Prodigal

Chapter 17

17

Twenty years ago…

Adam was afraid to close his eyes.

He’d been afraid to sleep ever since the night Danny was taken. The evidence was there in the bathroom mirror every morning. Adam looked hollowed out, like a carved pumpkin left too long on the front porch. But the weather’s too cold for pumpkins to rot come winter, so they just sink in on themselves. That’s what he looked like.

Some of the other kids were afraid to sleep because they were afraid they’d be taken. Adam was afraid of that, too, but he was more afraid of what he might see.

Leslie Beck told him once that if you died in a dream, you died for real, too. Adam couldn’t help thinking he was going to die in his sleep. And no one would ever know why.

But Adam was just so tired.

The classes after lunch were the worst. He put his head down on his desk. Adam had let one of his fingernails grow a little longer than the rest—not so much that Grandma Iris would notice, but just long enough that he could scratch himself. At first, jamming the nail into his palm had been enough to keep him awake. Not anymore.

Adam crossed his legs to bring his foot close. He slid his sock down and dug his long fingernail into the skin of his inner ankle. It was still sore from yesterday. He’d chosen that spot because no one would see it, unlike his arms or wrists. Adam was careful not to make it bleed too much, and he watched for infection. He’d learned that from Leslie. Leslie had been picking on someone, and JJ’d scratched him so hard that he still had the scar. Leslie had cried and said they might have to cut off his arm if it got infected, because people’s fingernails were so dirty. Adam didn’t believe everything Leslie said, but it would suck to lose a leg.

A shiver ran through Adam’s body, and he suddenly realized his finger was wet with blood. He wiped it on the inside of his sock, but he couldn’t get rid of the dark shadow under the nail. It made Adam feel gross, gross enough that he couldn’t start on the other ankle. He’d just have to hope class was interesting.

Mr. Barnes’s voice was soothing—something about the War of 1812. Adam imagined he could hear the ticking of the big clock on the wall, as seconds passed them by. He always thought the clock would stop keeping time when he watched it. The skinny, little hand paused, then lurched forward so hard he could see it shake with the effort of moving only that far and no further. Pause, lurch, pause, lurch… Tick, tick, tick…

Sarah had been sitting on the concrete steps long enough to know her mom wasn’t coming. She must have forgotten about the half day of school today. Sarah’s mother was never the most attentive parent, but ever since she’d started dating someone from work, she’d been totally clueless. Dating is what her mother called it, but she didn’t fool Sarah. Her mom was having s*x with him. Bob Something. Sarah didn’t want to think about it. But at least her mom never had s*x at their house, and her mother and Bob should be at work, so Sarah didn’t have to worry about interrupting anything this afternoon.

She could’ve asked one of the teachers to drive her home, but the last time Sarah had done that someone had called The County, though nothing had come of it. Walking home from school wasn’t allowed anymore, not since a kid in Cold Springs disappeared. No one in her class was worried, though. Cold Springs may have a decent football team, but everyone knew they were dumb as rocks on the other side of the mountain. She’d heard Bob say the kid probably got lost, or accidentally locked himself in an old empty refrigerator. Sarah shuddered. That would be an awful way to go. She waited until the teachers were distracted by a kid throwing rocks at one of the buses, and slipped away down the street.

This was Sarah’s favorite time of year to be outside. She hated hot weather and she hated to be wet, so the cool days before winter got socked in and they were buried in snow were the best. The air felt crisp and clean, and if there was one thing Sarah appreciated, living with her mother’s mercurial attitudes toward housekeeping, it was clean, odorless air.

About half a mile from the school, Sarah reached the overpass, a short section of road raised like a bridge over a low spot in the surrounding forest. She stopped to look over the edge at the ground, twenty or thirty feet below. Sometimes a stream appeared in the spring, if there’d been heavy snow, but it was dry now, thick with leaves. She shivered as she felt and heard the rush of air as a car passed behind her on the road, and imagined what it would be like to fall that far.

The ground gradually leveled out again as it reached the grassy fields of the town park up ahead. Sometimes she saw deer on the slope, but not today. Instead, she saw a big, white van—the kind without any windows—pulling over to the shoulder a little ways past the overpass. Its hazard lights began blinking, and a man jumped out, leaving the engine running.

“Skipper? Skipper?” he called, disappearing for a moment as he hurried around the front of the van.

Sarah stopped.

The Platt Acres development lay beyond the town park, farther than Sarah could see. In fact, there were no houses or businesses anywhere in sight. Sarah considered crossing to the other side of the road, to gain a little distance from the van, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself or look scared. Because she wasn’t. Not really. She kept walking.

The man wasn’t paying attention to Sarah. As she got closer, she heard him tell someone to stay in the van, saying it would be all right, that they’d find him. The man was about the age of the ones her mother dated. His clothes could use a washing and he needed a haircut, but lots of people around Plattsville worked dirty jobs and didn’t have the energy left over to try and look their best.

He didn’t look scary.

This close to the overpass, the ground dropped steeply away from the road. The man peered over the edge, into the woods beyond. Sarah sped up, hoping to get by him unnoticed, but he looked up as she approached.

“Excuse me—I’m looking for my dog. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

Sarah tried to speak, but she couldn’t, mesmerized by his eyes… Once, Grammy and Pappy had taken her to church (without her mom, who’d threatened to burst into flames), and the preacher talked about prophets in the wilderness. This man looked like that. His hair, brown and blonde and gray all at once, fell almost to his shoulders, and he had some color of pale eyes that were so intense and knowing… and sad.

Sarah finally managed to shake her head.

The man went on. “We were taking him to the park, and he jumped out the window—it was the damnedest thing.” The man’s face flushed and he looked down at the ground. “Sorry, miss. I guess I’ll have to put up signs, but we don’t have a photo of him, and I don’t know nothing about dog breeds. He’s one of them fluffy dogs—”

“What color?” Sarah asked, before she remembered she wasn’t speaking to him.

The man’s face squinched up on one side and his lips squeezed together while he looked up at the treetops, trying to decide. “Well, I don’t rightly know how to describe it. Son, you still got that picture you drew?”

He walked back toward the van, and Sarah thought she heard someone inside, but she couldn’t make out the words.

“In your book bag?” the man said. “A’right.”

He opened one of the van’s back doors and grabbed an olive green satchel, resting it on the bumper to rummage through it with his back to Sarah. “I know he ain’t exactly Picasso, but maybe if you looked at this—”

Sarah walked over, hands tucked into her backpack straps. Her mom always yelled at her for that—said she looked like she was trying to pinch her own boobs—but Sarah couldn’t help the nervous habit.

What did she have to be nervous about?

Maybe why it was taking so long to find his kid’s picture. Sarah licked her lips, mouth dry. It was time to leave.

She stepped back, intending to run toward the park even if it made her look stupid, but the man swung around suddenly and clamped his hand over her mouth. Sarah couldn’t get her own hands free from her backpack in time to stop him. The man’s other arm encircled her, pinning her arms against her sides. Was there another shadow, someone else, in the back of the van?

The man put one knee on the bumper and raised up, lifting her inside. Sarah kicked her legs as hard as she could, screaming into his heavy hand, and fell hard onto the metal floor of the van. Her head—

Adam fell from his desk, taking his chair over with him. The screaming sounds wouldn’t stop, and it wasn’t until Mr. Barnes grabbed him—“Adam, calm down!”—and he saw all the other kids staring at him, mouths open, that Adam realized he was the one screaming. But he still couldn’t stop.