The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “You’re the one who is supposed to care about old people the whole time!” Dinah shouts. “Why didn’t you ever go over there? Why didn’t you ever see if things were okay?”

  Mrs. Beach’s mouth falls open.

  “Here is what’s evil, Mrs. Beach! It’s when you know something is wrong and you ignore it and just bash along without doing what someone needs you to do!” Beagie’s crying rings in her ears, but Dinah can’t stop. Her mother moves toward her.

  “No!” Dinah screams. “You stay away from me! Don’t come near me again!”

  It must be almost three in the morning. Dinah hasn’t slept a wink. She sits at her desk and stares out the window, feet curled around the legs of her chair. Outside, the snowy driveway is lit dark and blue.

  The weird digital bell of their landline ring sounds and Dinah leaps up. It won’t be Skint, not on the landline; he’d call her cell. But a call at three in the morning—she flings open her door. Her father’s voice echoes in the kitchen, but he’s already hung up the phone by the time Dinah reaches him.

  “Who called?” she asks.

  Mr. Beach starts and swings round, hand still on the phone.

  “Denise Dugan.” He rubs his eyes. “I was just going to wake you. Skint hasn’t been back at her house, darling, not since before you stopped by there this afternoon.”

  Dinah heart stops. “He hasn’t?”

  “No. She was hoping he was over here.”

  Dinah shakes her head. “He isn’t. He’s not here.”

  “I know,” says Mr. Beach. “We’re worried, Dinah. Have you talked to him? Did he tell you where he might be?”

  Dinah shakes her head no.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” she cries. “Do you think something is wrong?”

  “Oh, Dinah, I’m sure he’s fine!” says her father, crossing to her swiftly. He hugs her. “He’s had a terrible, awful day, remember. The poor, poor boy.”

  “Maybe he went back to the hospital. Maybe he wanted to be with his dad. Call them!”

  “Excellent idea,” says her dad and he picks up the phone again.

  “Or maybe he is out walking! He does that, Dad, when he is upset about something. He walks and walks all over the place.”

  Her father nods to her as he gives his name to the voice on the other end of the phone.

  Dinah listens as he asks them about Skint. She doesn’t need to hear the answer from the other end, though. Out in the woods; Skint’s implacable face. She knows from the line of her father’s mouth that Skint’s not there.

  It’s eerie to have so many people in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Ms. Dugan has come, and Dinah’s mother is down now too, in her awful old pajamas. Mr. Beach keeps the kettle on the boil and makes endless cups of tea. But Dinah is too jangled up to drink any.

  Where could Skint be? At one of his uncles’? Somewhere even farther away? Could he be trying to go overseas?

  Stop. Stop. He’s only out walking somewhere people haven’t looked yet. (But hours, it has been! Hours and hours alone with no coat!) Walking is what Skint does. Look at the other night when he called her from out walking.

  But this is not the same as what usually is. There is nothing about today or the weekend or any time since Friday when she fished him out of the Pit that is the same.

  “I’ve driven all over kingdom come,” says Ms. Dugan. “I didn’t see a thing.”

  “He’s not at the church.” Mr. Beach hangs up from his latest phone call. “And Bernadine says she drove by the high school and he’s not lurking around there, either. Dinah, darling, drink your tea.”

  The church? The high school? Why are they only looking in stupid places that Skint would never be and not in the place he actually is?

  “Can we make a plan to find him, please?” she cries, pushing her teacup away. “Can we please at least make a plan?”

  “Honey—” Mrs. Beach begins.

  Dinah doubles over, head on her knees.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she says into her thighs. “No.”

  Hours pass. Outside the kitchen window the sky shifts from coal to smoke to gray; it’s dawn, and still no word of Skint. No sign of him at any of his uncles’, at Ms. Dugan’s house or at his own. There is no sign of him anywhere at all.

  Mrs. Beach has gone to wait at the Gilberts’ house with Ellen. Beagie is still asleep. Dinah’s brain is raw with exhaustion and too much thinking.

  “Rally!” she tells herself fiercely. Think! Be smart. Make a plan.

  Alert area businesses to be on the lookout for teenage janitors who look older than they are? Smuggle Mr. Gilbert out of the nursing home and place an ad in the paper to let Skint know where to find him?

  Childish. Her ideas dissipate like misshapen balloons.

  An op ed in the paper, then. Not long. Just “I’m sorry; come home, come home.”

  “The police will be here in a few minutes,” Mr. Beach tells her.

  The cup of tea her father made her hours ago is cold now and repellent, oversteeped.

  “I thought the police don’t help unless someone is gone for twenty-four hours,” she says. It is crazy to think that just two days ago Dinah was worried about the police catching Skint and hauling him in on charges. Now she can’t wait for them to get hold of him.

  “I imagine they get an early start sometimes. When circumstances warrant it.” Her father’s eyes are tired and red. “It’s awfully cold outside,” he says. “And Skint had a particularly upsetting day.”

  “They should hurry,” says Dinah. “Did you tell them to hurry?”

  “Yes,” says her father. “They are just finishing up at Ms. Dugan’s with her and Bernadine.”

  Bernadine.

  “I know you dislike her, Dinah,” says her father, “but she has been very kind to him today.”

  Really? What if she tells Ms. Dugan that she believes Skint isn’t fit to feed? But thinking about anything connected to Bernadine or the food pantry only reminds Dinah of Skint’s and her project to help the Rural Routes. Her eyes threaten to fill with tears.

  “The church means the world to Bernadine,” says her father. “You can’t take someone’s whole world away because they make one mistake.”

  You can if they deserve it. But Dinah is a fine one to talk. She makes mistakes that take away people’s whole worlds.

  “Come on, darling,” says her father. “Let’s go wait for them in the living room.”

  He picks up her cup of tea and carries it carefully into the other room.

  The policeman launches a volley of questions at Dinah. Where might Skint have gone? Does she have the names of his other friends? Blarp and blarp and on and on. Dinah’s eyes are gritty, and she rubs them with the heel of her hand.

  Don’t they get it? Dinah is Skint’s friend. Or was. And there is nowhere else he would have gone, not if he is not here at her house or out walking or in any of the other places she’s named for them a thousand times, made them drive to and call around. Skint is not somewhere usual because nothing is usual anymore. Nothing is usual and it’s all her fault. She messed it all up and forced Skint to run away.

  “He wants to go overseas,” Dinah tells Officer Vane. “He wants to help monks.”

  “Monks?”

  “Burmese monks,” Dinah clarifies. “Tortured. Imprisoned, like in Tibet. He wants to help them.”

  The policeman’s sharp shoulders relax, and he smiles at Dinah as though she were Beagie’s age. “Well, I think we can rule that one out,” he says. “I don’t guess he’s had the time or the means to get all the way to Burma.”

  “I didn’t say I thought he had got there yet.” Jerk. Why bother to ask her things if he is only going to make fun of her answers?

  More questions, questions that are the same as the questions he’s already asked and that she’s already answered again and again. Why doesn’t he ask new ones, good ones, ones that will get them to Skint? Dinah can’t bear it. She can’t. Skint freezing outside and full of des
pair; cut knee, no dad, nowhere he’d want to go—

  “It’s my fault!” she finally cries. “Skint left because he was mad at me!”

  Her father’s brows fly up, and Officer Vane looks at her questioningly. “Mad at you?” the policeman asks. “How come?”

  “I was stupid. I did the wrong thing!” Mr. Beach moves to sit closer to her on the couch, but Dinah rears away. Her stomach hurts, and she folds her arms over it.

  The policeman leans forward, and the chair creaks alarmingly. One of its legs seems to skid. Dinah’s father winces.

  “What did you do wrong?” the officer asks.

  What didn’t she do wrong? Dinah blinks helplessly.

  “Your friend is in a tough place, Dinah,” says Officer Vane kindly. “I don’t think anything anybody here did would make him run away.”

  “I agree,” says Mr. Beach urgently and moves close to Dinah again.

  “So I wouldn’t worry too much about him being mad at you right now,” says Officer Vane. “Let’s see, could he be visiting someone from his anime club, maybe? Someone he knows from art class at school?”

  Dinah buries her head in her hands. Her bones go hollow and thin.

  It all goes on and on. No, of course she doesn’t think he met someone from the Internet. No, he didn’t have his bike when she saw him last. No, she didn’t know the bike was no longer at Ms. Dugan’s. Yes, he rides his bike a lot. Yes, even in winter.

  Noises and voices wake Beagie up. But he doesn’t pay attention to them because he is remembering what he was seeing in his eyes while he was sleeping. Pictures of things happening. Dinah singing to him and feeding him peas, Dinah hugging Beagie’s stuffed horse, who was much, much bigger in the eye pictures than he really is here beside Beagie in his crib.

  Beagie loves Dinah so much. He wants her, right now.

  “Dah! Dah, Dah, Dah!”

  But Dinah doesn’t come.

  Beagie kicks his feet, but Dinah only stays a picture in his eyes. He bangs his feet harder and howls.

  “Beagie Bee! I’m here!”

  But it’s his father who has come, not Dinah.

  Beagie cries and cries.

  Mr. Beach comes back in the room and sits down beside Dinah again on the couch, Beagie on his lap. “I’m sorry, Officer,” he says. Beagie takes a pull from his sippy cup of milk.

  “No worries,” says the policeman. “A baby needs his breakfast.” He smiles at Beagie, then turns again to Dinah.

  Go, if you aren’t going to help, Dinah wills the policeman. Leave me alone so I can find Skint.

  “The thing is, Dinah, we’re especially concerned because Skint is not the only missing-child report we’ve had today.”

  “What?” Mr. Beach sits up upright.

  “We received a call just before I arrived here this morning,” says the policeman. “Man went to call his child to breakfast, child wasn’t in his room. Says the boy often plays in the yard when he gets up, but he wasn’t outside, either. Not anywhere. He called the boy’s mother—the father has custody—and she doesn’t know where he could be either. They’re frantic.”

  Dinah drops her cup of tea. It spreads over the rug and into the cracks between the wide boards of the living room floor.

  Mr. Beach clutches Beagie and grabs for Dinah. “Do you think, do they think—an abduction? Two boys in the same day? Officer!” His voice is shaking.

  “We don’t have a full picture yet,” says the policeman. Dinah knows the other boy, he says. Word has it she’s interacted with him over to the church.

  “Who?” exclaims Mr. Beach.

  But Dinah already knows.

  “K. T. Vaar,” says Officer Vane.

  Dinah’s heart sinks like a stone.

  “My God!” cries Dinah’s dad. “Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

  “One thing at a time, Mr. Beach. We thought we should ask your girl about her friend first.”

  K. T.’s miserable face. His dad in that windbreaker. Skint at the church saying “we’re stealing all the kids who are stuck with people like that and taking them with.”

  No. Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no.

  The policeman leaves, walkie-talkie crackling, boots stamping through the dooryard snow. He’s off to look uselessly for lunatics who abduct kindergartners and teens. Dinah has to get out of here. She has to think this through. She jumps up from the couch.

  “No!” her dad cries as she flings open the front door. “You are staying in this house until further notice!”

  “I’m just going in the yard! A passing maniac won’t grab me out of my own yard.” Her father’s face is creased with worry, but Dinah can’t tell him there’s no maniac, just Skint. “Please!”

  Mr. Beach hesitates. “The side porch,” he says. “You may sit briefly outside the kitchen door. But you stay right there! Don’t you move an inch!”

  It is better than nothing.

  Dinah’s brain is in a frenzy. The sun is up, wan in the sky and thin, but it is freezing cold outside as Dinah flings herself down onto the top step.

  What was Skint thinking? Is he planning to raise K. T. on his own? How will he do that? Skint and K. T. in matching janitor outfits—

  No. Don’t be ridiculous.

  What about school? And food? What about a place to live?

  This is insane. If it’s found out, it’ll be everywhere, all over the news. Talk about felony! Child-swiping leaves church-busting and stealing from the food pantry in the dust. There’ll be TV cameras all over, documentary teams, reality shows about the youth of Aile Quarry. Everybody flocking here and Skint routed out, only to spend the rest of his life in jail.

  No. No. Not on Dinah’s watch. No one will get a word out of her. Never, not this time. Not one single peep.

  Behind her the kitchen door creaks open. Her father drops down beside her, Beagie warmly wrapped and asleep again on his lap.

  Mr. Beach covers Dinah’s shoulders with her coat. “It’s too cold out here for no coat, Dinah, darling.”

  Dinah shrugs the coat off onto the stoop.

  “I can’t bear to have you shiver,” says Mr. Beach.

  Dinah shakes her head. “I don’t care about a coat.” Trembling, she rests her forehead in her hands.

  If I had just helped them, stayed there and helped Skint and his family and not blabbed around the place, none of this would have happened. Mr. Gilbert would still be home and Skint would be, too, K. T. in his own yard and all of them okay.

  Please let it all work out, let it all be fine; I’ll do anything, everything; please let it be okay. But there is nothing Dinah can do, no magic, no one to help her. There is nothing she can do but not betray Skint.

  Her eyes fill again and she holds her breath until the tears recede.

  “The police will find them,” says her father, his arm around her shoulders. “I know that they will.” He picks up her coat again. “Darling, please put this on.”

  “No,” Dinah says again, her voice breaking. “I don’t deserve a coat.”

  The day Skint came back in the sixth grade, Dinah watched him standing across the playground where the other kids were choosing up sides for capture the flag. It was recess. She had been too shy to say hello to him in the middle of class. Besides, he hadn’t looked like he recognized her at all.

  Dinah crossed the yard.

  “Hello,” she said. It was so cold that winter day her nostrils felt like she was breathing through a bird’s nest. She was warm enough on top because of her enormous coat, but her lower half was freezing. She only had on her skirt with tights that were too thin. “Do you remember me?” she asked.

  The game started, and the kids scattered across the field. The Vole grabbed at Sue’s hood and she turned, shrieking, and slapped him. Skint looked at Dinah, head tipped back.

  “From before,” said Dinah. “The play yard at the church. Your dad.”

  Skint narrowed his eyes.

  “Dinah,” he said finally. “From when we were five.”
r />   His breath was kind of smelly.

  “Yes,” said Dinah, and smiled. “Welcome back. How are you?”

  Above them the evergreen kings looked down, quiet in their robes. Laley snuck up to free the Vole from the other team’s prison. But Harlan diverted her, and she ran away, shrieking, leaving the Vole to languish.

  “I’m fine.” Skint glanced at the top of Dinah’s head. “Where are Birdie and Flint?”

  Dinah laughed. She forgot about how she used to have ponytails with names. “Gone,” she said, tipping her head down so he could see all she had now was just hair.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It is,” Dinah agreed. “I miss them.”

  From the playing field came more shrieking: the Vole washing Laley’s face with snow. Laley smacked him, hard, but he put his arm around her, and she allowed herself to be led back into the game.

  Dinah reached into her pocket and took out three agate stones and a feather. “These are from the churchyard, actually,” she said, presenting them on her palm. “Remember, how we played games with things like this?”

  “Yes,” said Skint. “We played they were magic.”

  “Here.” Dinah handed him the stones. “For a present, because of you being back.”

  Skint smiled at her, then laughed. “Wouldn’t you rather put them on my shoes?”

  Dinah laughed, too, although she didn’t really know what he was talking about.

  “Let’s make the stones be different now,” said Dinah.

  “Yes,” Skint agreed. “Let’s make them be talismans. Sacred objects. We’ll be priestlings in service of kings.”

  Dinah’s heart rushed as if it were full of petals unfurling. Behind her the wind gathered snow up in a whirl until it rose from the ground like a cloud, like blossoms unfalling from trees.

  Dinah’s mother, back from Ellen’s, hastens out of the Beaches’ elderly car and hurries up to them on the stoop.

  “The police just called Ellen,” she says. Her lips are pale, her eyelids puffed and heavy. “A woman near Winthrop told them she saw a boy matching Skint’s description out there. A boy riding a bike!”