I couldn’t get back to sleep after that. Muffin had woken up and was spinning around on his wheel. The rattling got into my head. I lay there, hoping that Wills wouldn’t tell me anything else he didn’t want Mom to know. I didn’t want to know things that I wasn’t supposed to tell her.
The next day was a Saturday, which made it worse that Dad wasn’t there. Dad always made a big breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays. It was his weekend treat since he didn’t have to go to work. Mom cooked the breakfast instead, but it wasn’t the same. With Dad, we would sit at the kitchen table and he would read bits out of the newspaper in between slurps of tea. He’s good at finding the funny bits, like the story about a man who was sent to prison because he kept stealing cars in order to clean them, and the one about a boy who wrote in an exam that you can stop milk from going sour by keeping it in the cow. Or Dad would look at the sports pages and tell us what a foolish game soccer is and how the players are all overpaid crybabies and that THE ONLY GAME IS FOOTBALL, which is a man’s game and not for namby-pambies. We argue with him about football being THE ONLY GAME, because Wills and I like soccer, except that we agree with Dad about soccer players hugging and kissing each other and pretending to be hurt when they’re not. And we agree with him that they get too much money, though we wouldn’t mind if we were soccer players ourselves.
So we sat there, Mom, Wills, and me, all quiet and just eating. Then Mom told us not to worry about things, and that Dad loved us very much, and that we would go and stay with him as soon as he was settled. Wills made a face and said that he didn’t want to go and stay with him and that Mom couldn’t make him. Mom said Dad would be very sad if Wills didn’t go, but Wills said he didn’t care. I told him to shut up and that he was making it worse for everyone.
He stood up then and shouted, “You shut up, Mr. Goody-goody,” and stormed out of the house.
Mom and I washed up, with me thinking the house would soon be empty if everyone kept walking out, and Mom saying that Wills would be all right once he’d gotten used to the idea. I didn’t even know if I’d be all right once I’d gotten used to the idea, but I was so angry with Wills for making everything worse, and I was upset too because I’d made things worse by shouting at him, even if he did deserve it.
“I wish Wills didn’t always have to be so extreme,” I grumbled.
“I know, love,” said Mom, “but Wills is Wills, and that’s how he deals with things.”
“Never mind us,” I muttered.
“I know he has his moments, Chris, but his heart’s in the right place and he doesn’t mean any harm.”
Only when he’s using me to entertain his friends, I thought.
When we’d finished, Mom asked if I would stay in the house while she went to the supermarket, “in case Wills comes back,” she said. I offered to go out on my bike to look for him, but Mom wanted me to stay put.
I sat and watched the television, even though there was nothing on. I sat there and missed my dad, because after breakfast on a Saturday we usually threw a ball around in the backyard, which was Dad’s bit of exercise for the week, and we helped him to wash his car, which is his pride and joy. Wills never lasted very long throwing a ball or washing the car. He always wound up throwing the ball so hard that he bowled Dad over—STRIKE!—or he got carried away with the dish liquid, and Dad’s pride and joy would disappear under a mountain of froth. Then it would just be me and Dad throwing the ball and washing the car, which was good for me, even when Wills yelled rude things at me from his bedroom window, and Dad threatened to wash his mouth out with the froth.
I sat there until the game started, and Mom came home with the groceries and looked worried because Wills wasn’t back. I said I’d go and look for him on my bike, because watching sports without Dad wasn’t the same. This time Mom didn’t argue.
I bicycled everywhere. Up and down: the roads near our house, down to the canal and along the side of it, up through the main street and back again. I might easily have missed him there because it was so crammed with people who were wandering up and down, in and out of stores, as though nothing unusual or sad or threatening was happening to them, which perhaps it wasn’t but it was to me. It made it more difficult to bear that life was going on as normal when there was nothing normal about it.
I spotted some of Wills’s horrible friends. He wasn’t with them and I wasn’t going to ask if they knew where he was. I bicycled past them quickly. I went into the library to ask Penny if she’d seen him go by, but I forgot that she didn’t work there on a Saturday. So I bicycled back home again.
“Wills?” Mom called when she heard me open the door. She looked a bit disappointed when she saw that it was me.
“Ive searched everywhere, Mom, but I can’t find him. He’ll be all right
