Part 1 (1/2)

The Leaving.

Tara Altebrando.

For Liz, who was taken too soon.

AVERY.

The lights hurt my eyes and Mommy is crying and not looking at me. I am on her hip, with Woof-Woof between us.

I am wearing my monkey pajamas.

I am supposed to be in bed.

But Mommy and then Daddy came into my room and turned on the light and said, ”Sweetie. We just need to do this thing. It's important. Then you can go right back to sleep.”

Daddy scooped me up and I grabbed Woof-Woof because he goes where I go, especially if it's someplace important.

Max isn't here.

Max isn't in his fireman pajamas.

Today was his first real day of kindergarten and he didn't come home.

I don't know why and I am afraid to ask because that is why Mommy has been crying.

It started at the bus stop.

The bus came, but Max wasn't on it.

I want to ask ”Is Max dead?” as Daddy puts me in my car seat.

But I don't want to because I don't know what dead means except that it's bad. Maybe kindergarten is bad, too? Maybe it takes you away and makes moms and dads sad.

The lights that hurt are on big cameras where we end up. In front of a big building that looks like it is made of gray LEGOs.

They make night feel like day.

They make me feel weird about my pajamas.

There are men talking into big microphones and I haven't seen my Minnie Mouse microphone in a while and it seems like my toys have started disappearing. Did Max take them with him?

Men are talking.

Like grown-ups with rules.

Then Daddy is right next to me and Mommy-with a microphone, lollipop-close to his mouth. Fishy camera eyes are pointed at us.

He is saying, ”Please, bring back our son. Bring all the children back, unharmed.”

A woman screams, ”My daughter said she was going on a trip, to the leaving . . . does anyone know what that means?”

And Mommy looks at me, like she's only just remembering that she's holding me, and I squeeze my thighs around her tight so that now I can lean toward the microphone, and the world gets quiet, so I say, ”I really want Max to come home.”

Mommy lets out a sound I have no word for and pulls my head into the s.p.a.ce between her head and her soft parts and pushes through all those shoulders and elbows and arms.

Woof-Woof is gone and I think about screaming.

Then I do.

My father says, ”Here,” and he has Woof-Woof.

I grab him and hug him and his brown ears smell like sleep and apple juice and my thumb that I suck and I say, ”Woof-Woof, I thought I lost you,” and he has these two eyes that are st.i.tched out of thread and they are wide apart and I know he's not real but for the first time ever, he looks so very sad.

So sad that it hurts to look at him.

I find Mommy's shoulder and find my thumb and close my eyes to make it all go away.

Scarlett

Like being ripped open, midnightmare. Breathless, in the center of a scream.

Her hands went to the knot on the blindfold at the back of her neck. It was tied tight. It hurt her fingers to undo it.

Then her eyes were freed.

Night.

Heat.

Palm trees.

”Where are we?” A girl.

”What's going on?” A boy.

She turned.

Saw the others.

Saw him. His name was . . . ? Something with an L?

He took off running after the van, screaming, ”Stop! Wait!”