The first thing I see when I go upstairs is his backpack, leaning against the wall. His green comforter. And then: Mia. She’s sitting in the middle of his bed, staring up at me like I’ve interrupted her.
I quietly shut the door behind me, to muffle the sound of us. “Mia,” I whisper.
“You’re here again,” she says.
“Your mom asked me to do this. She asked me to help.” I sit beside her, but she looks away.
“He’s really not coming back,” she says. “My mom was right.”
But I say nothing, because now I’m not so sure. But then I think, Maybe she’s talking about Sean. Maybe she knows something.
I drop my voice even lower. “Mia, what happened to your dad?”
“He’s gone,” she says, and she has this faraway look, staring out the uncovered window.
“I know. What happened?”
“He and Caleb got in a fight.”
“Were you here?”
She stops talking then, turns to face me. “Yes. It’s all because of you, you know. They were fighting more and more. Caleb was always making excuses, he always had to be with you. I have to go to Jessa’s race,” she mimics. “I have to help set up at Jessa’s for her brother’s party.”
“Wait, what? He said that?”
“Yeah. Your brother was graduating, right? And he spent the whole day with you instead of watching me so my parents could go away.”
“He wasn’t—” I cut myself off. I don’t need to argue with a nine-year-old. But he hadn’t been there all day. He’d barely been there at all. I think back to that to-do list I’d found in his bedside table, the date written down: 22. I had assumed he was reminding himself about Julian’s party, but maybe it was something else.
Going to see Jessa’s race, he’d told his mom before taking off that last day, as an excuse. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told her we’d broken up. Maybe he was using my name as an excuse. Meanwhile, where had he really been heading each time?
“Mia,” I say, leaning closer, but then I hear Eve call out for Mia as well, and she scrambles to the door, down the steps, and I’m left shaking in the middle of his room. There’s barely anything left. There’s his comforter. His sheets. His backpack, leaning against the empty wall. There wasn’t much inside, which I remember from when Max went looking for his money: just some notebooks, a few stray papers, and a pen, missing a cap.
His textbooks were never here. They weren’t in the closet on his shelf, on his desk, or in his locker. And I wonder if he ever purchased them at all this year.
The backpack is a dark green, with multiple pockets. Max had already tipped the bag over, emptying the main contents, when he went through this room, in his fury.
Now, all that remains in the bottom is the pen he would tuck behind his ear, or rest between his teeth, if he was concentrating. There’s an old test—a 91, circled in red—crumpled and forgotten at the base of his notebooks. In the side pocket is his student ID, the same image hanging above the petition outside the cafeteria. We all took the photos for them at the beginning of the year, and they always looked ghastly, overexposed by the printer settings and white background. But Caleb looks alive in his.
The second pocket has been unusable since last year—the zipper stuck permanently in the closed position.
It was me who got it stuck. Caleb was loading up the notebooks on top of his desk, getting ready to go study at the library. He swung it onto his back and called, “Ready?” over his shoulder
Halfway down the steps, I asked, “Do you have any gum?”
“Second pocket,” he said.
We were still moving, descending the steps, and after I took a piece of gum, I tried to pull the zipper shut—but it caught, and I pulled harder. But when I tried to tug it back to realign things, it wouldn’t move. “Oh, crap. I broke your backpack,” I said.
He stopped moving and dropped it to the ground at the base of the staircase, fidgeting with the zipper. “My gum is held hostage,” he said.
“Forgive me?” I said.
“Always,” he said.
Now, I think again, Forgive me, Caleb. Because I’m trying to unearth something he wanted to keep hidden. And I can feel how close I finally am.
The zipper, now, is pried open. It seems someone has taken scissors to the material around it, splitting it open, but also tearing the fabric in places. I wonder if it was just Max who tore into it, looking for the money stolen from him, and I didn’t notice.
Either way, someone has been through here, so sure there was something hidden.
That pack of gum is still inside, and I laugh for the moment, imagining this was all they uncovered. The pieces are brittle, snapping in my hand. I toss them in the garbage, but the scent of mint fills the empty room, until it is inescapable. It’s starting to rain, so I don’t open the window, but I take Caleb’s trash down the steps, outside.
I move quickly, through the drizzle. The garbage goes out tonight.
Peering inside, I see the placemats, the cookbooks. All dumped without care. It’s junk. It’s nothing. I tip Caleb’s garbage can over, watch the contents rain down over the rest of the trash.
I dislodge a cookbook in the process, and underneath, I see something iridescent. At first I think it’s one of Mia’s toys—the colors change when the light hits it. But as I move the other items aside, it comes into focus. It’s a spiral-bound notebook that I last saw less than a week ago, in the passenger seat of Eve’s car.