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=== Homesick === by Trismegistus Shandy This story is released under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. ----- We'd all gone to see the new _Tombs of Atuan_ movie, Mom and Dad and Kiara and me. On the way home, we chatted about the movie and got into an argument about whether they'd gotten Ged and Tenar's relationship right. Those were the last normal moments of our lives. Then Dad turned into our subdivision -- still normal -- turned onto our street --still normal -- approached our house... ...and it wasn't there. Mr. Starrett's house was on the left, with his red F-150 in the driveway, and the Petrovs' house was on the right, with no cars in the driveway but all their super-early Christmas decorations on the porch and lawn (it wasn't even Halloween yet) -- and there was nothing between them. Dad parked on the street and we all stared in confusion. "This can't be happening," Dad said, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. "What happened to our house?" Kiara asked. "Let's go ask Mr. Starrett what happened," Mom suggested. "It can't have -- I mean, he must have heard something if not seen it... it's only been a few hours." "It *can't have happened*," Dad insisted. "There's no way -- there's no room between them for our house to have ever been there!" "It can't hurt to ask Mr. Starrett," Mom insisted. "I'll go," I volunteered, and unbuckled my seat belt and got out. I walked up to his door and rang the bell. After I'd waited a minute or so, he opened the door and looked at me blankly. "Can I help you?" he asked. "Mr. Starrett, did you see or hear what happened to our house?" "Your house? Where do you live? I haven't noticed anything --" "Right there, Mr. Starrett," I said, pointing to the space between his house and the Petrovs', though I had a sinking feeling when he asked me where I lived. I'd mowed his lawn for him ever since I was big enough to handle a push mower, and he'd always invited me in to have a glass of tea afterward. Was he starting to get senile, or...? "Nonsense," he said. "I know the Petrovs; they don't have any sons, only daughters..." He squinted at me for a moment, then said: "No, you're way too skinny to be one of the Petrov girls in disguise. What's this about?" "Never mind," I said, "sorry to bother you," and turned and walked down to the street to get in the car. "He didn't recognize me," I said. "What?" Mom asked. Kiara started to sob. "I asked him if he knew what had happened to our house, and he asked me where I lived." "Was he wearing his glasses?" "Yes." "Maybe he needs new ones..." "Mom, I told him I lived right next door, and pointed, and he said I obviously wasn't one of the Petrov girls... meaning he thinks of them as his next-door neighbors. He didn't notice our house wasn't there. He doesn't remember us." Dad finally let go of the steering wheel and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He dialed somebody, or tried to, but he got an automated message saying that he had no service. Not that there wasn't any reception, I mean, but that he didn't have a valid account with a cell phone provider. Mom, Kiara and I all tried our phones and got the same message. "So we don't exist anymore," Dad said. "Our credit cards and debit cards won't work, either. Who knows if our cash will still be good?" "Why wouldn't the cash be good?" Kiara asked. "Because -- I think we've fallen into an alternate world, somehow. A lot like ours, except we never existed here... and who knows what other differences there might be? Like what the currency looks like -- whose face is on the twenty-dollar bill, for instance?" I thought back on the drive home, trying to remember if I'd seen anything weird -- stores or churches or street names that weren't like I remembered. But all I could remember was our argument about how the movie had turned Ged and Tenar's friendship into a typical Hollywood romance. "We can't just assume that," Mom said. "We need to talk to other people we know. Surely some of them will recognize us?" "Maybe we just don't live here in this world," Kiara said hopefully. "Maybe we live in another subdivision. Or in another city. And we've got cellphones with Sprint instead of AT&T or something?" "It's worth a try," Dad said. "Who is the most likely to still know us in an alternate world where we don't live here?" "Our parents," Mom said. "Mine live closer. Let's go there first." ----- Grandpa Haines was out clipping the front hedges when we pulled up in front of their house. He didn't give us more than a glance as we approached, and I had a sinking feeling he didn't recognize our car. It wasn't until we pulled into his driveway that he turned to look at us. "Let me talk to him first," Mom said, and got out of the car. The rest of us watched and waited; I realized I was holding my breath only when I couldn't do so anymore and let it out in a huff. Mom went over to Grandpa and said something, and he replied... his face looked puzzled. Mom said something else and the puzzlement changed to something else -- wariness? Suppressed anger? He said something else, and Mom replied with a sweeping gesture at the house. Grandpa shook his head and said something short -- just a couple of words. Then Mom turned around and ran back to the car, jumping in and slamming the door. "Drive," she said, and started sobbing. Dad put his arm around her for a moment and then started the engine. "Where are we going to go?" Kiara asked. "We need to figure that out," Dad said, backing out of the driveway. "And we can't waste gas just driving around... I'm going to stop in the first parking lot that looks like a safe place to sit for a while." He pulled into the Walmart shopping center near Grandma and Grandpa Haines' house and parked, not making any effort to be close to the store's entrance. "So," he said, twisting around so he could look at all of us, "any ideas? We could go to my parents' house and see... but we don't have enough gas to get there, and I'm not sure filling the tank is the best use of our limited cash." "I was born eight months before you," Mom said. "If this is an alternate world... whatever changed here to make it different from ours happened before I was born. So you probably don't exist here, either." "And Grandpa and Grandma Blair probably don't live where they do in our world, either," I said, thinking. "Didn't you move around a lot when you were a kid? In this world, they could have ended up in a different house in a different city when they finally settled down." "Yeah," Dad said. "If it's an alternate world that diverged at a specific point in history, before your mother or I were born, then that's almost certainly true. But *is* it? Do we have proof of that?" "We could go in the Walmart and buy a newspaper," I said. "Or go to the library and look at the newspapers for free," Kiara said. "We'll do that," Dad said. "But before we burn gas to go to the library, is there anything we want to buy at Walmart?" "Food that doesn't need to be cooked or refrigerated," Mom said. "We can't afford to eat out, not even the cheapest fast food. We need to make our money go as far as we can, before..." She trailed off, and I wondered if she was thinking about begging, or ways people with no identity could earn cash under the table. "Let's figure out how much we have, first," Dad said, and we pooled our cash and counted it. It wasn't much: less than a hundred dollars all told. We also had four cellphones, and Mom and Kiara had a little jewelry, but Mom didn't think they could get much money for it. We argued about the grocery list for way longer than we ever had before. Dad pointed out that we'd need to save some money for warmer clothes -- today was unseasonably warm, and we hadn't worn our coats to the theater, but we'd need coats within days. Finally, we went in the store and carefully looked at the Nutrition Facts on a bunch of different packaged foods, trying to get the most calories we could for our money. It was mostly store-brand bread and snacks. Mom had a mostly-full bottle of multivitamins in her purse, which could help stave off malnutrition. We had a tense moment when Dad paid the cashier, but she didn't blink at the money -- it must have looked like the money she was used to. From there, we drove to the nearest library. Mom and Dad looked at the recent newspapers and news magazines; Kiara and I got on one of the computers, and after trying to log on to our Gmail and Facebook accounts and finding, not surprisingly, that they didn't exist, we looked at several news sites, then at articles on historic events that had happened since Mom was born, and didn't spot any differences. We looked up some books that were written and published pretty recently and all of them existed in this world. We couldn't check anything out, because Grandpa and Grandma Haines lived in a different county from us, but even if we'd been at the library near home, our library cards wouldn't have worked. We went back to the car and compared notes. "I don't think the alternate world hypothesis holds water," Dad said. "The butterfly effect -- if something small changed forty-three years or more ago so your mother and I were never born, over time the changes would cascade and we certainly would have seen some kind of differences, and probably dozens. That Walmart wasn't built until your mother was in college, for instance." "And Dad didn't paint the house blue until I was in high school," Mom added. "And our subdivision might not exist at all, or could have a completely different set of houses with different residents, if we were in a world that diverged before we were born -- instead of just having one fewer house." "Then what happened?" Kiara asked. Nobody had an answer. We ate a sparing ration of store-brand saltines, then drove to a Goodwill, where we each got a warm coat, a stocking cap, and either a flannel shirt or a sweater. Or tried to. We didn't quite have enough money for all of them, so Dad wound up just getting a coat and no extra layer to go under it. By then, it was getting late, and we drove a short distance from the Goodwill to another, larger shopping center and parked for the night. We talked for a couple of hours about what to do next -- ways to get food and money and maybe some shelter other than the car. "Downtown has more services for homeless people," Mom pointed out, and everybody was quiet for a moment. It was the first time anybody had used the h-word. Then she said: "You know... the soup kitchens and homeless shelters." We'd all volunteered at the soup kitchen a few times. If we went back, none of the volunteers would recognize us. Then Dad said: "But there's nowhere you can park for free downtown. If we lose the car... *when* we lose it, because when we run out of gas, it's going to get towed within a few days of being stuck in one place... yeah, we should get downtown however we can and make use of the soup kitchens and homeless shelters. But for now... I think we should focus on finding ways to earn money. And ways to live without spending money." But of course none of us knew which businesses were likely to hire people with no valid ID. We all had driver's licenses, but if they looked us up in any kind of database, we wouldn't be there. It would be trial and error, and panhandling at expressway exits and intersections in between hunting for work, and probably some hungry nights before we figured out what other homeless people had figured out a while ago -- or died. ----- The next morning, we were all sore and stiff from sleeping in a half- sitting posture, hungry, thirsty, and in urgent need of a restroom. It was too early for the stores in the shopping center we'd parked at to be open, so we drove to a nearby fast food place and went in to use their restrooms. On the way out, I took a longing glance at the menu and the people being served breakfast, knowing that all I had to look forward to was crackers and a multivitamin. Once everyone else was done with the restroom and we all met back at the car, we ate a few crackers each, and then split up to go look for work. Dad said I should go with Mom, and he'd go with Kiara; he didn't want Mom and Kiara walking around by themselves. So Mom and I walked around for hours, talking briefly to the managers at all the businesses we could find that were open on Sunday mornings. Hardly anybody was hiring, and the ones that were wanted us to fill out employment applications that asked for information we couldn't give --address, phone number, Social Security Number. How did you find people who were hiring under the table for cash? We had no idea. Around one or two o'clock -- we didn't check the time very often because we wanted to make the batteries on our phones last as long as possible -- we went back to the car. Dad and Kiara weren't there, and Mom worried about them out loud as we ate a few more crackers. (We'd found water fountains by the restrooms at a couple of places, and drunk as much as we could there, and Mom had refilled the water bottle she'd brought with her to the movie theater.) But they returned to the car an hour or so later, having had no more success than we had. We were all too exhausted from walking more than we were used to to go out again for a while, though we might have had better success at that time of day than earlier in the morning, when a lot of places weren't open yet. I fell asleep for an hour or two, and I think some of the others did, too. Later on, we went out looking for work again, still with no success. After we all returned to the car around sunset, Dad moved the car a few miles to another parking lot, a shopping center in easy walking distance of a couple of fast food places and a gas station -- fresh territory to look for work in tomorrow. ----- The next day, we went out to look for work again. And again, we found nothing. After we met up again at midday, we went to a pawn shop and pawned the two newest phones and Mom and Kiara's jewelry. Dad wanted to keep two phones to dial 911 with if necessary -- one for each group when we split up. We got almost three hundred dollars, and after a couple of hours of careful discussion about how to use it, we wound up buying a tank of gas, some more groceries including fruit, cheese, and gallon bottles of water, and some toiletries --four toothbrushes and a single tube of toothpaste, a canister of baby wipes to clean ourselves with, and a bottle of no-rinse shampoo. By the time we bought four blankets, a flannel shirt for Dad, and an anthology of short stories at the thrift store, it was too late in the day to look for work anymore. We sat in the car, taking turns reading aloud to each other, until it was too dark to read. Tuesday morning in the restrooms at a gas station, we got cleaned up a bit for the first time in days. Just a bit; our hair and teeth were clean, but we were still wearing the same clothes we'd worn to the theater Saturday, plus the sweaters, flannel shirts, and coats we'd bought at Goodwill, because it was starting to turn cold again. We'd needed the blankets last night, and one blanket each hadn't been enough as the night wore on and got colder; Kiara and I wound up huddled together with both our blankets covering both of us. When winter really set in, blankets might not be enough, and we'd have to run the engine for the heat -- if we had money for gas. Again, we split up, and Mom and I found nobody willing to hire us under the table -- most weren't even willing to talk to us for more than a few seconds, except one guy at who offered Mom fifty dollars to have sex with him. We walked out of there, but I wondered if Mom would ever get hungry enough to consider that. And whether Kiara had gotten any offers like that, and she and Dad hadn't told us. For that matter, there were probably gay dudes who would pay for sex with someone my age, and if it were that or starve... Mom and I returned to the car a little after noon and ate a little, splitting an apple and eating some crackers and a little cheese. Dad and Kiara weren't back yet, and as usual, Mom worried. But when they still weren't back after two more hours, I got worried, too. We'd discussed our itineraries before we split up that morning, so we left them a note in the car and set out in the direction they'd gone, looking for work and asking people if they'd seen them. A lot of people refused to talk to us, but of those who would talk to us, *nobody* remembered seeing them, or would admit to it, anyway. Not even the managers at the first couple of restaurants we tried, who said they'd been on duty that morning and would have talked to anybody who came in asking for work. We were out until past sunset looking for them, and returned to the car to find them still not there and the note we'd left undisturbed. Mom was crying too hard to drive, so I drove us to another shopping center less than a mile away, and then we huddled in the back seat under all four blankets, for consolation and warmth. We had no idea what could have happened to them in the short distance from the car to the first restaurant Dad had said they were going to. It had been broad daylight and this wasn't a high-crime area. But they were gone. ----- The next morning, after washing up in the restrooms of a nearby fast food place, Mom said, "It's been almost twenty-four hours since we saw them last. Let's call the police." We couldn't actually call the non-emergency police number because we had no minutes on our phone, no account even. Mom called 911. I listened in as she said: "My husband and daughter have been missing for twenty-four hours -- I haven't seen them since this time yesterday... Hello?" Raising her voice, she said: "Can you hear me? -- Hello? -- NO, it's not a prank call, you asshole, my husband and daughter are MISSING? -- Hello? -- Damn it," she said, putting the phone down and sobbing. I put an arm around her. "Bad connection? Let me try, okay?" So I dialed 911, and got no better results. The operator couldn't hear anything I said. At first she was pretty patient, asking "Hello? Is anyone there?" a bunch of times, but after a minute or so she said she was going to have to hang up, and she did. "We'll drive to the police station," I said. But I didn't know where the nearest police station was. We were still nearer to Grandpa and Grandma Haines' house than where our house used to be, and I wanted to report Dad and Kiara missing in the same county where they disappeared, not at the police station I knew about back home. So I left Mom in the car and went in to the restaurant. There were three people in line to order food. "Hey," I said to the Hispanic guy at the tail end of the line. "Do you know where the nearest police station is? Or could I borrow your phone to call the police?" He glanced at me, but his eyes sort of glided off me and he returned his attention to whatever game he was playing on his phone. He stepped a little closer to the young black woman in front of him in line, and she in turn shuffled a little further from him, giving him an annoyed glance but not looking at me. Asshole. I decided I'd just stand in line and ask the cashier where the police station was. The next customer to come in, a sharply dressed middle-aged white woman, gave me a wide berth as she got into line, standing a good four or five feet from me. I could guess why. Despite my efforts at cleaning up, I smelled pretty ripe after days of walking for hours and wearing the same clothes, and Mom was almost as bad. I couldn't really blame the people who'd refused to even talk about hiring us yesterday. Against hope, I asked the woman if she could direct me to the police station or let me borrow her phone to call the police. She treated me the same way. But before I got to the head of the line, a big guy in a restaurant uniform came down the hall from the restrooms and the staff entrance to the kitchen. He was the first one who'd looked at me for more than a moment, but even he didn't quite meet my eyes. "Sir," he said, "you're disturbing our customers. I'll have to ask you to leave." "Could you *please* tell me where the nearest police station is? My dad and my sister are missing and I can't report it except in person because my phone's --" "Sir, please leave, or I'll have to call the police." "Yes! Do that! Let me talk to them. Or I'll tell them when they get here." He repeated his demand that I leave a couple more times and then manhandled me out of the way of the customer line, nodding at the woman behind me and the old guy who'd come in behind her. I was never all that strong, and several days of limited rations had weakened me further. He was able to get me out the door of the restaurant and into the parking lot without much trouble. "I'm going to stay in your parking lot until you call the police," I said desperately. He didn't seem to pay any attention to that, but went back inside. I went back to the car (which was over in the main part of the shopping center parking lot, rather than right by the restaurant) to tell Mom what had happened. "Did you find out where it is?" she asked. I didn't like the look in her eyes. "Nobody would give me the time of day," I said. "I think we smell and look enough like homeless people now that hardly anybody will pay any attention to us unless they're forced to. I asked two customers and a manager to please tell me where the police station was, or if I could borrow their phone to call the police. The customers ignored me and the manager threatened to call the police, then manhandled me out the door." "We need to go before the police get here," she said. "You getting arrested won't help -- they're not going to pay attention to a missing person report from somebody they're arresting for vagrancy or trespassing or whatever. And if I'm arrested too, we'll lose the car and everything in it, and be completely destitute when we get out." "Okay," I said, cranking up the car. I drove a little way down the road, back toward the place where we'd last seen Dad and Kiara, and parked in the nearest shopping center to the one where we'd parked the day before yesterday. Mom and I went into a grocery store that had just opened, split up and tried asking different staff and customers where the police station was, with no better success. Everyone ignored us, except for a cashier, who called her manager, who asked us to leave. "Let's go to the library," I said. "They don't open for a couple more hours, but we can look up where the police station is without actually talking to anyone." "I'll need a restroom before then," Mom said. "Let's stop at a gas station or something on the way." I followed Mom into the gas station, figuring I might as well pee again before sitting in the library parking lot for two hours. Once I'd let out the little trickle of stuff that had accumulated in my bladder in the last hour, I waited for her just outside the ladies' room, half expecting a clerk or manager to come up and tell me to leave. But no one did. Customers came and went, but Mom didn't come out of the ladies' room. I went back to the car to make sure she hadn't come out before me and gone there; it was empty. I spent twenty minutes waiting outside the ladies' room, then asked the next woman I saw who was heading in there if she could please check if my mom was okay. She ignored me, sidestepping me when I tried to plead with her and ducking into the restroom. After two more repetitions of that with other customers, and going back to check the car again, I decided I'd barge into the ladies' room and look for her myself. One of the weirdest things that had happened yet, aside from our house disappearing and everyone forgetting us, happened then. There were two women standing at the sink, washing their hands or adjusting their makeup, and neither of them reacted to a sweaty, stinky, homeless teenage boy walking in. One of the stalls was occupied, and I knocked on the door. "Mom?" I called out. Nobody answered; the women dried their hands and left. I looked into the empty stalls and made sure no one was there. A few minutes later, one of the women I'd seen enter earlier came out of the occupied stalls, also ignoring me, and went to wash her hands. "Excuse me," I said, "but have you seen my mom? She's a couple of inches shorter than me, about 5'7", and she's wearing a blue sweater with yellow kittens on it and blue jeans --" She put her hands under the automatic blow drier, drowning out my voice. I gave up. It was futile asking her if she'd seen Mom; she'd come into the restroom just a few minutes before me, and Mom must have left while I went to the car to look for her -- and then not gone back to the car, and missed seeing me when I returned after a few moments? That was hard to believe, but it was the only thing I could think of. I walked all around the gas station and the neighboring shopping center looking for Mom, but once the time approached for the library to open, I went back to the car and drove over there. Nobody bothered me or told me to leave; I sat down at a computer, looked up the police stations in this county, figured out where the nearest was, and left. And when I got back to the parking lot, the car was gone. Along with all my food, water, and blankets. I had nothing except for my clothes, including a packet of crackers in my coat pocket and a little money -- Mom had had most of it in her purse. We'd lived in fear that we might come back from one of our job hunt expeditions to find the car had been towed or ticketed, but how could it have been towed in the four or five minutes I'd spent in the library? No, the same thing must have happened to it that had happened to our house. And Dad, and Kiara, and Mom. Was there any point in telling the police they were missing? Probably not, I decided, but I had nowhere else to go. Maybe I could make a scene and get myself arrested, getting a couple of meals that would taste terrible but might be more nutritious than the saltines I'd been eating. I walked to the police station. It took a while; I was tired and hungry and had to stop and rest several times. When I finally got there, well after noon, I walked up to the front desk and said, "I'd like to report some missing persons -- my parents and my sister." I'd considered reporting the car stolen, too, but decided against it -- the license plate number wouldn't show up in their database. The guy at the desk didn't look away from his computer screen. I rapped on the desk and repeated myself. Still no reaction. I tried that with everyone I could see in the public area at the front. Nobody paid me any mind or gave any sign they could see or hear me. Even when I grabbed hold of someone's arm or sleeve, they wrenched out of my feeble grip without any conscious effort and continued on their way. I followed one of the officers through a Staff Only door and explored. Still nobody reacted to my presence, any more than the women in the gas station ladies' room. I found a break room and raided the refrigerator, eating someone's pastrami sandwich and someone else's microwave burrito and someone else's fruit salad and drinking a cup of orange juice, a cup of coffee, and a cup of soda before I finally felt sated. Several cops and support staff came and went during my feast, and none noticed me. This invisibility had some advantage, I though. I'd lost everything; at least I could take comfort in this stupid super-power I never asked for. The grief from losing Mom, Dad, and Kiara finally hit me full force and I laid my head on the breakroom table and cried, and cried, until I couldn't cry any more. ----- I don't want to talk about what came next. I don't remember it very well. I stole food from office breakrooms, restaurants, and grocery stores for a few days until I stopped feeling hunger. I slept on the bed displays in furniture stores for a few nights until I stopped needing to sleep. I briefly spied on the girls in the locker room at a high school, but realized I'd already lost my libido along with my need for eating, elimination, and sleep. Finally I settled into a pattern, walking all night and sitting and reading in a library or bookstore all day. For a good while, I stuck to public places. I had a sort of mental block against going into people's homes, even though I knew they wouldn't notice me any more than they did when I stole food off someone's plate in a restaurant or took a nap on a bed in a furniture store. But early one morning, I was trudging down a residential section of a major road, and saw a guy about my dad's age and two boys, the older of them a little younger than Kiara, hauling luggage from their house out to a minivan. "Looks like they're going on a trip," I said to myself. (I'd been talking to myself a lot since people stopped being able to hear me.) Then the idea occurred to me to stay in their house while they were on vacation. So I walked up the driveway and went in the front door. The mother was in the kitchen, loading an ice chest and a cardboard box with food. "Brandon," she called out after a bit, "this box is ready to go." The father came into the kitchen and picked up the box. "I think this is pretty much it," he said. "Anything me or the boys can help with here?" "No," she said, "I've almost got the ice chest done too." Listening to more of their conversation, I realized they were going to the mother's sister's house for Thanksgiving. I'd lost track of the date, and I realized with a shock that it had been a whole month since our house disappeared. I stayed out of their way for the last few minutes as they finished loading the van, turned off the lights, locked the door behind them, and drove off. Then I turned the lights back on started exploring the house. There was a living room, with sofas and chairs and a bookcase, some of whose contents looked interesting, but no TV. The TV was in a den that seemed to be a converted garage. There were also four bedrooms. The master bedroom and the boys' bedrooms were easily identifiable from the decor, and they looked obviously lived-in; the bedclothes were rumpled and there were baskets of dirty clothes at the foot of each bed, toys scattered on the floor of the younger boy's room, schoolbooks, graded tests and homework, novels, and drawings scattered across the desks. But there was also what looked like a teenage girl's room -- posters for a magical girl anime and a boy band, pastel curtains and sheets, and so forth -- and it was spotlessly tidy, the bed made and no dirty clothes anywhere. Not even an empty basket. At first, I guessed the girl had gone to stay with her aunt (and probably one or more girl cousins) a few days early. But closer inspection showed there was a thin layer of dust on the top of the dresser and vanity, covering not only the bare surfaces, but the girl's purse and makeup kit and so forth. She wouldn't have left that here if she was going to stay with her aunt, would she? No, wait -- Mom and even Kiara had more than one purse to go with different outfits. But then I studied the family photos in the hall. The oldest showed the man and woman, much younger, alone or with a baby girl (probably a girl, anyway, judging from how lacy her white dress was). Then an older version of the girl, two or three years old and wearing a Dora the Explorer T-shirt, with a baby boy in a sailor suit on her lap. Then all three kids together, or all five of the family, at different ages... and then, in the latest pictures where the boys' appearances matched the kids I'd seen an hour ago, the girl wasn't present. I was pretty sure the girl was dead, and her room was preserved as a kind of shrine. The girl didn't look that much like Kiara, but she was apparently around Kiara's age when she died, and this all brought my own recent losses back to me so hard that I broke down crying for the first time in weeks. I curled up on the girl's bed, hugging a koala plushie that reminded me of one of Kiara's plushies, and sobbed for a long time. Finally, some time after my tears dried, I got up and looked around some more. I wandered into the master bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I hadn't been in a bathroom for weeks, since I stopped feeling any need for a toilet. I was bundled up in layers of clothes that I'd stolen here and there in my first few days alone, while I still felt cold and heat; nothing was visible of me but my hands and face, and my face looked... not quite right. A little vague, like my personality had drained out of it. I didn't recognize myself; I could have been any teenage boy in a crowd... for that matter, I could have been a girl, the way my layered shirts and coats and pants obscured my figure. Had I looked like that to Mr. Starrett? Had Mom looked like that to Grandpa Haines? Surely not... I'd never noticed Mom, Dad, or Kiara looking different, except that we'd gotten more rumpled and disheveled as the days wore on. Without conscious thought, I started stripping off all those layers of clothes. It took a while. And I discovered that I wasn't myself anymore. I wasn't a boy, nor a girl either -- kind of a Ken doll, but more androgynous-looking. I had no nipples, no body hair, nothing at my crotch. "Huh," I said. "No wonder those showering girls didn't look too interesting. And no wonder I haven't need to pee for a while." After staring at myself in the mirror for a minute more, taking in this latest loss, I shrugged and started adjusting the shower temperature. I wasn't sure if I'd quit sweating at the same time I quit peeing and pooping, but I hadn't noticed my own smell for a good while now, and apparently no one else did, either. But I still thought the flow of hot water over my skin would feel nice, and I was right; it did. I got out a long while later, ten or twenty minutes after the hot water heater ran out (the cold water was nice, too, in a different way) and looked at the filthy clothes on the bathroom floor. "Nope," I said. "Not putting those back on." I thought about borrowing some clothes from the father of the household --Brandon, that was his name -- to wear while walking to a store to steal some more stuff that fit me. The boys' clothes would be too small for me, I thought, though I wasn't sure I hadn't lost a little height along with my nipples and junk. But on further thought, I didn't see any point in wearing clothes at all. I didn't have any private parts to conceal, and even if I still had them, nobody would notice. And I didn't seem to mind the cold anymore. So I gathered up those old clothes and sorted through them, throwing away the underwear and the tattered socks, and setting aside the other stuff to wash and drop off in a donation box after I left -- probably around the time the family came home from their Thanksgiving trip. I figured while I was washing my clothes, I might as well wash some of the family's stuff too. I filled the washing machine up the rest of the way with dirty towels and washcloths from the bathrooms, and a few pairs of underwear and socks from the boys' rooms. While they were washing, I looked around for something to read. The living room shelf was mostly history and biography, with a little popular science and some bestselling novels; the boys' rooms had mostly children's books or YA novels. The dead girl's room had a mix of teen romance and YA fantasy, and I wound up picking up _Liar_ by Justine Larbalestier off her shelf and curling up on the sofa with it until the washing machine was done, and again while the dryer ran. By the time they came home from their aunt's house, I'd washed all the clothes and dishes and put them away, as well as the sheets from the master bedroom and the boys' bedrooms. I'd finished _Liar_ and made a good dent in the _Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_. I'd lost track of time again, and was curled up on the sofa reading about Ben Franklin's system for self-improvement when I heard a key in the front door lock, and the door popped open. For just a moment I felt self-conscious about my nakedness, but that passed as the boys burst into the house and dashed for the hall bathroom without taking any notice of me. A few moments later, Brandon walked in, carrying a small suitcase in each hand, and then his wife, carrying a duffel bag and a dry cleaning bag. I followed them to their bedroom. I wondered if they'd notice the empty clothes baskets or the freshly-made bed. Back when I'd still felt hunger, waiters had never noticed me taking a plate off the platter they were carrying until they got to the customer's table and realized it was missing. Listening to their banal conversation as the woman unpacked and Brandon brought in more bags, I learned the woman's name (Lauren) and the boys' names (Dustin and Mitchell), but didn't hear any evidence that they'd noticed my cleaning. I finally decided it was time to go. It had been a pleasant few days, but I shouldn't stay any longer. I gathered up the bundle of clean clothes, wondering if I should try to return some of them to the stores I'd stolen them from, and realizing I couldn't remember what I'd stolen where. I walked out while Brandon was going out to the van for the last load of luggage and started walking toward the nearest Goodwill. ----- Some days later, though, after the first snowfall of the season, I found my footsteps turning that way again, one evening after I left the library just before closing. I didn't consciously realize I was there until I recognized the house and the minivan in the driveway. And without much thinking about it, I walked up to the house (now decorated with colored lights for Christmas) and looked in the windows. The living room was empty; there was a Christmas tree up, but it seemed pretty bare, with just a handful of scattered ornaments. Both boys were in the older boy's bedroom, playing some kind of video game -- I couldn't get a good look at the screen, at that angle -- and Lauren was in the kitchen, fixing supper. When I walked around the front of the house again after looking in the den windows, there was Brandon just pulling up and getting out of his car. On impulse, I followed him in. I would just hang out as they ate supper, I decided; it would feel kind of like being back home with Mom and Dad and Kiara. I told myself I wouldn't stay after they went to bed. I helped Lauren out a little, cleaning up after her as she finished cooking supper. When she called everyone to supper, I sat down with them and listened as they chatted about their days at work and school. Again, I started feeling so homesick that I cried. "I miss my mom so much," I sobbed, "and Dad and Kiara..." I wanted a hug from my mom, but I'd settle for one from Lauren, and I knew I wasn't going to get that, either. After supper, I washed the pots and pans and loaded the dishwasher before any of them could start on it. They didn't notice me working, and later I heard Lauren commend Dustin for doing the dishes without being asked; he looked a little confused for a moment and then said, "Sure, no problem." I sat in the living room with Lauren and Brandon for a while, until the boys had gone to bed and they started getting amorous. Then I started toward the front door -- and hesitated. Maybe it was wrong, but I turned back, went down the hall to the bedrooms, and slipped into the dead girl's room. She wasn't using it. And I could use a reminder of Kiara. I curled up with her koala plushie and lay there quietly, remembering everyone I'd lost -- those who'd disappeared and those who'd forgotten I ever existed. I slipped into a fugue state after a while, like I did sometimes when walking long distances at night. It felt very different from actual sleep, though. When I became fully aware again, it was morning and the family was stirring, getting ready for work and school. I put the koala plushie back in its place among the others arranged on the shelf over the bed and got up to listen in on the breakfast conversation and help clean up after breakfast. Once everyone was gone, and I'd finished the breakfast dishes, I put all the dirty clothes in the washing machine, then sat down in the easy chair to read, picking up the _Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_ where I'd left off. I didn't leave again for several days. When I went for a walk the following weekend, I came back to the house before evening and sat at the table while they ate supper, then washed the dishes as usual. December wore on and they kept decorating the Christmas tree, putting on a few ornaments every night after supper. I kept cleaning the house when everyone was out, and reading through the books from the dead girl's shelf during the night when everyone was asleep. On the flyleaf of a collection of fairy tales, I found this: For Kaitlyn, from Aunt Jessica Christmas, 2015 So that was her name. She reminded me even more of Kiara after that. One of the fairy tales in the collection talked about brownies, fairies that live in people's houses and help with the cleaning, in exchange for a bowl of milk every night; it warned that you must never thank a brownie, or it would go away and never come back. I smiled and wondered if that was what I was now. But obviously I didn't need milk, or anything else, and if one of the family thanked me -- which would require noticing me, or at least what I'd been doing -- I would have wept for joy. Still, maybe someone like me was the basis for the brownie legends? After I'd been living there a week, I discovered something else: three spiral-bound notebooks containing Kaitlyn's diary. I didn't read them, though; that felt like a step too far. Christmas drew nearer, and the tree filled up with ornaments, and sometimes I saw Brandon or Lauren coming in with a shopping bag that they hid away on the top shelf of their bedroom closet -- Christmas gifts for the boys, I figured. School let out for Christmas break and the boys were home all day, outdoors playing for a little while and holed up in Dustin's room playing video games most of the day. If they heard the washer and dryer running, or heard me vacuuming, they didn't comment on it. Then, the Saturday before Christmas, Brandon went somewhere with the boys, and Lauren spent several hours wrapping presents. The menfolk came back with shopping bags of their own -- gifts for their mom, I guessed, and indeed the boys spent some time inexpertly wrapping things in Dustin's bedroom that evening while Lauren was cooking. I thought about giving them something myself, but I couldn't, not without stealing something. Finally Christmas Eve arrived. They hadn't seemed like a super religious family -- they'd gone to church only one Sunday out of the weeks I'd lived with them. But they gathered in the living room after supper, and after they hung up the last few ornaments, they took turns reading a few verses each from the Christmas stories in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. Then Brandon pulled a book of poems off the shelf and read "A Visit from St. Nicholas", and they sang Christmas carols off and on, in between further conversation, for an hour or so. And the conversation turned toward Kaitlyn -- the first time I'd ever heard any of them mention her. They shared their memories of her, and cried a lot, and hugged each other. I wanted to join in the hug, but continued to sit by myself in a corner of the room until I got too uncomfortable with watching their grief, and got up to slip away to Kaitlyn's bedroom. I restlessly picked up the collection of fairy tales I'd been reading and read one, then another. I heard soft voices from the hallway, the parents wishing the boys goodnight, and then quiet for a long time, and then soft sounds again, whispers I couldn't make out. They were bringing out the Christmas presents from the bedroom closet, I figured. The boys, or at least Dustin, seemed a little old to believe in Santa Claus, but I remembered that Mom and Dad had continued setting out mine and Kiara's Christmas presents in the middle of the night for several years after Kiara found out there was no Santa. I put down the fairy tale anthology and hugged Kiara's -- I mean Kaitlyn's koala plushie again, weeping silently. How could I still cry when I didn't drink or pee or sweat anymore, I wondered? Then the door opened, and I jumped up, startled. Nobody but me had opened the door to Kaitlyn's bedroom since I'd moved in. Brandon and Lauren stood in the door, looking in; it didn't seem to occur to them that I had the light on. "It's been almost three years," Brandon said. "Do you think it might be time to... well, use the room for something else? Give Kaitlyn's books and stuffed animals to her cousins, and..." "Maybe in the spring," Lauren said. "I think it would be easier to bear in the spring. Let me have this for the rest of the winter." "Okay," Brandon said, and closed the door on me. Should I move out when they cleaned out Kaitlyn's bedroom, I wondered? It wasn't like I needed the bed for sleep, though. I could read in the middle of the night on the sofa just as well as here, and find things to read at the library as well as on the family's other shelves. But maybe I'd stayed here long enough. I was still thinking about that when something very strange happened: I fell asleep. It wasn't just a fugue state like I'd experienced every few days, sometimes while walking and sometimes sitting still. This was actual, simon-pure sleep, complete with dreams -- a weird jumble of things I'd been reading about, things I'd experienced recently, and things from long-ago memories. I woke up during the night feeling cold for the first time in months, and drew over me the sheets and bedspread that I hadn't needed before, then promptly fell asleep again. I woke again from a dream of going to see a movie with Kiara and the Petrov girls, and finding it was sold out, and going next door to watch a race instead -- the jockeys were riding a mix of different animals, not just horses. I was cheering on a petite woman riding a bison when I woke up, hearing the ringing of bells. I was disoriented -- I hadn't slept or dreamed in some time, and had forgotten what it was like. And when I remembered where I was, that Kiara was gone and the Petrov sisters had never heard of me, and that I was an invisible squatter in someone's home -- a brownie, to put the best possible face on it --I grabbed the koala plushie and hugged it to my chest. I felt like I was going to cry -- but then I felt something strange. The plushie pressed against my chest was brushing up against... something I hadn't had before. I sat up and realized that I was wearing pastel green pajamas, where I'd gone to bed nude --and that I had breasts, something I certainly hadn't had last night or at any previous time. Then the door opened and Lauren's smiling face looked in. "Merry Christmas, sweetie. Want to come see what 'Santa Claus' brought you?" I sat there in shock -- I'd barely begun to process the fact that I was a girl now, instead of the sexless brownie I'd been for the last month or more, and then came this second shock, far greater: *Lauren could see me.* I burst into tears, weeping for joy. "What's wrong, sweetie?" Lauren said, rushing to my side, sitting down, and putting her arms around me. "J-just a nightmare," I said. "I'll be okay in a minute." "Oh, I'm sorry, sweetie. That's not a good way to start Christmas. But you'll be fine once you wake up good. Come on, let's not make Dustin and Mitchell wait too long to start opening presents." I wiped away my tears with my sleeve and smiled at her. "Okay, Mom. Merry Christmas." I was in a daze as I followed her into the living room, seeing the array of presents sprawling under the tree, and hearing "Merry Christmas, Kaitlyn," from Dustin and Mitchell and Brandon -- from Dad, I reminded myself. There were eight or ten presents for me, too, some labeled "From Santa Claus", some "From Mom and Dad," and some from Dustin and Mitchell. There were also things I'd supposedly bought for Mom and Dad and my new brothers, which they opened in due course as the morning wore on and Mom brought us mugs of hot chocolate -- it was the first thing I'd tasted besides my own tears in almost two months. I had a lot to be thankful for, and a lot to figure out. First priority, after the Christmas festivities wound down a bit, would be to read through every word of Kaitlyn's diaries. Then to get onto Kaitlyn's laptop and discreetly google some information about feminine hygiene. But for now, I just sipped my hot chocolate, tore open another present when it was my turn, and basked in my new family's love. I had a feeling, somehow, that Mom and Dad and Kiara were somewhere like this, or would be soon -- slipping into the life of another family, taking the place of someone they'd lost. I silently wished them a Merry Christmas, wherever and whoever they were now. ----- I have several ebooks available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format; some are also available from Barnes and Noble. Smashwords pays its authors higher royalties than other retailers. The Bailiff and the Mermaid https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/563926 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B012WO9EAI http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bailiff-and-the-mermaid- trismegistus-shandy/1122419525?ean=2940152061574 Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/319765 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CUPYSFG When Wasps Make Honey https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/319769 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CU584JM A Notional Treason http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/401272 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I15RG6C http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a- notional-treason-trismegistus-shandy/1118399590?ean=2940045604819 The Weight of Silence and Other Stories https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/435313 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K5CL1B0 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-weight-of-silence-and-other- stories-trismegistus-shandy/1119459843?ean=29400459245