Page 141 of What You Wish For

“I just—wasn’t sure if you’d be up for it.”

“There’s nothing that could have kept me away. Clay might be my favorite kid on the planet.”

“Where are they sending you?”

“Seawall.”

“Okay,” he said, like he was making a note of it. “Be careful.”

And that’s when his tone shifted a little, and rather than just being all business, he edged a little closer, like he was going to say something more personal. “Are you—” he started.

But that’s when the officer giving instructions to the search teams barked, “Okay, folks, listen up.”

Duncan gave a quick nod and stepped back.

The officer went on. “Cover your area and your area only. Text or call any of the numbers on your sheet if you see anything. Mostly, you’ll be walking, using your flashlights to check for anything out of the ordinary. The child was in gray uniform pants and a white shirt. He had black sneakers. He had a blue backpack with school items in it, and also several comic books and some kind of reference book about marine life. You’re not just looking for the kid himself. If you see a shoe, if you see a backpack, if you see a book lying in the street. Do not touch it. Take a picture. Note your location. Call us and we’ll send officers to determine the next step.”

“Are we worried he’s been abducted?” Carlos asked.

“Right now, he’s just missing,” the officer said. “He left of his own will. But he’s a nine-year-old on the streets at night. Anything could have happened since then. We have to consider every possibility, and we need to move fast, so be thorough but stay focused.” His tone changed, as he added, “Bad things happen to kids at night.”

The entire briefing took two minutes, and somewhere during it, Duncan left, but I barely noticed. By the time the officer was done briefing us, I was staving off panic, and as soon as we got the green light, we were on the move. The school had a stash of heavy-duty flashlights we’d used for camping that they were handing out at the door. We each grabbed one, and as soon as we were out the gates, we started running toward the seawall.

Most of the search grids were square city blocks, but ours was just that narrow strip of beach. Alice and I decided to split up. She walked up high—at the top of the wall—and I took the steps down to the beach level, working along the water’s edge. I kept my flashlight trained on the waves—looking for Clay out in them.

Or a backpack. Or a book. Or—God forbid—a shoe.

Alice shined her light down and examined everything on the beach and near the wall—bushes and plants, driftwood logs, litter—looking for the same stuff.

We called for him, too. “Clay!” we shouted over and over. “We’re here!”

The hope, of course, was to find him safe and sound—maybe sitting pleasantly on a bench, reading a book and eating a bag of chips. Carlos and Coach Gordo had been assigned a fishing pier. Maybe he’d snuck out onto one and gotten trapped behind the gate when they hadn’t noticed him at closing time. It was possible, I kept telling myself, that there was some reasonable, not-at-all-tragic explanation for what was going on.

He’d be fine, I told myself. He’d be fine. He’d be absolutely fine.

But the longer we walked with no sign of anything, the harder it felt to believe that. The officer’s words,Bad things happen to kids at night, kept echoing through my head, and every now and then, I’d feel a swell of panicked tears squeezing my throat, threatening to rise up and take over.

But I’d shake it off. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—fall apart.

Clay was counting on us to find him and help him. He always seemed like such a little grown-up, but, of course… he was a kid. Despite his vocabulary, and his serious vibe, and his encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much everything, he had just as much right to make crazy mistakes as any other kid in the world. And just as much right to be totally overwhelmed by their consequences.

I tried not to think about how terrified he must be right now, wherever he was.

He was a kid. He was a kid who had lost his grandfather—probably the best person in his life—just weeks before the trip they’d planned together, one he’d been waiting for, looking forward to, reading up on, and planning for months. He’d read every shipwreck book in the library. He’d been keeping notes in a Moleskine of important questions to ask the museum staff.

I don’t know who pressured Kent Buckley into agreeing to take Clay on that trip, but I swear even a casual observer could have warned you that it wouldn’t end well.

That said, nobody could have imagined this.

The police weren’t totally sure if he’d run away—or been abducted.

My hunch was that he’d run away. My hunch was that he’d finally had enough of that father of his. A father who’d forgotten all about him—on his birthday. Any kid could make some bad decisions in the wake of a moment like that.

It was high tide now, and dark down by the water.

“Clay!” I kept calling. “Clay!” But the roar of the surf seemed to swallow the sound.

We were supposed to turn around at Murdochs—a gift shop built off the seawall on stilts over the water. That was the end of our ten-block range, and our plan was to switch positions on the walk back.

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