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

  Aunt Brandi stopped and reached over to turn Aidan’s chin so he was facing her perfectly.

  “Do you hear me?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good. Now…it’s your turn. How are you doing?”

  “I’m sad.”

  “And why are you sad?”

  “Because I’m here.”

  “Do you mean in the kitchen right now, forced to have this conversation? Or do you mean here as opposed to there.”

  Aidan looked away from her, down to his lap. “I mean here as opposed to there.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say!” Mom exclaimed at the same time Dad said, “Aw, Aidan, no.”

  Brandi ignored them. “That’s hard, Aidan.”

  When he looked back up this time, he was angry.

  “I know that,” he said, standing up. “None of you know! None of you were there! It’s better, the way they do things—and it makes you realize how awfully we do things here, okay? They know how to get along with each other. And let people do their own thing. Not like here. None of you have any idea.”

  He ran out of the room then. I thought he’d go to our room, but the footsteps kept going, up to the attic.

  Mom and Dad both stood up.

  “No,” Aunt Brandi said. “Let him be alone for a little bit.”

  “Brandi,” Mom said coolly, “that’s not your call.” She dropped her napkin on the table and headed upstairs, Dad following.

  “Well, that went well!” Brandi said to me. “Want another cinnamon roll?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nah, me neither.” She gave me a look similar to the one she’d just given Aidan, all this intense concentration. “Has he been talking to you?”

  “A little,” I said. “At night.”

  “That’s good. And how does he seem to you?”

  I thought about how all the fun of life seemed to have drained away from him, how the brother I knew who was so boisterous and out in the open was now stuck in his own head…or maybe stuck in a place that could only exist in his head right now.

  “He seems lost,” I told Brandi.

  She sighed and sat back a little in her chair. “That makes sense. Whatever happened, it can’t be easy to come back. It’s like he needs what the astronauts had—two weeks in quarantine to settle back into our world and into their own heads after the adrenaline wore off. A decompression chamber. There’s a lot of compression going on here, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I told her. “If we’re being honest.”

  She laughed. “I guess what I’m saying is that whatever happened to Aidan, he went through it alone. And he’s going to have to adjust to the idea that he’s not alone anymore.”

  “I don’t think he was alone there. In Aveinieu. It wasn’t like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, there was this woman he lived with, Cordelia. And there were other people too. And animals. Only they weren’t like our animals.”

  And just like that, I found myself saying too much. I hadn’t meant for what Aidan said to me at night to leave our room. Mostly because I knew that if he found out I’d blabbed, he wouldn’t tell me anything else.

  “You can’t let anyone know I said that!” I quickly told Brandi. “If you want him to keep talking to me. And I’m the only one he’s talking to!”

  “It’s okay, Lucas. Really, it’s okay. Your secret is safe with me.” She crossed her heart, then for good measure locked her mouth with an invisible key and threw the key my way. I caught it and put it in my pocket.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No—thank you, for being there for him. As I told you before, he needs you in his corner.”

  As if to emphasize this, Mom and Dad came storming back into the kitchen, Dad in the lead this time, Mom following.

  “You shouldn’t have said that!” Mom was yelling at Dad. “Did you see how he reacted? It was like you were a monster.”

  “All I said was that if that stupid dresser was the problem, then the obvious solution was to get rid of it! I wasn’t actually throwing it to the curb at that very moment!”

  “Well, you might as well have! We all know the last thing we should do right now is make him more upset. But you just managed to do that beautifully. With an assist from my sister!”

  “Whoa!” Brandi said. “How did this get to be my fault?”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Dad said. “Nobody’s. Not mine. Not yours. Not Laura’s. Not Aidan’s. Nobody’s.”

  “Well, it’s not the dresser’s fault either!” Mom added. Dad didn’t seem to appreciate this.

  I wasn’t really a part of the conversation, so I left. I went up to the attic and found Aidan sitting on the floor, facing the dresser. Its doors were closed.

  “I know it isn’t going to work again,” Aidan said to me. “I know they cut the connection. But I still want it here. Just in case.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, sitting down next to him.

  We sat there in silence for about three minutes.

  It was getting pretty boring. At least for me.

  “Look,” I said, “do you want to go see a movie? Let’s make them take us to a movie.”

  “Alright,” Aidan said. Then he stood up and left the room without looking back.

  26

  Although she wouldn’t say it, I think Mom was glad to get the rest of us out of the house. She said she still had a lot of phone calls to make and thank-you cards to write. I tried to imagine what the cards said: Thank you for trying to find my son, even though it ended up he was nowhere you could’ve reached. Next time we’ll have to send you inside the furniture to get him!

  We went to our usual movie theater, downtown. Dad had gone there when he was a kid, and my grandmother had gone there when she was a kid. Our family and the movie theater had been in town a long time, and knew each other well.

  Still, we weren’t prepared for the reaction we got when we showed up. Louie, the owner, came out of the ticket office and exclaimed, “Here they are!” like we were the stars of the movie we were seeing. He gave Dad and Aidan bearish hugs.

  “We looked everywhere for you!” he said to Aidan while Aidan was still enfolded in his arms. “Everywhere!”

  “I’m sorry?” Aidan said with an actual smile.

  Louie laughed and released him. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a hero’s return! Whatever movie you’re seeing, it’s on me!”

  Dad smiled and took out his wallet. “You don’t have to do that, Louie. We’re grateful for your help.”

  “No, no, no!” Louie exclaimed, waving Dad’s wallet away. “I won’t hear of it.”

  “Really,” Dad said. “I insist.”

  I could see why Dad was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable. Why should we be rewarded for Aidan disappearing on us?

  Louie didn’t see it this way, though. He saw it as something to celebrate, and eventually Dad gave in. Though once we were inside, he slipped Brandi some money and she went and bought tickets from the person at the window while Louie was busy with the popcorn.

  So I guess nobody won.

  As more and more people came into the theater, Aidan ducked lower and lower. It was only when the lights went down and the previews came on that he looked a little comfortable. But not as comfortable as before.

  I wondered if we’d ever be as comfortable as before.

  * * *

  —

  When we got home, Mom was already starting on dinner. (“An early dinner so Brandi can make an early start,” she explained.)

  Mom must have said something to Brandi while they set the table, because after that, Brandi didn’t ask any more questions about Aidan’s disappearance. Instead, we talked about the movie and about Brandi’s projects at work and about wayw
ard cousins of Mom’s and Brandi’s that I barely knew. When the phone rang, we didn’t think much of it—the house phone had rung more in the past week than it had for probably the previous five years combined.

  Mom looked at the caller ID and said, “Oh, it’s Denise. I’ll just tell her I’ll call back.”

  Denise was Glenn’s mom.

  Mom picked up the phone. “Hi, Denise—we’re in the middle of dinner. Can I call you back?…Oh, okay. What’s going on?…I see….” Mom leaned against the counter like she needed its support. “And who told you this?…And she heard it from?…Okay. I see….Well, of course it isn’t true, Denise. How could it be true?…I know. We all react in different ways, right?…Of course….Absolutely. I appreciate you telling me….Thank you, Denise. I’ll call them right away. And I’ll call you back later, okay?”

  We had all stopped eating and were looking at her. After she hung up the phone, she stared at it for a second, then put it back in its cradle.

  “So,” she said, coming back to the table without sitting down, “according to Denise, some people in town have apparently found out about Aidan’s story. It was right there in the police report, and someone there saw it and couldn’t help but share it with someone else, who probably told a few more people…and one of those people called Denise and asked her if it’s true, if Aidan is really saying he was where he said he was. She told this person she had no idea what she was talking about. I, obviously, couldn’t say the same.”

  Dad cursed out loud. Brandi shook her head and said something about small towns. Aidan looked like he wanted to fall through the floor.

  “The whole town must know by now,” Mom said. “Denise is the only one who had the decency to call me.”

  Aidan reached into his pocket and turned on his phone, which he’d shut off for the movie. It vibrated with missed messages. I looked over at the screen and saw most of them were from Glenn.

  “I think we need a family meeting,” Dad said.

  “Jim, we’re all at the table. You don’t have to call it a meeting,” Mom snapped. “Unless you’re planning to take minutes?”

  “C’mon, guys,” Brandi said. “We’re all on the same team here.”

  The phone rang again. Mom looked at the caller ID and didn’t pick up.

  “He’s a minor,” Mom said. “His statement shouldn’t be left around for other people to read.”

  “True,” Dad said. “But it doesn’t really matter whether the story should have come out or not. What matters is that it’s out there, and we have to figure out what to say.”

  “It’s true,” Aidan said. “The story.”

  It was as if two more bricks fell out of Dad’s patience then, making it dangerously close to collapsing.

  “Aidan,” he said, voice barely under control, “you need to listen carefully now. We’re not talking about whether or not it actually happened, whether or not you went into this other world. What we’re talking about is everyone else knowing. Believe me when I say that you do not want to be known as the kid who said he went to a far-off kingdom while everyone here was killing themselves to try to find him. That will not go over well, and will follow you for the rest of your life.”

  “It’s not a kingdom,” Aidan said.

  “What?” Dad shouted, exasperated.

  “I think he’s saying there wasn’t any king,” Brandi explained. “Therefore, not a kingdom.”

  “How is that helpful?” Mom asked.

  “It’s helpful,” Brandi said carefully, “because Aidan needs our support right now, not our doubt.”

  “You do see how this looks, don’t you?” Mom shot back. “You don’t think we’re being unreasonable to show concern about how it looks for Aidan, do you?”

  Brandi kept her voice calm. “I absolutely understand that, Laura. The only way I can see for you to deal with it is to dismiss it, to say that Aidan was shaken up when he returned and invented a story to get the adults to leave him alone. I know you have to say that outside this house. But inside this house is something else. Inside this house, you need to listen to Aidan.”

  Aidan jumped in. “What can I do to prove it to you?” he asked our parents. “I can tell you all about it, if you want. I can draw you pictures. I can tell you the things I saw there that I never would see here. Just tell me what you want to know.”

  “We want to know what really happened, Aidan,” Dad said. “That’s all.”

  “The days were longer than twenty-four hours, and the way it worked was that you’d get up when the sun rose and go to sleep when the sun set, and that would still be enough time to get everything done and get enough sleep. The thing I slept on was more like a rug than a bed, but it was super comfortable. Every morning I’d roll it up and put it in the corner. And you know how they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Well, over there, they actually believe it. You spend the first hour of the day getting the meal ready and making your plans for the day. There isn’t any coffee there, just tea. And the tea isn’t in bags or anything. There’s this flower they called a plenty, and you’d put the roots of the plenty into the hot water for one flavor or you’d put the petal side into the hot water for another flavor. I liked the petal side more, though the root side was supposed to keep you awake. And there were animals there, all these kinds of animals. Like boarses, that were part boar and part horse, and maddoxes, that were like wolves mixed with oxen.”

  Aidan seemed happier the more he was telling us these things, as his mind went back and remembered.

  Mom and Dad didn’t seem happier. They looked concerned. Like Aidan had really lost his mind.

  I imagined I looked a lot like Brandi looked—part amazed by what Aidan was saying and part amazed by the fact that he was talking to us at all. And underneath the amazement, there was a tiny question: Weren’t maddoxes supposed to be bears mixed with oxen, not wolves? Wasn’t that what he’d told me? Did it really matter?

  The phone rang again. This time when Mom saw the caller ID, she picked up.

  “Hello, Officer Pinkus….Yes, we have definitely heard what’s being said. I hope you are calling to tell us how to make it go away, because other than that, I’d say your department has done enough harm to my son for one night.”

  None of the rest of us could hear what Officer Pinkus said in response to that, but it must have done something to make Mom a little less angry, because as the conversation continued, her tone was a little less harsh. Dad and Brandi didn’t even try to distract me and Aidan from listening; we were all silent at the table, waiting for Mom to finish.

  “Well,” Mom said when the call was through, “it sounds like they’re trying to do some damage control.” She sat down at the table. “There was a reporter who called, and the police told them there wasn’t a story. And apparently the chief dressed down the person who leaked the report in the first place. Officer Pinkus thinks it’ll pass. She suggested we ignore it, and if anyone asks, we can say the police have told us not to reveal where Aidan really was. She felt comfortable with that. Although of course, Aidan, she’s hoping that when she comes by tomorrow night, after school and after your appointment with Dr. Jennings, you’ll have more to tell her.”

  “I’m not going to school tomorrow,” Aidan said.

  Mom didn’t blink. “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because the whole school is going to treat me like I’m weird?”

  “Just tell them it isn’t true,” Dad advised. “Laugh at it before they start laughing at you.”

  I thought Aidan was going to fight it further. It was more disturbing when he instantly gave up. He didn’t say anything else, just ate his dinner until there wasn’t anything left on his plate.

  The phone rang again. And again.

  Mom waited until we were out of the kitchen to start calling people back.

  * * *


  —

  Aidan sequestered himself in the den again with the TV. I stayed in our room. When I heard footsteps in the attic, I couldn’t ignore them. I went upstairs and found Aunt Brandi standing in front of the dresser.

  “I just had to see it,” she said when I walked up next to her. “It’s so…ordinary. You know, there are things in this attic that belonged to my grandparents—that chest over there was actually my great-grandparents’, which would make them your great-great-grandparents. It’s traveled the world, been through wars. And that dusty lime-green couch in that corner, under all that stuff? That was from your parents’ first apartment. Your mother would never dream of sitting on something so dusty, but she’s never going to get rid of it, because it was one of the first things that was theirs together.” She turned back to Aidan’s dresser. “But this thing? It has no history. Your mom bought it in a store. There are probably thousands out there just like it.”

  “Do you think they all lead to Aveinieu?” I asked.

  Aunt Brandi hiccupped a laugh. “I doubt it. If that were true, I imagine we would have heard a lot more about Aveinieu by now.”

  “So how does it work?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if there’s a way for us to know. There’s definitely no way for Aidan to know. If what he says happened really happened, it’s far beyond our science and our language. If we’re lucky, we can know the what. But the how and the why? This dresser has about as much of a chance of explaining that to us as Aidan does.”

  “Aidan keeps saying we can’t understand.”

  “He’s right. But that doesn’t mean he understands it. None of us can understand it. Some people will accept that. Other people won’t. They get scared by things they don’t understand. Those are the people to be careful around. But they don’t get to dictate our reality.”

  Aunt Brandi took a deep breath and sighed it out. Then she touched the side of the dresser as if she was touching the shoulder of an old friend.