I’m not sure how long I waited. Maybe an hour. Finally, Alicia got up from her chair. I watched her walk down the hallway toward the staff restroom, and then scrambled to my feet and grabbed my boots. I had maybe a minute to get out before she came back. I stuck my head out into the hallway, checking both ways first. Alicia was gone, and the glow from the common room in the other direction meant Martin was almost certainly in front of the TV. I took a step into the hallway. My left foot had gone numb from being folded under me, and it came awake with painful pins and needles as I snuck toward the front entrance. There was an alarm panel beside the door, and I started to punch in the code I’d watched Alicia plug into it the first night they brought me here. I heard the distant sound of a toilet flushing. My finger slipped, and I hit the wrong button. The light on the panel flashed red.
“Shit,” I whispered, and quickly reentered the correct code. The light turned green, and I heard a door opening. I yanked open the front door and slipped through it, pulling it nearly closed after me. I tried to slow my breathing as I stood on the outside, ears straining. Had Alicia gotten there in time to see the door closing behind me? Could she see the small gap I’d left so that she wouldn’t hear the noise of the latch catching when the door closed? I waited, but nothing happened. Short Term 8 stayed quiet.
I carefully put on my boots and then, millimeter by millimeter, eased the door closed, the snick of the latch almost inaudible. Nothing. I was out.
I zipped up my new coat and started the walk to the bus station. I only had a little bit of cash that I’d gotten under the counter doing odd jobs my first few days in Vancouver, but it was enough to get me onto a bus and out of there. My feet crunched on the salted pavement, and soon I was downtown, where there were enough people for me to blend in with that I felt safe taking the hood off my head. I tried to remember how long I’d been doing this, moving from city to city, scamming my way into juvenile care homes by pretending to be younger than I was. I’d left home for good at sixteen. Sometime after that there’d been the petty robbery that went really, really wrong, and I’d gone from being a runaway to being someone on the run. The danger of being caught had long passed, but once you start running, it’s hard to stop, so I hadn’t stayed in any one place for long. Since I couldn’t say exactly how long I’d been doing this; I’d lived so many lives that it was hard to keep track.
I arrived at the bus station, which was lit up even in the middle of the night with fluorescents that gave the place a queasy, yellow glow, and walked up to the ticket window.
“What . . .” I cleared the frog from my throat. I hadn’t spoken for days. “What’s the cheapest bus ticket you’ve got?”
The cashier raised a perfectly drawn on eyebrow at me. “You don’t care where you’re going?”
“Nope.”
She gave me a couple of options, and I picked the $82 bus to Calgary that left in less than an hour. After she handed me back my change, I had enough money for a coffee and muffin now and a sandwich on the road later.
I was standing in line at the station McDonald’s when I spotted him. Martin. He was hard to miss since he was a head taller than almost everyone else around.
I didn’t feel much anymore, but I did still feel fear. Every animal feels fear. It was a nice change from the usual nothingness, actually. I dropped my head, slipped out of the line, and began to walk slowly in the opposite direction from Martin. There weren’t enough people here in the middle of the night to disappear into the crowd, so I would have to be careful not to do anything to attract his attention. I headed toward the men’s restroom I’d clocked earlier. He would check it, but if I hid in a stall, maybe he wouldn’t find me.
How did he know I was gone? Maybe Jason or Tucker had woken up and reported me missing.
As I was headed to the men’s room, a cop on a radio started to head toward it too. He went inside, and I changed directions, flipping my hood over my head. I strolled toward a side exit instead. I’d wait around the corner until a few minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave and then slip back inside.
“Collin!” a voice called.
I ran.
“Hey, Collin!”
The footsteps behind me were moving fast. I dashed toward the exit just as a woman with a huge rolling suitcase came through the door I was aiming for. She slowed me down for only a few seconds, but it was enough. Martin caught up to me, a helpful cop on his heels. I immediately dropped to the ground and wrapped my arms over my head, burying my face against my knees. When in doubt, play the traumatized child.
“Hey, it’s okay, man,” Martin said, kneeling beside me and putting a careful hand on my back. “I know you’re scared, but everything’s going to be okay. Come on, let’s go home.”
• • •
I went with Martin back to Short Term 8, and Alicia hugged me hard as soon as I came inside. They took me back to my room. Jason and Tucker were both awake, and I wondered which one of them had ratted me out. My money—not that I had much left—was on Jason. Tucker was a dick, but he also wouldn’t care if I ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. He rolled his eyes at me and turned over in bed when I came in, while Jason handed me a mini Snickers from the candy stash he kept hidden in his dresser. I was pissed at him, but I was also hungry, so I took it.
I bit into the candy bar as I walked to the bathroom down the hall. I could hear faint voices coming from the kitchen and crept closer toward them. They were probably talking about me, and I wanted to know what they were saying.
The kitchen had double swinging doors, and I pressed my eye up to the gap between them. Alicia was making tea.
“The cops must have scared the hell out of him,” she was saying as she poured milk into two mugs and handed one to Martin. “Threatening to section him like that. If he understood what they meant, it’s no wonder he ran.”
“Yeah, but they’ll take him away for sure now,” Martin said.
Alicia sighed. “Poor kid.”
• • •
I wasn’t going to any fucking mental ward.
Locked up. Walls and darkness closing in on me, suffocating me, the close air stale from my breath . . .
Never again.
I would do whatever it took to prevent that, whatever they wanted.
• • •
“I have to tell you something,” I said the next morning.
Forks hit plates and silence descended on the dining table, like something out of the movies.
Alicia recovered first. “Sure, Collin. Why don’t you come to the office, and we’ll—”
“My name’s Daniel,” I said. “Daniel Tate.”
• • •
The name meant nothing to Alicia. She hadn’t grown up in Southern California, where my name had made headlines.
Daniel Tate, son of the food packaging heiress. Daniel Tate, American prince. Daniel Tate, the boy who disappeared.
• • •
Did you believe me when I said I was some no-name runaway from the Canadian backwoods? You shouldn’t have. I told you I was a liar. That boy was just one of my many fictions. I invented him because he was tough enough to survive when I wasn’t, and because even his terrible life was better than the truth.
• • •
It was sunny the day it happened. I was walking beside my bike, because the chain had come off and I didn’t know how to fix it. I was taking it home to my father, because he would know. Dad knew everything.
A white van turned the corner and pulled up beside me. I was too naive to be scared. The door slid open, and hands emerged from the shadows. Some grabbed me, dragging me into the darkness and muffling my shouts. Others pulled my bike in behind me, erasing any trace I’d ever been there. That was it. Ten seconds and I was gone, with no one having seen a thing. A kidnapping can happen that quickly and that invisibly, even on a sunny street in a safe neighborhood.
They tried to make me forget who I was, and for a long time, they succeeded. I conjured dozens of different lives for my
self as they moved me from dark room to dark room, passing me off from stranger to stranger. When it hurt, I would close my eyes and become someone else. I was a superhero captured by his evil nemesis. A king in hiding. An outlaw from a small, snowy town who was running from the cops. Anyone but Daniel Tate.
• • •
“I got away,” I told Alicia. “One day they accidentally left my door unlocked, and I ran for it. I didn’t know where I was, or even what year it was.”
Alicia’s eyes swam with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“There’s so much I don’t remember,” I said. “For a long time I didn’t even know who I was. And . . .”
“And what?” she pressed gently.
“They’re powerful.” My hands clenched into fists in my lap. “More powerful than the police. If they find me, they’ll take me back.”
She put a hand over mine. “That’s not going to happen,” she said with the blithe confidence of someone who had no idea what she was dealing with.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “You don’t know who these people are, who they know. If I’m in some government hospital or mental institution, they’ll find me. They’ll get me out and I’ll disappear again and I’ll never get away a second time.”
“No one’s taking you anywhere,” she said fiercely. “We’ll go to the police—”
“No!” I said. “You can’t tell them who I am!”
“We have to,” she said, “but then you’ll be safe. Daniel, you’ll get to go home.”
• • •
Alicia took me back to the Collingwood Police Station, and soon we were entering the office of the detective who’d threatened to have me committed, Detective Barson. When we came in, he pushed aside a half-eaten sandwich and asked what we needed.
I told him I was Daniel Tate, that I’d been kidnapped from Hidden Hills, California, six years ago. He looked at me with total incomprehension, and I couldn’t blame him. I knew it sounded crazy.
“What did you say the name was again?” he said as he woke up his computer.
“Daniel Tate.”
He entered my name into a search engine, and the first hit was the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Barson clicked the link, and up came a missing poster with the same information I’d just given him. My name, age, and the place I’d gone missing. Beside that was a picture. Dirty blond hair that was a few shades lighter than my hair now, hazel eyes, freckles across the nose, and a pointy chin. Barson looked back and forth between me and the picture.
“You sure this is you?” he said. “You said you don’t remember much.”
“I remember who I am.” Motherfucker, I added silently.
“It doesn’t look that much like you.”
“Come on, Frank,” Alicia said. “He’s ten years old in that picture. You know how much kids change between ten and sixteen.”
Barson thought about that, the frown lines on his face deepening. “Why didn’t you come forward before?”
Alicia’s patience abruptly ran out, and she threw up her hands. “The boy was imprisoned and traumatized! It’s a miracle he’s been able to come forward now!”
“Now, hang on there, Alicia. These questions aren’t unreasonable.” Barson studied me for another moment and then angled his computer screen so I couldn’t see it. “What’s your date of birth?”
I saw a brief flash of a blue birthday cake and foil balloons glinting in the sun. “November. The sixteenth.”
“Year?”
“Two thousand.”
Barson, his jaw clenched, stood. “Wait here a minute,” he said, and walked out of the office.
I turned to Alicia. “He doesn’t believe me.” My voice came out shaky.
“He will,” she said. “It’s just a lot to take in at once.”
The minute stretched into two and then ten. Barson stuck his head back inside the office.
“Do you remember your address?” he asked. “Phone number?”
I shook my head. “I-I remember I lived in Hidden Hills.”
“But you don’t remember what street?”
Alicia put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Daniel. No one could possibly expect you to remember something like that after all this time and everything you’ve been through.”
Barson just grunted and disappeared again. An hour passed and he still hadn’t come back. One of the officers brought us a couple of turkey sandwiches and sodas and told us Barson was talking to the chief. I grabbed a legal pad off the corner of Barson’s desk and started to sketch.
Alicia looked over my shoulder at the picture I was drawing of Tucker, scowling and holding up his middle finger.
She laughed. “That’s good. Can you do Martin?”
I worked on a drawing of Martin flipping pancakes and wearing a flowery apron while Alicia called Diane and filled her in. Alicia had just worked her full night shift, but it didn’t look like she was planning to go anywhere.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You must be tired.”
“Hush,” she replied.
When Barson still wasn’t back a half an hour later and I’d gone through a half a dozen sheets of the legal pad, I couldn’t sit still anymore. I began to pace his office. It was exactly four steps wide. I thought about that bus to Calgary. How I might be on it now if I had spotted Martin a minute sooner or just walked a little faster.
“What if they’re coming to get me right now?” I said. I couldn’t contain the words anymore. Everywhere I looked, I saw hands reaching out of the darkness to grab me. “What if they take me back there and—”
“No one’s going to take you, Daniel,” Alicia said. She tried to take my hand, to stop me pacing, but I threw her off.
“You don’t know that!”
That’s when the door opened. I jumped away from it, but it was just Barson, followed by another man. Barson stood against the wall while the other man took his seat behind the desk, and I sat down too.
“Daniel, I’m Chief Constable Harold Warner,” he said. “I’m sorry you’ve had to wait.”
“That’s okay,” I said shakily.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s been a lot happening since Detective Barson informed me of your situation,” he said, “but if you’re ready, I have your brother on the phone.”
I felt like I’d hit the ground after a long fall. All the air rushed out of my lungs. “What?”
“I’ve spent the last half an hour on the phone with the Malibu PD, confirming your story,” he said. “They put me in touch with Patrick McConnell. He’s your half brother, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, he’s on the phone now,” Warner said. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Oh, Daniel,” Alicia said softly.
My throat was too dry for me to speak, but they were both staring at me, so I just nodded again. Warner said something to me as he picked up the phone on Barson’s desk and hit a button, but all I could hear was the rushing of blood in my ears and my mind repeating Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. I had just slivers of memory from my past life—even added together they only showed how much was missing—but lots of those pieces were of my big brother. Patrick teaching me to swing a baseball bat. Helping me with my math homework. Letting me stay up late to watch scary movies with him when our parents were out for the night.
Warner handed me the phone, and I immediately dropped it. Alicia grabbed it for me and squeezed my shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said.
I nodded and lifted the phone to my ear.
“Danny?” a voice said. “Danny, is that you?”
“Patrick?” I choked.
Alicia stood and gestured to Barson. He followed her reluctantly from the office, and Warner left after them, leaving me alone.
“Are you . . .” Patrick hesitated. “Are you really my brother?”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “It’s me, Patrick.”
“They said you’re in
Vancouver?”
“They brought me here,” I said. “I was with them for so long, b-but I got away . . .”
“Oh my God. Danny.” Patrick started to cry. “It really is you.”
I started to cry too. “I want to come home.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re coming to get you.”
• • •
Alicia drove me back to the police station the next day. My half siblings Patrick and Alexis—my mom’s kids from her first marriage—had gotten on a plane that morning and were coming to get me. At least that’s what everyone kept saying. I knew they were really coming to see me. To see if I was who I said I was and not some sociopathic con artist posing as their brother. That was the only reason it could be them coming and not my mother, because some part of them was afraid I was a fake.
It hurt, but I didn’t exactly blame them. I probably wouldn’t believe me either.
But what if they didn’t?
I chewed on my nails as we drove to the police station.
“Nervous?” Alicia asked.
I nodded.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Daniel,” she said. “It’s going to be great.”
I rubbed my thumb over the back of my hand and nodded. “Yeah.”
Chief Constable Warner was waiting for us when we arrived. He took Alicia and me into an interview room, the same one they’d put me in the night they picked me up off the street. It seemed smaller than I remembered, and grubbier. Suddenly, I saw everything in hyperfocus, from the coffee stains on the carpet to the chipping paint around the doorjamb. This is where I’ll see Patrick and Alexis again, I thought. Surrounded by these paint chips and stains.
I looked down at my clothes, taken from the pile of secondhand stuff Short Term 8 kept in a closet. I pulled at the slightly too short sleeves of the sweater. What would they think when they saw me like this? The drip-drop of panic I’d felt all day turned into a steady stream pooling inside of me, filling up that empty space that usually gaped in my chest.
The door opened, and I jumped, but it was only Warner.
“They just called,” he said. “They’re in the cab. Should be here in about ten.”