They made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then went out back to the tree house. The twins had the coolest tree house ever. They had this humongous yard, and three years ago when they moved here their dad had built a tree house in two trees that had grown together. It even withstood a huge storm that took out lots of trees and telephone poles and they didn’t have power for two whole days. But the tree house was safe. They played cards and ate and talked about stuff. Ricky didn’t really talk about his parents, but his friends knew he was upset and didn’t make him talk about it. And what could he say? He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him or anything. He just wanted things to be normal.
After a while Mrs. Young called out, “It’s six o’clock! Ricky, are you staying for dinner?”
“Jeez, I’m late again,” Ricky said. He said good-bye to the twins and climbed out of the tree house and ran into the house to grab his backpack. “Sorry, Mrs. Young.”
“I’ll call your mom, let her know you’re on your way.”
“Thanks.” He hopped on his bike.
Being late was a bad habit according to his dad, but neither his mom nor dad had called, and Tori—who just got her license at the beginning of the summer and loved driving around—hadn’t come over to get him. It wasn’t that the Youngs lived all that far, it was less than two miles, but it was a steady slope uphill, so by the time he got home he was sweating.
He dumped his bike on the back porch and tried the door—it was locked.
Okay, that was weird. They never locked the back door. He knocked. “Hey! Open up!”
No one came to the door. Both his dad’s car and Tori’s car were out front, and his mom usually parked in the garage. It was really quiet—he couldn’t hear the television or the radio his mom listened to when she cooked. Or his dad watching baseball, if there was a game on.
He went in search of the key that was under a brick in the flower bed, but it took him jiggling ten bricks before he found it. He let himself in.
“Mom! Dad! I’m home!”
He walked around. No one was home. His mom’s purse wasn’t on the kitchen desk where she always left it. Tori’s and Becky’s backpacks were there, in the mudroom. But Becky had practice today, didn’t she? Maybe he was wrong about that and his sisters came home after school.
He looked in the garage. His mom’s car wasn’t there. It was an Escalade and large and comfortable, and whenever his family went out together they took that.
Ricky checked the chalkboard where they left messages for each other. It was blank. Where was everyone? Had they gone out to dinner without him? A volleyball game without telling him? His dad said no cell phone until he was twelve, but he needed a cell phone. So his parents could call him and tell him what was going on and where they were.
He checked the answering machine. There was a message from Mrs. Young that he was on his way home, but that was it. He deleted it. No one really called the house phone anymore, they usually called his dad’s cell or his mom’s cell. Both his sisters had cell phones, but he didn’t, which he didn’t think was fair. Joe and Ginny were getting cell phones for their tenth birthday, but his mom said just because his friends get something doesn’t mean he gets it. The girls had to wait until they were twelve, he could wait, too.
Whatever.
His mom often worked late meeting with clients and stuff. Maybe his dad went to the store. His mom hated to be interrupted when she was in a meeting, so he tried his dad’s cell. No answer.
Ricky grabbed a banana and went upstairs to his room and played some Mario on his DS but was bored and hungry and it was already after seven. Where was everyone?
He started to get a little weirded out. He bit his lip and thought about calling Mr. Young. Joe’s dad was scary in a good way. He used to be in the Army and now he was a mechanic. He looked scary, but he wasn’t mean and he liked Ricky, he was pretty sure. At least, he never said Joe and Ginny couldn’t come over and play and he always asked if Ricky wanted to stay for dinner or spend the night.
But Ricky didn’t want to act like a baby. He was almost ten. Right after Christmas was his birthday (which wasn’t really fair because it was Christmas and then two days later he got a birthday present, but they didn’t really have parties because it was so close to Christmas).
He walked through the house again and it felt so empty and he did get a little scared, so he called his mom’s cell phone. She didn’t answer, so he called his dad’s phone again. No answer. He was about to leave a message when he heard a car coming up the long driveway. Finally!
He hung up and looked out the window.
It wasn’t his mom. Two cars, both big and black, and Ricky almost picked up the phone to call the police, but he froze when he saw a bunch of men get out of the cars. Four men. Three were big, and one was short and had wide shoulders and a mustache that was too big for his face. One of the tall, skinny guys looked familiar, but Ricky didn’t know why. His mom worked with a lot of people and Ricky didn’t pay attention to them when they came over, mostly because he was always sent out of the room.
Did they have a meeting or something with his mom? The short one took keys from his pocket. They looked like his dad’s keys. That was superweird.
The men walked up to the porch and put the key in the dead bolt and Ricky didn’t have time to call the police. He didn’t know what was going on, but in the back of his head he screamed, Hide!
If he ran upstairs, they might hear.
Maybe they aren’t bad guys.
His mother always said his imagination was bigger than the Star Wars universe, which didn’t make sense to him, other than he got in trouble for exaggerations both at school and at home. But why did they have his dad’s keys? Who were they? Where were his parents? His sisters? Why were they coming into the house without knocking?
He decided to hide until they left, then he’d call the police. His dad had a gun safe in his closet, but Ricky didn’t know the combination. His dad said that when he was fourteen and went through a firearms safety class he could have the combo, but right now Ricky wished he had it. He knew how to shoot a rifle because they went out back, in the open space, and shot at bottles.
Hide!
He walked fast down the hall toward his mom’s office. She had a really neat office, a library she called it, with lots of books and it’s where she had meetings and worked at night. As he neared the door, he heard the front door open and one of the men said, “You two—go upstairs and grab suitcases, toiletries, whatever people travel with. Don’t make a mess. I need to find those damn deeds. This is fucked.”
What?
Ricky didn’t go into his mom’s office—there wasn’t a closet or anything to hide in—but he turned across from the office into the bathroom and closed the door, not all the way, because he didn’t want them to hear the latch. There was a linen closet in the bathroom and he crawled down, curling into a tight ball on the floor. He couldn’t get the door completely closed, but the light wasn’t on and unless someone was looking for him, he didn’t think anyone could see him.
Please please please.
He hugged his knees to stop shaking.
The short man who was doing most of the talking went directly to his mother’s office. Ricky couldn’t hear everything he said, but he caught enough to scare him.