Susan Taylor Chehak

PROLOGUE

Here is a boy alone, he's following his shadow through the snow, along the moonlit streets of Linwood at the first of the new year. Never to be seen alive again, soon he'll be among the missing, considered lost, assumed to have been taken, until spring, after the snow has melted, when his body is found, curled in on itself in the crease of a sodden gully at the base of Hollow Hill. Five miles from his home.

His family won't even know he's gone until tomorrow afternoon, when the school calls to inquire, Where is Peter? Again. Why isn't he in class? Again.

And this time they're going to have to take some action against the parents or against the boy, it won't be clear just which. A habitual truant, he is. A recurrent runaway, this one. A problem kid, though he's sweet enough when he wants to be. He's restless, the way boys are sometimes. Fidgety, unpredictable. But healthy. No medical problems that anybody knows about. Or mentions, anyway. He isn't stupid, but he's not smart either. On the lower edge of the middle of his class, he has trouble with numbers, seems mystified by words, has difficulty paying attention, can't sit still, finds it hard to focus, spends time in detention, spends time in the office, has sick days and missing days – but there are so many students in the school, how can anyone keep track of all of them, really?

The administration does its best, the teachers do their best, the principal – a frantic woman whose birdlike features inspire neither calm nor confidence – the counselors, the advisors, the medical staff, security, janitors, and cafeteria workers. All of them seem well-intentioned. They do what they can, and it's going to be hard to know who to blame for what will happen to this boy. Because it's up to the children, too, isn't it? And their parents. To show up, to follow through.
Calls have already been made. Conferences have been scheduled. Messages left, reports sent, notes – green slips and blue slips and red slips of alarm. A file was built. What more could anybody do?

Others who know the boy will tell the police and the reporters that he was quiet, he kept to himself, he didn't seem to cause trouble, he seemed polite, he was a loner, he didn't have many friends. He loved his dog. He had a paper route. He had been seen shoveling the sidewalk. He rode a bicycle in summer. Took the bus in winter. He had green eyes. Brown hair. He was 10 years old, would turn 11 in the fall. Four feet, seven inches. Seventy-eight pounds. A dimple in his cheek. A birthmark on his thigh.

He lived with his mother and father on Fairview Court at the far edge of the Elsewhere development, Tract 12, on a cul de sac with eight other houses, three on each side of the street and three more shouldering the circle at its end, with his at 1205, in the middle, on the left, between two vacant houses and across the way from another. Fairview Court, one of the few that are still populated. In Elsewhere, where the newly paved streets radiate from the center like spokes on a wheel, or the twinkle of a star.

His father has managed to hold onto his job at the cereal plant, taking swing shifts and overtime whenever he can, and his mother is a clerk at the courthouse during the week, a cashier at the Kum & Go on Saturday and Sunday nights. But that's only temporary. Anything to keep the house. He has no siblings. His grandparents live in Minnesota and Wisconsin, respectively, and are all of them housebound themselves. Diabetes. Emphysema. Arthritis and arrhythmia and obesity.

No boyfriends for the mom or girlfriends for the dad. Everyone seems to be on the up and up, though the dad does like to go to the Brown Derby for a beer or two now and then, nothing suspicious about that. And the mom has a night out with her co-workers every once in a while, too. Nothing wrong with that, either. These are good people. They work hard. They love their boy. Don't they?

Where are you headed, son?

Nowhere.

Eventually someone will step forward to say he saw him. Spoke to him. A kid like that, out at night, in the cold, all by himself. Walking, in a plaid wool coat too big for him and a fur hat, blue snowboots. You would notice a kid like that. You would stop and talk to him. Ask him if he was okay. Did he need a ride? Where were his parents?

But he'd been taught, right. All the kids were taught. It was a part of the curriculum. Don't talk to strangers. Don't get in the car. Don't take the candy, don't agree to help him find his dog. Scream and run. Cause a ruckus. Don't be shy.

The window sliding down. The man behind the wheel.

Where you headed, son?

Nowhere.

This was on First Street, all the way over by 8th Avenue. A long way from Fairview Court. Miles out of Elsewhere. He was headed for the river. He ducked into shadow, slipped under the barricade, was seen darting into the shelter of the shadows of the saints, crumbling on Bohemie Bridge, damaged by the flood.

At least he knew enough to take the longer way, to avoid the ruined chaos of downtown.

Halfway across the bridge he would have seen the lights of Nowhere. Warm, inviting, he was drawn to them, like moth to flame, like ice is lured by fire. This, to a boy, would seem a magic place, a wonderland, a carnival, a circus. Filled with life and light, music, laughter, love. There was none of the cold hard dark silence of Elsewhere here. Not that grim struggle for survival. Nor the crazy danger of downtown. Nor the guarded fear of the wealthier Wellington Heights across the boulevard, to the north.

The neon sign flashes: Nowhere. You are Now Here. If you lived in Nowhere, you would be home.

Maybe he left tracks. Maybe there were traces. In the snow. His boots. His prints. But by the time anyone noticed that Peter was gone, it was snowing again, and everything everywhere looked pretty much the same.
A boy alone. Last seen ducking under the barricade. A shadow among shadows, sneaking through the snow, across Bohemie Bridge.

Where are you headed, son?

Nowhere.