THE DAY AFTER EDDIE DISAPPEARED, DILLON AND I WENT DOWN to the Point to look for him. Dillon told me to wait on the beach, but I followed him into the water. He swam so fast, I couldn’t keep up with him, and we were against the tide. I was afraid of how deep it was farther out, but I didn’t want to stop until we found Eddie.
“Can you see anything?” I kept calling to Dillon, but he was too far away to hear me, and the rain was creating a mist on the surface of the water, making it even harder to see.
Every time I got out to the big waves, they dragged me back and I had to start again. My hands were numb and useless at pulling me through the water, and I became so exhausted, I couldn’t keep my head up. Large bits of kelp drifted around my neck, and every time I brushed a piece away, another would attach itself to my skin. The water closed in around my head, and it was so cold, I felt like my head was being crushed. For a few seconds I thought I’d never come back up, and I thought to myself, I deserve this. But then the water pushed me up and I tumbled onto the beach. When I looked up, I saw my father running toward me, shouting, his face raging with anger. He grabbed me around my neck and pulled me back onto the beach. My fingers were blue.
“He might be down there,” I croaked.
“What did you do?” my father screamed.
Then Dillon was there too, screaming for Dad to let go. The three of us were drenched from the sea and the rain, and we howled together for what seemed like forever. I remember the grayness of my father’s face when he looked at me that day—it was like the color had been washed out.
“You’re not to come back here on your own, either of you. Do you hear? You’re not to come here again.”
“I just want to find him,” I cried as my father dragged me up the beach to the car park. “I need to say goodbye.”
From the warmth of the car, I watched Dillon run back down onto the pebbles. He scrabbled around on the stones like a dog searching for a bone until our father wrestled him back to the car too.
Later, the police came around. Dillon and I hid in the closet under the stairs, listening to our parents talking to them. We caught only a few words: “called off” and “too dangerous.” Then I heard my name and more murmuring. I opened the closet door slightly to hear the rest, and Dillon put his hand over my mouth.
“No, I’m sorry. You can’t talk to them. They’re too upset,” my father said. His voice was high-pitched. “We’ve told you everything. It happened so quickly, there was no time . . .”
Dillon pulled the door closed, and everything was muffled again.
“Aren’t they looking for him anymore?” I asked Dillon.
“Shhh.”
“He’ll be so scared.”
“He won’t be scared now,” Dillon replied.
“He will.”
Dillon put his hand over my mouth again and said that we couldn’t let them hear us. Then he whispered very quietly that an angel would guide Eddie back to us. After a few minutes, I said, “Dillon, I’m not four. I know there aren’t any angels. And Eddie knows it too. He also knows that there is no Santa or tooth fairy.”
“You told him?”
I shrugged, even though it was dark and Dillon couldn’t see.
“Dillon?”
“What?”
“I couldn’t see Dad anywhere.”
“Shhh.”
“Dillon, where did he go?”
“He was there. You looked in the wrong place.”
A cloud of dust made me choke, but Dillon wouldn’t let me get out of the closet, even though I needed the loo as well and was really hungry. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before.
“Dillon?”
“What?”
“It’s my fault. I was the one who lost him.”
“No.” Dillon shook my shoulders so hard, I almost cried out. “This wasn’t your fault. You mustn’t ever say anything like that to anyone. It was an accident. Promise me that you won’t say a word to anyone.”
I promised and drew an imaginary zip across my lips. I didn’t know then that our silence would last for a year. I followed Dillon’s lead—he would let me know when it was safe to talk again. When, after a few months, we still refused to speak, Mum started telling everyone that we had chronic laryngitis. We drank a lot of cough medicine that year and had frequent trips to see doctors, who kept asking us how we felt.
After the police had gone, we crawled out of the closet, but our parents were still talking.
“Why him?” my father said. “Why did it have to be him?”
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