Come home, I type.
Please answer me
Answer me
Answer me
Joey has been missing for thirty-four days.
47
“THIS IS VERY FESTIVE,” Daniel says, surveying Simon Stanley’s living room. It’s decorated with red-and-green streamers, Christmas lights, and a tiny green tree with silver ornaments in one corner, by the piano. Simon Stanley is plunking out a jazzy song, singing in a wavery voice. It’s the end-of-semester party he holds for the Drama Club.
Everything is bright and lovely in this house, but I can’t feel it, at least not all of it. Always, now, I feel the fact of Joey’s absence inside me, somewhere deep and painful. I shake my head, try to clear my thoughts. Concentrate on Daniel.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I say. “I felt like I needed to get out of the house for a bit.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” Daniel says. “Theater people are so much more fun than regular people, in my opinion. Maybe I should join Drama Club in the spring.”
“I could see you, onstage, emoting,” I say, smiling at him.
“You look pretty,” he says. “The gray cardigan. It suits your eyes.”
And there they are, small butterflies in my stomach, flitting around. I don’t think I had butterflies with Gage so much as what I now feel like was anxiousness, always afraid I would say the wrong thing and drive him away.
This feels better than that.
“Daniel,” I say suddenly.
That girl, the one who came out before at the dance, she’s back. I can feel her, and this time what she’s going to do is right.
“Do you want to go outside? Get some air?”
“Anything,” he says. “Sure.”
I grab our coats from the rack by the door and we slip out, Simon still singing. Nothin’ but bluebirds, all day long.
Daniel hooks his arm in mine as we go down the front steps.
“Cold,” he says, looking up at the sky.
“Daniel,” I ask. “Can I kiss you?”
His eyes drift to mine.
I hold my breath. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this isn’t what I thought it was. What it might be.
“I’ve been waiting four months to hear you say that, Emory,” he says quietly. “But I’ve never kissed anyone before. I’ve only seen it in the movies. And in the hallways at school. I’ll do my best, but—”
I pull him to me.
And it doesn’t feel like it was with Gage, urgent and scary. Instead, it feels like sinking, very slowly, into a pool of warm light. Soft and perfect.
“Wow,” Daniel says slowly. “That…damn. The poets were right.”
“I think I felt the earth move under my feet,” I say.
“The stars are exploding in the sky,” he answers. “I’d like to do that again, as soon as possible, like right now.”
He’s bending his head to mine when my phone pings in my coat pocket.
“Sheesh,” Daniel says. “Technology is supposed to make things more convenient, but I’m kind of hating it right now.”
I pull out my phone, my hands shaking in the cold, my lips still tingling from the kiss.
Em
It’s me Max
I’m at a house in Franklin Township, 3722 Bolton He’s here
Out of it but here
I don’t know for how long tho
“Oh my god,” I say to Daniel. “It’s Max deVos. He knows where Joey is.”
My fingers tremble as I text back.
Max, stay there, please please don’t let him leave please I’ll try but get here quick
Daniel takes my phone from me. “Let’s go. You can call your parents in the car.”
We run, slipping down the icy sidewalk to Daniel’s car. We have to sit for a minute, waiting for it to heat up. I call my dad. He picks up on the first ring.
“Emory? Are you all right?”
“Dad, Joey is at a house in Franklin Township. I’m driving there now with Daniel. You and Mom meet us there.”
“Your mother got delayed in the city. She was meeting with NewDay to hear their proposal about the Mill. The snow is heavier there. She’s waiting it out. Text me the address. And Emory, please drive carefully. The weather.”
I hang up, text him the address.
“This could go either way,” Daniel says softly, starting the car.
“I know,” I say, steeling myself.
Struggle and joy, I tell myself. Like Simon Stanley said. There’s struggle and there’s joy.
* * *
—
3722 Bolton is a beat-up house at the end of a dead-end street. Max has been texting me the whole drive, letting me know Joey is still there.
Daniel and I sit in the car, looking at the house. My dad isn’t here yet.
Here, I text Max.
“Well,” Daniel says. “What do you want to do? Should we just…walk in?”
Before I can answer, there’s a tap at my window. Daniel and I both jump.
It’s Max deVos, blowing on his bare hands to keep them warm.
I open the door and get out.
“I was looking for him,” he says. “You know, all this time. Different places.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Max, thank you.”
“He doesn’t look good, Emmy. He’s kind of…gone. It’s hard to explain. He’s in a room in the back with some guys. Don’t…like, don’t make a big deal when you come in, okay? Just act like you came to, you know…”
“What?”
“Like, get high. I mean, I’m not. I haven’t, for a while. But I know how this stuff works, in places like this.”
I nod and follow him up the walk to the front door, Daniel behind me.
It’s musty inside from cigarette smoke. There are a bunch of people on a couch in the front room, smoking bowls and watching a movie. A couple of people are sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, zoned out. Daniel holds the back of my coat with his fingers, gently.
Max nods to the people he passes.
I don’t know if this is going to be like the movies, where a seedy-looking person jumps out at us and asks us what we want in a threatening voice, but I also know that I’ve done a lot of things I was scared of lately, and I can handle this. I can handle this because Joey is down this long hallway in a room, very close to me, and I need to get to him, whatever happens.
Max opens the door.
What did I think? That I would walk into a room with people shoving needles in their arms? Vomiting? Guzzling from liters of vodka? Maybe.
But it’s just a room with a couch and a huge flat-screen and a couple of guys playing Apex Legends, silently, blinking slowly, my brother on the floor, watching.
He doesn’t have the gray hoodie anymore and now his hair has grown out so much it covers his large ears. He’s got his hands stuffed in the pockets of a worn wool suit coat, the kind old men wear to play chess in the park on a cool day. He’s sniffling. He looks drowsy, like at any moment he might fall into a restful, deep sleep.
Max sits on the couch with the other guys, picks up a controller. Daniel hangs back, by the door.
“Hey, Joey,” I say softly. My knee aches a little as I bend to sit next to him.
His face drifts to mine. “Emmy. Emmy. Oh, no, why are you here? No, no.”