She opens the trunk. The boxes that were stacked on top of the kitchen table are piled inside. She lifts a box from the trunk, turns, and walks across the aisle to the other side of the parking lot. She walks down the aisle past three cars and then stops at a van. A huge van. A bus, really. It’s one of those houses on wheels, I think. A house-van-bus thingy. Mrs Patterson reaches in her pocket and removes a key. She puts the key in a door and opens it. It’s like the door on Max’s school bus. It’s regular sized. Mrs Patterson climbs three steps and turns left into the house-van-bus thingy.
I follow.
There is a living room inside, right behind the driver’s seat. There is a couch and a cushy chair and a table that is attached to the floor so it won’t move around. There is a television hanging on the wall and a bunk bed over the couch. Mrs Patterson puts the box on the couch and turns around and exits. I follow her back to the car and watch as she removes a second box and brings it back to the bus. She puts the box beside the first and turns to leave again. I do not follow this time. I stay. She has six more boxes to bring over and I want to take a second to look at the rest of the bus.
I walk past the living room into a narrow hallway. There is a closed door to my right and a little kitchen to my left. There is a sink and a stove and a microwave oven and a refrigerator. I pass through the door to the right and am standing in a tiny bathroom with a sink and a toilet.
A bathroom inside the bus.
If Max’s school bus had a bathroom, he would never have to worry about bonus poops again.
Actually, I don’t think Max could ever poop on a school bus, even if it had a toilet.
I step back through the door and into the narrow hallway. There is another closed door at the end of the hallway. I look behind me and see Mrs Patterson dropping two more boxes onto the couch. Four all together now. Two or three more trips and then she’ll be done.
I step through the door at the end of the hallway. As I open my eyes, the first shiver of my life runs down my spine. I have heard this expression before but never understood it until now.
I cannot believe what I am seeing.
I am standing in a bedroom.
It is the same bedroom where Max is trapped right now.
It is smaller, and there are fewer lamps, and there are two oval-shaped windows on either side of the bus that are covered by curtains, but the walls are the same colors as Max’s room in Mrs Patterson’s basement and the bed is the same race-car bed with the same sheets and the same pillows and the same blankets. The same rug is covering the floor. And the space is filled with Lego and Star Wars toys and army men. Just as many as are in Max’s room in the basement. Maybe more. There is a television stuck to the wall and another PlayStation and another rack of DVDs just like in the room in Mrs Patterson’s basement. Even the DVDs are the same.
This is another room for Max. A room that can move.
I hear Mrs Patterson drop another box onto the couch. I turn to leave. I do not know if she is going to drive this bus or her car or take an airplane, but I need to stay with her no matter what. I would never find my way home from this airport.
As I pass back through the door, I notice the lock on it. A padlock with a latch.
Another shiver runs down my spine. My second ever.
Mrs Patterson moves the last three boxes from her car over to the bus and then she steps off the bus. I follow. She closes the door and locks it. She walks back to her car, climbs in and starts the engine. I take my spot in the back seat. She pulls out, singing the hammer song again as she weaves her way through the parking lot aisles to a set of gates at the other end of the parking lot.
She pulls up to a booth and hands a man inside her ticket.
‘Wrong lot?’ he asks when he looks down at her ticket.
‘No,’ Mrs Patterson says. ‘My sister asked me to check on her car and leave her a jacket. I think she asked me to leave the jacket just so she didn’t feel too silly about having me check on the car. She’s a little obsessive compulsive.’
The man in the booth laughs.
Mrs Patterson is a good liar. She is like an actress on a television show. She is playing a character instead of being herself. She is pretending to be a woman with a sister who is obsessive compulsive. She is good at it. Even I would believe her if I didn’t know that she is a Max stealer.
Mrs Patterson hands some money to the man in the booth and the gate in front of her car lifts up. She waves to the man as we drive away.
The clock on the dashboard reads 7.55.
I hope we are on our way to school.
CHAPTER 43
Max’s desk is still empty. He is the only student absent again today, and it makes his desk seem even emptier. Nothing has changed since I left yesterday, which feels like a million years ago. The police officer is still sitting by the front door. Mrs Gosk is still pretending to be Mrs Gosk. And Max’s desk is still empty.
I would sit at Max’s desk if I could, but his chair is pushed in, leaving me no room to sit. Instead, I sit in a chair at the back of the room and listen to Mrs Gosk talk about fractions. Even without her spring, she is the best teacher in the world. She can make kids smile and laugh even while learning about something as boring as numerators and denominators.
I wonder if Mrs Patterson would have stolen Max if Mrs Gosk had been her teacher.
I don’t think so.
I think Mrs Gosk could even turn Tommy Swinden into a nice boy with enough time.
When Mrs Patterson went to the Learning Center, I came here, to Mrs Gosk’s classroom, to listen to her teach for a while. I cannot take my mind off how I left Max, but I was hoping that listening to Mrs Gosk might make me feel better.
It has. A little.
When the kids leave the classroom for recess, I follow Mrs Gosk to the teachers’ room. If I want to know what is going on, this is where I will find it. Mrs Gosk has lunch every day with Miss Daggerty and Mrs Sera, and they always talk about good stuff.
There are two kinds of teachers in the world: there are teachers who play school and teachers who teach school, and Miss Daggerty and Mrs Sera and especially Mrs Gosk are the kind of teachers that teach school. They talk to kids in their regular voices and say things that they would say in their own living rooms. Their bulletin boards are always a little raggedy and their desks are always a little messy and their libraries are always a little out of order, but kids love them because they talk about real things with real voices and they always tell the truth. This is why Max loves Mrs Gosk. She never pretends to be a teacher. She is just herself, and it makes Max relax a little. There is nothing to figure out.
Even Max can tell if a teacher is playing school. Teachers who play school are bad at making kids behave. They like the boys and girls who sit in their seats and listen carefully and never shoot elastics across the room. They want all the boys and girls to be just like they were in school, all neat and perfect and sweet. Teachers who play school don’t know what to do with kids like Max or Tommy Swinden or Annie Brinker, who once threw up on Mrs Wilson’s desk on purpose. They don’t understand kids like Max because they would rather be teaching their dolls than real kids. They use stickers and charts and cards to make kids behave, but none of that junk ever really works.
Mrs Gosk and Miss Daggery and Mrs Sera love kids like Max and Annie and even Tommy Swinden. They make kids want to behave, and they are not afraid to tell kids when they stink. And that makes them the best teachers to sit with at lunchtime.
Mrs Gosk is eating something called a sardine sandwich. I don’t know what a sardine is, but I don’t think it is good. Miss Daggerty crinkles her nose when Mrs Gosk tells her what she is eating.
‘Have the police talked to you again?’ Miss Daggerty asks. She lowers her voice a little when she speaks.
There are six other teachers in the room. A bunch of them are teachers who play school.
‘No,’ Mrs Gosk says, not lowering her voice. ‘But they’d better do their goddam jobs and find M
ax.’
I have never seen Mrs Gosk cry, and I have seen a lot of teachers cry. Man teachers, even, but especially the woman teachers. She is not crying now, but when she said those words, she sounded angry enough to cry. Not sad tears but mad tears.
‘It has to be one of the parents,’ Miss Daggerty says. ‘Or one of his relatives. Kids just don’t disappear.’
‘I just can’t believe that it’s been … what? Four days?’ Mrs Sera says.
‘Five,’ Mrs Gosk says. ‘Five goddam days.’
‘I haven’t seen Karen all day,’ Mrs Sera says.
Karen is Mrs Palmer’s first name. Teachers who play school call her Mrs Palmer, but teachers like Mrs Sera just call her Karen.
‘She’s been locked in her office all morning,’ Miss Daggerty says.
‘I hope she’s doing something to find Max and not just hiding from everyone,’ Mrs Sera says.
‘She’d better be working to the death and the dirt to find him,’ Mrs Gosk says. There are tears in her eyes. Her cheeks are red. She stands up and leaves her sardine sandwich behind. The room gets quiet as she leaves.
I leave, too.
Mrs Patterson has a two o’clock meeting with Mrs Palmer. I know this because she asked to meet with Mrs Palmer when she came into school today but the secretary lady said that Mrs Palmer was busy until two. So Mrs Patterson said, ‘Fine,’ in that way that means it isn’t fine.
I want to be in the room for that meeting.
I still have an hour before the meeting and Mrs Gosk’s students are in gym class. Mrs Gosk is sitting at her desk, correcting papers, so I go down to Mrs Kropp’s room to see Puppy. I haven’t seen him in five days, which is a lot of days in the imaginary friend world.
That’s a lifetime for a lot of imaginary friends.
Puppy is curled up into a ball beside Piper. Piper is reading a book. Her mouth moves but she doesn’t say the word. First graders read like this a lot. Max used to read like this.
‘Puppy,’ I say.
I whisper the words at first. It’s a habit. Not my habit but everyone else’s habit, so I do it, too. Then I realize how silly it is to whisper in a room where only one person can hear me, so I speak in a normal voice.
‘Puppy! It’s me, Budo.’
Puppy doesn’t move.
‘Puppy!’ I shout, and this time he jumps up and looks around.
‘You scared me,’ he says, noticing me on the other side of the room.
‘You sleep, too?’ I ask.
‘Of course I do. Why?’
‘Graham once told me that she slept, but I never sleep.’
‘Really?’ Puppy says, walking over to me on the other side of the room.
The kids are silently reading and Mrs Kropp is reading with four kids at a side table. These are only first graders but they all read without fooling around or staring out the windows because Mrs Kropp doesn’t play school either. She teaches.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I never sleep. I don’t even know how.’
‘I sleep more than I am awake,’ Puppy says.
I wonder if I could go to sleep if I wanted to. I never feel tired, but maybe if I lay down on a pillow and closed my eyes long enough, I would fall asleep. Then I wonder if all that sleeping might make it easier to forget how easy it is for us to stop existing.
For a second, I find myself jealous of Puppy.
‘Have you heard anything about Max?’ I ask.
‘Is he back?’ Puppy asks.
‘No, he was stolen. Remember?’
‘I know,’ Puppy says. ‘But I thought that maybe he was back.’
‘You haven’t heard anything about it?’
‘No,’ Puppy says. ‘Did you find him?’
‘I have to go,’ I say.
It’s not true, but I forgot how annoying it is to talk to Puppy. Not only is he dumb, but he thinks that the whole world is like one of those picture books that Mrs Kropp reads to her first graders. The books where everyone learns a lesson and nobody ever dies. Puppy thinks that the world is one big, happy ending. I know it’s not his fault, but it still annoys me. I can’t help it.
I turn to leave the room.
‘Maybe Wooly knows,’ Puppy says.
‘Wooly?’
‘Yeah. Wooly.’
Puppy doesn’t have any hands, so instead of pointing he nods his head in the direction of the coatroom. Standing against the far wall is a paper doll. He is about as tall as my waist, and at first I think it is one of those body tracings that Max refused to do in kindergarten when the kids were told to lie down on big sheets of paper and trace one another.
Max’s teacher tried to trace him and Max got stuck.
But when I look closer, I see the paper doll’s eyes blink. Then he nods his head left and right, like he is trying to say hello without using his hands.
‘Wooly?’ I ask Puppy again.
‘Yes. Wooly.’
‘How long has he been here?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ Puppy says. ‘A little while.’
I walk over to the coatroom to where Wooly still seems to be hanging on the wall.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m Budo.’
‘I’m Wooly,’ the paper doll says.
He has two arms and two legs but not much body, and he looks like he was cut out in a hurry. Imagined in a hurry, I remind myself. His edges are all jagged and uneven, and he has creases all over his body from where it looks like he was folded up a million times in a million different ways.
‘How long have you been here?’ I ask.
‘In this room?’ he asks. ‘Or in the whole wide world?’
I smile. He is already smarter than Puppy.
‘World,’ I say.
‘Since last year,’ Wooly says. ‘At the end of kindergarten. But I don’t come to school very much. Kayla used to keep me at home or folded up inside her backpack, but she has been taking me out for a bunch of days now. Maybe a month.’
‘Which one is Kayla?’ I ask.
Wooly reaches out to point, but as he does so his whole body curls over and slides to the floor, face down, in a rustle of paper.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, unsure what to do.
‘Yes,’ Wooly says, using his arms and legs to flip himself on his back so he is looking up at me. ‘This happens a lot.’
He is smiling. He doesn’t have a real mouth like me but just a line that opens and closes and changes shape. But the edges are curled up, so I can tell that it’s a smile.
I smile back. ‘Can you stand up?’ I ask.
‘Sure,’ Wooly says.
I watch as Wooly curls the middle of his body up and then down like an inch worm, pushing himself back against the wall until his head is touching it. Then he curls the middle of his body again, pushing his head against the wall and sliding it up. He does this twice more, reaching out and grabbing the edge of a small bookshelf as he does so and pulling himself up while the middle of his body pushes. When he is finished, he is standing again, but really he is just leaning against the wall.
‘That’s not easy,’ I say.
‘No. I can get around okay by scooting on my back or my belly, but climbing up the wall is hard. If there isn’t something to grab onto, it’s impossible.’
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘It’s all right,’ Wooly says. ‘Last week I met a little boy in the shape of a popsicle stick with no arms and no legs. Just a stick. Jason brought him to school, but when Mrs Kropp let him try the new computer game first, he threw the popsicle stick boy on his desk and just forgot about him. I stood here against the wall and watched him just fade away and disappear. One minute he was here and the next minute he was gone. Have you ever seen an imaginary friend disappear?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘I cried,’ Wooly says. ‘I didn’t even know him but I cried. So did the popsicle stick boy. He cried until he was gone.’
‘I would’ve cried, too,’ I say.
We are both quiet for a moment. I try to imagine
what it must have been like to be that popsicle stick boy.
I decide that I like Wooly a lot.
‘Why is Kayla bringing you to school now?’ I ask.
I know that when a kid starts taking an imaginary friend to new places, it usually means something bad has happened.
‘Her dad doesn’t live with her anymore. He hit her mom before he left. Right at the dinner table. Right on the face. Then she threw her food in his face and they started yelling at each other. Really loud. Kayla cried and cried, and then she started bringing me to school.’
‘Sorry,’ I say again.
‘No,’ Wooly says. ‘Be sorry for Kayla. I like coming to school. I think it means that I won’t end up like the popsicle stick boy for a while. She is always coming over to the drinking fountain to get a drink, but really she’s just checking to make sure I am here. That’s why I’m not stuffed in her backpack anymore. I think it would be a lot easier to forget about me if she still had me stuffed inside that backpack. So this is good.’
I smile. Wooly is smart. Very smart.
‘I was wondering if you heard anything about a boy named Max,’ I say. ‘He disappeared last week.’
‘He ran away. Right?’
‘What did you hear?’ I ask.
‘Mrs Kropp had lunch in here with two other ladies and they were talking about it. Mrs Kropp said that he ran away.’
‘What did the other ladies say?’ I ask.
‘One of the ladies said he was probably kidnapped by someone who knew him. She said that kidnapped kids are always kidnapped by people they know. She said that Max was too stupid to run away and hide for so long without being found.’
‘He’s not stupid,’ I say. I am surprised by how angry I sound.
‘I didn’t say it. The lady did.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. Anyways, she’s right about him being kidnapped. Mrs Patterson stole Max.’
‘Who is Mrs Patterson?’ Wooly asks.
‘She is Max’s teacher.’
‘A teacher?’ Wooly sounds as if he cannot believe it. I feel like I finally have someone on my side. ‘Did you tell anyone?’ he asks.