Leo

LEO

NOW

Dad tells you you’ll sleep in your old room, ’cause where else would you sleep? Still, it’s weird having someone in that room. No one’s been in that room for as long as I can remember.

Dad has to show you where your room is because you don’t know.

You also don’t know my name. After half a day of assuming, it becomes evident you don’t know. Dad tells you I’m Leo. “You remember Leo, don’t you?” he asks, and you shake your head, which doesn’t surprise me, because I’m not so memorable.

“He was smaller the last time you saw him,” Dad says.

You don’t have any clothes other than the ones you’re wearing, which came from the hospital’s clothes closet. They were donated. I can tell by looking at them that they’re not new. You’re wearing someone else’s old clothes. But the only clothes in your closet are a kids’ size six, because that’s the size you wore when you were taken. They’re not going to fit. Dad is tall, so he says to me, “Leo. Find something in your closet for your sister to wear.”

I still can’t wrap my head around it, how when Dad says your sister,he’s talking about you. You’re here in the same room as me. You’re home. Or at least some version of you is home.

I go to my room. I find a shirt I don’t wear anymore. I find a pair of sweatpants. I bring them to you. “Here,” I say, holding them out.

You take them. You say back, “Thank you, sir.” I can’t even bring myself to laugh because it’s pitiful that you think you need to call me, your kid brother, sir. Talk about fucked up.

“Just call me Leo already. Old people are sirs.”

You stand in your doorway holding my shirt and pants in your hands. There are things I want to know. Questions I want to ask you, but can’t. Questions about Mom. I know the story the police came up with. What I want to know is if that’s really the way it went down.

Dad asks if you want him to tuck you in, after you get dressed. His eyes get wet when he does. They’re hopeful, desperate. I can hear it in his voice. He’s begging you to let him tuck you in. It’s been eleven years.

You stare back. You say nothing.

Dad stands down because of your silence. “If there’s anything you need,” he says, “just ask.” Dad is as good as a stranger to you. It would be pretty messed up for him to tuck you into bed. You’re also too old for snug as a bug in a rug. Dad stopped tucking me in when you disappeared. He was too busy crying himself to sleep to notice me.

I lock my door when I go to sleep. I don’t know what kind of person you are.

The lady cop said you escaped because you made your own shank. Except she didn’t say shank. She said an improvised weapon. You stabbed somebody with it. There was blood on your clothes when they found you. It was his.

How do I know you won’t stab me, too?

I try to sleep. I can’t get comfortable. I think I won’t sleep. But then, before I know it, I hear Dad calling for you, screaming out your name. I look at the clock. It’s two a.m. Somehow or other, I slept.

I scramble from bed. I unlock the door and stumble from the room. When I find him, he’s in the hall. He’s out of his mind. His breathing is heavy. He spins in circles in the dark hall as if you’re right there, two feet behind, but he can’t get there fast enough to see you.

I go for the light switch, turn it on. The bright lights hurt my eyes. I use a hand to shield them. Dad’s sweating. He’s got a hand pressed to his chest like it hurts. I’m not so sure he isn’t having a heart attack.

“She’s gone,” Dad says, coming to a stop in front of me. He’s wearing pajamas. Dad doesn’t usually wear pajamas. Usually he wears boxer shorts. But tonight he had the wherewithal to put something more appropriate on, because of you. Except that the pajamas are long-sleeved. He sweats because of them.

I ask, “What do you mean she’s gone?”

Dad grabs me by the shoulders. He gives me a shake and says, “She just is, Leo. She’s not here. She’s gone. Delilah is gone.”

I think he’s had a bad dream, something about you disappearing. It would be understandable. I go to your room to see for myself, but he’s right. You are gone. The blankets and sheets are pulled all the way up like no one’s ever slept in the bed. My clothes are on the floor. You didn’t put them on.

I check the window first. It’s closed and locked. Wherever you went, you didn’t go out that way. I think you ran away, but maybe your kidnapper came and got you. “The fucking reporters.” That’s what Dad’s muttering, ’cause anyone watching the news now knows what town we live in, what our house looks like, and they know that you’re here. A ten-year-old with internet access and a bike could find you.

I leave your room. I check the bathroom, and then Dad and I race downstairs to scout out places you might be. We come up empty. There’s no sign of you on the first floor. The front door and the back door are shut and locked.

Dad’s on the phone, calling the lady cop because he has her number programmed into his phone. It’s the middle of the night, but that doesn’t stop him. There are cops sitting right outside, but Dad doesn’t bother with them or with 911.

The lady cop answers immediately. “Carmen. It’s me. Josh,” he says, breathlessly. His informality makes me want to gag.

I leave. I go from window to window, trying to figure out which way you went. You have no shoes. So whichever way you went, you went barefoot. But that’s nothing new to you.

I make the rounds. The windows are shut. They’re all locked. You didn’t go out any of them. I head back toward the kitchen. I pass by the basement door on the way there. I don’t know why I look, except that I’m running out of options. I open the door. It’s black down the steps. The basement is unfinished because even though Mom hoped to finish it one day, it didn’t happen before she tried to slash her wrists. Tried being the operative word, because she failed. The cuts were shallow, not enough to bleed out. There were a whole bunch of them, but they only got the surface veins. Mom didn’t get down to either of the main arteries, the ones that would have killed her. According to statistics, most people who try to slash their wrists fail. Because it hurts.

That’s when Mom turned the knife around and stabbed herself in the abdomen. Easy and quick. According to coroner reports, she managed to get her own liver and bleed out. She had a nasty lump on the back of her head, too, from whacking something on the way down.

I turn on a light. The basement becomes yellow. I go down the steps and there you are, sprawled on the concrete floor.

At first glance, I think you’re dead.

But then I see that your chest is moving. You’re breathing. You’re not dead; you’re asleep.

You passed on a soft, warm bed to come sleep on the cold, hard basement floor in the dark. Because for eleven years, it’s all you’ve known. In some effed up way, you find comfort in it, being down here in our dark, dingy basement.

It doesn’t get much more fucked up than that.