Maybe it was a good thing Savannah was still asleep. Now that I saw the RV through her eyes, it seemed cluttered and not all that clean. Some of it I couldn’t help, like the stains on the carpet and built-in chairs. But I could at least straighten up.
Trying to be as quiet as possible, I started putting away the clothes I had washed earlier in the kitchen sink, even though they weren’t quite dry. To make things neater, I put things into piles. Then I balled up a paper towel, wet it in the kitchen sink, and began to swipe at the cobwebs in the corners.
When I first realized that I was stuck here forever, stuck in a space I could cross in nine paces, I almost went crazy. The silence lay heavy in my ears. No one to talk to, nothing to look at. My friends, my family, the freedom to go anyplace in my car—all of it had been taken away as if it had never been. It was like living in a cave, with only my sounds to fill the space. I talked and sang to myself, but it didn’t make any difference. I was all alone, my thoughts pawing at me, day after day, night after night.
I slept as much as possible. It helped me escape the pain of my face. And it made it so that I could return to the outside world, even just in my dreams. Time folded in on itself and then stretched out endlessly. A day could be the same as an hour, or an hour the same as a day.
Some days I felt nothing but small. Others I felt enormous, the RV shrinking around me. I couldn’t turn without knocking over something. Whenever Sir came by, I would tremble with fear. But it was also a strange relief to know that I was not alone in the world.
When Savannah woke up, she would have to deal with the same reality I had so many months ago. But at least she wouldn’t have to deal with it alone.
DANIEL DIAZ
I had never been summoned out of class to go to the office before. What was even weirder was that once I got there, the school secretary said my dad needed to talk to me.
My dad and me had kind of an unspoken agreement. At school, we acted like I wasn’t his kid and he wasn’t my dad.
A dark-haired lady with lots of tattoos was sitting in the waiting area. I didn’t know her, but something about her was familiar. She seemed to be staring at me, but maybe that was because by now I was also looking at her, trying to place where I’d seen those blue eyes before.
I knocked once on the door to my dad’s small office, then pushed it open. Maybe no one else would have noticed, but his normal poker face was showing cracks. It was in the way his eyes turned down at the corners, how he pressed his lips together. Something was definitely wrong.
I stopped in the doorway. I wasn’t going to take another step until he told me what was up. “Did something happen to Mom?” My voice broke, but I didn’t care. “Or Orlando?” Orlando was my younger brother.
“What? No!” Dad sounded impatient. “They’re both fine.” He blew air through pursed lips. “Just come in and close the door behind you.”
I did, but I didn’t sit down. “What’s up?” I still couldn’t read the emotion leaking out of him. Was he mad? Scared? And what did it have to do with me? I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong.
“Just sit down, Daniel.” His tone was impatient. “Sit down and tell me what you did last night.”
“Last night? I went to kung fu, came home, took a shower, had dinner, ate some ice cream, did my homework. Then I played video games and went to bed.” Dad had been at a community meeting, so he hadn’t been home for much if any of that. Having a dad who was a cop meant he might not be there for a kung fu tournament, a birthday party, or even Christmas morning. Ironically, we saw each other more at school than we did at home.
When I was a little kid, it had been cool to have a cop for a dad. I could bring him on career day or even for show-and-tell. Looking at him in his uniform made me feel so much pride.
As I got older, it became slightly more complicated. I started noticing how cautious my dad was and how little he trusted anyone but himself. He was always grilling me and Orlando and even my mom. Whenever me or my brother made a new friend, the joke was that before we could even think of going over to visit, my dad had to know the full legal name and date of birth of everyone who lived in the house. All my friends were allowed to go to birthday parties or the mall by themselves years before me.
My dad had taught me a lot of things. Not to trust strangers. To always treat a gun like it was loaded. That most people didn’t understand what it was like to be a cop. (He ruined any TV show or movie with a cop in it, complaining loudly about how wrong they got everything.)
And because my dad was a cop, people expected me to be either a narc or a rebel—as if there weren’t any in-betweens.
He was the one who got me into kung fu, way back in third grade. He wanted me to know how to defend myself. But lately whenever I talked about Sifu Terry or even Bruce Lee, he looked impatient.
Now he said, “Tell me more about what happened at kung fu class.”
“It was just a regular class. We did grab counters.” The whole time I was talking, my anxiety was increasing. “Why? What’s wrong?”
He jerked his chin in the direction of the door. “That’s Savannah Taylor’s mom out there. She said Savannah never came home last night. And she’s not at school today.”
“What? But her mom picked her up after class.”
My dad’s thick eyebrows drew together. “The mom couldn’t have picked her up. She works swing shift. And Sifu Terry told her that you two closed up the dojo together.”
Did my dad think I was hiding Savannah someplace? “Are you asking if I know where Savannah is? Because I don’t.”
“I’m just trying to gather information. What made you think her mom was picking her up? Did you see Savannah getting into a car?”
“I asked if I could walk her home. She said her mom was waiting for her in the upper parking lot. Why would she lie to me about that?”
“Maybe she was meeting someone else up there. Does she have a friend she might be with?”
I thought of the times I had noticed Savannah at lunch, always with a book. “I haven’t seen her talking with anyone else at school. She just moved here last summer. All I know is that she was upset when she came to class. She looked like she’d been crying. And she said something about a fight with her mom’s boyfriend. I think his name is Tim.”
My dad leaned forward. “What did she say about him?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Something about how Tim said it was stupid for her to take kung fu.”
“Tim told Savannah’s mom about the argument. He said the last he saw of her was when she left for class.” Dad tapped his lips with his index finger. “Do you think she might have run away rather than go back home?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Why are you so sure?”
“If she was running away, why would she bother to go to kung fu first?”
My dad shrugged. “Teens can be impulsive. Maybe she started walking home and realized she didn’t want to face him.”
“She was upset,” I said slowly. “And she definitely didn’t like that Tim guy. She might even have been afraid of him.”
My dad considered this. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Do you think he was hurting her?” The specifics of hurting hung unspoken in the air.