I remember it was a Thursday because I had gone surfing that afternoon. I always go out on Thursdays because both my parents work late those days, which makes it easier to sneak a surfboard in and out of my car. It had been soft that afternoon, the sky hazy and the waves no bigger than three feet or so, and I was rinsing off in the shower at the edge of the sand when I heard someone screaming my name. “Emmy! Emmy! Where is she? Is she here?!” I looked up from the end of the path and saw my best friend, Caroline, tearing toward me.
Her hair was tangled, as tangled as mine after dousing it in salt water and sea air for a few hours, and she was dashing barefoot toward me, her shoes dangling from her hand. The whole beach stopped and watched as she hurtled down the hill, and I heard one surfer say to his friend, “Dude, she’s fast.”
I stepped away from the water, my heart racing. Was it my parents? An accident? Where was our friend Drew? Oh God, it was Drew. Something had happened to Drew! “Em,” she said, and there was something scary in her eyes, wild and hopeful and terrified all at the same time.
I had never seen her look like that before and I probably never will again.
“Emmy,” she said. “They found Oliver.”
It’s funny. You think about hearing certain phrases and you plan how you’ll react to them. They found Oliver. And yet when you do finally hear the three words you’ve been too frightened to even think about, for fear of jinxing them, for fear that you might never actually hear them, it’s like they aren’t real at all.
“Emmy!” Caroline grabbed me by the shoulders and bent down so she could look me in the eyes, her grip so hard I could feel her fingertips through my wet suit. “They found Oliver. He’s okay.”
“Caroline,” I said slowly. “You’re hurting me.”
“Oh, sorry! Sorry!” She let go of my shoulders but stayed close. “Are you in shock? Are you okay? Do you need something with electrolytes?”
I shook my head. “They found him? How—?”
Caroline grinned. “Your mom just called me. You weren’t answering your phone so she sent me to find you.” My mom knew what she was doing. Caroline is definitely the sort of person that you want to deliver news. Good or bad, she will rip that Band-Aid clean off.
“He’s in New York,” she continued. “He’s coming home.”
My knees were shaking. Maybe I needed something with electrolytes after all. “Who’s in New York?”
“Oliver, Emmy! God, focus!”
“Can I—? Where’s my phone? I need my phone!”
Caro was still jumping up and down as I ran up to my towel, digging around underneath it for my bag and finding my phone at the bottom. Seven missed calls and three texts from my mom: CALL HOME NOW, they all said.
“Did you tell my mom where I was?” I asked Caro, shoving my phone back into my bag and trying to get my wet suit off as fast as possible without taking my bathing suit along with it.
“No, of course not,” she said, then added “Here,” and offered me her shoulder for balance as I peeled off the lower half of the suit. “I said I thought you might be at the library and that’s why your phone was off.”
“Good.” My parents would never approve of me surfing, which is why they could never know. I love them, but if they had their way, they would have constructed a suit for me made entirely of Bubble Wrap and cotton balls. I didn’t want to be the kind of kid that snuck around and did things behind her parents’ back, but I loved surfing too much to stop. So I just lied to them instead, which, yeah. Not exactly the best solution to the problem, but it was all I had.
“They might wonder why your hair’s wet, though,” Caro said, interrupting my thoughts.
“We’ll think up a reason in the car,” I said, finally yanking a dress over my bathing suit. Caroline grabbed my towel and my hand and we took off up the hill toward the car. It sounded like there were jets flying overhead, but when I looked up and saw nothing but a few low clouds, I realized that the sound was just the blood rushing in my head, pulsing to keep me upright and alive.
“They found him,” Caro whispered, and when she squeezed my hand, I squeezed back harder and came down from the clouds once again.
I quickly dumped my surfboard into the back of Drew’s van before throwing myself in the backseat. Drew was waiting behind the steering wheel, frantically texting someone. His cheeks were flushed and he was wearing his soccer uniform. Drew used to be my best surfing buddy until soccer began taking up more of his time. Now he’s on track to get a full scholarship to Berkeley, just like his older brother, Kane.
“Oh my God,” he said without looking up. “Can you even believe it?”
“Not really,” I said. “Can you?”
“Nope,” he said, his thumbs flying over the mini keyboard. “How are you going to explain your hair to your mom?”
“Think something up for me,” I said, realizing too late that my feet were covered in sand and silt and gravel. Now all that mess was smeared over Drew’s floor mats.
Drew loves his van. It’s actually not a van, but a restored 1971 tomato-red VW camper bus. People actually take pictures with it, it’s so beautiful, and it has lots of room for surfboards in the back. The van used to be his brother’s, but after Kane went to college three years ago, he gifted it to Drew, like he knew that Drew was going to need it as a means of escape.
“Oh no!” I said once I saw the sand. “I’m sorry, Drew, I should’ve—”
“Who cares?” Caro screeched. “It’s sand, not acid. Just drive, okay?”
“Wait,” I said. “My car. My backpack’s in there, my homework. I have a quiz tomorrow!”
“Are you kidding me?” Drew backed the car up and the force of his acceleration smashed me into the seat. “Buckle up,” he said. “No one’s doing any homework tonight.” When we were finally cruising down the road, he glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Em, seriously, are you sure you’re not going into shock? You look pale.”
“I already offered her electrolytes,” Caroline said.
“I’m fine,” I told them. Only it came out sort of high and squeaky and any moron with average vision could probably tell that I was not fine.
Caro reached over the backseat and grabbed my seat belt. “Here,” she said. “Drew’s driving. It’s a requirement.” She snapped it into place and then squeezed my shoulders. “Is this really happening?”
Caro and I have known Drew since kindergarten. Actually, half our school has known one another since kindergarten. It’s one of those Southern California suburbs where few people move away from their pink stucco houses.
Here’s something you must know about Drew before becoming his friend: he drives as if he’s being chased by a carful of depraved, evil clowns. I took driver’s ed with him in sophomore year, so I can tell you that he’s always been like this. (I can also tell you that our driver’s ed instructor had to renew his Xanax prescription after Drew’s first on-the-road lesson.)
But when Drew’s upset or nervous or excited, that’s when he really lets it fly, and the day Oliver was found was probably the craziest driving I’ve ever seen from him. Caro kept one hand on her seat belt as he flew through a yellow light and when he hit a pothole, she yelped. “Drew, this van isn’t exactly built to break the sound barrier!”
“Oh, relax, Caroline,” he said, and I knew he was using her full name just to annoy her. No one ever calls her Caroline. It’s just too many syllables.
“I’d like to see Oliver before suffering from debilitating whiplash,” I told him, trying to loosen my iron grip on my seat belt.
“So how real do we think this is?” Drew asked.
He had a point. This wasn’t the first time that Oliver had been “found.” The sightings had been intense at first, hundreds of calls pouring in to the hotline saying that they had seen a sandy-haired, freckle-faced seven-year-old in Omaha, Atlanta, Los Angeles, even Puerto Rico. The calls died down over the years, but every year or so, there was a ray of hope. A short-lived ray, but hope nonetheless, enough to live on for another year.
“Maybe real?” I said. “I don’t know, I . . .” I trailed off, not really sure what to say.
Caro took over.
“Emmy’s mom called me because Em wasn’t answering her phone,” she said. “Something about a fingerprint. He was in a police station for a school field trip? I’m not sure. Anyway, it matched the one in his file and they went to arrest Oliver’s dad at home. He wasn’t there, but Oliver was.”
“New York?” Drew asked. “Really?”
“New York City,” Caro emphasized. “But here’s the part that’s bonkers: they still haven’t found his dad. Apparently, he’s on the lam.” Caro always liked the police lingo. I don’t think she’s ever missed an episode of Law & Order: SVU.
“Wow,” Drew murmured. “New York.” I didn’t have to look at Drew’s face to know what he was thinking. He would pretty much like to be anywhere else but our town. New York must’ve sounded like a dream.
We live in a tolerant community, so long as there’s nothing to tolerate. So when Drew came out and announced he was gay last year, it caused a bit of what he called the “muffled kerfuffle.” Caro and I already knew, of course, but Drew’s parents were a little . . . different. They were accepting at first, lots of “we love you just the way you ares” and all that, but to hear Drew tell it, the mood was heavier at his house. The silences longer, the words shorter. “They look at me sometimes,” he said one night when we were sleeping over at Caro’s, his voice quiet in the dark. “And I can’t tell if they like what they see.”
I could understand why Drew sounded wistful about New York.
I glanced out the window as Drew turned right, all of us quiet for a moment. In our second-grade class picture, we were lined up by height in the middle row: Caro on the end, then Drew, then Oliver, then me. And then Oliver went away and there were just three of us, with no idea of how to make sense of our loss. And to make it worse, every adult was super nice in the months after Oliver disappeared: “Ran your bike into my car? It’s just a tiny scratch.” “Threw a ball through my window? Be more careful next time.” It was unsettling. When the adults are full of indulgence, you know things are really bad.
Drew swung a left and pulled onto our street. His normal routine is to careen until the last possible second and then spin a U-turn in our cul-de-sac before zooming into my driveway. You can imagine how exciting that is in a top-heavy VW bus. The first time my mom saw Drew zipping toward us, she said, “He does know that the street dead-ends, right?”
It was a fair question.
I have to admit, though, Drew knows what he’s doing, and ten seconds later, he was pulling the parking brake as we eyed a caravan of news trucks and cameras. “Hello, hello, old friends,” Drew drawled when we saw them. “How long has it been?”
“Two years,” I replied, glaring out my window. After Oliver didn’t show up to school that Tuesday ten years ago, the news cameras became a noisy cavalry for a few months. At first, everyone thought it was great. They were bringing attention to the case! Surely, someone would see Oliver and call the police and he’d come home in time for Drew’s eighth birthday party. Caro and Drew and I used to draw pictures of Oliver and try to get the newscasters to film them, but mostly they just stood in front of Oliver’s home and said things like “This tragic disappearance has left a community shaken . . . [dramatic pause] . . . to its core.”
The ironic thing is that even though Oliver’s disappearance was a huge deal in our town, it didn’t really get that much attention outside of the city. He was a young kid taken by a non-abusive parent who had no citizenship in a foreign country. It was terrible, yes, but when it came to criminal investigations, finding Oliver wasn’t at the top of most people’s lists. That’s when I first learned about true frustration, that wrenching ache when the thing that matters most to you barely makes a ripple in other people’s lives.
One afternoon, after the story had faded slightly in the local headlines, the reporters decided to talk to me. My parents were inside and didn’t know that I had snuck out to see if Oliver was secretly in his backyard, and the cameras descended on me. Even now, when I think about it, it makes me want to throw up.
“How does it feel to know that your friend Oliver might never come home?”
“What can you tell us about Oliver, sweetheart? Do you think he wanted to be with his dad more than his mom?”
“Did Oliver say anything to you? Did you know that his father was going to take him?”
I’m not sure when I started to cry, but when my dad came storming out of the house, I was in full-blown hysterics. He grabbed me up and told all the newscasters to go fuck themselves (which definitely did not make it into the seven o’clock broadcast), then carried me back inside. Soon after, he taught Caro and Drew and me some Beatles songs and told us that whenever we saw people with cameras, we should just sing those songs.
At the time, I thought it was just fun to sing really loud, but then I realized what an evil genius my dad is. To broadcast Beatles lyrics, you have to have the rights to the songs, which costs somewhere around a billion dollars. So whenever we popped up singing about yellow submarines or Lucy in the sky with diamonds, they couldn’t use the footage.
We’ve done that ever since. Works like a charm.
“Which song?” Drew asked, unbuckling his seat belt like he hadn’t just commandeered his car like a rocket. “I vote for ‘Hello, Goodbye.’ It’s appropriate.”
Neither Caro nor I disagreed, so we hurried out of the car and up my driveway as the anchorpeople dashed toward us. I recognized some of them—the ones that hadn’t been promoted to better jobs in San Francisco or Houston or New York—and they were already eyeing the three of us, painfully wise to our wacky sing-alongs.
“‘You say goodbye and I say hello!’” we sang. What we lack in talent, we make up for with enthusiasm and nefarious glee.
We were barely done with the first chorus before we made it through the front door of my house, where my mom was waiting.
“Oh, honey!” she wailed, grabbing me up and then hugging Drew and Caro as an afterthought. “They found him! He’s alive!”
I hadn’t seen either of my parents cry in years. When Oliver was taken, there were whispered conversations and stressful quiet moments, but they never cried. I think they thought they had to be brave for me and strong for Maureen, Oliver’s mom. But now my mother was weeping against my shoulder and I hugged her tight, not sure what to say.
Drew was better in these situations than I was.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Trenton,” he said. “Oliver’s in New York. If he can make it there, he can make it anywhere.”
She started to laugh through her tears and she let go of the three of us. “Drew,” my mother scolded, “this isn’t a time for jokes.” But she was still laughing and Drew just winked at me.
“Mom,” I said, “is it true? Really, this time?”
My mother nodded and used a ragged tissue to wipe at her eyes. “Maureen called us an hour ago. She’s already on her way to the airport to go to New York. She said . . .” My mother stopped to stifle a sob. “She said he’s six feet tall and has dark hair.”
I just nodded, but I knew what my mom meant. When Oliver left, he was barely as high as my shoulder and had blond highlights from spending summers outside in our backyards.
“What about his dad? Is he—?”
“They don’t know,” my mother said. “Apparently, he wasn’t home and he hasn’t come back since. They’re looking for him now, though. I’m sure they’ll find him.” (I wasn’t so sure. My mom had been saying that for ten years about Oliver: “I’m sure they’ll find him.”)
“Your dad’s on his way home from work now, Em.” She dabbed at her eyes again. “Are you kids hungry?”
“Yes,” Drew and Caro chimed together. My mom runs a catering business so there’s always food around. They like to take blatant advantage.
“Come on, come on,” my mom said, ushering us into the kitchen. “There’s leftover crêpes.”
Crêpes! Caro mouthed at me, grinning. I stumbled along behind them, discreetly wiping sand off my ankles while my mom’s back was turned.
My mom had the kitchen redone several years ago and it looks like a Martha Stewart showcase combined with an operating room. There are shiny gadgets that completely befuddle my dad and me, and yet it’s somehow warm and inviting. I like to hang out in there, just so long as I don’t touch anything and accidentally get puréed.
“Do you think Oliver’s dad will follow him here?” I sank down into a chair next to Drew, who looked as worried as I felt. “I mean, Oliver’s been with him all this time. To be separated now, that has to be hard.”
“His dad?” Caro said. “That’s who you feel bad for right now? Seriously?”
“No, I feel bad for Oliver,” I told her. But I felt kind of bad for everyone and I didn’t know why.
“Is there Nutella in this crêpe?” Drew asked.
“Here, mine’s Nutella. Switch with me.” I swapped the plates around before Drew could say anything. Caro muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “people pleaser,” but gave me an innocent look when I glanced at her.
“Does he know that Maureen’s remarried?” I asked. “Or about the twins?”
“Oh, man, that’s going to be a shock,” Caro said, digging into her snack.
“I’m sure Maureen will tell him all about Rick and Molly and Nora,” my mom reassured us. “That’s not exactly news that she can hide.”
“Do you think he even remembers us?” Drew asked. “It’s been ten years.”
“Don’t say that,” I snapped before I could stop myself. Drew’s fork froze in the air as he stared at me. My mom was watching me across the kitchen, too. I had seen that look too many times over the years, the “oh my God, is our child damaged beyond repair?” look, and I was in no hurry to see it again.
“Of course he remembers us,” I said. “Why wouldn’t he? We remember him. How could he forget us?”
Both Caro and Drew blinked at me, but I glanced away and tried to calm down. For years I had imagined Oliver coming home, what it would look like, and it never involved crêpes or him not remembering us. I crossed my fingers and knocked my hand softly against our wooden kitchen table, Oliver’s and my secret way to undo a jinx. We had made it up two weeks before he disappeared and I wasn’t about to let it go now.
“I’m sure he remembers,” my mom said in that soothing way that made me want to scream. “Oliver’s coming home and he’s safe. That’s what matters right now.”
I looked at Caro. She crossed her eyes back at me.
My mom suddenly stopped. “Hey,” she said. “Why is your hair wet?”
All three of us froze, Caro almost choking on her crêpe.
“We dared her to try out for the swim team,” Drew said, not missing a beat.
“That’s why I didn’t get your messages,” I added, tapping Drew’s ankle under the table in a silent thank-you. He kicked back his own version of you’re welcome.
My mom just laughed. “Crazy kids,” she said, then turned around to get more food. “You know Emmy can’t swim very well.”
Caro, Drew, and I looked at one another, then Caroline leaned over and brushed some sand off my elbow, wiping away my secret.