They made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then went out back to the tree house. The twins had the coolest tree house ever. They had this humongous yard, and three years ago when they moved here their dad had built a tree house in two trees that had grown together. It even withstood a huge storm that took out lots of trees and telephone poles and they didn’t have power for two whole days. But the tree house was safe. They played cards and ate and talked about stuff. Ricky didn’t really talk about his parents, but his friends knew he was upset and didn’t make him talk about it. And what could he say? He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him or anything. He just wanted things to be normal.

After a while Mrs. Young called out, “It’s six o’clock! Ricky, are you staying for dinner?”

“Jeez, I’m late again,” Ricky said. He said good-bye to the twins and climbed out of the tree house and ran into the house to grab his backpack. “Sorry, Mrs. Young.”

“I’ll call your mom, let her know you’re on your way.”

“Thanks.” He hopped on his bike.

Being late was a bad habit according to his dad, but neither his mom nor dad had called, and Tori—who just got her license at the beginning of the summer and loved driving around—hadn’t come over to get him. It wasn’t that the Youngs lived all that far, it was less than two miles, but it was a steady slope uphill, so by the time he got home he was sweating.

He dumped his bike on the back porch and tried the door—it was locked.

Okay, that was weird. They never locked the back door. He knocked. “Hey! Open up!”

No one came to the door. Both his dad’s car and Tori’s car were out front, and his mom usually parked in the garage. It was really quiet—he couldn’t hear the television or the radio his mom listened to when she cooked. Or his dad watching baseball, if there was a game on.

He went in search of the key that was under a brick in the flower bed, but it took him jiggling ten bricks before he found it. He let himself in.

“Mom! Dad! I’m home!”

He walked around. No one was home. His mom’s purse wasn’t on the kitchen desk where she always left it. Tori’s and Becky’s backpacks were there, in the mudroom. But Becky had practice today, didn’t she? Maybe he was wrong about that and his sisters came home after school.

He looked in the garage. His mom’s car wasn’t there. It was an Escalade and large and comfortable, and whenever his family went out together they took that.