The game paused—I had to assume it was Glenn who’d done the pausing.
“That’s crazy!” he said. “Like, really crazy!”
“I know, right?” Aidan said. “If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it.”
“I had no idea you sleepwalked!”
“This was the first time. I think Mom and Dad are bolting all the doors now, just in case.”
Glenn whistled, and I could hear him lean back on the couch. “And here we were, looking all over town for you. But you weren’t even in town.”
“Nope. I wish I remembered walking that much, but I really don’t.”
“Dude, that sucks.”
“I know. Can we keep playing?”
“Sure.”
The game sounds resumed.
I wanted Aidan’s new story to make more sense. And as far as it stuck to the real world, it definitely made more sense than Aveinieu. Route 95 existed much more than any place that included unicorns and maddoxes. So that should have made it much more believable.
But the truth?
Aidan sounded more truthful when he was talking about Aveinieu. I obviously couldn’t see his face from behind the couch, but something was missing in his voice when he was explaining it to Glenn—Dad would have called it sincerity. Aidan didn’t sound like he really meant it.
I also didn’t believe that a sleepwalker could make it that far without leaving a trace. Or that he could spend six days wandering without his pajamas getting that messy. Or that no one spotted him at any point on his way home. Or that he could make it back into our locked house undetected. Or that he found a cabin without any electricity and without any neighbors so close to our suburb.
So what you’re saying is that you think your brother went into a fantasy world? I asked myself.
Well, maybe there’s another option. Maybe neither one of the stories is true.
“How are you guys doing?”
My concentration was broken by the sight of Dad in the doorway, checking up on us.
“Good,” Aidan said.
“Great,” Glenn seconded.
Then Dad looked at me behind the couch. “Lucas?”
“Just working.”
Glenn peered over the couch at me. “Dude! I forgot you were there!”
Dad laughed at that.
“Alright, guys,” he said, “you can’t spend the whole day playing video games. I’ll come back in an hour or so to break for lunch, and then Glenn’s going to have to go home so Aidan can get some of his homework done. If he gets enough done, you can come back tomorrow. Just call first, okay?”
“Will do,” Glenn said.
As soon as Dad left, I expected Aidan to tell me to leave. But he didn’t say anything, so I stayed. I waited for Glenn to ask him more, but he didn’t.
I guessed this meant he was satisfied with Aidan’s answer.
I wasn’t.
23
After lunch, Glenn went home and Aidan went to our room to do homework. Mom asked me if I wanted to go to the grocery store with her, and I said sure. For the past week, we’d been mostly eating meals people brought over. It was time to eat our own food again.
Usually we bumped into one or two people at the grocery store, but this time it was like a group text had gone out, and in every aisle there was someone else to hug Mom or smile at Mom or tell Mom how glad they were that Aidan was home. Mom was polite about all the attention but she didn’t really welcome it. I barely recognized anybody who was talking to us, and a few even looked at me and asked, “Is that him?”
No, I wanted to say, I’m the other one. But instead I left it to Mom to correct them.
“Let’s make this as quick as possible,” Mom told me during a clear minute. We zoomed through as best as we could—but had to stand there awkwardly while Minnie, the checkout person we always went to, cried and told us how her prayers had been answered.
Because I’d stayed at home most of the time Aidan had been gone, I hadn’t realized how involved everyone else felt.
And if I didn’t know it, I was pretty sure Aidan didn’t know it either.
* * *
—
Dinner that night was almost normal.
Mom cooked. Aidan set the table. Dad and I were in charge of dessert.
We didn’t talk about Aveinieu.
Instead, Mom talked a little about the people in the grocery store. And Dad talked about how everyone at work was also so glad. Aidan kept moving the food around on his plate, nearly choking when he tried Mom’s corn bread, which wasn’t great but wasn’t that bad. Dad changed the subject to the World Series, and what he expected to happen in the game that night. We talked about baseball the whole time, the only awkward moment coming when Dad mentioned an injury that had happened to one of the players while Aidan was away.
After the table was cleared and chores were finished, we watched the Series together in the den. I thought that anyone looking in our window would have seen a regular family watching a baseball game. Mom and Dad might have looked at Aidan a little more than usual. I might have as well, as if I continued to need proof he was back. But that was the only thing different, and that was barely noticeable.
For a while, I let myself believe it was all going to be okay.
24
Near midnight, bedroom darkness.
“What did you eat there?” I asked.
Aidan didn’t say, Stop asking me questions. I was in a cabin off the highway the whole time. He didn’t say, It’s none of your business. Or even, Let me go to sleep.
Instead, he said, “It was mostly things we grew. No meat, out of respect for the other creatures. It wasn’t like here, where there’s a hierarchy—you know, people in control and then animals on the farm to be eaten. Or pets. It’s not like that. So instead of, like, burgers, we had a lot of vegetables. Some of them were ones I knew, like corn. But others—I had no idea what I was eating. I just had to trust that I wasn’t allergic or something.”
“What was your favorite?”
“They have this food called gak—it’s like the most intense corn bread you’ve ever tasted. I could have eaten it by the pan. It could absorb any flavor, so if you put, like, a single raspberry in it, the whole thing would be raspberry flavored.”
“Not like the corn bread we had at dinner.”