The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) Read online

  The game paused—I had to assume it was Glenn who’d done the pausing.

  “That’s crazy!” he said. “Like, really crazy!”

  “I know, right?” Aidan said. “If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “I had no idea you sleepwalked!”

  “This was the first time. I think Mom and Dad are bolting all the doors now, just in case.”

  Glenn whistled, and I could hear him lean back on the couch. “And here we were, looking all over town for you. But you weren’t even in town.”

  “Nope. I wish I remembered walking that much, but I really don’t.”

  “Dude, that sucks.”

  “I know. Can we keep playing?”

  “Sure.”

  The game sounds resumed.

  I wanted Aidan’s new story to make more sense. And as far as it stuck to the real world, it definitely made more sense than Aveinieu. Route 95 existed much more than any place that included unicorns and maddoxes. So that should have made it much more believable.

  But the truth?

  Aidan sounded more truthful when he was talking about Aveinieu. I obviously couldn’t see his face from behind the couch, but something was missing in his voice when he was explaining it to Glenn—Dad would have called it sincerity. Aidan didn’t sound like he really meant it.

  I also didn’t believe that a sleepwalker could make it that far without leaving a trace. Or that he could spend six days wandering without his pajamas getting that messy. Or that no one spotted him at any point on his way home. Or that he could make it back into our locked house undetected. Or that he found a cabin without any electricity and without any neighbors so close to our suburb.

  So what you’re saying is that you think your brother went into a fantasy world? I asked myself.

  Well, maybe there’s another option. Maybe neither one of the stories is true.

  “How are you guys doing?”

  My concentration was broken by the sight of Dad in the doorway, checking up on us.

  “Good,” Aidan said.

  “Great,” Glenn seconded.

  Then Dad looked at me behind the couch. “Lucas?”

  “Just working.”

  Glenn peered over the couch at me. “Dude! I forgot you were there!”

  Dad laughed at that.

  “Alright, guys,” he said, “you can’t spend the whole day playing video games. I’ll come back in an hour or so to break for lunch, and then Glenn’s going to have to go home so Aidan can get some of his homework done. If he gets enough done, you can come back tomorrow. Just call first, okay?”

  “Will do,” Glenn said.

  As soon as Dad left, I expected Aidan to tell me to leave. But he didn’t say anything, so I stayed. I waited for Glenn to ask him more, but he didn’t.

  I guessed this meant he was satisfied with Aidan’s answer.

  I wasn’t.

  23

  After lunch, Glenn went home and Aidan went to our room to do homework. Mom asked me if I wanted to go to the grocery store with her, and I said sure. For the past week, we’d been mostly eating meals people brought over. It was time to eat our own food again.

  Usually we bumped into one or two people at the grocery store, but this time it was like a group text had gone out, and in every aisle there was someone else to hug Mom or smile at Mom or tell Mom how glad they were that Aidan was home. Mom was polite about all the attention but she didn’t really welcome it. I barely recognized anybody who was talking to us, and a few even looked at me and asked, “Is that him?”

  No, I wanted to say, I’m the other one. But instead I left it to Mom to correct them.

  “Let’s make this as quick as possible,” Mom told me during a clear minute. We zoomed through as best as we could—but had to stand there awkwardly while Minnie, the checkout person we always went to, cried and told us how her prayers had been answered.

  Because I’d stayed at home most of the time Aidan had been gone, I hadn’t realized how involved everyone else felt.

  And if I didn’t know it, I was pretty sure Aidan didn’t know it either.

  * * *

  —

  Dinner that night was almost normal.

  Mom cooked. Aidan set the table. Dad and I were in charge of dessert.

  We didn’t talk about Aveinieu.

  Instead, Mom talked a little about the people in the grocery store. And Dad talked about how everyone at work was also so glad. Aidan kept moving the food around on his plate, nearly choking when he tried Mom’s corn bread, which wasn’t great but wasn’t that bad. Dad changed the subject to the World Series, and what he expected to happen in the game that night. We talked about baseball the whole time, the only awkward moment coming when Dad mentioned an injury that had happened to one of the players while Aidan was away.

  After the table was cleared and chores were finished, we watched the Series together in the den. I thought that anyone looking in our window would have seen a regular family watching a baseball game. Mom and Dad might have looked at Aidan a little more than usual. I might have as well, as if I continued to need proof he was back. But that was the only thing different, and that was barely noticeable.

  For a while, I let myself believe it was all going to be okay.

  24

  Near midnight, bedroom darkness.

  “What did you eat there?” I asked.

  Aidan didn’t say, Stop asking me questions. I was in a cabin off the highway the whole time. He didn’t say, It’s none of your business. Or even, Let me go to sleep.

  Instead, he said, “It was mostly things we grew. No meat, out of respect for the other creatures. It wasn’t like here, where there’s a hierarchy—you know, people in control and then animals on the farm to be eaten. Or pets. It’s not like that. So instead of, like, burgers, we had a lot of vegetables. Some of them were ones I knew, like corn. But others—I had no idea what I was eating. I just had to trust that I wasn’t allergic or something.”

  “What was your favorite?”

  “They have this food called gak—it’s like the most intense corn bread you’ve ever tasted. I could have eaten it by the pan. It could absorb any flavor, so if you put, like, a single raspberry in it, the whole thing would be raspberry flavored.”

  “Not like the corn bread we had at dinner.”

  “Nah. Not like that at all,” he said, really sad.

  I sat up in bed. “Is that why you haven’t been eating much? Was food there that different?”

  Aidan sighed. “It was better. Everything tasted better. The tastes we have here seem faded now. Watered down. In Aveinieu it was so intense. I learned how to cook! You wouldn’t believe it, Lucas. Some of the things I made…I know I wasn’t there long, but it’s like each meal was its own movie and symphony and light show all at once. That kind of intense.”

  “Sounds awesome.”

  “It was.”

  “You could try cooking here?”

  “Nah. I can’t do any of the things I did there. Not here. I can’t explain it—I wasn’t a different person, really. But the person I was meant something different. I had a different role.”

  I tried to picture him there. On a farm. Making magical corn bread. But my imagination couldn’t reach it.

  “What did you wear there?” I asked, figuring maybe more details would make it feel more real.

  “Cordelia’s friend Wei was this incredible seamstress. She made me a shirt and some pants. It was almost like pajamas, but no elastic, just a drawstring. And the whole underpants thing was not something they did. So I kept washing mine in the river so I could rewear them.”

  “But when you came back, you were in your old pajamas.”

  “Yeah. I was sleeping in them when…well, when I was sent back.”

  “W
hat happened?”

  “Cordelia didn’t think it was safe for me there anymore. I didn’t agree. I thought she was making it up so I would go back. But in the end…she won.”

  “Why didn’t she think it was safe for you?”

  “I’m telling you—that was probably a lie. She said some of the creatures were worried I was bringing a plague with me. But honestly, I think she always regretted staying in Aveinieu. She missed her family. And since she couldn’t go back, she made me go back.”

  “Why couldn’t she go back?”

  “Because when I told her what year it was, she realized everyone she’d ever known would already be dead.”

  “When did she leave here?”

  “Over a hundred years ago.”

  “So she must’ve been really old.”

  “Not really. I told you, time moves differently there. Or maybe our bodies just age differently.”

  Are you making this up? I wanted to ask. Are you lying to me the same way you lied to Glenn? Some of the things he was telling me were possibly too convenient—starting with the fact that the food he mentioned was a variation of what we’d just eaten. But he also didn’t seem to be stopping to think about his answers, and he hadn’t contradicted himself yet.

  So either he was a really good liar…or this wasn’t a lie.

  “Why’d they think you had a plague? Were you sick?” I asked.

  “No. But the last person from our world had a form of measles—or at least that’s what Cordelia thought it was. So of course the Aveinieu started to worry that all of us newcomers had it, and that it would spread. Which wasn’t true. But it gave them a reason to be suspicious.”

  “Who’s ‘them’?”

  “Some other humans. But mostly the animals. The maddoxes, the unicorns, the boarses.”

  “Boarses?”

  “Kind of like a boar, kind of like a horse.”

  “And the birds? What did the birds think of you?”

  There was a pause. Then Aidan said, “It was really strange—there weren’t any birds. Cordelia said she wasn’t sure whether it was true of all of Aveinieu or just the part we were in. Like, if it was two hundred years ago and you walked up to someone here and showed them a picture of a panda bear and asked them if they’d ever seen one, they would think it was a magical creature, right? They’d have no idea they existed half a world away. So maybe it was like that with birds. Although Cordelia said she’d never heard an Aveinieu story that included a bird. And there were a lot of Aveinieu stories. Cordelia said she only knew about one percent of one percent of one percent of all of them. That’s how she put it.”

  I was going to ask more about Cordelia, but Dad’s voice interrupted from the hall. “Guys, it’s late. Time for bed.”

  “Sorry!” I called.

  Aidan remained quiet until we heard Dad’s footsteps trudge back to his room and our parents’ bedroom door close.

  “Do you think he heard?” Aidan asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, because that was the answer he wanted.

  “I hope not,” he said. And I didn’t ask, Why not, if it’s the truth?

  “Let’s go to sleep,” he said.

  I wondered if he dreamed of Aveinieu, or if his dreams were as stuck here as he was.

  25

  Aunt Brandi arrived just before lunch on Sunday, and she brought along what felt like a year’s supply of cinnamon rolls.

  “If this doesn’t cheer you up, I don’t know what will,” she said.

  “You’re a saint,” Mom replied, taking the boxes and putting five cinnamon rolls out on a plate.

  Growing up, Aunt Brandi had been Mom’s little brother. But she had already begun living as her true female self by the time Aidan and I were born. She was always our favorite of our aunts and uncles…but the competition wasn’t very serious. The rest of our aunts and uncles lived far away. And none of them would have brought cinnamon rolls.

  We sat down at the table and ate. Mom used a fork and knife. Dad and Aidan ate their rolls section by section, unraveling the spirals as they went. I noticed that Aidan wasn’t as hesitant as he’d been with the corn bread; maybe cinnamon rolls came close to the “intensity” of the Aveinieu cuisine.

  Brandi and I just dug in, eating the middle in the middle. “So,” Brandi said between bites, “how’s everyone doing? I want to go around the table, starting with you, Laura.”

  “I’m enjoying this cinnamon roll very much,” Mom said after putting down her fork and her knife.

  Brandi tsked her sister. “You know that’s not what I’m asking. How are you doing?”

  “Obviously, I’m grateful that Aidan’s home. And I’m exhausted from saying thank you to everyone who helped. And I’m feeling guilty for feeling so exhausted by that. And, of course, I’m frustrated that we don’t know what really happened. But I am also at peace with that frustration because, as I said, the important thing is that we’re all together again. Does that answer satisfy you, Brandi?”

  Brandi nodded. “Absolutely. Your turn, Jim.”

  “Also grateful to be here like this,” Dad said. “Because for a moment there it looked…Oh God. Sorry, guys.” Dad’s eyes had started to tear up, and now he was wiping it away.

  “It’s okay, Jim,” Brandi said. Mom patted his back.

  Dad took a deep breath, laughed a little at himself. “Sorry again. Don’t know what got into me. I guess it wasn’t that long ago that Laura and I were sitting at this table with the police, them telling us…” Dad took another deep breath. “Them saying we couldn’t give up hope, but the fact that they were saying that…it just felt like they were starting to lose hope. And we had to stare into that abyss and hope that somewhere in there, Aidan would take shape. Which he did. It’s all good again.”

  Brandi was getting a little teary too. When I snuck a look at Aidan, he looked something between embarrassed and horrified.

  “Your turn, Lucas,” Brandi said.

  “Glad to have Aidan back, duh.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I had one of those devices from Men in Black that can erase everyone’s memories. I’d love everyone to forget the past week, so we could really be back to normal instead of this normal but we’re now in.”

  “What do you mean, normal but?”

  I thought it was obvious. But I reminded myself that Aunt Brandi wasn’t living with us, so she wouldn’t necessarily know.

  “Normal but everyone’s looking at us funny,” I explained. “Normal but there are all these questions that nobody’s asking, but you can tell they really, really want to ask them. Normal but we were kinda on the news last week, and that doesn’t disappear when you change the channel. Normal that we’re a family again, but…we also have to deal with this big thing that happened to us.”

  “That makes perfect sense to me,” Brandi said.

  “Me too,” Dad added, reaching over and messing my hair. “We’d all like to get rid of that pesky but.”

  Normally, Aidan would be all over Dad using the phrase “pesky but”—I half suspected Dad had said it just so Aidan could laugh at its resemblance to pesky butt. But Aidan didn’t say a word.

  At least not until Brandi turned to ask how he was doing. Before she could get a sentence out, he asked her, “So how are you doing?”

  “Happy to be here, honestly,” Brandi replied. “Things like this make you realize where you need to be. And I haven’t been around enough.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mom said. “You’re here plenty.”

  Brandi laughed, so I figured Mom was teasing. Or Brandi just refused to be offended by the accusation that she was around too much.

  “Can I be excused?” Aidan asked.

  This made Brandi laugh even louder. Then she sucked some dried frosting off her fingers and sai
d, “No way, dude. It’s your turn. So tell your auntie what’s going on in that bright head of yours.”

  “There’s no way for you to understand.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First, you tell me…do you think I’m lying, like my parents do?”

  “We don’t think you’re lying,” Dad jumped in and said.

  Mom shushed him. “Let Brandi answer, Jim.”

  Aunt Brandi pushed her chair back and scooted it so she was facing Aidan directly. He turned her way.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, kid, because I don’t know any other way to be. I don’t think you’re lying on purpose. I think you absolutely believe what you’re saying. And I respect that. Completely. But do I believe it’s true? Again, if I’m being honest, the answer is: I have no idea. It stretches credibility—but life stretches credibility all the time, to the point that credibility doesn’t have much credibility left, you know? What concerns me is that a lot of the time when we believe a story that’s fantastic, it’s in order to cover over something really traumatic that’s happened. I am worried that someone hurt you, or that you hurt yourself, and that if the hurt isn’t addressed, it’s only going to get worse. I’ve tried to bury things, Aidan, and I can tell you—it doesn’t work. Burying something doesn’t take away the weight of it. It only pushes the weight deeper and makes it harder to carry around.”