When I wake up, the light in the room is different. Brighter. It feels like it might be lunchtime, so I make a cheese sandwich. The first few bites make me gag, but I force myself to swallow. If someone attacks me, I will need to have the strength to fight back. I wish I’d taken karate instead of dance. What good was a perfect split leap going to do me now? My dad used to watch this old TV show about a guy who could make a bomb out of a gum wrapper and a bungee cord and a single match. I wonder what he would do with bamboo cutlery, peanut butter and a wicker basket. I sure can’t think of anything.

  I need something metal. And sharp. I look around the room again. All the furniture is made of molded plastic. I stand up and hurl the night table against the wall, hoping it will shatter into sharp shards. It bounces. I smash the chair into the kitchen table, making a tiny dent.

  I am suddenly very thirsty. When I open the fridge to get some juice, there it is, right in front of me—a white metal rack. I throw the little boxes of milk and juice on the floor and yank out the rack. I don’t know how I’m going to get the metal rods out of the frame, but I have to try. My hands are still sore and swollen from pounding on the door, so I stomp on the rack until my feet hurt as much as my hands do. I wonder where my shoes are. And my phone. I wonder if anybody has missed me yet. I sit at the table and stare at the dent.

  Gradually, the room darkens and the pot lights come on. The quiet is deafening. No street noise. No voices. No footsteps. Just the faint hum of what I figure is some kind of air-exchange system. I look up and see a small vent near the ceiling. No help there. I’ll work on the fridge rack later. All I can do right now is write my first essay.

  Chapter Four

  Eric

  It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I last saw Amy. Ms. Lessard has called the cops, checked the hospitals and contacted Amy’s dad. He says he hasn’t seen Amy in weeks. I have been on the phone for hours. I call girls she dances with, girls she plays soccer with, girls who like to party. Guys she used to date, guys who want to get with her, guys on the swim team, guys on the chess team. It’s a long list. No one has seen her. No one knows Shawna’s last name or where she lives. Shawna isn’t answering her phone. I leave message after message, text after text. Call me. Call me. Call me.

  I fall asleep in the media room. Yes, that’s what Mom and Dad call it. Not a TV room, a media room. Massive HD-TV, Bose surround sound, blackout shades, leather couches and chairs, fully stocked bar, commercial popcorn machine. My dad likes his toys. Not that he’s ever around to enjoy them. Mom never comes down here—she prefers her office, on the top floor. And her white wine. And her tennis coach, Axel. Really. I bet his real name is Mike.

  My phone wakes me up, and I grab it off the marble coffee table. I’m disappointed to see Ms. Lessard’s cell number. Where the hell is Shawna?

  “Have you heard from that girl? Shawna?” she says after we establish that neither of us has heard from Amy.

  I sit up and try to focus. “No. I keep trying, but nothing yet. What do the police say? Are they looking for Amy?”

  There’s a pause before Ms. Lessard answers. It’s like she’s on a five-second delay. “They usually wait twenty-four hours to investigate a missing person, but since Amy’s so young...” Her voice trails off. “They still think she’s probably with a friend, but they’re not taking any chances.” Another pause before she says, “The police are on their way to see you, Eric. It’s only a formality, a process of elimination. No one thinks you’ve done anything to her.”

  “They always suspect the boyfriend, right?” I say. I’d never hurt Amy. Ms. Lessard knows that. Doesn’t she?

  As if she’s read my mind, she says, “I know you’d never hurt Amy, Eric. I told them that. They’re just being, you know, thorough.”

  “Thorough,” I repeat. The doorbell rings. I can hear my mom’s heels clicking across the floor. “Gotta go, Ms. L,” I say. “I think the cops are here. Thanks for the heads up.” I end the call just as my mom’s voice comes over the intercom.

  “Eric. The police are here. Something about Amy. Please come up. We’re in the kitchen.”

  When I get there, she is offering the two cops—one man, one woman— coffee. When they refuse, she pours herself a glass of white wine and says, “Should I stay?”

  “Might be a good idea, ma’am,” the man says, “since your son’s a minor.”

  “How long will this take?” she says, looking at her watch.

  “Not long, if Eric cooperates,” the woman replies.

  Mom laughs gaily, as if she’s at a cocktail party, flirting with one of Dad’s cronies. “Eric’s very cooperative, aren’t you, sweetie?” She perches on a stool by the counter and pats the stools on either side of her. “Make yourselves comfortable, officers. Eric, tell them what they want to know.” She winks at the man, who blushes. Both officers stay standing.

  “When did you last see Amy, son?” the man asks.

  I hate it when men call me “son.” My own parents never call me that. Why should anyone else?

  “Last night,” I tell him. “At a party on Washington Avenue.”

  “We heard there was a fight. Between you and Amy.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter. Is it true?”

  “Yeah. But it was no big deal. She wanted to stay and dance. I didn’t. Like I said, no big deal.”

  “What time was this?”

  I think for a minute. We had gone to the party at around ten. Had a few drinks. Danced a bit. It was boring. I wanted to be alone with Amy. The music was way too loud, and everyone but me was on their way to getting wasted. Including Amy.

  “I didn’t check my watch. Probably around midnight.”

  The woman writes something in a notebook, and Mom takes a sip of her drink.

  “Are you the jealous type, Eric?” the woman asks.

  “Jealous? No. Not really.”

  “I hear your girlfriend was very attractive. And popular.”

  “Yeah. She was. Is.” Why are they referring to her in the past tense? She isn’t dead. I know she isn’t.

  “So that didn’t bother you?”

  “Not really. She was—is—friendly.”

  “Friendly.” The woman turns the word over in her mouth like a hard candy.

  “Yeah. As far as I know, popularity’s not a crime.”

  Mom snorts, and the male cop raises his eyebrows at her.

  “What did you do after you left the party, son?”

  “I came home. Went to sleep.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “I walked.”

  “From Washington Avenue? That’s a long way.”

  I shrug. “I like walking.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “See me what?”

  “Walking.”

  “I guess so. I mean, there were cars going by.”

  “And did you speak to your parents when you got in?”

  “No. It was late. Dad’s out of town. I didn’t want to disturb Mom.”

  The cop turns toward Mom. “Did you hear Eric come in, ma’am?”

  “Afraid not,” Mom says. “I took a pill around midnight. Dead to the world until this morning. Sorry, sweetie,” she says to me.

  I shrug again. The officers exchange a glance that must mean the interview is over. The woman closes her notebook. The man puts a business card on the granite countertop. “Call anytime,” he says. “If you hear anything. Either of you.”

  Mom nods and slides off the stool. She staggers a little and grabs the male cop’s arm. “Oopsie daisy,” she says.

  I watch as she walks them to the door, weaving slightly. She waves goodbye and trills, “Toodles” as they get in their cruiser. Then she shuts the door and strides back to me. Her back is straight, her footsteps steady, her voice clipped and precise.

  “What have you done this time, Eric?” she says.

  Chapter Five

  Amy

  I’m not one of those girls who writes in her journal every day and dreams of being the next Stephenie Meyer or whatever. I never read anything unless I have to for school. Mom says that when I was little, I loved books, but somewhere along the way I stopped. She thinks it was because I got so serious about dance. I think it was because all the books we had to read for school were completely lame. I still get good marks in English though. So writing a few essays shouldn’t be too hard. Especially if it will get me out of here. I push away the thought that it might not.

  I get a pen and a pad of paper out of the drawer and sit down at the table. Which sin should I start with? I look at the letter again. Lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, envy, wrath, pride. The Seven Deadly Sins don’t sound all that deadly. If I think about lust, I’m going to think about Eric. I wish we hadn’t fought. I wish I’d left the party with him. I wish that chick Shawna had left me alone. No, I don’t want to write about lust. Maybe sloth would be good. The image of a weird animal hanging upside down in a tree comes to my mind. That’s not the kind of sloth I’m supposed to write about, I’m pretty sure. I doodle on the pad for a minute—a daisy with two leaves— then start to write.

  Sloth is another word for laziness. When I was little, Beth was always the one Mom called lazybones. Beth’s not a morning person. I am. Mom says Beth and I are like our births. Beth took forever to come out. I tried to be born early. Beth moves slowly. I move fast. But Beth’s not lazy. Not really. She just takes her time doing things. Like spreading peanut butter on her toast in the morning. Or getting dressed. It makes me crazy. But she’s not lazy. Especially now, when she has to go to physio three times a week. And do exercises every day, probably for the rest of her life. She has to work so hard just to get from point A to point B.

  No, the lazy one in my family is my dad. I remember him coming home from work and parking himself on the couch with a beer and a book. Even though she worked full-time too, Mom would still make dinner, do the laundry, help us with our homework, read us bedtime stories and make our lunches for the next day. Dad was supposed to take care of the yard and the house. You know. Mow the lawn. Clean the gutters. Let’s just say that when they sold the house after the divorce, it was listed as a fixer-upper. Lazy. Slothful. That’s my dad. Funny and smart, but not a ball of fire. Mom told me once that she fell in love with Dad because he was so laidback and fell out of love with him for the same reason.

  The real reason Mom fell out of love with dad is because his laziness almost got Beth killed. She was at a party one night and she called home for a ride, because the girl she went to the party with was too drunk to drive. Mom and Dad had always said, Call for a ride. No questions asked. Mom was asleep, and Dad answered the phone that night. He told Beth to call a cab, because he was too lazy to get off his ass and go get her. He told her he was “really into” the book he was reading. She got a ride with her drunk friend, who ran a red light and got herself killed. They had to use the jaws of life to get Beth out of the car. Her right leg was smashed. She had a concussion. Her pelvis was broken. All because Dad was too lazy to get out of bed. So, I guess you could say sloth kills. It doesn’t sound like a deadly sin, but it can be.

  I’ve filled a page, and I don’t have anything more to say about sloth. I do know which sin I’m going to tackle next. It’s the one I’m feeling right now. Wrath. I’m so angry, I figure I can tear the fridge rack apart with my teeth. Not that I’m going to try. Mom would kill me if I wrecked my teeth after she spent so much to have them straightened. I try again to pull the rack apart, but all I manage to do is bend it a little. I slump over the table and rest my head on my arms. I’m so tired, but before I go to sleep, I need to find a weapon. And I need to “mail” my essay. I fold the paper in half and slide it through the slot in the door. I press my ear to the slot, but I can’t hear anything, not even the sound of the paper falling to the floor on the other side.

  I go into the bathroom to wash my face and pee. When I flush the toilet, I have a sudden memory of Dad telling me how to stop the toilet from running. Mom had been asking him to fix it for months. Jiggling the handle had stopped working.

  “Take off the tank lid and lift up the rod and float for a few seconds. That should do it,” he said. Thanks for being a lazy bum, Dad.

  When I open the tank now, I find a metal rod attached to a float. If I take it apart, the toilet won’t flush. If I don’t take it apart, I won’t have a weapon. I separate the rod and the float as carefully as possible—I want to be able to get it back together when I need to. The rod isn’t long or sharp, but I feel stronger holding it. Less afraid. Before I go to bed, I take the pen and scrawl a big DAY 1 on the wall across from the bed. Beside it I write the word SLOTH. Then I draw a tree with a sloth hanging from one of its branches. With the rod clutched in my hand, I crawl into bed. The pot lights dim and I sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Eric

  My mom really should have been an actress, not a CEO. That whole flirty, “oopsie daisy” thing with the cops? Totally fake. She’s not even tipsy, let alone drunk. And she’s definitely not helpless. Or stupid. She just wanted the cops to think she was. She does that a lot. People (mostly men) underestimate her. They usually regret it.

  This is a woman who started a dogwalking business when she was in high school and built it into a hugely successful company. There are DLD franchises all over North America. In case you were wondering, DLD stands for Donna Loves Dogs, the name she picked when she was sixteen. And yes, there’s a heart in the logo. Mom hasn’t touched a dog in years though. Won’t have one in the house. She just sits up in her office and manages her empire. And plays tennis with Axel/Mike.

  Now she’s glaring at me as if I’ve made a mess on the carpet.

  “Do I need to call Richard?” she asks.

  Richard is Mr. Franks, the lawyer she keeps on retainer. I’ll admit he’s come in handy in the past. But she hasn’t had to use his services—not for me anyway—in a long time. He read me the riot act when he got me off on the whole assault thing. Which was all a huge misunderstanding. But I listened. And Amy has made it pretty clear she doesn’t date losers or criminals. So I’m not that guy anymore. No matter what Mom thinks.

  I shake my head. “I haven’t done anything wrong, Mom. Really.”

  “So you have no idea where Amy is?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you last saw her at a party? In a bad neighborhood?”

  I nod. For the first time, I start to feel really afraid. For Amy. For myself. This isn’t a game or a joke. This is real. Mom must see the fear in my face because she stops glaring and puts her arm around me.

  “When was the last time you ate?” she asks.

  I shrug. I honestly can’t remember.

  “Time for brinner then,” she says. When I was little we used to have brinner—breakfast for dinner—all the time. Just her and me, sitting in front of the TV in our old house. Watching reruns of old shows like Gilligan’s Island and F Troop. We haven’t had brinner together in years. Not since her business took off and we moved.

  I sit at the counter and watch her fry the bacon, scramble the eggs, put bread in the toaster. She looks over at me and smiles. “Just like the old days, huh,” she says. She was always good at reading my mind.

  I nod and say, “Have you called Dad?”

  She shakes her head. “Should I?”

  I shudder. The last thing I want is for Dad to take charge. That’s what he does for a living. Hostile takeovers. He’d have Mr. Franks over here in a hot second. “No. Not unless I get arrested.” I manage a weak laugh.

  “Not funny,” she says. “And those cops were idiots anyway.”

  “Even idiots can make an arrest.”

  “Not without evidence they can’t,” she says. She puts a plate of food in front of me and starts to eat scrambled eggs from the pan. “So what’s your plan?”

  “I’ve been trying to find this girl named Shawna. She was with Amy at the party. She isn’t calling me back though.”

  “That’s it?”

  I take a bite of toast and watch her while I chew. She has a bit of scrambled egg on her chin, but otherwise she looks the way she usually does. In control. I’m sure if I asked her to hire a private detective, she would do it.

  I’m sure she wants to. But I want to find Amy myself. I want to be the one.

  Not some stranger.

  “It’s a start,” I say. “And there’s this guy named Devon. The party was at his house.”

  “Okay,” she says. “How about—”

  I cut her off. “Remember what Mr. Franks said last year? That I had to start taking responsibility for my actions?”

  She nods.

  “Well, let me do it then.”

  “But you just told me you’re not responsible.”

  I get up, leaving most of my brinner untouched. “You know what I mean, Mom.”

  She turns away from me and runs some water over the frying pan. “I suppose I do,” she says. “But this is serious, Eric. If the cops come back, I’m calling Mr. Franks. You are not to talk to them without both of us there. Do you understand?”

  This is starting to feel like an episode of Law & Order. The kind where it turns out that the boyfriend chopped his girlfriend up and put her in the freezer. Except, I didn’t.

  Before I go to bed I try calling and texting Shawna again. No answer. No reply. Just before I fall asleep, my phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

  Devon saw something.

  I text back. Who is this?

  Cara. Devon’s sister. Come by tmrrw morning.

  K. I reply.

  The screen goes dark. My dreams are full of chainsaws, blood and bones.

 

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