I walked into the kitchen and froze. On the kitchen counter was my mom’s beloved camera and an envelope with my name on it.
I opened the envelope with shaking fingers. Inside I found five twenty-dollar bills, a picture of the three of us that my mom had taken, and a note that said,
“Kaine,
We are so sorry for leaving like this. You are better off without us. We hope you can see that someday.
Love Always,
Mom and Dad.”
My fingers brushed over the glossy surface of the photograph. I remembered the day she’d taken that picture. Like my dad and his dreams of becoming an engineer, my mom had had dreams of becoming a photographer. Every spare cent my mom had made as a waitress went to film or developing materials.
We’d spent that day at the park together as a family. Mom had insisted she wanted a family photo together, so Dad had lugged her tripod all over the park with us, and Mom carried her camera in its case.
We’d been set up alongside a stream at Wolf Ledges Park. It had been a good day for me. I’d been to the park lots of times with friends, but it was the first time my family had been there with me. There was a place where a stream made a little waterfall that fell into a pool under an outcropping. I’d been raving about it to my parents for weeks, so Mom had offered to take our family photo there.
She had set the timer on the camera and run back to get in the shot with Dad and me. Just as the camera clicked and whirred, Mom lost her balance and we’d all three ended up in the water. It had turned into one big water fight, and it was one of the best memories I had of my parents.
I looked at the money, the picture, and her camera. It had to be a trick, a practical joke, orsomething. My family couldn’t just leave me, could they? Maybe if I waited long enough, one of my parents would pop out from behind a door and yell “Gotcha!” or show up and tease me for being so gullible.
But no one did.
I’d been so scared at the end of that first day, I didn’t know what to do. I’d searched the entire house, from the basement to the attic, looking for something, some clue, as to where they might have gone. There had been nothing. Every single piece of evidence that my parents had ever lived in that house, other than the contents of the envelope and my bedroom, had been wiped away.
For a while, I figured it had to be a test of some kind, a challenge to see if I could be good without them there every minute. Over the next several days I created a whole fantasy world in my head about my parents, scenario after scenario that explained why they’d been forced to leave me behind. Sometimes I imagined they were secret agents. Other times, I dreamed they were royalty in exile from another country. Or maybe they had stolen sensitive government information, and now they were fleeing for their lives. Where my father, a mechanic by trade, might have gotten government secrets was beyond me, but it didn’t keep me from fantasizing.
Regardless of my conjectures, the persistent theme was that theywouldcome back for me. They’d be back if I could wait long enough, be good enough, prove myself worthy enough of having my family back. They always came back.
I did everything I could think of to prove myself. I cleaned the house, top to bottom, as well as I could with just water and a few old t-shirts that I tore into rags. I made my bed every day. I did my summer reading for school. I even tried washing my clothes in the bathtub, but without soap it hardly seemed to make a difference.
I’d done everything I could think of to be a good son, but the days passed, one after another, with no sign of my parents returning.
I’d stayed in the house for weeks, walking down to a nearby convenience store to buy food. Luckily, it was summer, so the days were long and even the evenings were warm. I’d go to the local library and borrow books, always making sure to return them on time so I didn’t accumulate fines I couldn’t pay. I’d asked the librarian for help in making a calendar so that I would know what day it was.
I didn’t have a clock, so I had to guess at the time. I’d stay up late eating cereal out of the box and warm soda. All the dishes were gone, and even the refrigerator had disappeared, which didn’t really matter to me, because the electricity to the house was cut off a few days after my parents disappeared anyway.
An electrical worker had stopped by the house one day and rang the doorbell, but I was too afraid to answer. What if he called the police? If they took me away, my parents wouldn’t have any way of finding me. The worker had posted a disconnection notice on the door and left. I’d read the notice several times, trying to understand it, but it indicated we were hundreds of dollars behind on the bill and I knew there was no way I could pay it. The hundred dollars my parents had left me in the envelope wouldn’t have even made a dent in it.
I had a rechargeable flashlight, and when I went to the library every afternoon, I’d charge it in an outlet hidden behind some books in one of the stacks. I thought one of the librarians believed I was trying to steal something, because she would stop by to check on me with annoying frequency. I wanted to yell at her that it was a library, for god’s sake! Why would I steal something I could just borrow?
The idea of stealing started playing a prominent role in my thoughts. I was running low on money and was almost completely out of food. The funds my parents had left me hadn’t lasted very long, and I didn’t know where the food bank was that my mom used to go to.
I started going around to our neighborhood, offering to do chores. It added a little bit of cash to my diminishing hoard, but wasn’t nearly enough to feed a growing boy, especially when I was buying all my food from a high-priced convenience store.
It was the hours alone at night, after the flashlight battery would die and hunger gnawed at my stomach, that fear really began to take root in my soul.
I’d sob, asking God—who I didn’t really believe in—to send my family back to me. I begged. I pleaded. I bargained. I promised I would be good. I apologized for being so bad that my parents had to leave me behind. I promised I would do anything,beanything, just so long as He sent them back to me. They never came.
A part of me knew I should probably go to the police, or tell an adult my parents had left, but something in my mind had become fixated on the idea that if I left the house my parents wouldn’t be able to find me when they came back. Irrational, I knew, but Iwasjust a kid.
I didn’t know how long I was alone. After a few weeks, hunger became a serious problem. My pants weren’t fitting me anymore. They were too short, but too loose as well. I’d lost my belt and they kept threatening to fall off my skinny hips, so I found a piece of rope I could use to keep from embarrassing myself. I was rationing every cent I earned. Even with being frugal, though, and adding the cash I earned from mowing lawns and other chores, I soon ran out. I had been to every house in the neighborhood that I could walk to in what seemed like a reasonable length of time, but all the lawns were mowed, all the chores were done.
I’d lie in bed at night, so hungry I’d feel dizzy. I’d drink as much water as I could stand to stave off the hunger pangs, but after a while the thought of plain water just made me even more sick to my stomach. To this day, I hated drinking plain water, because it reminded me of those days alone in the house.
I’d become desperate. Desperate enough to resort to stealing.
I’d been walking back to my house after another fruitless day of looking for work when I saw it—a pizza box sitting on top of my neighbor’s trash can.
