“Care to offer up any details for your old mom?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We went to the movies, it was dumb, and then we went to dinner and hung out.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Did you talk?”
“About what?”
“About anything. Maureen said that Oliver doesn’t really talk to her.”
“We . . . talked,” I said, trying to figure out how much to tell my mom before she would tell Maureen. Oliver hadn’t said that I should keep any secrets, but I felt like it wasn’t my information to share. “Sometimes it’s just weird to talk to your parents, y’know? Maureen’s overreacting.”
My mom nodded slowly, the way she always does whenever she disagrees with me but doesn’t want to say so for fear that I’ll stop speaking to her altogether. “Well, I’m glad Oliver has you for a friend.”
“Oliver’s always had me for a friend,” I replied.
“Did you have fun?”
“Yeah, sure. He’s funny. He’s really smart, too.”
“Funny?” my mom repeated. “How so?”
“Spanish Inquisition,” I said to her, which made her smile. “I’m sorry, you’ve exceeded your maximum amount of questions today. Please try again tomorrow.”
She stood up and kissed my forehead. “Don’t stay up too late, okay? You need your rest.”
The jury was still out on that last statement, but I let it go. Sometimes it was just easier to pretend to agree. “’Kay,” I said.
After she left, I turned the music back on and reached to turn off my lamp, trying not to think about anything for a few minutes. That’s always impossible, though. It’s easier to stop breathing than it is to stop thinking. After Oliver vanished, I used to try to not think about him, but he just bobbed to the surface of my thoughts again and again, the boy who disappeared but never went away.
My hand was still on the lamp.
I was almost too scared to do it, to turn the light on and off. When we were kids, we used to flick our lights to signal each other after we had to go to bed. We tried working out a system but I usually got impatient and just opened the window and yelled across the air to him instead.
The first few nights after Oliver left, I used to sit in bed and turn the lamp’s plastic switch on and off again and again, my silent, desperate Morse code. At first, I thought that maybe he was just hiding in his room in a really expert game of hide-and-seek, but a few weeks later, my parents found me at three in the morning, my nightgown soaked in tears, my fingers red and raw from turning the switch so hard and so often.
After that, I usually left the light on at night. If Oliver came home, I wanted him to know that I was there.
Now I was sitting in the dark, looking out the window. The light was off in his room, just like before, but I could see movement in the hallway outside his door. Was Oliver there? I thought about the tall guy that had sheepishly climbed out of the cop car, had stood up on that surfboard, his brow furrowed both times. It was and it wasn’t him, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing about me.
The plastic knob hurt my fingers when I clicked it on and off.
Sunspots lit up my vision for a minute. My heart was pounding so hard that I was pretty sure I could see it moving my shirt. It’s okay if he doesn’t remember this, I thought. It’s okay if he doesn’t remember. It doesn’t mean anything.
Across our yards, Oliver’s light flicked on, then off a few seconds later, and I smiled into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A week later, the news crews came to interview Oliver. It was just for the local station, nothing national, Oprah wasn’t knocking down the door or anything. But the cameras are always the same size, hulking and unblinking, and they took over Oliver’s living room for the afternoon while Maureen hustled the little girls over to our house.
“I’ve been cleaning all morning,” she said, breathless as she practically shoved Molly through the front door. “Oops, sorry, sweetie. Mommy’s sorry.” She blew the hair out of her eyes, her bangs fluttering before landing in the exact same spot on her forehead. “They wanted to do it at home, you know, just make it look really . . . homey. Like, where he belongs.”
My mom and I, neither of us sure who she was talking to, both nodded. Molly frowned up at her mom, then leaned against my legs while Nora took hold of my hand. “Let’s plaaaaaay,” she whined. “Let’s play Interview.”
“Oliver wouldn’t play,” Molly murmured.
“He didn’t have time, sweetie,” Maureen said, then smoothed some stray hairs down. “Thank you so much for watching them. I didn’t want them around all the . . .” She waved her hands and mouthed the word media at my mom and me before wrinkling her nose.
“We’ve just had so many calls,” she continued, and I wondered if she had even taken a breath in between her words. “They all want to talk to me, to Oliver, find out how he’s doing. They keep calling the house and it’s just . . . you want the phone to ring for ten years and then one day it does and it doesn’t stop.”
Her voice was starting to sound dangerously wobbly, her eyes began to well up, and I quickly steered the girls toward the TV room. “Cartoons!” I said. “Don’t fight over the remote!”
They scampered off.
“I’m sorry,” Maureen said as soon as they were gone, fanning her fingers in front of her eyes again. “He’s not talking to me and I don’t know if he’s happy and I got him this shirt but it’s patterned and I remembered this morning that I read once that you shouldn’t wear patterns on TV and—”