Disappearance at Devil's Rock (34 page)

Josh: Mom didn't even wait for us to get inside before yelling at me that I was grounded. She'd tried to text me and I pulled my phone out to show her it was out of battery. She yelled some more and even yelled at Luis too. Then she stopped yelling and asked where was Tommy.

Luis: We had no real plan at that point, ma'am. Really we didn't. We walked back to his house, and we didn't talk about what we were going to do or say when we got back. We were hoping that Tommy would be there waiting for us. That's all I could think about because he'd run off and neither of us had seen Arnold. I know I was thinking and hoping that Arnold wasn't there and Tommy had freaked out, and that he'd go back to Josh's house once he didn't find Arnold. Then we got to the house and Josh's mom was yelling at us, and she asked where Tommy was. Josh said, “I don't know. He ran off into the woods.”

Murtagh: Can you repeat what you said to your mom?

Josh: Yes. “I don't know, Mom. He just ran into the woods.” I answered her question and I answered it truthfully. I didn't know what else to say or do. So that's all I said and it was the truth. Everything started happening from there. Then the next night after Tommy ran off, Arnold was outside my bedroom window again. I told Luis about it. Right away. That was enough for me and him right there.

Murtagh: What do you mean by “enough for me and him”?

Rooney: I told you I did not go back to the apartment and that I was at the park, in the quarry caves. My caves. I was hungry and thirsty but I didn't care, because the caves were mine and beautiful and I didn't have to look at myself or anything else inside them. I slept during the day and no one ever came by and bothered me. I walked around the park at night and sometimes I walked to other
places too. I won't deny that. In the caves I was all right, but outside? I wasn't right. I was all messed up. I wasn't myself.

Luis: Josh's mom made him call Tommy's mother to ask if Tommy went home. I wanted to believe that he went home on his own, too, but he wasn't there. We weren't lying then. Tommy had got up and run into the woods all by himself. That's what happened. And I didn't know what to think. Maybe Tommy's mom would call the police and they would find Tommy was okay and hopefully find him without Arnold in the park. That night I couldn't help but think what if Tommy found Arnold and killed him or something and then ran away himself, and I didn't want Tommy to get in trouble. I knew it wasn't likely, but I was so afraid of everything. I can't say it any better than I didn't know what to do so I did nothing. Then later, when Josh said Arnold was standing outside his window at night I knew nothing was okay, but the longer Tommy was gone and the longer we went without saying more it was like we couldn't say anything.

Josh: I know I'm not explaining this well. We didn't know Arnold's uncle was dead, and we didn't know if Arnold was actually in the park that night, and I still don't. You haven't told me. We were hoping that Tommy would come back eventually. And when they didn't find him in the park we thought there was a chance he couldn't handle what we'd done at Arnold's place and ran away. Tommy is a different kind of kid and is always thinking in his own Tommy way, you know, so we thought anything was possi
ble. And we were afraid. That's really it. We were both afraid. Me and Luis spent all this time after together and it was like we were waiting for our turn to go away and disappear.

Rooney: Isn't it so silly? The park was like a shared bedroom, and me and Tommy had made an imaginary line. You stay on your side and I'll stay on my side. I wanted to talk to him, to make up, to go back to how we were all summer long, but I didn't know how to do that. I'm not very good at stuff like that, never have been, and that's not my fault. I didn't have brothers, real brothers, and I walked around at night trying to figure out what to do and say but I stayed away from his island, made sure he had his space, and then I figured out what I needed to do. I'd get him his coin back. I gave him a hobo nickel, a special one, one that I made just for him. I used to practice making them when I ran away as a kid, stayed in shelters, awful places. Terrible places. So sick of terrible places, you know, no one deserves to live in terrible places, they don't and I know I've done bad stuff but no one deserves terrible places. It's not fair and it's not our fault sometimes, and that was it right there, that was what I was going to tell Tommy, and that's why I went to his house to find the coin. His house isn't a huge McMansion. It's a regular kind of house and I loved that about it. Been there a few times, yeah. I watched the house for a little while and his sister walked out the front door, went out back, got on her bike and took off. I wasn't expecting that, but then I knew she'd be gone for a bit and that's when I
went inside. I didn't go inside before because I didn't want to make Tommy even more mad, but it was good. It was okay. I went into his room and it was like he was in there. All his stuff, I wanted to go through it, but I had to focus. That wouldn't have been right. I looked for the coin I gave him but couldn't find it. I did find a few old pennies on his bureau and took those thinking that it's the thought that counts, right? That's what people say about giving gifts, and this was a gift, a peace offering, and I made my way back to his island in the park and it took me forever to find it because it's not easy to find, not obvious. I had to be patient, but I found it and swam out there. It wasn't like the first time we were there. It was harder to see, cloudy, and the water level had gone down because it hadn't rained in a while. He must've heard me struggling to get out there, because he was sitting where I'd left him and was still giving me the silent treatment. He wasn't going to forgive me, and that, that was the worst feeling right there. I knew it was over and that we weren't brothers anymore.

Murtagh: What did you do next, Rooney?

Rooney: I gave him the pennies and then I left his island. I left. That's where he wants to be so I left him there and walked back to the apartment that night. I wanted to stay in the caves but I was feeling guilty about my uncle, figured I should check in on him, yeah, and, of course be there for when you guys showed up so I could explain everything. I told you I knew you were going to be there, right? I did. Tommy had the right idea, I think, to go away, disappear. I know I told you
all this and everything, but maybe you're better off leaving him alone. Tommy will come back when he wants to come back.

A light knock. “Hello, Elizabeth?”

Allison enters the room, sidestepping the door, letting it swing gently shut behind her. She is dressed in clothes she was not wearing earlier that evening; her tan suit is now a blue blazer and jeans. Allison must be able to read the look of confusion on Elizabeth's face and says, “Yeah, I changed. You've been here for a while, and you've been busy.”

Elizabeth separated the three transcribed statements and spread them out into neat rows and columns covering the entire table. The pages are out of order, or not in their original order. Elizabeth spent the night cataloguing, mapping, and piecing together the pages to where she thought they fit. The table is a matrix that can be read horizontally or vertically and in any order a reader may choose, and the end is always the same. Elizabeth is not done with her rearranging, however, as she hopes to find a reading with a different ending. She is not ready to hear whatever it is Allison has to say.

Elizabeth says, “I can put everything back the way it was, if you need me to. It's not so hopelessly out of order. Here, let me do that. I hope it's okay that I, uh, did this.” She stands up and her leg and back muscles rebel against unbending. She picks up her cell phone off the table. Maybe now's the time to check and respond to all of Kate's messages.

“That's not necessary, Elizabeth. We can take care of that.” Allison walks into the room, her flats clack on the linoleum. She stands across the table from Elizabeth, buttons her blazer, the one gold button, folds her hands in front, then lets them hang. “I'm so sorry, Elizabeth. We found your son's body at Borderland. We found him on one of the pond islands.”

Elizabeth spent so much time during of her previous days and nights imagining the worst, imagining this moment—being told Tommy was dead. She constructed countless permutations in settings: she sat at the kitchen table with Kate and Janice when the phone rang; she was in her living room serving police officers coffee; Allison brought her to Josh's house or to a stranger's house in a suburb or a farm or in a big city or to a ditch on a lonely country road; or she was left at a podium at a press conference. Within the framework of those settings and scenarios she imagined all manner of delivery in which they inform her Tommy was dead: confident, uncaring, empathic, awkward, stuttering, commiserative, cold and quick. Her imaginary response was always the same. There would be crying followed by unhinged screaming and the destroying of everything within her reach. She smashed dishes and mugs and coffeepots and windows and windshields and microphones and snapped chair legs and punched holes in plaster and punched faces, so many faces, and they would deserve it even if they didn't. She imagined a fire inside of her heroically immolating all and everything and, even if for one feckless moment, the world would be made to feel the unfairness, meaninglessness, horror, and impenetrable sadness.

Now that it's been said, finally and definitively declared that Tommy is dead, there is no flame inside of her, not anymore. Elizabeth does not wipe the tabletop clear of its pages, flip the table, throw a chair at the Plexiglas windows. She sits down and stacks the statement pages in a neat pile as though gathering ancient and brittle documents. “Is Tommy here?” she asks.

“No. He's on his way to the state coroner's.”

Elizabeth waits for Allison to say more but she doesn't. She wants to ask who will be there with Tommy, will they stay with him until she can see him.

Allison: “Can I get you—”

Elizabeth interrupts and asks, “What do you think Tommy and Josh saw in the woods?” She points at the statement pages. “Tommy saw something and ran into the woods, and then Josh said he thought he saw Tommy running away down the path. What did they see?”

“I can't really speculate—”

“Allison. I'm asking you. I need you to tell me what you think.”

“Tommy probably saw Rooney hiding in the woods and Josh saw Rooney running away. It's possible they didn't see anything, too. Their eyes might have been playing tricks on them, as it was so dark and they'd been drinking a little, and how on edge they must've been, with everything going on, with what they were planning.”

Elizabeth considers arm-swiping the table clear of pages after all, to see if it makes her feel better, feel anything. Instead she gathers a few more pages and adds them to the stacked pile. She says, “Tommy said he saw himself. Josh says that here. On this page.” Elizabeth plucks the page off the table and holds it up. “He says that Tommy saw himself. I believe Josh and Tommy.”

Allison doesn't say anything.

“Tommy's body—” Elizabeth pauses for a deep breath. “I don't know if I want to know.”

“We don't have to do this now, Elizabeth. Let me take you home, so you can be with Kate and your mom, and—”

“No, not yet. First tell me. You have to tell me. What happened to Tommy's eyes? They had pennies over them or in them, right? Did you find him with pennies over his eyes?” Elizabeth fights back tears and shuffles through pages roughly, holding up the last part of Rooney's statement/confession. “Those pennies, those fucking gifts Arnold wanted to give Tommy. He did give them to him, right?” Elizabeth screams and does finally give in to the urge and swipes the table clean, the pages curl and drift to the floor.

Allison looks at Elizabeth almost comically wide-eyed and her
mouth open. “Yes—Jesus. How'd you . . . Did you figure that out from the statements?”

Elizabeth says, “This is going to sound—” She stops and shakes her head. She doesn't care how it sounds. She's going to say it and say it all without stopping. “The night after Tommy didn't come back home, and it was late, real late, and dark, and I couldn't sleep, and I came out of the bathroom, and I saw Tommy between the chair and end table in my bedroom. He was crouched there like he was hiding. It was Tommy but it wasn't. It was like his living shadow or something. I couldn't see his face, not at first, but it was him. I saw him, felt him, could even smell him. That's the part I still can't get over. I could smell him, Allison. Then I went over to him, tried to touch him, but he was gone. But right before he disappeared, I saw his face. Or
a
face. And it was like a flash, so quick, I wasn't sure what I saw initially, or I knew and I didn't want to accept what I saw. Still I was so desperate to see him again, I spent the next days and nights walking around the house always looking for him and thinking sometimes I almost did. I got the camera because I was trying to see him again, see if he was really there. And I did see him again, or I did see what I saw in my bedroom when we found that diary page with the drawing. That awful goddamn picture he drew that fucking got passed around online and everywhere. That was the face I saw in my bedroom. It was Tommy's face all swollen and beat up. It was his dead face with those pennies on his eyes. That's what I saw in my bedroom. And I think Tommy saw it too. He fucking saw his own dead self there out in the woods and then he ran away, and oh, God, he must've been so scared, Allison. My poor baby . . .”

Allison walks around the table and puts an arm around Elizabeth's shoulders.

Elizabeth is crying now, the kind of tears that debilitate the rest of your body. Movement is impossible, as there's only the crying and
pieces of yourself leaking away, never to be retrieved. She says, “My Tommy's been alone on that island all this time and he'll be alone forever.”