The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📕

being gouged into the doorframe, although the blade might be a little crooked. I place my unused plate back in the cupboard and wipe down the counters. I scrub the sink for no good reason. I return to the living room where I watch, with an odd churning sensation in my gut, for more news about Amy’s case, but each time they come back to the story, the information is the same: the investigation is being re-opened due to the emergence of new information which the police have reason to believe is credible at this time. That’s all they say. They give away nothing.

THE DAY THAT AMY WENT missing, that long, long ago Tuesday, Ricky came home late at night. Dusk had settled over the street hours earlier, while I stood at the living room window peering into the shadows. When Ricky got home, there were still two police cars parked in front of the Nessors’ house and our sink was filled with dirty dishes. I remember the dishes because even more than the police cars outside, those unwashed cups and plates signalled something menacing to me. Amy’s disappearance had crept right into our kitchen and laid its cold hands on my mom, preventing her from washing up like she did every night.

I wasn’t really worried at first, not even when the police were in our living room asking me questions, but when Mom left the dishes in the sink, I felt, for the first time, a penetrating tremor of fear.

I was in my bedroom, though still wide awake, when Ricky finally wandered in through the front door. Mom hadn’t told me to go to bed, but I couldn’t stand watching her pace back and forth across the living room, so I’d quietly put on my pyjamas and retreated to my room on my own. I had never stayed up this late before. It was as if the world had tilted to one side and everything around me was tipping over.

“What’s going on?” I heard Ricky say.

“Amy, the little girl down the street, is missing,” Mom said, her voice cracking. “Zoe saw her getting into a car and now —”

“Zoe saw?”

I came out of my room then. I stood at the end of the hall and looked at my brother. His hair was sticking up in places, as if he’d been running his hands through it. “She was walking in front of me,” I said. “She got in a car and now they can’t find her.” I turned to my mom. “She’s not back yet?”

Mom shook her head. “No sweetie, but everyone is looking very hard for her. It was good that you saw something. It gives them a clue, a very important clue, to work with.”

I turned back to my brother. “I had to tell the police what I saw. They came in the house and asked me questions.”

My brother sat down heavily. “Holy shit,” he said.

I HARDLY SLEPT THAT NIGHT, but when I walked into the kitchen for breakfast my brother looked even worse than I felt. His hand was twitching beside his bowl of cereal, and when he glanced in my direction, I could see that his eyes were bloodshot, narrowed to tiny slits. Mom was there, too, standing beside the counter with a mug in her hands. She was gazing out the window above the sink, staring into the backyard.

“Oh! There you are,” she said, turning in my direction. She gestured toward the table. “Have some cereal.”

I wanted to ask about Amy, to find out if she had come home while we were sleeping. Each time I woke in the night, which was often, I thought about her empty bed. I pictured her pyjamas and her stuffies and her pillow — all waiting for her to come back. “Did they find Amy?” I finally managed to whisper.

Mom poured milk over my cereal. “I haven’t heard anything yet,” she said. “But I’m going to walk you to school today, okay? And after school, I want you to wait for me. Don’t leave until I get there.”

I nodded, but my throat was too twisted to swallow the cornflakes in front of me. I stirred the spoon around and around, watching my cereal grow soggy. “I wouldn’t get in anyone’s car,” I said.

“I know,” Mom said. “But still.”

Ricky didn’t say anything. He sat like a zombie, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of cornflakes. “Were you with Darius last night?” I asked. I wanted to know and I didn’t. I had tossed the question out casually, but in the split-second before he answered, I felt the tiny fissure of suspicion in my mind widen.

“Yeah,” he said, milk dripping from his spoon back into the bowl. He shovelled in another mouthful. “We went to a movie.”

I kept stirring my cereal. The mushy flakes sank to the bottom of the bowl. A few drops of milk dribbled over the side and onto the table. I traced a line through them with my finger, smearing the milk into a thin white arc.

We didn’t have a movie theatre in Dunford, but there was one in Leeville, which was only twenty minutes away. I wanted to believe Ricky. I had to believe Ricky. He’d gone to the movies many times on a Tuesday because it was cheap night. And yet I couldn’t stop seeing Amy climb into the back seat of that blue car. Who else had been in the car? I struggled to recall specific details. Were there two shadowy figures in the front seat? And then, like a thought dropping from the sky, I remembered seeing a hat. A baseball cap. The driver was wearing a hat. I hadn’t told the police that. I hadn’t thought of it until now.

“The driver was wearing a hat,” I said suddenly.

“What?” Mom glanced over at me, setting her mug down forcefully on the counter.

“The car Amy went in. The driver was wearing a baseball hat. I think.”

“You think? Zoe, this could be important! The police said if