with anyone.”

  Officer Pinkus nodded. “As I said, I take you at your word. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come to me later on if there’s something more to tell. I am also taking you at your word that this won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Good. We’ve also agreed that you should talk to a counselor, because you have clearly been through something outside your ordinary experience. I hope you will be truthful with the counselor, because in my observation, the truth really does set you free, and allows you to go on with your life. Secrets, on the other hand, have a way of taking up all the space in the room—and you don’t want that.”

  This time, the pause lasted a little longer than the others before Aidan realized she wanted him to say something. Then he echoed, “Yeah, I don’t want that.”

  It didn’t feel like he meant it. It felt like he was just saying what she wanted to hear.

  But she took it at face value and reached out to shake Aidan’s hand. He took it. As they shook, she said, “I’ll come back in a few days to check in. But in the meantime, it’s good to have you back.”

  I expected Aidan to echo again, to say, It’s good to be back. But he didn’t say anything more.

  Officer Pinkus shook my hand, then Mom’s and Dad’s. Officer Ross was already on his way to the car.

  “Have a good day,” Pinkus told us.

  Then she left us alone, and none of us knew what to do next.

  15

  It was a Thursday. All our friends were at school. Most of their parents were at work.

  We were marooned at our kitchen table.

  Mom had never been a good fake. If she was annoyed with you, you knew she was annoyed. Most of the time, the only question was what had spurred the annoyance. Did you leave the refrigerator door open? The toilet seat up? Did you use the last toilet paper and not replace the roll? Were you trying to watch YouTube before your homework was finished?

  In this case, it was obvious that Mom had a lot to say on the subject of Aidan’s disappearance and the story he’d told the police. But it was also obvious that she thought she was doing a good job of hiding this and appearing calm. I was sure Aidan could see the strain. He’d been on the receiving end of Mom’s exasperation many more times than I had. He knew its language even better than I did.

  If she was going to play calm, he was going to play along.

  Dad usually liked to paper over the serious moments with jokes. But his mind wasn’t kicking into joke mode right now—probably because all the jokes would lead to him making fun of Aidan’s story.

  So we did what most families do when conversation is impossible: We ate. Mom offered to make eggs, but I said cereal was fine and Aidan agreed. He didn’t eat much, though. I saw him trying, but it also looked like trying, not eating. I wondered what was going on with that. When I was done eating and Aidan was done trying to eat, Dad told us he might go to the office. None of us objected. Mom said she’d work at home. About a second after she said that, the phone rang—Aunt Brandi, home now from Peru, calling for an update.

  “One sec,” Mom said, then moved to another room so we wouldn’t hear her.

  Dad got his stuff together and looked for any new objections before he headed out the door. Then he left me and Aidan alone in the kitchen. Aidan spotted something on the counter, went over to get it, then brought it back to the table.

  It was one of the missing posters.

  Aidan pondered his own photo and the plea for help beneath.

  “I guess it was a big deal, huh?” he said. “Like, the kids at school will know about it?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I told him. “Pretty much everyone in the county knew about it. And most of them were looking for you.”

  “Ugh. What a mess.”

  I was annoyed with him then, and I wasn’t going to hide it like my parents were hiding it.

  “Yeah, what a mess,” I repeated sarcastically. “Isn’t it a bummer that you’re going to have to deal with the fact that everyone stopped what they were doing in order to find you before it was, you know, too late? Such a shame that while you were riding unicorns or petting dragons or whatever, they were dredging the pond to look for your body and checking every single corner of this town for you. Sucks, right? The police kept asking me and Glenn questions we didn’t know how to answer, and each time, we had to wonder whether giving the wrong answer was going to lead to you never being found. What a mess! But hey—I guess this can be a learnin
g experience for everyone. In particular, next time you go into a fantasy world? Do us a favor and leave a note.”

  Aidan stood up then, rinsed out his cereal bowl, and put it in the dishwasher.

  “You’re never going to understand,” he told me when he was done. “But that’s fine. I’d never expect you to. So let’s just follow everyone’s lead and pretend it’s a normal day, okay? Did anyone get my homework assignments while I was gone? I might as well catch up before I go back tomorrow.”

  “Our teachers emailed our assignments for the past few days.”

  “You didn’t go to school either?” Aidan looked surprised by this.

  “Clearly I’m not the only person who’s never going to understand,” I said.

  Then I left him alone with his missing poster.

  16

  I wasn’t sure whether it was deliberate or not, but a lot of the time that day, when Mom was on the phone, we could hear what she said. People were calling to see how Aidan was, how all of us were doing. And once Mom told them we were fine, doing well, the natural next thing was for them to ask her what had happened, if the mystery had been explained.

  “We’re just focusing on the present,” she’d tell the person on the other end of the phone, whether they were a relative, a neighbor, or a friend.

  From Mom’s end of the conversation, it was clear that most people were okay to stop there. But a few persisted. I imagined them saying, You don’t have to tell us what happened—just tell us where he was. We looked so hard for him. Where did we miss? Because Mom’s answers were:

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No, he wasn’t anywhere we thought to look.”

  “No, it was just him. Nobody else. He was on his own the whole time.”

  And, most often, “We’re just happy to have him back.” Over and over again.