Diary of the Gone by Ivan Amberlake Read Free Book Online

Tears trickled down my cheeks
and I rubbed them away in shame.
    All the way back, I was thinking of
what if whoever was in the woods would run after me. I listened
intently to any sounds apart from my footfall, but heard
none.
    My brain worked frantically. Where
should I go? Home? Mom wouldn’t be there. Bev wouldn’t help me
either. She was at school. I needed someone, a grown-up, to help me
get Greg out of the Swamp.
    I reached the edge of the forest. Home
was not far away. Scratched at my elbow and ankles, sweaty from the
run, I hobbled to the back porch of my house. Shelter.
    I swung the door
open, kicked off my boots and headed for the living room where the
phone was. I’ll call Mom, I nodded to myself.
    When I entered the living room, I
skidded to an abrupt halt. Mom was sitting at the table. It felt as
if I’d entered this morning’s memory.
    “ Mom?” I asked, surprised.
For a moment I forgot that it was her I needed to find. “What are
you doing here?”
    “ Where have you been?” She
ignored my question and scanned my muddy clothes. “I called you an
hour ago and you weren’t here. Can you imagine how worried I was,
Callum?” She never called me Callum. I began to feel uncomfortable,
but this was not the time.
    “ Mom, you need
to—”
    “ No, enough. Now listen to
me.” She stood up, her eyes twinkling with tears. “Bev told me that
you started leaving home at night again. If I ever find out you
snuck out one more time, you’ll be grounded till the end
of—”
    “ I found him,” I
interrupted her, not really interested in what she was
saying.
    “ Wh-what?” She looked at
me, confused by my words. “Who did you find?” Then her mouth formed
a little “o”.
    “ Nathan?” she breathed
out.
    “ No. Greg Thornby,” I
mustered to utter the name.
    She sat down on the chair, shaking her
head, her eyes crazed. “Greg Thornby? Where?”
    “ At the Swamps,” I said,
then lowered my eyes.
    “ How do you know it was
him? We have never met that boy.”
    “ I just know, Mom. It’s
him.”
    She heaved a deep sigh. I was still
panting from my run home.
    “ How did you find him?”
Mom asked, silent tears trickling down her flushed
cheeks.
    “ I— was just—” Words
failed me. I couldn’t admit to walking alone out there in the
Swamps.
    Mom didn’t press me for the answer.
She came over and gave me a hug, and in the comfort of her arms I
relaxed. There was no judgment in that hug, nothing but love and
warmth, and a desire to help me get through my pain.
    “ We need to call the
police,” she whispered after a long period of silence.
    “ And that boy’s parents,”
I said and sighed.
    Then came another blurry mess for me.
Policemen came, asked questions and then left. Mr. and Mrs. Thornby
arrived later, asking more questions, although they were pretty
much the same as the policemen had asked. I murmured something in
response. Then they comforted me, their faces etched in my mind.
Then Nathan’s parents came. Two gaunt lifeless faces, with no
emotion except anguish chiseled into them.
    They stopped asking questions
afterwards, letting me think over what had happened to me in the
past few days.
    “ We need to search the
area, so the more men are going with us, the better,” someone said
nearby.
    I raised my eyes and saw a man in
uniform talking to a group of policemen and men of our town. From
his words I realized they were not going to take me and I knew
they’d never find the body without me.
    “ I’m going with you,” I
said, my voice feeble and croaky. They kept talking without taking
any notice of me, so I said a bit louder, “I’m going with
you.”
    The broad-shouldered policeman
swiveled his head my way, and I recognized Chief Coleman in him. He
turned to his subordinates and said, “I’ll be back with you soon.
Wait for me outside.”
    He came up to me, crouched so that our
eyes were level. The odor of nicotine still accompanied him like a
twin brother.
    “ I know