The Leavers(23)

Upstairs, in the silence of his room, Deming spoke Fuzhounese to his mother and told her he was sorry for saying she was dead.

ROLAND AND DEMING HAD no classes together except for gym, but at recess they wolfed down their sandwiches and forsook the playground for the computer room, where crumbs and nerds of all grades played video games. Sometimes they’d see people in there they wouldn’t have expected, like Emily Needles, or even once, Cody Campbell.

For two weeks they dominated the top scores for all the games, beating their own records. No matter what game you played, you’d only see two names, DWLK and RFUE. At first, Deming had typed DGUO, but Roland had asked, “What’s Dee Goo Oh?” and it was too complicated to explain. (He’d written “Deming Guo” on his worksheet the first day of school and Mrs. Lumpkin had called him up to her desk after class: “Is there a problem? Is this a joke?”) Whenever Deming won another game, Roland held a hand out and said, “Who’s awesome? D-W-L-K is awesome!” Deming returned the high-five and glanced around the room, wishing Roland would keep it down. It wasn’t safe to be bragging like that in Ridgeborough, and he didn’t like how Roland jumped up and down when he typed in RFUE, pumping his fist in the air. But between games Deming returned to the top score boards to look at the repetitions of a name that was supposed to be his.

In math, Mr. Moore drew obtuse angles and Amber Bitburger chewed on the ends of her white-yellow hair. Stay awake, Deming told himself. Stay alert. The easiest way to make sure he wouldn’t get comfortable was to remember he was on a mission, that gin rummy and meatloaf and flannel blankets were a part of his investigation. If he held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared.

After a few weeks, the wooden floors of the Wilkinsons’ house no longer felt so slippery, and when people said “Daniel” he answered, didn’t think they were talking to someone else. No longer did Peter and Kay look as unusual to him, the shade of their skin and the shape of their noses as normal as the low buzz of the empty streets, and he didn’t always remember to dial his mother’s phone number at night. When he did he always got the same message: This call cannot be completed at this time. Now it was his face that seemed strange when he saw it in the mirror.

He told himself his mission supervisors could come for him at anytime, yank him out of class, drag him from the kickball game, approach him in the cafeteria as he ate PBJ on wheat, seemingly unaware. For he could never be unaware. There was always the possibility that one afternoon there would be his mother or Leon or even Vivian in the cafeteria, ready to pick him up and bring him home, or a rap on the door at Homeroom, Daniel Wilkinson excused as the rest of the class murmured “Oooo” like he was in trouble, and in the principal’s chair would be Mama, her face a warm light, apologizing for taking so long, rolling her eyes behind Principal Chester’s back. They would jump on the next bus to the city, and Deming could clear the lint from his throat, loosen his milk-coated tongue.

It wasn’t his mother or Vivian who came to the Wilkinsons’ house one Friday, but a freckled white woman with a button nose and a small cup of a chin, hair springing from her face in toast-colored coils. “I’m Ms. Berry,” she said, “but you can call me Jamie.”

“Jamie is our caseworker from the foster care agency,” Peter said.

The woman turned to Deming. “Do you want to show me your room?”

“Go ahead, Daniel,” Kay said.

Jamie followed Deming upstairs and sat on the floor, against his bed. She looked at the plastic trucks. “Are these your toys?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to show me how they work?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” Jamie smiled. “How’s school going? Have you made any friends?”

“Yeah. Roland.”

“Do you want to tell me about him?”

“He’s—a boy.”

“I know you’ve been through a lot of big changes recently. But whatever you want to tell me, it’s between me and you. And you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

“What’s your favorite subject at school?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about your least favorite subject?”

All of them? “Math, I guess.”

IN THE EMPTY PLAYGROUND, the weary swing had creaked as Deming’s mother swayed. This was last November, three months before she left. Eek-eek-eek, it went, eek-eek-eek. Deming leaned, palms on her back, but he couldn’t get her that high. Up, down, curving behind him and sweeping forward, her jacket a silver dollar against the gray sky, she had yelped into the clouds. Ha! Ha. He pushed her until she said, “Enough. Your turn.” She lifted one leg, then the other, patting the saggy U of the rubber seat.

He sat, legs dangling. “Ready?” Up he went, higher, swing squealing past the pockmarked asphalt, the slide flaked with curls of rust. A hot glob of lunch dribbled up inside him and the next thing he knew he was no longer clutching the chains but flying, soaring like a brick, and before he smacked into the asphalt he saw the pavement tilt sideways, blotting his vision, a concrete eclipse.

He’d awoken in a strange room with the worst headache of his life, lying on a cot next to another cot with an old man in a diaper and an IV drip, mold stains blotched across the ceiling tiles. He heard crying babies and saw white static. A sign on the wall said URGENT CARE.