Avery flushed the toilet—she’d held off as long as she could out there on the porch—and washed her hands, then stopped in the hallway outside The Shrine and decided to call Sam, who was her boyfriend. Why was she always reminding herself of that? It was possible she needed reminding because he was her first actual boyfriend and the concept was still fresh. More likely, there was another reason, but she wasn’t ready to admit that quite yet. He might not even pick up so late—or was it so early?—but this was the sort of thing you woke people up for. Especially people who were your boyfriend.
As the line rang, she went into her brother’s room and lay down on his Scooby-Doo bedspread. Apparently he’d loved that show—and supposedly she’d watched it with him, but she didn’t remember; when she’d gone back to watch some episodes a few years ago, she’d found Shaggy annoying.
“Hey,” Sam said sleepily when he answered.
“Hey,” she said beneath a sky of glow-in-the-dark constellations.
“Everything okay?”
“They’re back.” She’d spotted the Big Dipper on the ceiling. “My brother and the other kids.”
“What?” That quickly, he was wide awake.
“Well, he’s not back.” And there, the Little Dipper. “Not yet, but we’ve heard they’re back.”
“No way,” he said.
“I know.” The bed smelled lonely. “My mom’s sitting on the front steps. Waiting. She heard that they don’t remember anything.”
“How is that even possible?” Sam said.
“I have no idea. It’s all just . . . crazy. Right?”
Sam had only moved to Fort Myers a few years ago, so he didn’t really understand how crazy it was, not having lived through it all the way everyone else had. Not the way she and Ryan had. Sam had seen the movies, but that was all.
Avery didn’t actually remember much about the day it happened; she’d been only four years old. But she learned everything she needed to know eventually.
For starters, her parents had given her endless lectures about strangers—they still did—and why she should fear them, because she didn’t want to end up like her brother—abducted by some crazy guy and held hostage somewhere or, worse, killed or sold on some foreign sex-slave black market—did she? And, “Sorry, Ave, but we’re not sugarcoating this for you. This is your reality. The world is a horrible place. The Bogeyman and Slender Man may not be real, but there are worse, real things to fear. And not just guns and ISIS but quiet, messed-up people who can take a bunch of kids and make them go poof.”
When she was old enough, she went online. She knew about the small bus a few people saw behind the school that day and that the bus company claimed no knowledge of it. She’d read about the search parties in all the nearby swamps and on beaches, the accusations thrown at the school security guard, the lawsuits filed against the school district and the bus company (her parents had initiated the claims), and the suicide, a few weeks later, of the school principal. She’d also read countless supposedly moving profiles of each of the kids, which said dumb things like how they loved music and sports and playgrounds and princesses and all had sparkling personalities.
Of course they did!
THEY WERE FIVE!
Avery had even been on TV the day it happened. She’d watched that clip once, then never again. Her four-year-old self, clinging to her once-beloved Woof-Woof and saying, “I really want Max to come home.”
Brutal.
Now she was impatient for him to get on with it.
She said, “What do you think is taking him so long?” and knew it sounded ridiculous.
Scarlett
Back up on the terrace, the woman—her mother, her mother—was waiting for her, holding pajamas.
“The night before you disappeared,” she said, “you told me you were going on a trip. Your exact words were that you were going ‘to the leaving.’ Do you remember that?”
Scarlett closed her eyes.
/
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“I don’t.” She opened them. “And we just disappeared? Like . . . how? Did you look for us?”
“Of course!” Now looking tight, defensive. “It was the first real day of kindergarten.”
“What does that mean, ‘real day’?”
“The first day all the kindergartners went to school. They do a staggered start, with some of the kids going one day and then the rest another day. So it was the first day all the kindergartners were there together.”
“And?”
“And at the end of the day, you weren’t on the bus you were supposed to be on. People say there was a bus at school—like a small one, a short bus—that you all got on, but they never found it, but I knew right away it was something else. Some people spotted a craft up by Venice.”
/ /
“A spaceship?”
/ /
“Yes, ma’am.”