I check my hand. I hold it in front of my face. I feel bad for doing it, but I remind myself that I am checking for Max’s sake even though I know I am checking for my own sake, too. More for my own sake. My hand is still solid. I am okay. I am not disappearing. And Max is okay. Somewhere Max is okay.
I decide to search the house again while I wait for Mrs Patterson to get back. I feel like a police person on television, looking for clues, and that is exactly what I am doing. Looking for clues that will lead me to Max.
I notice a closet in the kitchen that I did not notice before, and I look inside even though I know that Max is not inside. It would be a silly place to hide a boy, and besides, Max would have heard me calling if he was in this closet. It is dark inside but I can see the outline of cans and boxes in the gloom. It is a pantry.
I find more pictures of Mrs Patterson’s son, on the mantle over both fireplaces and on the little tables in the living room. I don’t find pictures of Mr Patterson, which seems strange at first, but then I realize that Mr Patterson is probably the one who is taking all the pictures. Max’s dad does the same thing. He doesn’t show up in many of Max’s photographs because he is always behind the camera instead of in front of it.
There is not a lot of stuff in Mrs Patterson’s house. No piles of magazines. No bowls of fruit. No toys on the floor or baskets of dirty clothes near the washer machine. No dishes in the sink or empty coffee cups on the kitchen table. The house reminds me of our house when Max’s parents were trying to sell it. Max was in kindergarten and Max’s mom and dad decided that they needed a bigger house in case Max ever got a brother or a sister, so they stuck a big sign in the front lawn, kind of like a price tag without any price, so people would know that the house was for sale. And a lady named Meg would bring strangers into the house when nobody was home so they could look around and decide if they wanted to buy it.
Max hated the thought of moving. He hates change, and switching houses would be a big change. He got stuck a few times when he found out that strangers were coming over, so eventually Max’s mom and dad stopped telling him that people were coming over.
I think that is why we never moved. They were worried that Max might get stuck for ever if we moved to a new house.
Every time the strangers came over to look at the house, Max’s parents would push all of the papers and magazines into a kitchen drawer and throw all the clothes on the floor into a closet. And they would make their bed, which they never do. They had to make it look like no one in the house ever forgot to put anything away so the strangers would see what the house looked like if perfect people lived inside.
That’s what Mrs Patterson’s house looks like. It looks ready for strangers to come over. But I don’t think that Mrs Patterson is trying to sell her house. I think that this is just how she is.
I check the upstairs and the basement again, looking for closets that I did not see the first time or any clues about where Max might be. I find more pictures of Mrs Patterson’s baby and a closet in the upstairs hallway. Max is not inside.
In the basement, I find three cupboards, but they are dark and dusty and too small for Max to be inside. I find boxes of nails and a pile of bricks and plastic containers full of clothes and a lawnmower but no Mrs Patterson and no Max.
It’s okay. Mrs Patterson will walk through the front door any minute. Even though I know that Max will not be with her, that will be okay. Just finding Mrs Patterson will be enough. She will lead me to Max.
I am standing in the dining room, looking out the sliding glass doors at the pond, when I hear the door finally open. The shadows from the trees are dipping into the pond now and the orange sparkles on the ripples of the water are almost gone. The sun is too low to sparkle any more today. I turn and walk into the kitchen, toward the hallway that leads to the front door, when I see that it was not the front door that I heard opening.
It was the basement door.
Mrs Patterson is walking through the basement door. She is coming into the kitchen through the basement door.
I was just in the basement a couple minutes ago, looking at the cupboards and finding boxes of nails. Mrs Patterson was not in the basement two minutes ago and now she is stepping through the doorway to the basement and closing the door behind her.
I am more scared than ever.
CHAPTER 35
My first thought is that Mrs Patterson is an imaginary friend and I did not realize it. Maybe she can pass through doors like me and somehow she came home and went into the basement without me hearing her.
I know right away that this is ridiculous.
But she must be something special, because somehow she was in the basement without me seeing her. Maybe she can make herself invisible or maybe she can shrink herself.
I know that this is ridiculous, too.
I watch as she opens the refrigerator and removes some chicken. She places a pan on the stove and begins cooking the chicken. While it sizzles, she starts making rice.
Chicken and rice. Max’s favorite meal. Max does not eat many things, but he always eats chicken and white rice. He likes foods that don’t have bright colors.
I want to go into the basement again and find the closet or staircase that I must have missed. Maybe Mrs Patterson has a basement under the basement. Maybe there is a door in the floor that I did not see because I don’t usually look for doors in the floor.
But I’m afraid to leave Mrs Patterson again. I will wait. She is making dinner for Max. I know it. I will follow her when she is done.
Mrs Patterson does not make a mess when she cooks. When she is finished with the cutting board, she rinses it and puts it in the dishwasher. When she is done pouring the rice into a glass bowl, she puts the box away in the pantry. Max’s mom would like Mrs Patterson if she had not stolen Max. They both like things neat. Max’s mom says, ‘Clean as you go.’ But Max’s dad still piles dishes in the sink and leaves them there overnight.
Mrs Patterson slides a red tray on the counter. She wipes it with a paper towel even though it looks clean. She puts two paper plates and two plastic forks and two paper cups on the tray.
Max likes to eat from paper plates and paper cups because he knows that they are clean. Max does not trust people or dishwashers to get his plates and forks and cups clean. Max’s mom and dad don’t always let Max eat from paper and plastic stuff, but sometimes they do, especially if Max’s mom is trying to get Max to try something new.
But how does Mrs Patterson know that Max likes paper plates and plastic forks? She has never come over for dinner. Then I realize that Mrs Patterson has been with Max for three days. She has learned that Max does not trust dishwashers.
Mrs Patterson puts rice and chicken on both plates and then pours apple juice into both cups.
Max’s favorite drink is apple juice.
She lifts the tray and heads down the stairs to the basement. I follow.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs Patterson turns left into the part of the basement with the carpeting and the green table with the net and the television.
There is a door under the carpet somewhere. I know it. Max is probably right underneath me. In a basement’s basement.
Then Mrs Patterson walks across the room, past the green table and to a wall with a painting of flowers hanging from it and a shelf stretching across the top. I wait for her to bend over to pull back the carpet but instead she reaches up and pushes a little piece of the shelf into the wall. It clicks and then a part of the wall moves. Mrs Patterson pushes it until there is space enough for her to enter. She does and then a second later the wall slides back and the shelf clicks again. It has popped back into place. The parts of the wall where the secret door and the wall are are invisible. There is wallpaper on the wall and the place where a tiny space between the wall and the door might be is hidden by the design in the wallpaper. It is camouflaged. Even though I know the door is there, I cannot see the outline of the door anymore. It is a super-secret door.
Max
is behind that super-secret door.
I walk across the room. I am finally going to see Max. I step into the door but I do not pass through. I bump into the door and fall backwards onto the floor. The door in the wall is impossible to see so I must have missed it. I move to the left and try again, walking slower this time in case I miss it again. I bump into the wall again. I try this three more times but bump into the wall each time.
There is a door here, but it is like the elevator doors at the hospital. When Max imagined me, he did not imagine super-secret-doors-that-look-like-walls were also doors, so I cannot pass through.
Max is on the other side of this door that is not a door. The only way I can get in is if Mrs Patterson opens the door again.
I must wait.
I sit on the green table and stare at the wall. I cannot step away and cannot daydream. When Mrs Patterson opens that door, there will be just enough space for her to exit, which means I have to squeeze into that space as soon as she is clear of it. If I am too slow, I will not be able to get through.
I wait.
I stare at the painting of the flowers, waiting for it to move. I try to only think about the door that is a wall but I start to wonder what it is like behind the wall. There must be a room behind the wall, and it must be big enough for Mrs Patterson and Max to eat dinner together. But it is underground and has no windows and is probably locked so Max must feel trapped, too. And that means that he might be stuck. Or maybe he was stuck but now he is unstuck.
I want to see Max but I am afraid to see what he looks like after three days behind a wall. Even if he is unstuck, he cannot be good.
I wait.
The wall finally moves. I jump off the edge of the table and step over to it. The wall opens and Mrs Patterson steps through the opening. She looks back after passing through, giving me plenty of time to pass through the opening.
I think she is looking back to make sure that Max is not trying to follow her, but I am wrong. I take one look at the room behind the wall and know that I am wrong.
Max is not trying to escape.
I cannot believe my eyes.
CHAPTER 36
The light is blinding. Maybe it is just because I have been standing in the dimly lit basement for a long time, waiting for the wall to move, but the room is brighter than any underground room I could have ever imagined.
As my eyes adjust to the light, I can see that the room is painted in yellow and green and red and blue. It reminds me of Mr Michaud’s kindergarten classroom, with his giant caterpillar crawling over the white board and his students’ finger-painting spread all over the walls. It reminds me of a box of crayons. The boxes with just eight or ten different colors inside. The room is an explosion of color.
There is a bed in the shape of a race car. It is painted red and gold. It even has a steering wheel sticking out of the headboard. There is a dresser with every drawer painted a different color. There is a door on the far side of the room with the word Boys written on it in red, squiggly letters. There is a desk with a tall pile of drawing paper and an even taller pile of graph paper, which is Max’s favorite kind of paper. Good for drawing maps and planning battles. There are model airplanes hanging from the ceiling on wires. There are toy soldiers and tanks and army trucks and airplanes everywhere. Snipers on a shelf over the bed. A line of tanks on top of a beanbag chair. Columns of soldiers marching across the center of the room. An airfield on the bed with anti-aircraft guns on the pillows surrounding it. A battle has taken place recently. I can tell by the way the soldiers and tanks are spaced out.
Green has defeated gray, I think. It doesn’t look like gray stood a chance.
The room is bigger than I thought. Much bigger. There are train tracks running all the way around the room, disappearing under the bed and popping out on the other side. I do not see a train. Probably parked underneath the bed.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of Star Wars figures standing on the dresser, and Star Wars spaceships on one side of the room, organized like Max would like them organized. The X-wing fighters need a runway to take off, so there are no other spaceships parked in front of them. The Millennium Falcon can fly straight up, so it is surrounded by TIE fighters and twin-pod cloud cars. There are stormtroopers and Cloud City troopers standing next to each spaceship, waiting for Max’s orders to launch.
I’ve never seen so much Star Wars stuff in one place except at the toy store. Neither has Max. He probably has the biggest collection of Star Wars stuff of anyone in his class, but this collection makes his collection at home look puny.
There are enough stormtroopers here to make a small army.
There are six X-wing fighters. Max has two, and even that is a lot.
There is a television hanging on the wall across from the bed and a pile of DVDs underneath it. A stack almost as tall as Max. It is so tall that it looks like it could fall at any second. There are three green helicopters parked on top of it with snipers guarding the perimeter. The DVD that the snipers are standing on is Starship Troopers. Max loves that movie.
There is a carpet on the floor. It is dark blue with stars and planets and moons everywhere. It is new and thick and I wish I could sink my toes into it like Max can. But my feet only touch the idea of the carpet, so they do not sink in. They stay on top.
There is a gumball machine by the bed.
The blue backpack from Mrs Patterson’s car is sitting on the bed. It is open. I can see Lego peeking out from underneath the flap.
Lego to keep Max engaged while he was in the back seat of the car. To distract him until she got him home.
And in the center of the room, there’s more Lego. Thousands of Lego in sizes and shapes that even I have never even seen before. There’s large Lego and small Lego and mechanical Lego, the kind that needs batteries and the kind that Max loves the most. There is more here than Max could ever dream of. It has been sorted into piles according to size and shape, and I know right away that Max has made those piles. They look like the kind of piles that Max makes. Lined up like the soldiers on the floor, all the same distance from one another.
And sitting in front of those piles like a Lego general, with his back to me, is Max.
I found him.
CHAPTER 37
I can’t believe it. I am standing in the same room as Max. I wait one more second before saying his name, just staring at him like his mom does at night when he is asleep after she has sneaked her kisses. I never understood why she just stares at him like that, but now I do.
I never want to stop staring.
I missed Max but I did not know how much I missed Max until now. Now I know what it feels like to miss someone so much that you can’t describe it. I would have to invent new words to describe it.
Finally, I say his name. ‘Max,’ I say. ‘I’m here.’
Max screams louder than I have ever heard him scream before.
His scream doesn’t last long. Just a couple seconds. But I am sure that Mrs Patterson will come running in any second to see what is wrong but then I realize that I could not hear Mrs Patterson and Max while I was waiting on the other side of the wall. And Max couldn’t hear me when I was screaming his name earlier.
I think this room is soundproof.
There are lots of soundproof rooms on television. Mostly in movies but sometimes in TV shows, too.
Max does not turn around to look at me as he screams, and this is a bad sign. It means he might get stuck. It means that he is getting stuck right now. I walk over to Max but I do not touch him. As his scream starts to fade, I say, ‘Max, I’m here.’ I say exactly the same thing that I said before he started to scream. I speak softly and quickly. I move as I speak so that I am standing in front of him, with his army of Lego piles between us. I can see that he has been building a submarine, and it looks like the propeller might actually move on its own when it is finished.
‘Max,’ I say again. ‘I’m here.’
Max is no longer screaming. He is breathing hard
now. Max’s mom calls this hyperventilating. It sounds like he has just finished running a thousand-mile race and now he is trying to catch his breath. Sometimes this will end with Max getting stuck.
I say again, ‘Max. I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.’
Touching Max would be the worst thing that I could do. Yelling at Max would be bad, too. It would be like pushing him into his inside stuck world. Instead, I speak softly and quickly again and again. I reach for him with my voice. It is like throwing him a rope and begging him to grab on. Sometimes it works and I can pull him out before he ends up stuck, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it is the only thing I know that helps.
And it works.
I can tell.
His breathing is slowing down, but his breathing would slow down even if he was getting stuck. I can tell by his eyes that he is not stuck. They see me. His eyes see my eyes. He is not disappearing. He is reappearing. Coming back to the world. His eyes smile at me and I know that he is back.
‘Budo,’ he says. He sounds happy, and this makes me happy.
‘Max,’ I say back.
I suddenly feel like Max’s mom. I want to leap over the piles of Lego and grab Max by the neck and squeeze him tight. But I cannot. Max is probably happy that the Lego piles are separating us. They let his eyes smile at me without him having to worry that I might touch him.
Max knows that I would normally never touch him, but he might think this is different. We have never been separated for three days.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, sitting down on the floor in front of Max, keeping the Lego between us.
‘Yes,’ Max says. ‘You scared me. I didn’t think I would see you anymore. I am building a submarine.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw.’
I don’t know what to say next. I try to think about the best thing to say. The thing that will save Max. I feel like I should be sneaky and try to find out how tricked he is, but then I think that I should just find out what is going on no matter what. This is serious business. Not lies about lost homework or throwing chicken nuggets in the cafeteria.