Mrs Patterson just drives. She does not turn on the radio. She does not make a phone call. She does not sing or hum or even talk to herself. She keeps both of her hands on the steering wheel and just drives.
I watch her. I think about climbing into the front seat next to her but I don’t. I have never sat in the front seat before and I do not want to sit next to her. I want to follow her. I want her to lead me to Max so I can save him. But I do not want to sit next to her.
I was going to save Max even if I never met Summer. I love Max and I am the only one who can save him. But I still think about Summer a lot when I think about saving Max. I think about the promise that I made to her. I don’t know why, but I do.
I watch for clues while Mrs Patterson drives. I wait to hear her speak. I have been alone in the car with Max’s mom and dad before, and I have been alone in rooms with lots and lots of people who think they are alone, and they are usually doing something. Eventually everyone does something. They turn on the radio or hum or groan or fix their hair in the little mirror that is pasted onto the windshield or drum their fingers on the steering wheel. Sometimes they talk to themselves. They make lists or complain about someone to no one or talk to the other people who are driving in cars around them like the other people can hear them through the glass and metal.
Sometimes people are gross. They pick their noses in the car. This is gross even though the car seems like one of the best places to pick a nose, because no one is around and you can get rid of your boogers before you get home. Max’s mom yells at Max for picking his nose, but Max says that some boogers won’t come out with a tissue, and I think he must be right because I have seen Max’s mom picking her nose, too. But never when someone else is watching.
That’s what I tell Max.
‘Picking your nose is like pooping,’ I say to him. ‘You have to do it in private.’
Max still picks his nose around people sometimes, but not as much as he used to.
Mrs Patterson does not pick her nose. She does not scratch her head. She does not even yawn or sigh or sniffle. She keeps her eyes forward and takes her hands off the steering wheel only to switch on the flashing arrow when she turns. She is serious about driving.
Serious about everything, I think. A serious customer, Mrs Gosk would say, and that makes me even more scared. Serious people do serious things and don’t make mistakes. Mrs Gosk says that Katie Marzik is a serious customer because Katie always gets 100 percent on her spelling tests and solves all the math problems without any help. Even the ones that the rest of the class can’t solve with help.
If Katie Marzik wanted to be a kidnapper when she grew up, she would be a good one.
I bet Katie Marzik will drive just like Mrs Patterson someday, with her eyes on the road and her hands on the steering wheel and her mouth closed.
If Mrs Patterson is driving to her house, and I think she is, I am worried about what she has done to Max. How did she keep him stuffed away for the whole day while she was at school?
She could have tied Max up with rope, and that would be bad. Max does not like to be held still. He will not sleep in a sleeping bag because it is too tight. It squishes him, he says. And he says that turtleneck shirts choke his neck, even though they don’t but somehow do at the same time. He doesn’t go into closets even if the door is wide open and never pulls blankets over his head. He wears only seven pieces of clothing at one time, not counting shoes. Never more than seven, because more than seven is too much. ‘It’s too much!’ he yells. ‘Too much! Too much!’
This means that when it is very cold outside, Max’s mother can get Max to wear only underwear, pants, a shirt, a coat, two socks and a hat. Never any gloves or mittens. And even if she took away the socks or the hat and underwear, which I sometimes think she would if she could, he still would not wear the gloves or mittens because he does not like his hands all bundled up and squished inside a glove. So Max’s mom sews fur linings into all of his coat pockets and Max just puts his hands in his pockets to stay warm.
If Mrs Patterson tied Max up or locked him in a closet or inside a box for the day, that would be very, very bad.
I’m mad at myself for not thinking about this before, but I am glad that I did not think about it before, too, because it would have worried me even more.
Maybe Mrs Patterson has someone helping her. Maybe Mrs Patterson is married and her husband is stealing Max, too. Maybe it was his idea. Maybe Mrs Patterson told Mr Patterson that they would be better parents for Max than Max’s parents, so Mr Patterson has been pretending to be a dad by watching Max all day, which would be better than tying Max up or locking him in a cupboard, but still bad because Max does not like strangers or strange places or new foods or different bedtimes or anything that is different.
Mrs Patterson turns on her blinking arrow but there is no street ahead to turn on to. Just houses. One of these houses must be her house. Max is inside one of these houses. I can barely sit still now. I am finally almost there.
She drives past three driveways and then finally turns right. There is a long driveway in front of us. At the top of the hill is a blue house. It is small but it looks perfect. Like a picture from a book or a magazine. There are four big trees on her front lawn but not one single leaf on the grass even though there is not one single leaf in the trees either. No leaves sticking out of the gutters or bunched around the edges of the house, either. There are two baskets of flowers sitting on the stoop by the front door. The same kind that the parents sell every year at school. Tiny yellow flowers in baskets. Maybe Mrs Patterson bought them from the parents last week when they were on sale. Every tiny flower in the baskets looks perfect. Her driveway is perfect, too. No cracks or patches at all. There is a pond behind her house. A big pond, I think. I can see little bits of it around the corners of the house.
As she drives up the hill, she picks up a remote control and presses a button. The garage door opens. She drives into the garage and turns off the car. A second later I hear the garage door rattling and humming. It is closing.
I am inside Mrs Patterson’s house.
I hear Summer’s voice in my head again, making me promise to save Max.
‘I know,’ I say.
Mrs Patterson can’t hear me. Only Max can hear me, and soon he will hear me for real. He is somewhere in this house. He is close by, and I am going to find him. I can’t believe I have made it this far.
Mrs Patterson opens the door and climbs out of the car.
I step out of the car.
It is time to find my friend.
‘Time to save Max,’ I say.
I try to sound brave but I am not.
CHAPTER 33
I do not wait for Mrs Patterson. She stops in a little room just inside the garage to take off her coat and scarf. There are hooks for hanging things and a neat row of boots and shoes along the floor and a washer machine and dryer machine but no Max, so I walk past her into a living room.
There are chairs and a couch and a fireplace and a television hanging on the wall and a little table with books and photographs in silver frames, but there is no Max.
There is a hallway and staircase to my right so I turn and climb the stairs. I climb them two at a time. I do not need to hurry now because I am finally inside Mrs Patterson’s house, but I do anyway. I feel like every second counts.
There is a hallway at the top of the stairs and four doors. Three of the doors are open and one is closed.
The first door on the left is open. It is a bedroom, but it is not Mrs Patterson’s bedroom. There is no stuff in it. Just a bed and a dresser and a nightstand and a mirror. Furniture but no stuff. Nothing on the dresser. Nothing on the floor. No robe or jacket hanging from the hooks on the door. Too many pillows on the bed. A mountain of pillows. It is just like the bedroom that Max’s mom and dad have at the end of the upstairs hall. The guest bedroom, they call it, but Max’s mom and dad have never had a guest. Probably because Max would not like a sleep-over guest. It’s lik
e a pretend bedroom. A bedroom that you only look at but never use. Like a bedroom in a museum.
There is a closet next to the bed so I check it. I pass through the door into a dark space. I can’t see anything because it’s so dark so I whisper. ‘Max? Are you here?’
He is not. I know it before I even whisper his name.
I don’t know why I whisper his name since Max is the only person who can hear me. Max’s mom would say that I have watched too much television, and she is probably right.
The second door on the left is also open. It is a bathroom. This bathroom looks like a pretend room, too. A museum bathroom. There is no stuff in here, either. Nothing on the sink or floor. The towels are all hanging perfectly on the rods and the toilet seat is closed. It is a guest bathroom, I think, even though I have never heard of a guest bathroom before.
I walk down the hall to the door that is closed. If Max is upstairs, he would be in a room with a closed door, I think. I pass through the door. Max is not in the room. It is a baby’s room. There is a crib and a toy box and a rocking chair and a bureau with a basket of diapers on top. There are blocks on the floor and a little blue train engine and a little plastic farm with little people and little animals.
Max would not like the little plastic farm because the people do not look real. They are little pegs with faces, and he does not like those kinds of toys. He likes realistic toys. But the little farm animals and the little people are standing outside the little plastic barn, so the baby must like it.
Then I realize it. Mrs Patterson has a baby. I can’t believe it.
There is a closet in this room, too. A long closet with sliding doors, but one of the sliding doors is open. There are shelves stuffed with tiny shoes and tiny shirts and tiny pants and tiny balls of socks.
But no Max.
Mrs Patterson has a little baby. This does not seem right. Monsters are not supposed to have little babies.
I leave the baby’s room and walk into the room on the other side of the hallway. This is Mrs Patterson’s bedroom. I know it right away. There is a bed and a dresser and another television hanging on the wall. The bed is made but it is not piled with pillows and there is a bottle of water and a book on the headboard. There is a little table beside the bed with a clock and a pile of magazines and a pair of glasses. There is stuff in this room. Not like the guest bedroom.
There is a bathroom attached to the bedroom and a big closet without any doors. The closet is almost as big as Max’s bedroom. Lots of clothes and shoes and belts but still no Max.
I shout, ‘Max! Are you here? Can you hear me?’ Just in case I didn’t see him.
No one answers.
I leave Mrs Patterson’s bedroom. I stop in the hallway and look up to see if there is a trapdoor on the ceiling leading to an attic. Max’s mom and dad have a trapdoor with stairs attached, so when you pull a cord, the trapdoor opens and the stairs unfold and you can climb up into the attic. There is no trapdoor. No attic.
I go back down the stairs.
Instead of turning back into the living room, I turn left. There is a hallway to the left that leads to the kitchen and there is another living room across the hallway. Couches and cushy chairs and little tables and lamps and another fireplace and a shelf full of books, but no Max.
I walk through the living room and turn left into a dining room. A long table with chairs. A little table with more photographs and a tray of bottles. I turn left again and walk into the kitchen. Lots of kitchen stuff but no Max.
The first floor is a living room, another living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. That is it. No Max anywhere.
No Mrs Patterson.
I walk through the house again, faster this time. I find a bathroom that I did not see the first time because the door was closed and a coat closet was by the front door.
No Max.
Then I find the door that I am looking for in the hallway to the kitchen.
The basement door.
Mrs Patterson is in the basement with Max. I know it.
I pass through the door and onto stairs. The lights in the stairway and in the room at the bottom of the stairs are turned on. The room at the bottom of the stairs is carpeted and looks like another living room. There is a big, green table in the middle of the room with no chairs around it and a little net stretched across it. It looks like a tiny tennis court. Like a tennis court for dolls. There are couches and chairs and a television down here, too, but not Max.
And no Mrs Patterson.
There is an open door on the other side of the room. I pass through it into a room that looks like a normal basement. The floor is made of stone and there are big, dirty machines in the corner. One is a furnace, which heats the house, and one is a water pipe machine, but I do not know which is which. There is a table with hammers and saws and screwdrivers hanging on the wall above it, all just as neat as Mrs Patterson’s closet and lawn. The whole house is neat. The water bottle on the headboard was the only thing that looked out of place in the whole house.
That’s it. There are no closets or stairs down here or anything.
No Max. And no Mrs Patterson.
I lost her again. In her own house.
I run upstairs into the kitchen and shout Max’s name. I run to the garage to check if Mrs Patterson’s car is still in the garage. It is. The engine is making the ticking sound that cars sometimes make after they are turned off. Her coat is still on the hook next to the washer machine.
Maybe she is outside. I am being silly because I can’t lose a person inside her own house, but I still feel like I should panic. Something is wrong. I know it. Even if Mrs Patterson is outside, where is Max?
I hold my hand up in front of my face and look at it closely, checking to see if I can see through it.
It’s still solid. I am not disappearing. Max must be okay.
He is somewhere and he is okay. Mrs Patterson knows where Max is so I just need to find Mrs Patterson and I will eventually find Max.
I go outside. I pass through the sliding glass doors in the dining room and step out onto a deck at the back of the house. Steps lead from the deck to a small patch of grass and down to another set of steps and the pond. It is a long, narrow pond. I can see houses on the other side of the pond, and I can see the lights from other houses to the left and right of Mrs Patterson’s house through the trees. Mrs Patterson’s neighbors don’t live very close to Mrs Patterson, but I don’t think she would ever bring Max outside.
There is a dock in the water at the bottom of the steps and a little boat floating next to it. A paddle boat. Max’s mom tried to get Max to ride in one when we went to Boston last summer but he would not. He almost got stuck before his mom finally stopped asking him to give it a try. It was one of those times when I thought Max’s mom might cry because all the other little boys and girls were having fun in the boats with their parents but Max would not.
Mrs Patterson is not on the deck. There is a table with an umbrella and a bunch of chairs but no Max and no Mrs Patterson.
I jump off the side of the deck and run around the house. I run and look and run until I have gone all the way around the house and am back on the deck, staring out at the pond again. The sun is low in the sky so all the shadows are long. The sunlight makes sparkles on the water.
I shout Max’s name as loud as I have ever shouted anything in my life. I shout again and again and again.
The birds in trees answer my calls, but they are not answering me. Only Max can hear me, and Max is not answering.
I feel like I have lost my friend all over again.
CHAPTER 34
I go back inside the house. I must have missed a room or a closet or a cupboard. I stand in the dining room and shout Max’s name again. My voice does not echo because the world cannot hear my voice. Only Max can hear my voice. But if the world could hear my voice, it would repeat it now. It would echo again and again. That is how loud I yell Max’s name.
I walk through the downstairs again, sl
ower this time, making a loop from dining room to kitchen to living room and back to dining room. I stop in the living room with the television and look at the photographs in the silver frames. There is a baby boy in all three pictures. He is crawling in one picture and standing up in another, holding onto the side of a bathtub. He is smiling in all three pictures. He has brown hair and big eyes and a chubby face.
I still can’t believe that Mrs Patterson has a baby. A baby boy. I say it aloud to make it seem more real. ‘Mrs Patterson has a baby boy.’ I say it again because I still don’t believe it.
I wonder: Where is Mrs Patterson’s baby? At nursery school?
Then I have an idea. Maybe Mrs Patterson’s baby stays with a neighbor while she is at work. Maybe Mrs Patterson walked over to the neighbor’s house to pick her baby up.
That is it. I know it. Mrs Patterson left the house when I was upstairs or in the basement but she did not drive her car. She went to get her baby from a neighbor’s house or maybe from a nursery school down the street. Someplace close. Maybe she picks up her baby and walks home every day because fresh air is good for babies and she can ask him questions about his day even though he can’t answer because that is what mothers do.
I am feeling relieved now. I do not know where Max is, but as long as I follow Mrs Patterson, I will find him. As long as I do not lose her, everything will be fine. Maybe Max is in another house with Mrs Patterson’s husband. Maybe Mr and Mrs Patterson have a vacation house in Vermont like the one that Sadie McCormick likes to talk about whenever someone will listen, and maybe Max is there right now. Far away from where the police would look.
That would be a smart thing for Mrs Patterson to do.
Take Max so far away that the police would never find him.
Far away from the parents she doesn’t trust and the school she thinks he shouldn’t go to.
But that is okay. If I stay with Mrs Patterson, she will eventually lead me to Max. Even if he is in Vermont, I will find him.