D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

I was supposed to be in school that day. It was Monday, the last Monday, the beginning of the end of the school year. Half the kids were gone, and the others were watching videos and filmstrips, the teachers passing the time as much as the kids. I should have been there with my handful of friends, with Sallie and the rest, giggling, passing notes, our teeth practically chattering while the summer got its claws in us. Instead, I was watching Dad pace the room as he waited for the cops to show.

Once again, I had to give him credit. He stumbled through fatherhood, less with a plan than with a flashlight, but he did his best to hit the major milestones. Birthdays were good, if a bit underwhelming, especially compared to my friends’. Christmas was usually a nontraditional blast of junk food, scary movies, and as many toys as you could fit under a tree. I still don’t know how he pulled that off year after year. And even though we didn’t get the traditional tuck-in, kiss-on-the-forehead kind of good night, he still kept better tabs on us than I ever realized. Most nights, he was the first to bed, but, as I learned after Andy went missing, he would inevitably take a stroll through the house after we were asleep to check on us.

That was how he knew.

For the second time in a week, I stood just out of sight, spying as Dad talked to a pair of cops in the kitchen about Andy. Apparently we’d drawn the asshole card this go-round, as one of the cops, a big man with a buzz cut, rather stoically told Dad that that sort of thing was common among delinquents.

“Delinquents?” Dad asked incredulously.

“Yes, sir. I understand your son had a shoplifting incident just a week ago.”

“Yeah. He did something stupid, but I don’t think that qualifies as—”

“He has also been suspended four times from school for fighting, smoking, et cetera.”

Dad sighed, but it wasn’t a sound of exasperation – more of a plea to himself not to punch the cop in the face.

“What does any of that have to do with finding him?” he asked impatiently.

“Running away from home is also common among delinquents,” the cop added.

“Don’t fucking call my son a delinquent again.”

Just then the other cop, a shorter, round-faced fellow, spoke up. “We’ll do all we can, sir. You have to believe that.”

I listened to them talking, considering all of the potential scenarios running through their heads. The unhappy home lives of runaways that made them feel as if life on the road was a better option. Most came back soon, so they said, but this was a small town, and every cop knew to keep their eyes out. It was all rather bland and prepackaged, but I listened along just as well as Dad. Soon they were gone, and I crept around the corner, a mouse uncertain if the cats were asleep.

Had my father ever looked so pitiful? His head was slumped in his hands, his thinning hair a mess from where he had run his frustrated fingers through it. From the side, he looked like an old barn about to cave in. The only thing supporting him was the kitchen table itself. He heard me walk in, and I saw his brows perk up, but he refused to look at first.

“You okay, baby?” he asked, still not glancing my way.

Hearing his voice, so broken, so desperately sad, sent a shock of heartbreak racing through my entire body. All at once, I couldn’t even answer the question. Instead, I must have squeaked a little, some kind of pitiful excuse for a word. It was enough to turn those watery blue eyes my way.

“Oh, Jack,” he said, sitting up straight and spreading his arms. I spilled into him and went boneless as he scooped me up as easily as he had when I was a baby. He told me it was okay, and he let me cry until I was just about empty. Once or twice, I could feel his tears drip down, mixing with my own, the two of us all but spent.

“He’ll be back,” he told me at the end. “Don’t you worry. He’s just a little upset, I’m sure, but he’ll be back.” We talked a bit longer before I sneaked back to my room and slid the door closed. Maybe they were right.

Dad.

The cops.

That little voice inside me, the quiet part that always told me what I wanted to hear.

All of them were saying the same thing.

He’ll be back.

But I knew what they didn’t. I saw the truth that they were blind to. He hadn’t left. He hadn’t packed up and strolled out. He’d been taken. Stolen by that half-formed, horrid creature. There wasn’t any question in the matter. If my brother was ever to see our house again, it was up to me to make it happen.

I’m getting tired of writing this. I know that’s a weird thing to say, especially from the outside.

Just quit then.

That’s what I imagine most people would say, and my itching fingers tell me that would probably be for the best. They always itch when I’m doing something I shouldn’t be. When I fucked around with Gabe Thompson after that football game when we were fifteen, they itched so bad I couldn’t even feel what was happening below the waist. He didn’t like me. He had all but told me as much in class that year. He always, more so than just about anyone I knew, made it a special point to terrorize me in class. People like him made my high school years a nightmare.

“I’ll bet you don’t even shave your bush,” he told me once. “I mean, how would you hold the razor?”

I had ignored similar things for the better part of a month, but that particular sentiment was just too disgusting to ignore. I spit in his face, right in class, right in front of Mr. Pullman, and when he stepped over to split us up, Gabe started laughing. He’d broken me, made me give in to his awful impulses, and so he won.

I can still remember the grin on his face, even all those months later, when I bumped into him after a football game. It was homecoming. The stadium was less than half a mile away from the house, close enough to walk without much worry. Usually, a few friends tagged along with me, but on that night, I was going solo. I saw Gabe at the game, I always saw him, tracked him, kept an eye on him the way you might keep an eye on a rattlesnake that people let slither around their house. It was only really dangerous if you didn’t know where it was.

I had a handful of friends at that point, weirdoes like me, people pushed out of the inner circles, hiding in plain sight at the edge of the crowds. There were plenty of us, and we were never really alone, but we never really mattered either. That was fine. Life on the inside of that glass globe looked awful by comparison. I caught glimpses of Gabe and his friends, the preppy, well-kept pretty boys in Dockers and tucked-in polo shirts, a wall of stinking, high-school-boy cologne enveloping them wherever they went. One of them had procured a bottle of liquor, some cheap, plastic-bottle vodka from the look of it, and they were passing it around, taking swigs whenever they felt it was safe to. They kept it hidden under a plastic megaphone with our school logo on it, the Green Bronco.

When the game was over, the crowd began to break up, splitting into subgroups for rides home with parents, older siblings, anyone that would spare a seat. I hugged my friends and set out down the darkened stretch of road lined with cars on their way out. There were too many people, and I began to feel itchy in my fingers, the way I always did after too long in a crowd, so I sneaked off onto one of the quiet neighborhood paths that would lead me home. I crossed around the edge of the field house, and there he was, stumbling along towards me. His house was also within walking distance, just in the opposite direction, heading for the nice part of town. He saw me, and I glanced down to the ground.