Brandy Colbert - Pointe

My dead best friend.

I’m standing and then I’m walking toward the counter without thinking, oblivious to Sara-Kate and Phil, who are close behind.

Donovan’s name comes up once or twice a year—on the anniversary of his disappearance or when someone submits a false lead. Like, someone saw him in a Burger King in Vermont, or he was spotted in line at an amusement park in Utah. I figured out a long time ago to stop believing I would see him again. He was my best friend, but everyone knows kids missing longer than twenty-four hours were sexually abused or killed or both.

But this time is different. The news anchor’s glossy lips are stretched into a smile and she stumbles over her words, trips over the last-minute script. She’s telling us that he’s alive. Donovan’s been found.

My ears are the first thing to go. I can no longer hear voices, just this buzzing. Raw and unstoppable and I can’t tell if Sara-Kate and Phil and the rest of the diner hear it, too, because then my eyes get stuck on the school picture that was taken the last year I saw him. I used to keep that picture in my nightstand, separate from the photos of my other classmates. Seeing it on-screen, I feel like someone has stolen my journal and displayed it for the world to see.

I am somewhat aware of the silence as I take in that for the first time ever, no one in this greasy spoon is saying a word. That they’re all looking from the television to one another, slack-jawed. That Sara-Kate is stepping forward for a closer look, and Phil is rubbing my back, searching my face with his huge, dark eyes.

Donovan is alive.

“They found that boy,” Jana says, her hands gripping the black handle of a coffeepot.

I try to hold myself up, but these legs, these same legs that will dance me all the way to New York—they can’t. They are made of jelly and I would fall to the ground if Phil didn’t catch me. This particular combination of relief and confusion and elation is too big to comprehend, too big to do anything but lean on Phil in front of the counter, tears streaming down the hills of my cheeks until he and Sara-Kate lead me out on my jelly legs.

Outside into the brisk autumn air, where I catch my breath for the first time in minutes, where I say it aloud to convince myself it’s true:

“Donovan’s alive.”

Donovan came back to us.

MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS A SHITSHOW.

The Pratts’ house—Donovan’s house—is two doors down from us, so our street is blocked off. I stop at the corner and show the policemen who I am, pull out my ID with unsteady hands as I try to look down the street to see what’s happening. I’ve dreamed about this day plenty of times, but in my version, Donovan was standing outside on his porch—waiting for me like I’ve been waiting for him all these years. My version didn’t look like this.

I receive an escort to my driveway and a couple of officers hold back the reporters while another walks me to my front door, smiles, and makes sure I’m safely inside before heading back down the porch steps.

The house is quiet and calm, the antithesis of the clicking shutters and shouted questions and hum of too many people on the other side of the door. I breathe in the silence.

“Mom?” I call out.

But I know she’s not here. She works part-time in the research department of the library and today is her late day. Dad won’t be home for another half hour, either. And I don’t know what to do with myself, so I sit on the couch with my coat buttoned up to my neck and I wait.

Exactly thirty minutes later, I hear the slow crank of the garage door, my father’s car pulling in, the creak of the door as it shudders to the ground. Then I hear his urgent footsteps, the flipping of light switches as he navigates his way through the dark house, looking for me.

“In here,” I say when he rushes past the living room doorway.

He loops back down the hallway and into the room, stands in front of me while he scratches the back of his head. “Did you get my messages? Mom and I both called you a few times.”

His eyes are slightly dazed, his silver tie with teeny black polka dots askew. I gave him that tie for Father’s Day last year. He uses everything I give him. Even the misshapen ceramic pencil cup I made in third-grade art class sits on the desk at his accounting firm in the city.

“Oh, yeah.” I looked at my phone once, I think, to check the time. I don’t remember hearing it ring or seeing the missed calls. “Sorry. I got distracted.” I gesture toward the commotion on the other side of the curtains.

He smiles a bit. “Right. It’s kind of a zoo out there. But what do you say we brave the paparazzi and go out to dinner when your mother gets home? We should celebrate.”

“I already ate,” I say, digging my fingers into the empty cushions on either side of me.

I don’t realize this is a lie until I think about the cup of lentil soup that never came to the table. I wonder if Jana ever brought out our food, if she was pissed that we left without canceling our order.

“Could I stay here instead?” I twist my hands in my lap as I look at him. “I want to watch the news.”

Dad has too much energy. He wants to get out. He can’t stop fiddling with his collar and glancing toward the windows. But he smiles again, bigger this time. He says, “Of course, babygirl. You’re right. It’s probably best if we all stay in.”

So that’s how Mom finds us, side by side on the sofa in the den, watching the same story play out on different channels. She settles on the other side of me, and when our eyes meet, I have to look away because I see the happy tears in hers and if she starts crying, mine will spill over again. She puts her hand on top of mine as I turn back to the television.

Donovan Pratt, 17, returned to his home in Illinois after four years in captivity

Breaking News: Chicagoland teen rescued from years-long abduction

Locals call missing teen’s return a miracle

The news is the type of nonstop coverage that makes people turn away after a while, say they no longer care. I absorb it all, find a little pocket to store each new piece of information. The reports are vague. Every news anchor alludes to the abuse, brings up old long-term abduction cases and some that were never solved. They talk about where Donovan was found: a Las Vegas breakfast buffet, with the person they believe had him all these years. A few minutes past nine, the thick-haired anchor with the tired eyes says.

I was in second period. Chem. My throat tightens as I try to remember if I felt anything during class. But no. I was zoning out, same as any other day of the week.

Some of the channels show timelines to illustrate his life. They use fancy graphics and bold colors, but it all adds up to the same conclusion: thirteen years as a normal kid in Ashland Hills, four years at the mercy of a stranger. I wait and I wait, but they haven’t revealed the identity of the abductor. All we know is there’s a suspect in custody.

“You should get ready for bed,” my mother says gently, around eleven.

The coverage has slowed except for the major cable news channels. There’s nothing new to be learned at this point, but I’m afraid I’ll miss something if I go to bed. I want to know who took him. What they did to him.

“He’ll still be here in the morning,” my mother says, as if she can read my mind.

Somehow I float up to my room and then I’m under the covers. But I can’t sleep. How can someone be here every day for years, then disappear? How can they be gone so long and just come back on a Thursday, like that was the plan the whole time? I won’t believe he’s really here until I see him.

Donovan was brave. In a speak-first-think-later sort of way, but there was always truth behind his words. Like that day during our sixth-grade history lesson. I’d been dreading it all week because we were studying the Civil War and there’s nothing worse than being the only black kid in class on the day your teacher talks about slavery.

Most days, I don’t think too much about being a novelty in this town. Chicago is really segregated, and my suburb is almost all white, but people don’t treat me like there’s a big divide or anything. We’ve been in school together for so long, it’s like they forget my skin is darker until someone or something reminds them. And the slavery discussion is one of those instances. It goes one of two ways: either the teacher calls on you because you must be the expert, or they avoid you and look all around the room at your blond-haired, blue-eyed classmates.

Mr. Hammond was old-school, so he jumped right in. Something about the modern-day effects of Jim Crow laws, and as soon as he finished his question, he looked right at me and said, “Theo, maybe you have an example of how Jim Crow laws have affected you or your family so many decades later.”

I felt eyes on me and I felt eyes trying not to be on me. The room was so silent, I heard Macy Wilkins’s stomach growling in the next row. And no matter how hard I wished it, Mr. Hammond did not get swallowed up by the floor and whisked away to a hell built for insensitive teachers.

I was just sitting there, trying to figure out how to answer him without being exceptionally rude, when I remembered that this year I wasn’t the only black kid in this class. Donovan sat on the other side of the room and I didn’t have to look over to know he was seething.

But I didn’t expect him to say anything.

Before I could open my mouth: “Why did you call on Theo, Mr. Hammond?”