We Now Return to Regular Life Read online

  Dial Books

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street |New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Martin Wilson

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  Ebook ISBN: 9780735227842

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wilson, Martin, date, author.

  Title: We now return to regular life / Martin Wilson.

  Description: New York, NY : Dial Books, [2017]

  Summary: When fourteen-year-old Sam Walsh returns home after three years in the custody of his kidnapper, his older sister Beth and childhood friend Josh must deal with their survivors’ guilt, their memories of what really happened the day Sam disappeared, and with the fact that Sam is not the boy they remember, but a troubled teen struggling to re-adapt to normal life.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016032500 | ISBN 9780735227828 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Kidnapping—Fiction. | Emotional problems—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Gays—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.W6972 We 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032500

  Excerpt from SAINT MAYBE by Anne Tyler, copyright ©1991 by ATM, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket photographs © 2017 Arcangel, Snapwire, Shutterstock

  Jacket design by Kristin Smith-Boyle

  Version_1

  =For Avery=

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: THAT DAY

  Chapter 2: The White Truck

  Chapter 3: Holding It Together

  Chapter 4: Connected

  Chapter 5: The Famous Beth Walsh

  Chapter 6: Lickety-Split

  Chapter 7: Adults

  Chapter 8: The Most Awful Story in the World

  Chapter 9: Superman

  Chapter 10: Alien

  Chapter 11: Gone but Not Gone

  Chapter 12: A Better Place

  Chapter 13: January

  Chapter 14: The Other Kid

  Chapter 15: Again

  Chapter 16: Meadowbrook Manor

  Chapter 17: Home

  Chapter 18: Any Other Freshman

  Acknowledgments

  Note About the Author

  “Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.”

  —Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe

  CHAPTER 1

  THAT DAY

  Beth

  We’d been studying on his couch, our Advanced Chemistry textbooks sitting on the coffee table, suffering through questions about alkali metals and noble gases, when Donal made a joke about gas being ignoble. And I’d laughed, like I always did at his dumb jokes. And then our knees touch and our shoulders bump and suddenly we start kissing each other. Like, a real kiss, deep and forceful, sending gentle sparks up my back. I’m wondering how in the world this happened when my cell phone starts ringing.

  It’s Mom—I know from the ringtone, I don’t even have to look. The one day I cut out from school early. The one day I break routine. I pull away from Donal, instantly wishing I hadn’t. I let out a little laugh and instantly feel this ridiculous mix of nervousness, because Mom is calling, and regret, because we stopped kissing too soon, and then confusion, because why were we even kissing to begin with?

  “Damn,” Donal says. “Let’s not stop.”

  I stare into his blue eyes, which look a little dopey right now. He isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my friend, just my friend, ever since freshman year. Why did I like kissing him so much? I wipe my lips, but I also have the urge to lean into him again and start all over.

  But the phone keeps ringing. I can’t ignore Mom. I’m her dependable daughter. And if, for once, I’m not, she’ll freak out.

  I scoot away from Donal and make a move to go to my purse on the floor at the end of the couch, but I stop.

  Did he plan on kissing me all along?

  “You gonna get that?” Donal asks. “Or can you just ignore it,” he says, breaking into a smile while raising his eyebrows again and again in a silly way.

  It must be close to three o’clock. I’m skipping sixth-period soccer practice. We both are. I hurt my ankle last week and have a doctor’s note—a light sprain. I’m not out for the season or anything. But I’m still supposed to sit on the sidelines and physically be there—you know, be a team player, rah-rah-rah.

  But I snuck away with Donal. He’s on the boys’ team, but his coach had the flu and their practice was canceled. It was his idea, skipping out. “Let’s get this chemistry assignment done,” he’d said. And then he added, “at my place.” He knew I didn’t like to spend a lot of time at my own house. So yeah, maybe he planned this. Makes total sense. Except it doesn’t. And now my phone won’t shut up.

  I finally hop from the couch and grab my phone from my bag, squatting on the floor. I don’t answer, I just stare at the word “Mom” flashing on the screen. Then the ringing stops. “Great,” I say. Somehow she’s figured out that I’m not at school. Maybe Coach Bailey called her. All I can think about is my mom’s worried face, the thoughts that must be swirling through her brain.

  Donal runs a hand through his red hair then leans forward, his eyes on me, but he’s not making the funny face anymore. Then the phone starts ringing again, and he leans back on the couch, laughing.

  I try to gather my thoughts. Okay, quick—what’s my excuse? Screw it. “Hello,” I say after the third ring. I brace myself. But I don’t hear any words. I just hear something like a moan. “Hello?” I say again.

  The moan turns to some sort of heavy breathing, and then I hear Mom’s voice: “Beth?” It sounds like she’s been crying.

  “Mom, I’m here,” I say, feeling sick to my stomach. I was worried about being in trouble. But now I’m just afraid.

  “Thank God I found you!” Mom says. I hear her take a few deep breaths. She sniffles and says, “They said you weren’t at school. I thought, I thought—I didn’t know what to think.”

  I’m used to hearing my mother cry. For over three years it’s been a fact of life. She can be laughing one minute and then, wham, she’s leaking tears. Like she feels bad for ever having fun. I’m so used to it, it hardly ever phases me. I’m always there to hug her, rub her back, play the good daughter. But the way she sounds now is different. “Mom, I’m okay. I’m at a friend’s—”

  “Just come home. Come home.” Then she makes some kind of gurgling noise.

  “Mom?” My heart is revving up. I hear a voice in the background—my stepfather’s, probably. I think I hear him say Tell her.

  Oh God. I look over at Donal, but he’s still staring up at the ceiling, smiling in an ex
asperated way.

  “Beth,” Mom says, her voice sounding shaky.

  I hold my breath, close my eyes.

  “They found Sam.”

  I let out my breath, or maybe it’s a gasp, but I don’t say anything, and I keep my eyes shut. Because when I open my eyes I’m not sure what the world will look like.

  I’ve been waiting for this moment for three years.

  “Beth,” Mom says, speaking carefully now. “He’s alive.”

  I open my eyes. The world looks the same as before. But it shouldn’t. It should be brighter, more colorful, like a wondrous land of make-believe. I must be in some weird dream now.

  Because what Mom is saying isn’t possible.

  “They found him this morning, honey. And now he’s home, he’s home with us.” She starts crying again, and then I realize why she sounded different. This is a happy cry.

  My brain can’t make sense of it. Sam + Found + Alive + Home = Sam is found, Sam is alive, Sam is at home. Our home.

  It’s all wrong. Sam is dead. Sam is gone. He disappeared three years ago. No, more than three years ago. Vanished. Like one of those kids on the milk cartons. You never see them again. You just don’t.

  “Beth, did you hear me?” Mom says.

  Donal is looking over at me now with a concerned expression. He mouths something but I’m too foggy to read his lips.

  “Beth?” Mom says.

  I press the phone back against my ear. “Yes,” I say.

  Mom says, “Wherever you are, just come home.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay. I’m coming.” I end the call and drop the phone back in my bag. I just stay there, frozen. I should be screaming and jumping up and down. I should be the happiest person alive. But I don’t feel like I’m in the real world.

  “Beth? You okay?”

  Donal sits up and I stare over at him and that’s when I realize that I’m not dreaming all of this. “I have to go.” I don’t say good-bye or hug him or anything. I grab my stuff and rush out of his house into the overcast October day. It’s not cold, but I’m shivering when I take out my car keys. I can hear Donal shouting my name from the front door of his house, but I don’t look back. I steady my hand and get in my car and drive. I manage to obey traffic laws. I manage to get back to the southern side of the city, where we live in Pine Forest Estates, in the same house we lived in back when Sam went missing.

  My stepdad, Earl, had wanted to move. But Mom was adamant that we stay. What if he comes back and doesn’t find us? How will he be able to find us if we move? Ridiculous. Earl thought so, too. Ridiculous that she could even think that might happen, as if Sam were some stray dog who had simply lost his way.

  But now we’re the ridiculous ones.

  Sam. I can see him. Brown hair, brown eyes, stubby little nose, sharp dimples. A classically cute kid. And he knew it. Even at that young age, he had the cockiness of a good-looking older boy. Mom always said he was going to grow up to be a heartbreaker. He’s eleven in my mind. Always eleven. But of course he’d be fourteen now, wouldn’t he? He is fourteen now.

  I’m driving, getting closer and closer to our neighborhood, approaching a future I never knew existed.

  ===

  That day in July was hot and sticky. A day when you just wanted to stay inside, which is what I was doing the day Sam disappeared. The AC was on, but Earl was tight with money, and he didn’t like us to run it too low. So basically we all suffered, with useless ceiling fans blowing the stuffy air around. At least my room faced the backyard, which was mostly shaded by a big oak tree. So it was a little cooler in there. But I remember the heat, because it became one more unpleasant thing about that day.

  Mom and Earl were at work. We’d been fighting a lot back then—Earl and I. About the AC, about how late I stayed up, too late, about how I talked to Mom (“Don’t be smart,” he’d always say). She had married him the year before. He was fine, but I still didn’t know him that well. Like, who was this guy living in my house and telling me what to do, pretending to be my real dad?

  On that day, Sam pushed open my bedroom door, around two in the afternoon.

  “What?” I said.

  He was always barging in, which I hated. Normally I locked my door but that day I must have forgotten.

  “What do you want?”

  Let me pause to take in Sam that day: He was tall for his age. He played soccer, basketball, sometimes football, so I guess you can say he was an athletic kid, but he was too young to be muscular. He rode his bike, played video games. He was active, loud, energetic—a boy. That day he was wearing cargo shorts and a Superman T-shirt, looking flush, his dark hair slightly sweaty and stuck to his forehead.

  “Josh and I are going to the mall.” Josh Keller was our neighbor, a kid Sam’s age. “We’re gonna ride our bikes.”

  “You’re kidding?” The nearest mall was two miles away along a busy road. It was a dying, crappy mall. And it was hot as hell out. “Why doesn’t Mrs. Keller drive you?”

  “She’s too busy studying or something. We want to buy some new video games.”

  “Mom will kill you if she finds out.”

  “But she won’t find out,” he said, smiling that dimpled smile. He knew he could get away with anything. “You want to go with us?” he asked. Maybe he was trying to rope me in so we’d both get in trouble.

  “No way,” I said. The idea of riding a bike with two eleven-year-old boys, all the way down Skyland Boulevard as cars zoomed by, was too embarrassing to contemplate.

  “I wish you could drive,” he said.

  I was fourteen, but turning fifteen that September, and I could get my learner’s permit then. “Me too,” I said.

  “If I’m not back by the time Mom gets home, will you cover for me?”

  I rolled my eyes and he gave me a pleading, innocent look—always performing, hamming it up. I have to admit, sometimes he was hard to say no to. We were brother and sister, after all. Even if he bugged me, we still had some kind of pact. Especially after Dad had left, when Mom’s bad moods could strike us like thunder.

  I sighed. “Fine.”

  He cracked his impish grin and gave me a thumbs-up. Then he shut my door.

  I almost yelled, “Be careful!” or something like that. But I didn’t say anything.

  That was the last time I saw him.

  ===

  Two or three hours later, I was still in my room. I’d fallen asleep while reading Forever for the millionth time. I’d been trying to read My Antonia, because it was on our summer reading list—this was the summer before I started high school—but, sorry, it was too hot for fine literature. It was the knock on the door that roused me, the sound of it whooshing open.

  “Where’s your brother?” Mom asked from the doorway. She was in her work clothes, but her hair—light brown like mine, but with gray roots because she wasn’t good about coloring it—was sort of messy and wilted.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling groggy. I rubbed my eyes and was almost surprised to find her still standing there. “He’s probably at Josh’s house.” I looked at the little pink digital clock on my bedside table. It was just after five.

  “I just saw Josh. He was riding his bike around. I didn’t see Sam.”

  I thought about what Sam had said earlier, about how I should cover for him. If Mom found out he was riding his bike out of the neighborhood—one of many things that was strictly forbidden—then he was toast. Part of me wanted to rat him out right then and there. Precious Sam disobeyed you. But he always broke the rules, and it never mattered. Plus, if he got grounded he’d be in my hair a lot more than he already was. So I decided to play dumb. Let Mom figure it out on her own.

  Besides, I didn’t think anything was wrong. Bad things didn’t happen to Sam. He’d fallen off his bike once, flipped and rolled, and all he had was a scraped elbow.
When most of the kids in his third-grade class got the flu one winter, Sam was fine, not even a sniffle. He seemed invincible.

  “Call his cell,” I said. Mom had given us cell phones, but they were meant only for “emergencies.”

  “His phone’s in his room. I checked.”

  “I don’t know then.”

  Mom stared at me, folding her arms across her chest, which is what she always did when she meant business. “You’re supposed to watch your brother,” she said.

  “He’s not a baby.”

  Mom shook her head and walked out of my room without even bothering to pull my door shut.

  A few seconds later I heard the front door slam. I went down the hall to the living room—the room we never used, with its white carpet and fancy furnishings—and looked outside and saw Mom marching across the street to the Kellers’ house. Josh was riding his bike around his driveway in tight circles, but he stopped when he saw Mom approach. Josh was Sam’s friend, but I knew Sam kind of thought he was a tool. A sissy. He had sandy blond hair and fair skin that freckled in the summer. He looked delicate, not like the rough-and-tumble type of boy that Sam was. He was quiet, polite, careful. Josh was the only kid who was Sam’s age in the neighborhood. They were friends of convenience more than anything else.

  “Josh hasn’t seen Sam for hours,” Mom said when she came back into the house. “He said they rode their bikes on the trails in the woods, but he went home and Sam stayed there.”

  The trails? What happened to the mall? “Yeah, I’m sure he’s just still goofing around out there.”

  Mom nodded, pulling her hair back away from her face, barely pushing back panic. It’s like she knew. Mother’s intuition or something.

  I went back to my room, but I didn’t stay there long. I felt an uneasiness gnawing at my insides. I put Forever down again and went outside into the heat and over to the Kellers’. I felt better, doing something, instead of sitting around. Josh wasn’t outside anymore, so I knocked on the door and Mr. Keller answered, the cold air from inside whooshing out at me. Mr. Keller was tall, blond going gray, wearing jeans and a blazer. “Hi, Beth.”