Jiji made supper for us which really consisted of heating leftovers. Grandma spent that time sitting on the sofa, her shoulders hunched, worrying a crumpled tissue between her hands. None of us ate very much.
After dinner, I helped clean up and sat with my family for a while, then went back up to my room where I resumed my pacing and looking out the window. I was merely waiting for later when everyone else went to bed so I could steal outside and look around that house once more. The chance that Stevie was there was, no doubt, zero, but I felt pulled there, an invisible itch in my very soul I needed to scratch.
For appearances' sake, I brushed my teeth and changed for bed. However, my parents stayed up later than usual. I could hear the TV on downstairs with news on, droning in the background and their voices and Jiji's murmuring together. I kept myself occupied by preparing the room as I did every night, as if Stevie was here now.
After a while, Jiji brought me up a mug of cocoa and sat a little while with me while I sipped at it. His presence was comforting even though my insides felt all twisted up and charged with incredibly uncomfortable energy. When I'd finished the cocoa, he took the mug and told me to get him immediately if I needed anything, that he was going to stay the night downstairs.
Finally, I switched off the light in mine and Stevie's bedroom and left the door slightly ajar. Stevie was the one who preferred the partially open door so any lights that our parents had on or the sound of the TV set could drift in and comfort him with the evidence of our parents' presence in the house in spite of the fact he never spoke directly to them.
With nothing left to do but wait, I sank onto my bed. My mind played that afternoon, over and over. With my eyes closed, and listening to the blend of TV voices and my parents and Jiji in the distance, I saw the scene in my memory, like a neverending loop. The tinkling Dairy Whip theme song. The tension of running into the house to get the money before the truck had passed. The airplane overhead, so close the noise drowned out everything else until it had passed. Stevie's outburst about fire from the sky, eyes rolling back, then his balled fists as he begged me to get the money.
In it all, I strained to remember some sort of clue that would show me what could have happened in those brief moments I was in the house. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds altogether. And Stevie would never have gone anywhere on his own. In spite of his exception to being away from me because of the ice cream truck, he would have begun screaming his head off if I'd been out of his direct orbit for more than those few seconds.
Since the age of three, Stevie wouldn't let me out of his sight. We discovered within moments that I'd never be able to attend school. The first morning, as soon as I walked out the front door with Dad, backpack and all, the screaming started from inside the house. So Jiji homeschooled me until Stevie was old enough to start kindergarten and they enrolled him in the same school as me so he'd know I was close by. Stevie was placed in the class for special kids down the hall from me. I had to sit in his classroom with him for a while before I could go to my class. And then, before I even reached my own classroom, his screams reverberated through the hallways, sending me running back down there to calm him. As soon as I'd gotten him quiet and got into the hallway to go back to class, his screams sent me running back. The principal gently but firmly recommended we resume homeschooling while my parents searched for a longer-term solution.
We also had to be very careful what he was exposed to because if he attached to something, he had an obsession with it. After seeing one cartoon of Spiderman, Stevie loved him and had to be Spiderman every single year at Halloween, in addition to having Spiderman on clothes and bedding. Then, the first Halloween, Stevie fell in love with some colorful hard candy balls in plastic and that's when his ritual of picking one each morning began. If the bowl of them we had to keep out on the coffee table wasn't filled regularly, he'd start crying inconsolably until someone came running with the big bag of them and poured them into the bowl.
I must have exhausted myself searching my memory for hours and fallen asleep because when my eyes popped open next, the hall light was out. I could still hear the TV in the background. I heard crying and words, muffled by sobs but just audible, "My Stevie! My baby!" It was Mom. I almost ran out to see her but something stopped me, pulling my attention to the source of what had pulled me from sleep.
Glowing light shone through a corner of the window. Drawing closer, I heard a sound. A rumbling, grinding sort of noise. The light that had awoken me was coming from somewhere in the street, through the bedroom window. I thought it was the usual streetlamp that shone in under the half-drawn blind, but the lights moved around, like spotlights searching the night.
I pulled the blinds completely up and pressed my forehead to the glass, straining to see past the end of the fence that divided our patch of yard from the empty house next door. My view was frustratingly limited so I lifted the window a few inches. From what I could hear, a car was idling at the curb, just past the corner so that it was invisible except for the beams of light created by the headlights. I could no longer wait for my parents and grandparents to go to bed. I had to find a way to sneak past them. I started to turn around—
"What are you looking at, Mikey?"
I pulled in a breath. The familiar voice had sounded right behind me. I turned.
He was there, in the shadowy light of our bedroom. "Stevie!" I rushed over to him. "You're here!" I grabbed him into a hug. He stood stiff, arms at his sides, the way he always did when embraced. I didn't care. I closed my eyes and squeezed. "You're here, thank God." Now I was sobbing. He stood like a human-sized doll, thankfully not resisting. Now I knew why Mom was sobbing my brother's name. It had been a tearful reunion and now she'd sent him to his room to sleep. In my upset, I had obviously misperceived the passage of time. Finally, I released him and stood back, checking him over. "Where have you been? We've been worried sick. The police were searching for you! I thought I'd lost you." I swabbed at my wet cheeks.
Stevie rubbed his eyes. "Just around. I got lost but someone drove me home. I'm sorry I worried you."
"It's not your fault. Who drove you?"
"I don't remember."
My relief was so great, I willfully ignored his odd speech pattern and calm demeanor. For someone who'd been away for hours, he was surprisingly calm. Someone must have drugged him before he had a chance to scream for me. I switched on the light and looked into his eyes. The pupils were dilated. "Someone drugged you," I said.
"Drugged?" He blinked a few times.
"Yeah, like injected something into your arm or gave you a pill. So you wouldn't scream."
He was quiet a few more moments, as if my words were sinking into a mud pit in his head. Then, "I guess. I was drugged."
"Did you see them? What did they look like?"
Again, the blinking as if he wasn't exactly seeing me. "I don't remember, Mikey. My mind is weird. Everything is like a cloud in there. Sorry."
Through the window, the lights were ebbing, as was the sound of the car engine. Had whoever it was been the one who'd just dropped him off? I'd lost my chance to find out by running outside and when I asked Stevie, I got the same, I don't know, followed by the 'sorry,' again.
"It's okay. Just don't wander away again. It's been hell worrying about you."
"I won't, Mikey. I promise. Never again."
"Michael-chan?" Jiji's voice sounded from outside my room. He was always respectful and never just barged in the way my parents did sometimes. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, Jiji. Very. Stevie just came in from upstairs."
Jiji didn't answer right away. "Yes," he said after a few seconds. "That's right." He didn't open the door wider or peek in. "Get some rest now. It's been a hard day. You too, Stevie-chan. I'll be downstairs if you need me."
I went to the door. Jiji was watching me, his face creased in concern. The strain of the day showed in the deeper lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. His was the older, more weathered version of my mom's face. When I was younger I used to picture him as a samurai even though he kept his hair cropped short, a habit from his time in the army during World War Two. "Thank you, Jiji." A pang of guilt squeezed my chest. It was my fault he and Mom and everyone else had had that terrible day.
Jiji reached up and cupped my cheek briefly. Then he turned and went back down the hall, down the stairs.
I turned around, leaving the bedroom door cracked open as usual. Relief was still flooding my chest like a warm, tingly invisible river. "You should go to bed now, Stevie," I said. I went over to his chest of drawers to pull out his pajamas but he didn't want to change.
"I'm too tired. I'll change in the morning. Is that okay?" He climbed right into bed.
I pulled a face, looking at him. Stevie never went to sleep without his special PJs. He felt they made him into Spiderman and they did double duty as his Halloween costume each year. Mom had to buy larger ones each year to accommodate his growth, wash them with familiar-smelling detergent and sneak them into the drawer so he wouldn't know the difference. We learned that too from experience. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I'll wear them tomorrow."
"Okay." I put them away and got into my bed. Energy skittered up and down my back, up my arms and legs, like millions of tiny electric shocks. There was no way I'd fall back asleep any time soon. I sat up, watching him. I listened to the sound of his breathing and watched his comforter, a network of images from Spiderman comics, rise and fall gently while a tsunami of relief poured through me. Every bit of tension I'd been holding since the moment I went back outside after grabbing the ice cream money drained from me and I was finally able to lie back. I didn't think I'd ever be able to eat ice cream again without remembering the horrible feelings from today. I fell asleep, listening to his breathing. I remember thinking everything will be okay now.
How wrong I was. Having Stevie back with me that night would prove to be only the beginning of my banishment into Hell.