The idea of an eight-year-old disappearing makes goose bumps pop up all over my arms. I have to make sure to wait with Nico for the bus. If we’re together, nothing can happen.
“If you want,” Gabe says, “I can walk you home so nothing happens to you.”
“I take the bus.”
And even if I didn’t, I do not want to hang out with Gabe. As much as I want to make some friends, he’s creepy. It’s something about his thin curly hair. Also, he smells bad. He needs to take a shower. I take one every night because Mom says it’s important to smell good.
“Well,” he says, “maybe you can come over to my house after school today.”
“I’m not allowed,” I say. “I’m supposed to come right home after school.”
“Maybe another day?” he asks hopefully.
“Maybe.”
I don’t want to hang out with Gabe any day, but I’m hoping he will just leave me alone if I say that. But he doesn’t leave me alone. He talks to me the entire time we are waiting in the line for our food, and then he follows me to my table. I don’t really want to sit with him, but I guess it’s better than sitting alone.
SIXTY-THREE
Nico and I ride the bus home from school together. It’s not surprising that he made a bunch of new friends today, but he still sits next to me.
“How was school?” I ask him.
“Pretty good,” he says. “A lot of kids like to play baseball.”
I wish I was good at sports like Nico. I’m good at swimming because Dad taught me, but it’s not a group activity. I don’t even think there’s a swim team for kids my age. The other thing I like to do is read, and that’s not a group activity either.
“Some of the kids are going to the park this weekend to play baseball,” he says. “Maybe Mom will let me go.”
“Just be careful,” I say. “Did you know that there was this kid named Braden Lundie who disappeared a few years ago? He was about your age too. Nobody even knows what happened to him.”
“So?”
“So! Something happened to him. Maybe somebody killed him.”
“Geez, Ada.” Nico rolls his eyes. “You worry more than Mom.”
He might be right. I don’t know why I worry about things so much. I wish I could turn off my worrying.
“If you’re worried,” Nico says, “you can come and watch.”
I might do that, but really, I would rather be spending time with kids my own age. I didn’t make any friends today. Well, except for Gabe, and I really, really don’t want to spend any time with him outside school. It’s bad enough I have to see him at school.
“Did you sleep better having your own room last night?” I ask Nico.
He thinks about it for a minute and shakes his head. “No, I was scared. I missed you.”
I’m glad he said that. I had so much trouble sleeping last night all alone in my room. “I miss you too.”
“Maybe we can have a sleepover sometime?” he suggests. “I can bring a sleeping bag and sleep on the floor in your room.”
“Or I can sleep in your room?”
“We can take turns,” he says happily.
The bus arrives on Locust Street, which is the dead-end street where we live. Nico and I climb out, along with that kid Spencer who lives across the way. Spencer’s mom is already waiting for him and immediately takes him home, but our mom is waiting in the house. I’ve got the keys to the house in my bag, and Mom says if she’s not home from work yet when we get home, I’m in charge until she gets back.
As we pass the house next door to ours, I notice somebody at the window. It must be our neighbor. It’s a man about the same age as Dad, and when he sees us, he waves. Nico waves back, and so do I, but I feel weird about it. I don’t know why that man is standing at the window, watching the school bus arrive.
It’s just a strange thing to do.
SIXTY-FOUR
Step 3: Learn to Live in Your New Home
Nico is acting weird.
He’s been going over to the Lowells’ house after school because he broke their window playing baseball in the backyard so he has to work it off doing chores. Anyway, it seems like he goes there every day, and then he doesn’t get home until just before Mom gets back. I asked him what kind of chores they have him doing and he said just cleaning. But then when I asked him what he was cleaning, he got quiet about it.
Whatever they’re making him do, it’s making him grumpy. They don’t even have an animal to clean up after. Are they making him take out the garbage? Wash dishes? Are they making him push a boulder up a hill and as soon as he gets to the top, the boulder rolls back down to the bottom again?
If this were back in the old days, when we shared a room, I would have just waited until bedtime and then asked him about it. But now, Nico shuts himself in his room at night and doesn’t talk to me much.
Tonight, during dinner, he was hardly eating at all. Mom made mashed potatoes with lots of butter and salt, just how he likes it, but he just kept making it into a big pile and then sculpting it into different things. So after dinner is over, I go to his room. I knock on the door, which still feels weird after sharing a room for so long.
“I’m busy!” he calls out.
“It’s Ada!” I call through the door.
