“Aja,” I say again when I’m hovering over him, staring down at the crown of his head, where black hair sticks out at various angles and on either side the bent legs of his glasses are clinging to the tops of his delicate ears. This close, I notice that his body is trembling ever so slightly, as if a vibration of the earth is happening just in the spot below his feet.
I bend my knees until my chest is level with his head and put my arms around his tiny frame, easily hefting him up in the air. His body, arms rigid at his sides, is as stick-straight as a pencil—and nearly feels as light.
When I set him gently down in the kitchen, we both stand there not touching or speaking and I wonder if maybe he’s traumatized or in shock. I search my brain for the first-aid treatments I learned in Boy Scouts. Did we cover shock?
As I’m deciding between slapping him across the face (seems harsh, but I have a flash of a scene from a movie where it works) and throwing a cold cup of water at him (ditto), Aja speaks. Or at least, I think he spoke.
“What?” I bend down a little, trying to see his face, if I can make out the words his mouth is forming.
“I’m sorry,” Aja says, so quietly it takes me a minute to register the phrase.
Before I can respond, Aja takes off, running out of the kitchen and down the hallway. His bedroom door slams shut and the noise reverberates in my ears.
And I’m left there, feet glued to the linoleum tiles, looking back into the living room at the big sparkly mess and wondering what the hell just happened.
AFTER PICKING UP the large shards, then sweeping and vacuuming the leftover bits, I get on my hands and knees to look under the sofa and make sure I got it all, but before I can even look I feel a sharp stab in my palm. I lift it up to look and a long sliver of glass glints back at me, a bead of red blood already asserting itself on the squishy pad beneath my fingers.
I swear under my breath: “Shit.” The pain is concentrated and intense and I know it’s going to hurt even more when I pull it out. Though I’ve kept it at bay ever since Aja ran to his room obviously traumatized, anger wells up from somewhere deep. Intuition tells me Aja put that hammer through the glass on purpose, but I have no idea why. What was he possibly thinking? I hold my hand steady down the hall, so the blood now pooling in my palm doesn’t drip onto the carpet. At Aja’s door, I pause. I lean my head closer, my ear almost touching the door, and I hear the faint clack of the keys on the keyboard. I sigh and continue to my room in search of the first-aid kit under the sink in my bathroom, my foot stepping squarely onto the wet spot left by The Dog.
Double shit.
AFTER BANDAGING MY hand and cleaning the dog piss out of the carpet, I know I should go talk to Aja, but I pick up my cell and dial Connie instead.
“Good lord, Eric,” she says after my brief recap of the incident. “And he didn’t tell you what happened?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
“Of course I did,” I say, thinking back. Didn’t I? “I think I did. I don’t know, he just seemed so traumatized or something.”
“Where is he now?”
“In his room.”
“You’ve got to go talk to him and let him know that accidents happen. He probably feels terrible.”
I open my mouth to tell her I don’t think it was an accident, but I realize how awful that sounds, so I change the subject.
“Have you read The Virgin Suicides?”
“What?”
“The book—The Virgin Suicides. Have you read it?”
“Uh . . . I don’t think so. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Eric, seriously. Go talk to him.”
“OK, OK,” I say.
I throw my phone on the bed, rub my good hand over my stubbly cheek, and a stench wafts up from my armpit. I’ll talk to him after I shower.
Fifteen minutes later, when I walk into the hall with my still-damp hair, the first thing I notice is Aja’s wide-open door.
“Aja?”
I peer into the room. It’s empty. “Aja?” I yell out again. Silence.
I wonder if he took The Dog out for a walk. I head to living room and my eyes dart to the crate in the dining room—where The Dog is lying, head on his paws, looking up at me with sorrowful eyes. My heart starts to beat a little faster.
“Aja!” I yell, even though it’s a futile attempt. I know I won’t be getting a response. A glance in the kitchen confirms what the newly formed pit in my stomach is trying to tell me. Aja’s gone.
I run out the front door and down the concrete steps to the parking lot, calling his name with even more urgency. The bright blue sky forces me to squint and the hairs on my arm react to the unexpected cold air—wasn’t it sixty-five earlier this week?—as I scan the cars, the sidewalk, the road. A hunched balding man in an overcoat two apartment buildings down from me is walking a puff of a dog that looks like a Pomeranian. The guy’s staring at me, openmouthed, and I glance down at myself, taking in what he sees: a barefoot guy clad in a robe, breathing heavily and shouting.
“Have you seen a boy?” I ask, staring back at him. “He’s ten, but small for his age. Looks about seven?”
He puts his hand up to his ear, which even from this distance I can see is sprouting a handful of long white hairs. “Ten, you say?” His voice is gruff.
I nod.
He sets his lips in a line and shakes his head, while his dog lifts its leg and pees on a car tire.
As I turn to go back inside and get my car keys, I wonder: am I overreacting? When I was ten, I would stay outside for hours with my buddies. I try to remember what we were even doing. I have a vague memory of throwing rocks at stuff. Well, my friends were throwing rocks. I was most likely studying them.
But Aja doesn’t have any friends. And he’s never shown the slightest interest in going outside—he’s always on that blasted computer.
The computer!
I rush into his room and swipe the mouse to wake up the screen, praying he followed my rule about not leaving it password-protected. A chat room fills the monitor and relief floods me. He’s a good kid.
I scan the missives.
ProfX729: Didn’t wrk.
IggyCanFly: What’d u try?
ProfX729: Hammer. Annihilated coffee table.
IggyCanFly: W@?! D0000000000d. Bet ur dad’s P’d.
ProfX729: Nt my dad.
IggyCanFly: Rght. Sry.
ProfX729: Think I ne2h sth bigger. More ke.
IggyCanFly: Like w@—a car? ;)
ProfX729: Maybe.
IggyCanFly: D00d, jk. C the winky face? ^^
ProfX729: Got an idea. MTF.
IggyCanFly: Wait. Not a car, K? 2 yng 2 drive.
IggyCanFly: D00d, u there?
IggyCanFly: D00d?
I only understand every third word, but two things are clear: 1) Aja did throw the hammer into the coffee table on purpose. 2) He’s left to go try whatever he was trying with something else. Something bigger. Something that may or may not be a car. And the panic that’s rising with every second, flooding my body with alarm, is telling me that whatever it is he’s doing, it’s something dangerous.
And the only question that remains is: can I find him in time?
ten
JUBILEE
“WELL, THIS IS a first,” Louise says.
I look up from the returns I’m scanning.
“Found this in the stacks,” she says, holding up a flip-flop.