Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (16 page)

More arrows. Sharp ones.

‘Please,’ Mrs Palmer says. ‘Step inside.’

We step into Mrs Palmer’s office. This time Max’s parents sit on the couch where Mrs Patterson and Mrs Palmer were sitting a couple minutes ago. I wish I could tell them that they are sitting in the same place where the person who stole Max was sitting a few minutes ago.

Mrs Palmer moves over to the couch where the police chief is still sitting. There is no room for me, so I stand beside the couch that Max’s parents are sitting on. Even though there are no sides here, because there is no bad guy in the room like before, I still feel like there are sides, and something tells me that I want to be on Max’s parents’ side.

The police chief stands up to shake Max’s parents’ hands. He introduces himself and then everyone sits down except me.

‘Mr and Mrs Delaney, I’m Chief Norton. I’ve taken charge of the search for your son. Let me tell you where we are so far.’

Max’s mom nods but Max’s dad doesn’t. He doesn’t move at all. I think he does this on purpose. If he moved, if he even nodded, then there would be no more sides in the room. Everyone would be on the same side. They would be a team.

He doesn’t move an inch.

The police chief tells Max’s parents about the search of the school and the people who are searching the neighborhood. He says that they are
operating under the assumption
that Max has run away and will be found soon, which sounds like he is hoping that Max has run away and will be found soon, otherwise he will not know what to do.

‘Max has never run away before,’ Max’s dad says.

‘No,’ the police chief says. ‘But his teachers think it’s possible, and it’s more likely than any other scenario.’

‘Like what?’ Max’s dad asks.

‘I’m sorry?’ the police chief says.

‘What other scenarios are you talking about?’

The police chief pauses for a moment. When he speaks, his words come slowly. ‘Well, it’s far more likely that he ran away from the school than he was abducted.’

Max’s mom lets out a tiny whimper when he says
abducted
.

‘I don’t mean to frighten you, Mrs Delaney. Like I said, I expect my phone to ring at any moment, telling me they found Max playing in someone’s backyard or lost in a patch of woods behind a neighbor’s house. But if he isn’t found, we will have to look into the possibility that someone has taken him. I’ve already started the preliminary work in the event that this ends up being the situation. We’re exploring both possibilities simultaneously, just in case.’

‘Is it possible that he ran away and then got picked up by someone while he was on the street?’

Mrs Palmer asks this question, and I can tell by the look on her face and the police chief’s face that they both wish she had not asked it. At least not in front of Max’s parents. She looks at Max’s mom, who looks like she is about to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t mean to frighten you.’

‘It’s not likely,’ the police chief says. ‘It would be quite a coincidence if Max decided to run away at the same time a child abductor was driving by the school. But we’re looking into all options, interviewing all staff members that come into contact with Max and trying to see if someone new has recently come into contact with him.’

‘Why was Max alone?’ Max’s mom asks.

This is a good question. An arrow question that should have hit Mrs Palmer right between the eyes, but instead the question sounds like jello. There’s nothing behind it. Max’s mom even looks like jello. She is all wobbly and weak.

‘Max’s paraprofessional was out today, and Max had walked to the Learning Center many times on his own,’ Mrs Palmer says. ‘In fact, one of his IEP goals is to become more independent in regards to moving around the building and following a schedule, so it wasn’t unusual for him to be traveling from his classroom to the Learning Center alone.’

‘And that’s when you think he disappeared?’ Max’s father asks. ‘In between his classroom and the Learning Center?’

‘Yes,’ the police chief says, speaking quickly. I think he wants Mrs Palmer to be quiet, so he is covering up all the spaces where she could speak. ‘Max was last seen in his regular classroom. He never made it to the Learning Center, but since his paraprofessional was absent today, the Learning Center teachers didn’t notice that Max had never arrived, since she is the one who works with him there. And his teacher, Mrs Gosk, assumed that your son was in the Learning Center, so Max could’ve been gone for as long as two hours before anyone noticed.’

Max’s dad runs his hands through his hair. He does this when he is stopping himself from saying something bad. He does this a lot when he argues with Max’s mom. Usually right before he slams the screen door and leaves.

‘We’d like to get some information from you,’ the police chief says. ‘Names of people who come into contact with Max on a regular basis. Anyone new in his life. Daily routines. Any medical information we might need to know.’

‘You said you thought you’d find him any minute,’ Max’s mom says.

‘Yes, I know, and I still believe that. We have more than two hundred people searching the area right now, and the media are spreading the word for us as well.’

The police chief is about to say something else when there is a knock on the door and a policewoman pokes her head inside the office.

‘Mrs Patterson is ready to go home unless you need her.’

‘Nothing on the walk-through?’ the police chief asks.

‘No.’

‘And we have her contact information?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine then,’ he says. ‘She can go.’

‘You’re letting the bad guy go!’ I shout, but no one hears me.

It is like when Max’s dad or Sally shout at the television as they watch a detective let the bad guy go free by mistake, except on TV the bad guys usually get caught. This is the real world, and I don’t think the television rules work here. Bad guys like Tommy Swinden and Mrs Patterson can win in the real world. All that Max has is me, and I am useless.

‘Okay, I’ll send her home,’ the policewoman says.

That means it is time for me to go, too, even though a big part of me wants to stay here with Max’s mom. The only way to help her is to help Max, but leaving her now seems wrong. She seems so weak. Like only half of her is here.

Still, I have to find my friend.

I pass through the office door and re-enter the main office. I do not see Mrs Patterson. The policewoman who told Chief Norton that Mrs Patterson was ready to leave is on the phone now. She is sitting at the desk where the secretary lady usually sits. I don’t know where Mrs Patterson is, but I know where she parks her car, and I’m worried that she might already be walking to the parking lot so I start to run out of the office when I hear the policewoman say, ‘You can tell her that she can go now. But tell her that she needs to leave her phone on in case we need her.’ She says this to the person on the other end of the telephone.

Good. Mrs Patterson hasn’t left yet.

Still, I want to be inside her car before she gets there, so I run.

I once knew an imaginary friend who could pop. Instead of walking to a place, he could just disappear from one place and reappear in the other place, as long as he had been to the other place before. I thought this was amazing, because it was like he stopped existing for a second and then existed again a second later. I asked him what it was like to stop existing because I wanted to know if it hurt, but he did not understand my question.

‘I don’t stop existing,’ he said. ‘I just pop from one place to the other.’

‘But what does it feel like to stop existing for that second before you reappear?’

‘It doesn’t feel like anything,’ he said. ‘I just blink my eyes and I am in the new place.’

‘But how does it feel when your body disappears from the place that you start?’

‘It doesn’t feel like anything.’

I could tell that he was getting angry so I stopped asking. I was a little jealous of him for being able to pop, except that he was only as tall as a Barbie doll and his eyes were blue. All blue. No white part at all. It was like he was looking through a pair of dark blue sunglasses, so he could barely see, especially on a cloudy day or when the teacher turned out the lights to show a movie. And he had no name, which is not uncommon in imaginary friends but still a little sad. And he is gone now. He stopped existing over Christmas vacation when Max was still in kindergarten.

I wish I could pop right now. Instead, I run through the halls, following the same path that Max and I followed earlier today when Mrs Patterson stole him. Right back to those glass doors where Max left earlier today.

Mrs Patterson’s car is not in the parking lot. I run up and down the row but I can’t find it. But there is only one way to the parking lot, only one hallway and one set of doors, and I know that Mrs Patterson could not have beaten me here because I ran the whole way and Mrs Patterson would not run because it would make her look suspicious.

Then I figure it out. She has two cars. She drove a different car back to the school. One without the blue backpack and all the evidence that Max was inside. Like a hair from his head or dirt from his sneakers or his fingerprints. All the stuff that the scientists can use to prove that Max was sitting in the back seat. That must be it. She drove a different car back to school just in case the police wanted to inspect her car. That would be sneaky-smart and I think Mrs Patterson is the sneakiest-smartest person I have ever met. She will be coming out those doors any second and getting into a different car. One I have never seen before. Maybe the one I am standing in front of right now.

I look around to see if I can find a new car in the parking lot. One I have never seen before. Then I see it. Not a new car that I have never seen before but Mrs Patterson’s old car. The one with the blue backpack and Max’s hair and Max’s dirt. It is in the circle in front of the school. It is parked in the circle, right in front of the doors to the school, even though it is illegal to park in the circle when kids are in school. I know this because sometimes Mrs Palmer comes on the intercom and asks for the person who is parked in the circle to move their car
immediately
. She says
immediately
in a way to let the person who parked the car know that she is annoyed. She could just say, ‘Please move your car from the circle. And whoever you are, I am annoyed that you parked there,’ but instead she says
immediately
, which seems nicer and not so nice at the same time.

But it is always a parent or a substitute teacher who parks in the circle because teachers know better. Mrs Patterson knows better. So why is Mrs Patterson parked in the circle now? There are police cars in the circle, too, but police are allowed to break the rules.

Then I see that Max’s parents’ car is parked in the circle, too. It is parked behind Mrs Patterson’s car, but then it is not parked behind Mrs Patterson’s car because Mrs Patterson’s car starts moving. It is driving around the back of the circle and toward the street.

I run. I run as fast as I can, which is only as fast as Max imagined that I could run, which is not that fast. I want to yell, ‘Stop! Wait! You weren’t supposed to park in the circle!’ But she would never hear me, because her windows are up and she is so far away and I am imaginary, and only imaginary friends and my friend who she stole can hear me.

I cross the driveway without looking both ways or using the crosswalk and then I run across the front lawn to the other side of the circle, but Mrs Patterson is pulling into the street and turning right. I wish I could pop. I close my eyes and try to imagine the back seat of Mrs Patterson’s car, with the blue backpack and the hair from Max’s head and the dirt from his sneakers, but when I open my eyes a second later I am still running across the front lawn and Mrs Patterson’s car is disappearing down a hill and around a bend.

I slow down and then I stop. I am standing in the middle of the front lawn, underneath a pair of trees. Yellow and red leaves are falling around me.

I lost Max.

Again.

CHAPTER 26

Chief Norton told Max’s mom and dad that he has not given up hope on finding Max somewhere in the neighborhood, but that he is ‘shifting the focus of the investigation in a different direction’.

This means he doesn’t think that Max ran away anymore.

He sent Max’s parents to the teacher’s lounge with a policewoman to answer some more questions. Then he told the police officer with the brown spot on his neck to call Burger King and Aetna to make sure that Max’s mom and dad were working when Max disappeared. He has to make sure that it wasn’t Max’s mom or dad who stole Max. I’m not surprised. The police always have to check out the parents first.

It seems like parents are always the bad guys on TV.

The officer comes back into the office and tells Chief Norton that Max’s mom and dad were at work all day and were ‘in plain sight’, which means that they could not have driven to the school, stolen Max and driven back without someone noticing that they were gone.

The chief looks relieved.

I guess it is better to search for a stranger who steals little boys than to find out that a mom or dad stole their own little boy. But I also know from television that the people who hurt and steal kids are usually not strangers, which is true today, too. Mrs Patterson is not a stranger. She is just smart.

About twenty minutes before dismissal, the chief ended the lockdown and let the kids put on their coats and line up for the buses. But the lines were short today. Lots of the kids got picked up by parents who were biting their nails and twisting their wedding rings and walking faster than normal, as if the kidnapper was hiding behind the trees on the front lawn, waiting to scoop up even more kids.

I tried to talk to Puppy before he went home on the bus with Piper, but I had only a couple minutes before her bus was called.

‘Mrs Patterson stole Max,’ I said to him.

We were standing in Piper’s classroom, watching her move the papers in her cubby to her backpack. Actually, Puppy was standing. I have to sit on the floor when I talk to Puppy, since he is a puppy.