Saturday, July 16, 1994

Saturday, July 16, 1994

12:47 a.m.

Andy wakes from a fitful, restless slumber feeling like he hasn't slept at all. The events of earlier in the night keep marching through his mind, as potent a reminder as the blades of grass still stuck to the soles of his feet.

That grass had felt cool between his toes as he walked toward the hedge rising between his family's yard and the one belonging to the Marshes.

A yard he'd started watching after his mother sent him up to bed.

And a yard he visited once she herself had retired for the night.

Andy was allowed to stay up past his bedtime because his mother knows how left out he's been feeling all summer. There are no kids his age on Hemlock Circle, forcing Andy to spend these endless school-free days playing by himself as Billy gets to roam anywhere he wants with Ethan.

But an hour of extra television isn't enough for Andy. He wants to be in the thick of things like his brother. That Billy never lets him tag along—or even tells him about what he's been doing—feels unfair to Andy. He wants to experience things, too, even if it's just vicariously. So if he couldn't go camping, he could at least enjoy watching Billy do it.

Thanks to the location of his bedroom—on a corner of the second floor, with one window facing the woods and the other offering a sidelong view of the Marshes' yard—he could see Ethan's orange tent and the way it glowed like a single flame when the lantern inside it was lit. He could even see the silhouettes of the two boys inside, blurry and indistinct.

Watching them, Andy imagined what they were doing, what they were talking about, what it was like to be older and have a best friend. He thought about these things long after the tent went dark. And when it began to glow again—an unexpected triangle of light in the July night—his curiosity was too piqued to resist.

So he snuck outside and crossed through the hedge from one lawn to another. Andy didn't plan to be there long. Even though his father was away and his mother asleep, he knew he could get in big trouble if he were caught outside this late. He simply wanted a glimpse of Billy's life. Ethan's, too. The life of any boy older than him felt both huge and limitless.

But as he tiptoed closer to the tent, Andy started to suspect he was wrong about that. Because Billy and Ethan were arguing, and their voices sounded small and scared. Especially Ethan's, as he said things that shocked Andy.

Bullshit.

Weirdo.

Freak.

It wasn't the words themselves that were shocking. Even at age seven, Andy's heard plenty of curse words. It was the way Ethan said them that rattled him. There was a meanness to them that Andy had never associated with Ethan before. And he didn't like it one bit. Especially the last part.

"If you like ghosts so much, why don't you just die and become one?"

As he turned away from the tent and began to run toward home, Andy heard his brother's voice, not knowing it would be for the last time.

"Hakuna matata, dude," Billy said.

No worries.

But Andy can't help but worry as he tosses and turns in his bed. Is this what being older is like? Is this how best friends talk to each other? Above all, did Ethan really mean what he said?

That last question lingers in his mind as he falls asleep, and will remain with him for a very long time. It will be there in the morning, when his parents sit him down and tell him that Billy has been taken. It will be there when detectives with interchangeable names and faces and badges ask him if he saw anything suspicious that night, anything at all.

Andy will remain silent about what he heard Ethan say because he's been told by everyone that Billy had been taken, most likely by a stranger who grabbed him after slashing the tent.

It will be years before Andy begins to doubt this theory, and years more until he forms one of his own. By then his father will be dead, his mother will be institutionalized, and Andy Barringer, long past the age his brother got to reach, will have no one left to tell it to.