Thursday morning, after the chat he'd had with his brother the night before, Floyd was reluctant to face him at the breakfast table, so he stayed up in his room and waited until he saw Lloyd walking up the street through his window. Floyd wondered if he was going to meet up with Melanie, again, like they used to. He hoped so. Floyd grabbed a package of S'mores Pop Tarts on his way out of the house and ate them like a sandwich.
Floyd slunk past Lloyd's gaze in homeroom. Feeling sheepish, he didn't acknowledge his brother in any way. The seat next to him was empty. Piers wasn't there, but the boy wasn't exactly punctual to begin with. The sight of him rushing in at the last second was familiar to the whole class. It was all evidence that the boy was overburdened by responsibilities. The first bell blared, and Piers was not there.
The old wall phone rang, and Mrs. Funk answered it. After a minute she hung up and pointed at Floyd. "Mr. Piccolo. You're needed at the principal's office. Go now, please."
Floyd sighed. He looked over at Lloyd only to find that his brother was watching him. Floyd pushed back his chair and stood up. After the students shifted their desks out of the way, he zig-zagged his way between them to the front and left the room even less eagerly than he'd arrived.
There was a police officer standing outside Principal Graham's office. The secretary pointed at the office. "Are you Floyd Piccolo?”
Floyd nodded.
“All right. Just go in, Floyd. There are people who need to talk to you."
Floyd walked up to the door and gazed in. Sitting in front of Graham's desk was Piers' mother Shawna. The chair next to her was empty. Principal Graham waved him in. "We have some questions for you, Mr. Piccolo. Have a seat."
Floyd sat down in the empty chair next to Mrs. Pitstick. She was a blond woman in her mid-40's. She had on lipstick, but no makeup. She looked terribly distraught. Principal Graham went on. "Floyd, Piers is missing. The police would like to ask you some questions."
"That's right," said the police officer as he came up from behind Floyd. "We need to know when the last time you saw him was."
Mrs. Pitstick's anxious eyes caught Floyd's own. Floyd could tell what kind of strain she was under. "I didn't notice until this morning,” she said. “Oh my god, I just don't normally have to keep tabs on him. He's so responsible."
"I know," said Floyd. "He was at my house last night."
"I didn't even know that. My god," her face was tormented. "I didn't even know he left last night. I thought he was in his room. He's always in bed by ten. I never even saw him leave. I just wasn't paying attention to him. My god, what kind of mother am I?" The poor woman was upset. She, like Piers, was dealing with more than her share of problems. He knew for a fact that she’d been working two jobs since they’d moved in.
The police officer stood right next to Floyd's chair. "Do you have any idea where he might have gone after he left your house?"
Floyd shook his head. "I just thought he went home."
The police officer became very serious. "It seems that he never arrived."
After the meeting in the principal’s office, Floyd was distracted all day. He couldn't pay attention to any of his classes. It was a helpless feeling. He'd felt helpless before but worrying about someone else was so much worse to Floyd. He could only imagine how Piers' mother must feel. There was simply nothing she or he could do.
While he was supposed to be paying attention to his teachers, he was mulling over this new puzzle. Where could Piers have gone? Piers went to school. Piers went home. Piers went to the library. Sometimes he was over Floyd's house. Other than these few places, where else would his friend have ventured? Floyd simply couldn't imagine a universe where Piers had somewhere else to go. Did he have some weird other life? Like a nightlife where he hung out with shady people in the grittier parts of town. Maybe there was a whole second layer to Piers. Who knows?
Floyd knew. His friend was about as shady as a hula hoop, and there were no gritty parts of Bowl Valley. Even the dark places were pretty well lit. Neither Piers, nor Bowl Valley, had anything to hide. So, Floyd concluded that there were three possible explanations for Piers' disappearance. 1) Piers had been nabbed off the street, which was really scary; 2) Piers had gone somewhere he always goes, and something had happened to him there; or 3) Piers had gone somewhere he doesn't usually go and something had happened to him there. The conclusions weren’t, exactly, scientific, but Floyd was more about feelings than logic.
The Pitstick house had been thoroughly searched. That's regular police protocol. Whether or not the parent of a missing child was a suspect in their disappearance, they would always turn the family home upside down before doing anything else. He couldn't know where Piers wouldn't go, so all he could do was concentrate on where he would go. If Piers had gone to the public library (he preferred it to the school’s), he wouldn't be missing now. You can't go missing at the town library. You can't do anything, there, really. The computers were old, the chairs were uncomfortable, the water in the water fountain was warm, and the encyclopedias were written before California was a state. Yes, it was paradise to Piers, but that didn't mean he went there, and it certainly didn't mean he disappeared there. Floyd realized that the library would have been closed when Piers left the night before, so Floyd had just wasted several minutes of his life thinking about it.
That left the high school. The school would have been closed, too, when Piers left. The place shuts down at night and it becomes impenetrable. Only the custodians and some faculty had keys. Why would he come here, anyway? Piers had had some suspicions the night before about the causes of the explosion Floyd had seen, but could he have sneaked into the school to investigate them? Floyd couldn't picture little Piers Pitstick breaking into the high school. And what would make him do such a thing? They were one day away from the performance of Gladiator. It was scheduled for Friday night at 8:00 P.M. Time was ticking.
Say that Piers did come by the high school at around 10:00 P.M. last night. Say he could get in, what could possibly have happened to him when he was here? There were very few ways to vanish without a trace here. This was Bowl Valley High School, not the Amazon basin. And he was pretty sure there weren't any dungeons or torture chambers where'd he be kept against his will. Although the wood shop had a few shocking similarities to a torture chamber. It really did, actually.
All of a sudden, an idea hit him like a fist. It should have been the first place he thought of. They’d even talked about it. The very thought made him want to leap out of his seat and run to get a look for himself. Unfortunately, he had to wait for the bell. But once it rang, he knew where he was going.
He knew exactly where Piers would have gone.
Floyd would usually meet Piers at lunch in Center Court. Today, since his friend was nowhere to be found, he skipped the meal altogether and walked to the auditorium. Backstage students were preparing for the next night's performance, unaware that Floyd's friend was missing, or that important things other than their play were happening in the world. Floyd kind of wished he could feel that way, too.
Floyd took a roundabout path, avoiding a crowd of students hovering over Richard Sato as he painted ancient Roman spectators on his huge backdrop. Floyd crept downstairs to the trapdoor room, which had been locked for weeks. For some reason that was unclear, perhaps some squabble between teachers, the room had fallen into disuse. It took on a creepy silence, but that could have just been Floyd. He put his ear up to the door. No strange sounds or smells. What exactly was he supposed to do? Something bothered him about all of this. Did he break the door down? How? Wouldn't that attract a lot of attention? Of course, it would. It would probably make more noise than World War 2. At least World War 1.
Floyd left, then came back after classes ended. He made his way down to the prop room where Peyton had had her accident. He flipped on the light but had no such surprise as he did the last time. He walked around, looking over all the props. There seemed to be no kind of order, things were just laid out or dumped in boxes full of unrelated items on the shelves. There seemed to be every kind of weapon, from axes to swords to even a cat o' nine tails. Floyd wondered what sort of shows some of the more peculiar props had been used in. He didn't remember ever seeing hearing about a bullwhip in a high school play, but there was one coiled up in a box on one of the shelves. In a corner was a scratched up wooden baseball bat. Floyd picked it up. It was heavy. Just what he needed. He walked back to the door and turned off the light, then made his way back to the far end of the room where he leaned back on the wall and slid to the floor.
Hours went by. Just as Floyd had hoped, nobody had come to visit the prop room. He pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was past six p.m. The school would be mostly empty by now, but he worried it wouldn't be empty enough. He was lucky Mr. Moderick wasn’t holding rehearsals well into the evening, which a normal teacher would be doing. Luckily, for Floyd, the man was a total diva, and he’d been really flaky about rehearsals. Insisting that he be there for every single one so he could monitor every actor’s progress, but then canceling things for some mysterious reason that made him seem like a secret agent, leaving the stage a ghost town. Students would all rush home to rehearse the show at each other’s houses after school, setting up mockeries of the stage in their back yards, which would have made the teacher furious.
Floyd crept up the stairs, taking dainty steps, and had a look out into the main room. Richard, Lloyd and Peyton were there, plus a couple of people Floyd didn’t know. All still working on the Colosseum backdrop. Everyone seemed exhausted.
"I can't believe it's almost done," said Peyton.
"I can't believe it, either," replied Richard. The weariness in his voice was obvious. He'd been working around the clock on Mr. Moderick's project. Floyd sat and listened for a while, the conversation seemed a little strained for some reason. Mostly keeping to impersonal topics. He felt kind of guilty to be spying on them. What if one of them came down here? Floyd bristled. That would be the end of everything. What would Peyton and Lloyd say if they found him here? That would be the end of everything, but forever. Fifty years from now, they still wouldn’t be speaking to him.
Soon enough, everyone was gone that Floyd didn’t know, leaving just his brother, Richard and Peyton to work in silence. Floyd seemed to remember that Richard and Peyton had seemed to be starting something not too long ago, but now what were they to each other? How did this little love triangle function? Lloyd stood up straight and stretched. He'd been hunched over for what seemed an eternity to his back. "I'm gonna go, guys," he said. "You coming?" He asked Peyton.
Peyton was on her knees working on the corner of the backdrop. She shook her head. "I'm gonna stay until this is done. I don't think it'll be much longer."
"Probably not," Richard agreed.
"Yeah, okay," said Lloyd. He walked away, not the least bit worried about leaving his girlfriend, or whatever she was to him, with an older man she'd been crushing on relatively recently. Then it was just the two of them. Floyd turned around, considered walking back down to the prop room, but then he heard something he just couldn't walk away from.
"So, what's up with you two? Seriously," Richard asked.
Peyton seemed slightly bothered, but quickly suppressed it. "I don't know. We've just been hanging out."
"Really? I thought we were 'just hanging out'. I guess I was wrong." He sounded more disappointed than angry. There was real sadness in his voice. "I guess I don't know anything."
"I'm sorry, Richard," she said sincerely. "It's not like I meant to hurt your feelings."
"I know you didn't mean to, but you did hurt my feelings."
Peyton looked ready to toss up her arms in exasperation. "I don't even know what it is, okay? I don't even know what to call it."
"He's your boyfriend."
"Yeah, I guess. But..."
"But what?"
"I don't know. I guess he is."
"How do you not know? His weird-ass brother walked in on you two, right? Everybody knows."
"I don't want to talk about that, okay?"
"I want to, though."
"Why?"
"I just want to get on with it. I want it to be done, but it won't be done until you talk to me."
Peyton nodded. "Okay. I guess I understand."
"Did I do something that annoyed you? Did I call you too much?"
She shook her head. "No. I liked talking to you. I would like to keep talking to you."
"Okay. It wasn't something I did?"
"No. You didn't do anything."
"You're sure?"
"It was just something that happened really quick."
"What do you mean?"
"It just came out of nowhere, I guess."
"What did? Kissing Lloyd?"
"No. Not exactly. I just mean...I guess...it wasn't all about Lloyd, I guess."
"Then who was it about?"
Peyton let out a long sigh. "I just had a thing. I was feeling really mixed up about someone.”
“Someone? Who?”
“Not someone. Something. Feelings, you know. And it just got weird.”
"Feelings about him?"
"Just feelings."
"I don't understand. What feelings?"
"It's just really confusing."
"God, I don't understand what you're saying."
"I know. Let's just try to forget about it."
Richard took a long pause, then nodded. "Okay."
Floyd went back downstairs. Time continued to pass. A half hour? A whole hour? Maybe several? Floyd got lost in his thoughts, most of them about Peyton or Piers. Two people he couldn't help but feel he'd let down in a big way. Could it be denied that he was responsible for what happened to Piers, too? Was there any getting around that? Poor Piers. He did almost nothing but try to help him. He was a better friend than he even deserved to have. Floyd prepared himself to find out the worst possible news when he got in that locked room. What would he do if Piers was, actually, in there? What if he was...
Floyd stood up, bat in hand, then walked down the hall and up the steps, once more. He had a long look around him. He was sure this entire wing of the school was empty now, so back down the stairs he went. It was just down the hall from where he'd been sitting for hours. When he got to the door, he braced himself, then lifted the bat above his head and, without wasting too much time thinking, which would only cause trouble, he swung the bat. A loud crunch filled up the corridor.
His forearms stung from the sudden shock of the bat striking the door. Unfortunately, even though it had seemed like he'd done something huge, the door was totally, and unequivocally, unimpressed by his efforts. There wasn't even a dent in the metal. Why did he think this was a good idea? Was he too noodle-armed to make this work?
He struck again, louder and harder than the first time. Then again. And again. And again. He continued until it felt like he'd knocked the earth off its axis. To his delight, the knob was now clutching to the wood of the door by one small screw. He grabbed it and ripped it off, then he stepped inside and flipped up the light switch. He dashed around the room, searching everywhere for Piers, who wasn't there.
In fact, nothing was there but the backdrops Mr. Manse, and others, had made for Almost, Maine. For some reason, they were all unrolled and tacked to the wall, as if on exhibition. Except for the small elevator at the center of the room, there was nothing else. Floyd's shoulders slumped. He'd been so sure Piers was in here. Now, he wasn't sure why. Why did he think his friend was being held captive in a room under the stage? He realized that he had gotten carried away. Something big was going to occur here and it was unhinging him. Considering how well telling Lloyd about it had worked, he figured he would have just as much success telling his parents or his teachers. He realized that he had little chance of stopping whatever was going to happen. Actually, with Piers missing, he had no chance at all.
It was quite the challenge for Floyd, escaping the booby traps and empty halls of Bowl Valley High School. The ruckus he'd made did not seem to attract any attention. It had been imperceptible from beyond the auditorium, and the custodians happened to not be within earshot at the time. But he knew the only open entrance would be on the other side of the building. If he was caught, no matter what dazzling story he dreamed up, they would take his name down and would easily deduce who was responsible for the damaged door when they discovered it.
So, when he came out from downstairs into the main hallway, he had to dash from door to door, pressing himself flat against them and concealing himself in the door jambs. A custodian turned a corner and just missed him, walking away from Floyd and down the hall the same way he was headed. Floyd peeked out, rear end pressed against the door still, and watched the man's back grow smaller and smaller until he turned into a stairwell on his left. Sneaking like this, it took another couple of minutes for Floyd to reach the main entrance. When he got outside, he broke into a run, cutting through the empty parking lot and leaving tracks in the snow. He was home ten minutes later.
He'd missed dinner and his parents had questions. He couldn't claim he'd been at Piers' house, obviously. He made up a story about being upset and going for a six hour walk to think about things. Though they didn't argue, they didn't believe him, either. This was Floyd, though, he was a good boy. Whatever he had been doing, it was probably not destroying school property with a baseball bat and sneaking out of the building like a cat burglar.
It was about ten o'clock and Floyd was pacing back and forth in his room after taking a shower. He couldn't stop thinking about Piers. It wasn't just that he was missing, there was an entire mystery here that needed to be unraveled. Eventually, he started thinking about a subject he'd been avoiding.
Tomorrow night.
He stomped out of his room and pushed open Lloyd's bedroom door and went in. Lloyd was surprised to see his brother. He was on his bed, EarPods on. They hadn't been visiting each other's rooms for what seemed a long time.
"It's crazy about Piers," said Lloyd, sitting up.
"Yeah."
"You okay?"
"Yeah. He's not okay, though."
"You don't know that."
"I know he's not okay. Somebody took him."
"Why would anyone do that?"
"I don't know. I think maybe it's about tomorrow night."
Lloyd sighed. "Oh god, Floyd. Don't start this, again."
"What if I'm right?"
"But why would anyone take Piers?"
"I think he found out something. Something bad. I don't know what."
"You said it was an accident. What is there to find out about an accident?"
"I don't know, but the stage is gonna fall down tomorrow night, and you're gonna go with it. You and Peyton. And there's gonna be fire!!" Floyd was almost crying, he was so upset.
Lloyd softened a little, seeing his brother’s distress. "Look, I'm starting to think that you really believe this. If you do, that still doesn't mean it's really gonna happen. People can't see the future."
"I wish that was true, Lloyd. It's really hard to know something bad is gonna happen. It stinks. I can't do anything about it. Nobody's gonna help me."
"I will always help you, Floyd, if you really need it. But this stuff is nuts."
"You don't understand what's going on. There are so many things to tell you, I don't know where to start. I just don't..."
Lloyd crossed his arms and yawned. "Okay. Fill me in."
So, Floyd did. Lloyd nodded once or twice a minute. He told him everything from Babalú-Ayé to his busting the trap room door. When Floyd was done, he stood there passively, not being able to tell what his brother was thinking. Finally, Lloyd stood up and put his hand on Floyd's shoulder. "So, you weren't spying on us, you were enjoying what's-his-name's magical mystery vision?"
Floyd didn't know how to respond. He had thought he was winning Lloyd over, now he realized he hadn’t been. "I'm just telling you what I know, Lloyd."
"I know. I know," Lloyd gently nudged his brother through the door and out into the hall. "I'm sorry, Floyd. I don't forgive you. Not yet. Not even close to yet. I need more time."
Lloyd's door closed and he locked it. Floyd was left alone in the hallway. He doubted if anyone ever felt so alone.
On Friday morning, Floyd was up before the sun. He lay in bed staring at the shadowy ceiling. When dawn approached his window, he wished he could send it back. This was not a good day for the sun to rise. There were some days that Floyd simply wished he could turn it off. Some days he needed a break from his life. It often felt that the bandages, the casts, and the aches and pains added up to more than he could manage. Yet, he had to. Nobody could opt out. Not him. Not anyone. If you are going to live your life, you have to do it every day. There are no doctors' notes.
He was dreary through breakfast, then he lingered around the house until Lloyd left, following after him a few minutes later. His brother and Melanie had made up. She had gladly forgiven him. Floyd knew that it wouldn't be the same if it were him. If Lloyd had been the cause of Peyton's accident, she would have forgiven him by now. That's just what it's like being Lloyd.
Was it all just a roll of the dice? Even the kind of person you were? This idea saddened Floyd. He hated thinking that things happened for no reason. That it was all just chance. This was something he'd been struggling with since he'd met Piers. Piers wanted to live in a universe where everything can be explained. Every cold you caught, every toe you stubbed, he wanted everything to make perfect sense. Like everything was a science experiment, and people were just there to fill up the beakers and light the Bunsen burners. But Floyd didn’t want that. Floyd wanted there to be a mind behind it all. The discovery of Babalú-Ayé had really thrown Piers off course because it swung the whole universe away from the way he saw things, and more towards the way Floyd did.
In the end, though, what did it really matter? Floyd was still Floyd, and people didn't get Floyd. People didn't want Floyd. He'd thought that had changed, but it really hadn't. Floyd wondered what it was like to be understood. People understood his brother. He was just the way he seemed, so was his life. But Floyd's life wasn't the same. People thought he was morose. People thought he was depressed. Why was he that way? Did anyone even care enough to learn why?
For a minute there he thought he had found that person who might make everything he endured worthwhile. He thought Peyton was that person. Someone who cared and understood that Floyd was more than what he seemed on the outside. That there was something buried a mile deep underneath his frown. He really thought he'd found something special. But it all fell apart, just as he should have expected. It never would have worked out. Nothing ever worked out.
That was just being Floyd.
Floyd moped all the way to school, which took quite a lot of time. Traffic came to a screeching halt when he moped across Main Street. Cars were backed up for miles. People were honking and yelling. By the time he’d arrived at school, his moping was starting to bring down civilization, causing people to become primitive and tribal. The moping only escalated. He moped through the halls. He moped through the entire day. He was even moping when he was in class. Did you know you could do that? You have to be really good at moping, but it can be done. Eventually, at 3:00 p.m., the moping ceased, and Floyd found himself standing outside the trap room, examining what had been done since his vandalism of the door the night before.
There was a cardboard sign with a large ‘KEEP OUT’ written in marker. Floyd pressed his nose to the space between the door and the jamb and snorted in a snoot full of an acrid smell. There was something funny in there. Was it some kind of epoxy? Someone had cemented the door shut somehow. Why would you do that? Why keep people out of the trap door room? There was nothing in there the night before. He thought that maybe a custodian, or someone on the faculty, did this out of anger. Floyd considered that this might not have anything to do with the explosion, that he was barking up the wrong tree. Floyd had never been able to see the incidents coming, so why couldn’t he be completely wrong about this, too?
Floyd felt completely not up to the task of what was ahead. He had no idea what to do next. At least Piers would have come up with a half dozen theories. Probably none of them would work, but he would at least be doing something. Floyd was blank. He felt, as he’d often felt before, and especially lately, entirely useless.
Time passed slowly at home. Floyd, once again, was stranded in his room, his mind awhirl with the kind of anxiety only knowing people you love are headed for imminent doom can cause. Soon enough, he stopped his pacing back and forth, walked out into the hall and stepped through the open door of his brother's room.
"Uh...hey," said Floyd.
Lloyd was lounging on his bed, again. He dumped his iPad on his belly when Floyd walked in. "Hey."
Floyd stood right before his brother. "Look, what I was trying to tell you before..."
Lloyd rolled his eyes. "Oh, no. What?"
"Um..."
"I don't wanna hear it, Floyd."
"I just want you to understand that..."
"No. No more of your crap, okay? What are you trying to do, anyway? How is this going to help you get Peyton back?"
Floyd shook his head, frustrated. "I'm not trying to get her back."
"There's nothing to get her back to, anyway. She wasn't your girlfriend."
"I know. Oh, God, Lloyd. I just..."
"You just what?"
"I just want to make things right, so you'll listen to me."
"I have listened to you, Floyd. We tried that. And as far as making things right goes, I'll get over all this, but Peyton isn't."
"That's not important."
"It's not? Really? Are you serious? I don't buy that for a second."
"It's not important now. Right now. This very minute, it doesn't matter if she likes me or not. I just need her to be safe. If you won't listen to me, everything's going to..."
Lloyd grunted and interrupted. "Look, I know a girl never liked you before. But she did. She really did. Really liked you. She talked about you constantly when you weren't around. She was into you, Floyd. I don't even know how that happened, the kiss and all. I really don't. I think she wanted to kiss you, but you frustrated her. You were so distant and weird, she probably thought you weren’t interested."
Floyd winced. He didn't know any of this. It made it all so much harder. He realized now how much he'd lost when he lost Peyton's friendship. Would she have been his girlfriend? The very thought made him feel dizzy, but then he remembered that it was impossible now, and he sobered up. Floyd was struggling to keep on point. "I don't want to talk about that. I want..."
"She thinks you did it on purpose. Do you know that?"
This sucked the breath right out of his lungs. Yes. He knew. "Lloyd. You've got to listen to me. Please. Please. You need to hear me out. Tonight..."
"I told her you weren't that kind of person. Honestly, though, I'm not sure about that."
Lloyd's matter-of-fact tone disturbed Floyd. His face became wounded. "What do you mean?"
Lloyd relaxed, taking the other earbud out. "I mean, I'm not sure that you didn't do it on purpose."
His posture slacked. Floyd didn't know what to say, so he just spoke his pain. "You think I wanted to hurt Peyton?" he asked, his voice barely a squeak.
"That thing you do. The bad stuff you do. You usually do it to yourself. This time, you did it to her."
"The bad stuff?"
"You know what I mean. The bad stuff. I don’t know what to call it. We never call it anything. You pointed that bad stuff at her like a gun. Okay, probably not on purpose, but you were mad, Floyd. You were mad at us. You might have made that happen. Even if you didn't know you were doing it, you did it."
Floyd, once again, had no rebuttal. He could think of a million questions to ask, but there was only one that really mattered. "You think I'm a bad person, don't you?"
Lloyd's eyebrows shot right up. "I didn't say that, Floyd."
Floyd just shook his head. "You're thinking it, though."
"I said I didn't think you did it on purpose. I shouldn't even have implied it. I'm sorry."
There was a long pause. Nobody said anything. The silence was as thick as molasses. Lloyd stared up at his brother's face, ashamed. He had gone too far. "I don't think you're bad Floyd. Of course not. Nobody on earth thinks that."
"Peyton does," Floyd said.
Lloyd didn't say anything.
"And I do," said Floyd. "I do, too."
Floyd walked out of the room. Lloyd watched him go but said nothing more. He stood up and closed the door. Whether Floyd was hurt or not, it was about time to get ready for the show.