Twisted Fate(38)
“Maybe we can do something to help find him,” I said.
“Listen, Tate,” Becky said. “Don’t even start in about Graham being some kind of stalker creep child molester or something. He made one of those films of me and I’m fine, and besides, you said the cops were already over at his house. If there was something to find, don’t you think they would have?”
“No, no, no. I know, I’m not saying he kidnapped Brian. I’m saying maybe we can help find who did it. Graham talked a lot to the kid. Maybe he knows something or figured something out, some clue.”
I was thinking about this one time me, Becky, and Declan hitchhiked far out into the country and pretended we were lost and then knocked on people’s doors to ask them for directions. We weren’t lost. I don’t know why we did it. We were just curious about what the insides of people’s houses looked like. And as usual we were bored out of our minds.
This got me thinking about how the cops would be searching for Brian.
“Hey, that’s it!” I said.
“What’s it?” Becky said with a mouth full of Fritos.
“We’ll do the ‘We’re lost, can we use your bathroom?’ thing.”
“You really think this is the time to do something like that? God, Tate, stick with something. I thought you wanted to try to find Brian.”
“Duh. This is how I want to try to find him,” I said. “The cops can only cover so much ground and regular people aren’t allowed to snoop around people’s houses.”
“You want to go looking for a missing kid by walking into people’s houses? Why are you so crazy? I mean, really, do you even know why you are so crazy?”
“It’s not crazy, Becks. Better yet, we can be all like, Hey, I’m lost, can we use your computer to email my mom, and then we check what websites they’ve been on.”
“So okay, we’re going into the house of someone who may, like, molest or kidnap kids. That’s a place we’re trying to get into? And they’re just going to let us on their computers based on a really, really dumb idea.”
I said, “It’s worth a try. Otherwise we just sit around here feeling weird and freaked-out, and I am not about feeling weird and freaked-out.”
She sighed and drank more of the Coke and then looked again at the Missing picture. He was wearing his X-Men T-shirt in it and smiling. Becky’s eyes filled with tears.
I reached over and held her hand. “What is he like?”
She shrugged. “He used to come with his mom and hang out and read comics when she was cleaning. I remember he was really sweet. He came up to my room once and I showed him how to make things on the computer. We used to get him to talk about stuff because he had such a cute little voice. I dunno. I always thought he was a cool little kid, you know?”
“IS a cool little kid,” I said. “And we can help look for him.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Becky’s voice was hoarse and she wiped her eyes. “It’s better than doing nothing. Do you think Graham can really help with this?”
I nodded. I didn’t tell her about all the feelings I had about Graham or about the fact that he was already trying to get with Ally. My feelings about him were all mixed-up. But if there was a chance to help this little kid I was going to take it.
If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s taking chances.
We left the Laundromat and walked through the winding roads back into our neighborhood and headed to Declan’s. I remember feeling like we had a sense of purpose at last. Not just about finding Brian, but in general. I remember thinking that Brian going missing somehow revealed what our lives were really like. We generally didn’t do much. We listened to music and skated and went to school and got stoned. Sometimes my parents decided I should go sailing with them or go to a party.
I suddenly had this sense that maybe all the nothing we did wasn’t really our fault. The cutting class and doing nothing and sitting in the Laundromat or at the beach or out in the woods just waiting for whatever—waiting for our lives to begin. Those things weren’t entirely because we were bad kids. It’s just that there wasn’t much to do unless you were like Ally and got a kick out of baking muffins. There was a whole world out there that we were going to inherit and it wasn’t a very good one.
I know Ally saw the good in everything—even in the end she saw the good in everything. But me, I wanted to change things so that when I finally got out of Rockland and made my own way it would be in a better place. The problem was I didn’t know how to do it. And every time I felt like I might be figuring it out something came up that swept it all away. It might not be our fault we were like this, but we were the only ones who could do anything to change it. If we wanted things to be better we had to do it. We had to work together and do it. The AMBER Alert for Brian and everyone coming together made me feel something I had never felt before and that was part of a community. Part of a big group of people who look out for one another.
That evening with Becky and Declan, I felt like we were good people. Like we were the children of this town and we were trying to help other children in the town. The adults may not be doing a great job all the time and some of them were probably actually dangerous. But other people were doing so much and felt so touched and hurt by what happened. It was all one more thing that made me want to change. Made me want to understand Ally, made me want to do what Richards wanted. I guess when Brian went missing it was another turning point for me. Made me think in ways I never had or never had to before.