Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (25 page)

This is the second promise I have made to Max this morning. I am about to break the first.

Max screams as I turn toward the door. ‘No, no, no, no!’ he shouts.

Max will get stuck if I leave.

If I pass through the door, I will not be able to get back into the room until Mrs Patterson opens the door again after school.

I step through the door anyway, knowing that the hard thing and the right thing are usually the same thing.

I ask someone who I know is not listening to forgive me for breaking my promise to Max and leaving my friend behind.

Sound returns as I step into the basement. Max’s silent room is behind me and the hum of the furnace and the swish and drip of water in the pipes fills this room. I know that Max is screaming. He is probably pounding on the door right behind me but I cannot hear him. I am glad. Imagining him getting stuck behind the wall fills me with sadness and guilt. Hearing the real thing would be worse.

A door slams upstairs. I suddenly remember what I need to do. I run across the room and up the stairs to the first floor. I turn in the hallway and look into the kitchen. The cardboard boxes that were stacked on the table last night are gone. I do not see Mrs Patterson.

Then I hear the sound of an engine starting, followed a second later by the clankity sound of the garage door opening.

I think about running to the garage but decide that it is too late. I turn right and head to the front door. I pass through it and step outside, falling off the stoop that I did not know existed. I tumble to the ground, bouncing off a stone walkway that wraps around the house and leads to the driveway. I pull myself up, running before I am even standing upright. My knuckles drag on the ground for my first few steps. I run around the bend to the front of the house and see the driveway that stretches down to the road. Mrs Patterson’s car is already halfway down the driveway. Her car is facing toward the road so she is not driving slowly like people who are backing up do.

I will not make it to the car in time. It is already too far away. Max never imagined that I could run that fast. He never imagined that I would need to run that fast.

But I run anyway. I cannot imagine spending the day in Mrs Patterson’s house knowing that Max is trapped behind a wall and I cannot reach him. I run as fast as I can down the hill, meeting the driveway halfway down. I am running so fast that I am on the edge of falling, half running and half tumbling, and, even so, I will not catch Mrs Patterson.

Then I see it. A car coming down the road. A green car that will pass by Mrs Patterson’s driveway. Mrs Patterson will need to slow down and maybe even stop to let the car pass.

I have a chance.

And just as I begin to think that I can make it, I cross over the edge from running into tumbling and I am rolling on the pavement, end over end. I hold my arms against my ears to protect my head, and then somehow I roll over and push up, and a second later I am running again, still out of control but in the right direction, toward the bottom of the driveway and Mrs Patterson’s car. My feet are flailing and my arms are outstretched, trying to help me keep my balance, but I am on my feet and moving.

Her car has stopped at the end of the driveway and the green car is passing by. I veer left off the driveway and onto the grass. I will not reach the bottom of the driveway in time but maybe I can meet the car as it turns onto the street. I point my body at the far corner of the front lawn, where the grass meets a stone wall and a line of trees. I run as fast as I can to that corner as Mrs Patterson’s car turns and accelerates. I will not make it unless I jump. As I reach the edge of the lawn, where the grass meets the pavement, I jump and close my eyes, expecting to bounce off the fender or the wheel of Mrs Patterson’s car.

Instead, I feel the almost silent
whoosh
that accompanies every passing through a door, and a second later I am lying in the back seat of the car, crumpled on the floor, trying to catch my breath.

I can hear Mrs Patterson. She is singing.

It’s a song about hammering in the morning and hammering in the evening.

It sounds like it should be a happy song, but somehow it sounds scary coming from Mrs Patterson.

CHAPTER 42

Mrs Patterson sings the hammer song twice and then turns on the radio. She is listening to the news. I listen to hear if there is news about Max. There is not.

I wonder if she is listening for news about Max, too.

We have been driving on a highway for a long time, which is strange since Mrs Patterson lives so close to the school. Our ride from the school to her house last night took less than fifteen minutes, and I don’t remember driving on a highway to get there.

The clock on the dashboard says 7.36. The first bell rings at 8.30 so we still have lots of time to get there, but this highway driving is making me nervous.

Where are we going?

I try not to think about Max. I try to stop imagining Max trapped behind that wall, all alone. I try not to hear his voice crying for me. I tell myself to pay attention to the road and try to read the green signs and watch Mrs Patterson for clues but my imagination keeps imagining Max, screaming and crying and pounding on the walls for help.

‘I am helping,’ I want to tell Max, but even if I could, I know he wouldn’t believe me. It’s hard to help when you have to break promises and leave your friend alone behind a wall.

I hear a roar over my head and know that it is an airplane. I have never heard a plane flying so low but I have seen and heard them on television and know that this is a big plane somewhere over our heads. A jumbo jet.

I look out the window. I look up. I want to see the plane but I do not. A green sign above the road reads
Welcome to Bradley International Airport
. There are other words on the sign but I do not read fast enough to read them all. I am happy that I was able to read the word
international
, because that is not an easy word. I look ahead and see low buildings and tall parking garages and buses and cars and lots of signs everywhere. I have never been to the airport before but I expected to see airplanes. I see none. I can hear them but cannot see a single one.

Mrs Patterson turns off the main road and drives down and around to a gate. She stops the car in front of a machine, rolls down her window and reaches out to press a button. There is a sign on the machine that says
Long Term Parking
. I do not know what
Long Term Parking
means, but I am starting to wonder if I have made another mistake. Is Mrs Patterson flying away somewhere? Is she worried that the police are about to find Max?

I have seen people arrested in airports on television before. They are always bad guys trying to leave the country. I don’t know why the police don’t just leave the country, too, and arrest the bad guys in the new country, but maybe this is what Mrs Patterson is doing. Maybe she knows that Mrs Gosk or the police chief have solved the mystery and know who took Max and now she has to escape or end up in jail.

The machine makes a humming sound and then spits out a ticket. Mrs Patterson drives into a parking lot that is full of cars. There must be hundreds of cars and there is a parking garage right next to the parking lot that is full of cars, too.

We drive up and down the rows. We drive past empty spots but Mrs Patterson does not park in any of them. She is driving like she has a place to go instead of a place to find.

Finally she slows down and parks the car in an empty spot. She gets out. I get out, too. I am too far from home to get lost now. Wherever Mrs Patterson goes, I go.

She opens the trunk. The boxes that were stacked on top of the kitchen table are piled inside. She lifts a box from the trunk, turns, and walks across the aisle to the other side of the parking lot. She walks down the aisle past three cars and then stops at a van. A huge van. A bus, really. It’s one of those houses on wheels, I think. A house-van-bus thingy. Mrs Patterson reaches in her pocket and removes a key. She puts the key in a door and opens it. It’s like the door on Max’s school bus. It’s regular sized. Mrs Patterson climbs three steps and turns left into the house-van-bus thingy.

I follow.

There is a living room inside, right behind the driver’s seat. There is a couch and a cushy chair and a table that is attached to the floor so it won’t move around. There is a television hanging on the wall and a bunk bed over the couch. Mrs Patterson puts the box on the couch and turns around and exits. I follow her back to the car and watch as she removes a second box and brings it back to the bus. She puts the box beside the first and turns to leave again. I do not follow this time. I stay. She has six more boxes to bring over and I want to take a second to look at the rest of the bus.

I walk past the living room into a narrow hallway. There is a closed door to my right and a little kitchen to my left. There is a sink and a stove and a microwave oven and a refrigerator. I pass through the door to the right and am standing in a tiny bathroom with a sink and a toilet.

A bathroom inside the bus.

If Max’s school bus had a bathroom, he would never have to worry about bonus poops again.

Actually, I don’t think Max could ever poop on a school bus, even if it had a toilet.

I step back through the door and into the narrow hallway. There is another closed door at the end of the hallway. I look behind me and see Mrs Patterson dropping two more boxes onto the couch. Four all together now. Two or three more trips and then she’ll be done.

I step through the door at the end of the hallway. As I open my eyes, the first shiver of my life runs down my spine. I have heard this expression before but never understood it until now.

I cannot believe what I am seeing.

I am standing in a bedroom.

It is the same bedroom where Max is trapped right now.

It is smaller, and there are fewer lamps, and there are two oval-shaped windows on either side of the bus that are covered by curtains, but the walls are the same colors as Max’s room in Mrs Patterson’s basement and the bed is the same race-car bed with the same sheets and the same pillows and the same blankets. The same rug is covering the floor. And the space is filled with Lego and
Star Wars
toys and army men. Just as many as are in Max’s room in the basement. Maybe more. There is a television stuck to the wall and another PlayStation and another rack of DVDs just like in the room in Mrs Patterson’s basement. Even the DVDs are the same.

This is another room for Max. A room that can move.

I hear Mrs Patterson drop another box onto the couch. I turn to leave. I do not know if she is going to drive this bus or her car or take an airplane, but I need to stay with her no matter what. I would never find my way home from this airport.

As I pass back through the door, I notice the lock on it. A padlock with a latch.

Another shiver runs down my spine. My second ever.

Mrs Patterson moves the last three boxes from her car over to the bus and then she steps off the bus. I follow. She closes the door and locks it. She walks back to her car, climbs in and starts the engine. I take my spot in the back seat. She pulls out, singing the hammer song again as she weaves her way through the parking lot aisles to a set of gates at the other end of the parking lot.

She pulls up to a booth and hands a man inside her ticket.

‘Wrong lot?’ he asks when he looks down at her ticket.

‘No,’ Mrs Patterson says. ‘My sister asked me to check on her car and leave her a jacket. I think she asked me to leave the jacket just so she didn’t feel too silly about having me check on the car. She’s a little obsessive compulsive.’

The man in the booth laughs.

Mrs Patterson is a good liar. She is like an actress on a television show. She is playing a character instead of being herself. She is pretending to be a woman with a sister who is obsessive compulsive. She is good at it. Even I would believe her if I didn’t know that she is a Max stealer.

Mrs Patterson hands some money to the man in the booth and the gate in front of her car lifts up. She waves to the man as we drive away.

The clock on the dashboard reads 7.55.

I hope we are on our way to school.

CHAPTER 43

Max’s desk is still empty. He is the only student absent again today, and it makes his desk seem even emptier. Nothing has changed since I left yesterday, which feels like a million years ago. The police officer is still sitting by the front door. Mrs Gosk is still pretending to be Mrs Gosk. And Max’s desk is still empty.

I would sit at Max’s desk if I could, but his chair is pushed in, leaving me no room to sit. Instead, I sit in a chair at the back of the room and listen to Mrs Gosk talk about fractions. Even without her spring, she is the best teacher in the world. She can make kids smile and laugh even while learning about something as boring as numerators and denominators.

I wonder if Mrs Patterson would have stolen Max if Mrs Gosk had been her teacher.

I don’t think so.

I think Mrs Gosk could even turn Tommy Swinden into a nice boy with enough time.

When Mrs Patterson went to the Learning Center, I came here, to Mrs Gosk’s classroom, to listen to her teach for a while. I cannot take my mind off how I left Max, but I was hoping that listening to Mrs Gosk might make me feel better.

It has. A little.

When the kids leave the classroom for recess, I follow Mrs Gosk to the teachers’ room. If I want to know what is going on, this is where I will find it. Mrs Gosk has lunch every day with Miss Daggerty and Mrs Sera, and they always talk about good stuff.

There are two kinds of teachers in the world: there are teachers who play school and teachers who teach school, and Miss Daggerty and Mrs Sera and especially Mrs Gosk are the kind of teachers that teach school. They talk to kids in their regular voices and say things that they would say in their own living rooms. Their bulletin boards are always a little raggedy and their desks are always a little messy and their libraries are always a little out of order, but kids love them because they talk about real things with real voices and they always tell the truth. This is why Max loves Mrs Gosk. She never pretends to be a teacher. She is just herself, and it makes Max relax a little. There is nothing to figure out.