A Trace of the Farringtons

They didn’t live like anyone else we knew. If they lived at all.

I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING "OFF" about the Farringtons even before I met them. I saw it in my mother's face—a queer look in her eye, and a tautness around her mouth—when she came back from her first visit to their house.

Of course, it wasn't until much later, after I'd seen some other things for myself, that I remembered her expression as she walked back into our house from that visit, still carrying the house-warming casserole she'd taken over. But from that moment on, my "dog sense"—that little vibration that tells you when someone is a "wrong 'un"—sat up sharply every time one of the Farringtons got close.

I was only twelve years old in 1978, which was the year they showed up in Rock Creek. They'd come from Iowa, which was kind of a surprise because everything about them screamed "California." Patrick, the father, for instance wore a lot more jewelry than I'd ever seen on a man before—wedding ring; fat Rolex; chain on one wrist and another about his neck—while his wife, Marie, was always fashionably done up in tropical-hued skirts and blouses, and knee-length boots.

But naturally enough it was their boys—Devon and Micah—that I mostly noticed, and they're the ones who most seemed to shout "California."

Both of them were golden, for a start. Though their parents had dark hair, and in my memory look vaguely Italian, their sons had lustrous tans and burnished blonde hair, always perfectly combed, that caught and reflected the sun in twinkling highlights. Micah was a year younger than me, but he was strong and fast and could throw and kick a football farther than anyone else in our tiny middle school. Devon was a sophomore, and was a head and neck taller than me. He was slim and graceful, and excelled at basketball. Both brothers were polite and well-spoken, excelled academically (I heard), and carried themselves with a quiet and confident superiority.

I don't know where they or their father were that day, when my mother walked over to give them that casserole as a welcoming gift. It was something she always did when someone moved into the neighborhood. But the Farringtons had taken her by surprise. Not until she noticed the Cadillac in the driveway of the fifth house down from ours did she think to go knocking.

"Be back in a few minutes," she called to me as she went out the door with her Corningware pot. I knew what she actually meant was, "Be back in a few hours," because she liked to stay and help new neighbors, or at least talk to them—all while quietly looking over their stuff; sometimes even picking it up to see if there was still a price tag stuck to the bottom. But in this case she really was back in a few minutes, and she still had the Corningware pot, and she had that expression on her face—a distant look, and the trace of a frown in her eyes. "Nothing," she said when I asked her what was wrong. She just slid the casserole into our refrigerator, though there was hardly room for it among all the leftovers. "Their furniture's not here yet, so she didn't have any place to put it. Her name's Marie Farrington," she added. Then, more softly, "She really knows how to dress."

I got my own first look at the Farringtons a day or two later. I was out riding my bike with my friends Lewis and Natalie. We saw a giant moving truck in the driveway of a house just down the street from mine, and we stopped to watch as a Cadillac pulled up behind it. A man and a woman and two boys got out. The older, taller of the boys only raked his eyes over us before following his parents in. The younger gave us a longer look, then also went inside.

"Did they just get back from church?" Lewis asked, for the boys were wearing sports coats, slacks, and dark loafers.

"It's Thursday, you dope," Natalie retorted.

"Then why are they dressed like that?" Lewis, like me and Natalie, was more sensibly dressed for the humid Texas summertime in a t-shirt and shorts and sandals.

"Maybe they went to the bank," I suggested.

"I don't dress up to go to the bank," Natalie loftily replied.

"You don't go to the bank, period," said Lewis. "Come on, those turtles won't catch themselves." We pedaled off to the creek that gave our tiny town of five thousand its name. Every once in a while I looked up from the dark, swirling water with the sense that we were being watched, but I never spotted anyone.

Natalie and I went to the same church—Rock Creek Methodist—and the next Sunday we found out that the Farringtons were going to attend too. The minister introduced them from the pulpit, and had them stand. The parents were all smiles, especially Marie, who clasped her hands to her heart and beamed at everyone in the sanctuary. The younger son—it would be a little while before I firmly attached the name "Micah" to him—looked a little intimidated by the attention, but the older one swept the crowd with his eyes, and showed only the faintest smile on his lips.

"Oh my God," gasped Melissa Gibson after services, when all us kids were pushing our way outside. "Those new boys are so dreamy!" She was fourteen, and almost every week she had a new TV dreamboat to crush hard on. "Devon? He's so tall, and I love his hair!"

"Whatever," said Natalie, who was my age and still ran around like a tomboy. "Hey," she said, tugging my sleeve. "We're going out to the Dairy Queen for lunch, you should ask your parents if—"

"I bet you like Micah," Melissa interrupted her.

"Who?"

"Devon's little brother. Isn't he cute?"

"I guess. But I was saying that—"

Melissa poked me. "Are you going to invite them over to your house?"

"Why should I?"

"To play, dummy! They live just down the street from you!"

"Maybe, but it's not like I'm in love with them!"

"Well, if you do invite them, tell me," Melissa said. "I wish you had a swimming pool." We were outside by now, and Melissa went up on tiptoes and craned her head all about. "Then you could invite them over—I bet Devon's a fantastic swimmer—and invite me over too."

"And you could drown her," Natalie whispered in my ear. I snorted hard.

"I'm going to go wait over there," said Melissa, and she moved off to lurk by the front door. Natalie and I went out by the street, to make plans for the afternoon. I was turned to where I could see the door going into the church, and I saw it when the Farringtons came out. They already had their sunglasses on, so I couldn't be sure, but I thought I caught Devon looking at me. At any rate he had his face toward me when he uncoiled a wide, slow grin. But if he thought I was watching him, he was wrong. I was watching Melissa, who was standing a little behind him, where he couldn't see her. Even at that distance I could see the ardent tension in her face as she reached out to touch Devon, then pulled her hand back sharply.

I snorted to myself and turned back to Natalie, who was suggesting a shared ice cream under a shady tree in her back yard, to be followed by an Abbott and Costello movie that the independent station was scheduled to show late in the afternoon.

* * * * * *

I TALKED TO MICAH for the first time a few days later, at the 7-11 a mile from our street. I was going in to get a Slurpee, and he was outside putting air into the front tire of a really nice dirt bike. I skidded up with a "Hey" and he looked up. Being so close to him, I could now see that his eyes were intensely green. "You're the new guy that just moved in, huh? I'm Sammy."

"I'm Micah." He looked me up and down. "You go to the same church as us."

I shrugged, and told him I was going in for a Slurpee, asked if he wanted to get one too. He shook his head, then asked if I wanted to ride around and tell him about the neighborhood. So that's what we did.

There's not a lot in Rock Creek to show off or talk about—not even now, when it's nearer ten thousand than two thousand, and people from Austin are using it as a place to commute from—and there was a lot less back then. I pointed out the new subdivisions that were going up, and the various places where you could get off the road and into the weeds and down to the creek. I took him by the Fitzgerald dairy farm and made the usual kid joke about sniffing Mr. Fitzgerald's "dairy air", and then we swung around past the middle school we'd be attending in the fall. I told him about some of the teachers, and he asked about the sports teams. "I play soccer," he said.

"We don't have a soccer team, but we have football and baseball and basketball. Track."

"That's good," he said. "I like football."

I looked him over. He was in normal clothes this time, shorts and a muscle shirt and bright white sneakers. He was brown all over under his golden hair, and he definitely had muscles. He caught me looking at him and said, "What?"

"Nothing. You just look like you're good at sports." I felt a stab of resentment. "I'm a lot better at things like math."

"Well, I'm good at that stuff too." He said this very matter-of-factly, not like a boast, but it made me secretly hope I was much better at math than he was.

I asked him about his family. He told me that they were from Iowa, that his dad was now an administrator at the University of Texas, and that his mother stayed home and taught piano part time. Rather diffidently he let it be known that he played the clarinet while his brother played the trumpet. I asked him about his favorite TV shows, and mentioned that I liked "The Six Million Dollar Man" best. He got kind of a funny smile at that, and said that his family didn't have a TV, that they spent their evenings listening to music, reading books, or playing board games.

All of this seemed a little weird to me, but I probably wouldn't have thought much of it except for what happened a little later, as we were coming around the corner onto our street. The house at that corner belonged to the Hendersons, and their mastiff, Bombardier, was laying on the front porch. He was a great dog, really friendly, but as soon as he saw us he came bounding out of the yard, barking his head off. I yelled at him to be quiet, because he knows me, but he kept coming, and he wasn't just barking but growling hard. When he got close I noticed he was concentrating on Micah.

Micah noticed it too, and he shot off, pumping hard on his bike, with the dog almost flying in pursuit. I rode after as best as I could, and when I was right on Bombardier's butt I kicked him lightly. He sprang around and snapped at me, knocking me off my bike. I rolled across the road, scraping myself up pretty bad, and my heart was racing because I expected to him to jump on me and lock his jaws on me. But when I sat up, he was running full tilt back to his house with his tail between his legs.

Micah had stopped a couple of houses ahead. He didn't come back, but gestured me to follow. I brushed myself down, made sure I wasn't bleeding too badly, and shakily rode up to him.

"Sorry about that," he said. "Dogs don't like me. I don't know why. Are there any others around here?" I shook my head. "I'll have to find a different way to get around, then."

That was the first time I thought that an animal or a person could have a "dog sense" that could warn them off of people. And maybe because it was Bombardier who'd gone after Micah, I found myself sympathizing more with the dog than with the younger Farrington brother.

We rode up to his house just as his brother was coming out of the garage with a ten-speed over his shoulder. Like Micah, Devon was in shorts and a muscle shirt, but he was also wearing a watch and a thin gold chain around his neck. He spared me only a very brief glance.

"I'm going to ride around a bit," he told his brother. Micah looked at me.

"I have to go home," I stammered. I was hot and sweaty and worn out from the ride, and I was also bleeding in a couple of places. But as Micah and Devon rode back into the street, I noticed that both brothers looked as fresh as though they'd stepped out of a shower.

I got cleaned up, and when I got out of the bathroom found that my mom had been out. She'd actually been at the Farringtons, getting a tour, while I'd been riding around. But she didn't say anything about it until supper time, when she monopolized the talk at the table with stories about how perfect everything was at their house, how all their furniture was new and expensive and tasteful, how they'd obviously had interior design work done.

"I can't believe it," she said. "Everything in that house fits perfect and in the perfect proportions. It's like they bought a furniture showroom and built the house up around it. And clean? There's not a spot of dust on anything!"

"They just moved in," my dad said.

"Our place didn't look as nice when we moved in!"

They talked this way some more, until my dad finally said that he'd look at the household budget to see if we had the money to buy some new stuff.

* * * * * *

I GOT TO SEE THE INSIDE OF THEIR HOUSE once that summer, when Lewis and I ran into Micah in the neighborhood and he took us back to his place to show us a Lego set he had. The company had just started putting out sets with motorized parts, and Lewis spoke enviously when Micah said that he had one, so Micah offered to show it to us.

Like my mom said, the inside of their house was spotless, and done up very tastefully in cream and rose colors, and instead of a TV they had ten bookcases of books—practically as big as the school library, I thought at the time. Micah took me and Lewis upstairs, and we saw that his room was also perfectly tidy, with everything put away and his bed crisply made. He took out a set of Legos from his closet, and we spent an hour putting little mechanical things together. Naturally, Micah had more experience at it, and the little machines he made were complicated in ways I could barely figure out, even after he explained them to me. When I complimented him on his work—trying to be polite, because I was feeling that resentment again—he said that Devon was a lot better at it. He took us to the next bedroom over, which was as neat as his own, where a large Lego contraption was buzzing away on a shelf. It was a working clock, Micah explained. Devon had also made a very simple mechanical calculator, but had taken it apart because it took up too much room on his desk.

"I need to buy a Lego set," Melissa said enviously when I saw her at church the next day and told her what I'd seen. We were walking from the Sunday School classroom to the sanctuary for the eleven o'clock service.

"Haven't you seen enough of them?" Natalie said. "The Farringtons, not Lego sets," she added when she caught me opening my mouth to make an obvious retort.

"I haven't seen anything of them yet! All Devon does is hang out with the high school kids! Down at the playground on the blacktop, playing basketball."

"You're in high school," Natalie said. "Why don't you—?"

"Not until school starts! And he's going to be in the sophomore class," Melissa said with a pout. "And my mom won't pay for me to take piano lessons from Mrs. Farrington. Oh my God!" She clutched my arm. "If I was playing for her, and Devon came in, and he heard me, I'd just die!"

"Then why do you want to take piano lessons over there?"

She glared at me. "You just don't understand. You're too young."

Her back was to the men's restroom door, so she didn't see—but I did—as Devon Farrington came out just then. He gave one glance to the back of Melissa's head, and glided off in the other direction. I must have smiled or something, because Melissa did a double take at me. "What?"

"Nothing." I got a mischievous thought. "Just a guy. He came out of the restroom and he saw you and he went—" I sighed and clapped my hands together and blinked my eyes in the most exaggerated impression of a lovesick girl I could manage. "And then he ran away."

"Who was it?" Melissa said, and she looked all around. But Devon had vanished into one of the Sunday school classrooms, and we were the only young people in sight. Melissa shook me. "Tell me, you little—"

"Nah, I'm just making it up."

Her eyes narrowed. "Really?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" I dodged her as she grabbed at me again, and ran laughing into the sanctuary.

* * * * * *

I KNEW WHAT MELISSA MEANT about Devon hanging around with the high school kids. I saw him and Micah all the time down at the elementary school, which was just a few streets over, when Lewis and I went riding past. There was a blacktop there, and a grassy field, in addition to the regular kid equipment, and I got used to seeing them playing with some of the other kids they'd gotten to know. Devon was usually shirtless and playing hoops with older kids, while Micah was usually on the field playing flag football with kids his and my age. Natalie told us he was really good, that he was the fastest and most maneuverable kid she'd ever seen play, almost never losing the flag he had hanging out his back pocket. We asked her how she knew this, and she said she'd gone down a couple of times to play flag football with the guys. Naturally, Lewis and I teased her about trying to grab Micah's butt, and she chased us for half a mile before we got away.

I ran into Micah himself only a couple of more times over the rest of the summer, since I didn't care for sports, and that was while riding my bike around—I'd sometimes see him, and we'd ride around together without saying much. It didn't seem like he was much interested in me, and since he didn't watch TV—or go to the movies, it turned out—I didn't have much to say to him, and our rides together always ended with him veering off to hang out with more interesting kids, meaning kids who were throwing a ball around.

Meanwhile, I had only two real encounters with Devon. I only ever saw him at church, and even there I tended to avoid him. In both cases it was only because he got behind me without me noticing. Once was in the Fellowship Hall after services. A potluck buffet had been set out, and I was at the dessert table trying to figure out which of the great cakes or pies to take from—the Misses Nelson and Ogilvy and Yates were keen competitors, so much so that the pastor (I later heard) had to take them aside and chide them into taking a more Christian attitude toward their church bakes. I'd finally decided to compromise by taking slices of the chocolate and carrot cakes both, when I heard a snicker behind me. I wheeled guiltily in time to see Devon turn away with a look of weary disgust on his face. To Harrison Taylor he said, "There's fairy tales about little kids who eat too much, you know, and the bad things that happen to them." It was too late for me to put any of it back, but I couldn't eat after that, and gave the whole plate away to someone else.

The Fellowship Hall was the setting of the second scene too. We'd gotten to church early, and I was amusing myself by picking out the Bach Minuet in G on the battered upright piano in the corner. I felt a cold presence behind me, and looked over my shoulder. Devon was looming there, his head seeming almost to brush the ceiling as he looked straight down his nose at me with cool contempt in his eyes. I broke off, and after a humiliating moment of staring at my hands in my lap, I got up. I wandered over to the kitchen area, then turned around at the sound of the piano. Devon had taken my place, and was banging out an intricate classical piece far above anything I could handle. He left the Hall when he was done, and seemed to pointedly ignore me as he glided past.

"Devon's playing the trumpet for the service next week," Melissa gabbled excitedly to me and Natalie after church had let out. "His family's all going to sing and he's going to accompany them on the trumpet!" I tried very hard to make myself sick the following Sunday morning, but I couldn't manage. Devon was very good, I had to admit, but I spent the whole performance staring at my scuffed up shoes.

* * * * * *

JULY AND AUGUST PASSED, and school started in September. Micah enrolled at my middle school, but I didn't have him for any classes. Lewis did, though. Micah was a year behind us, but he'd scored so well at English and math that he was enrolled in seventh-grade classes, including Lewis's pre-Algebra class. So from him I got to hear how Micah got perfect scores on the homework and aced the pop quizzes, and that he got a 95% on the first English test only because he forgot to turn the last page over and so didn't do the last two questions. He had gone out for football, too, and I heard that the coach was having trouble giving him a position because he was the best kid at each of them. I worked in the library instead of taking gym, and I got to watch him come into the library to read science-fiction books instead of eating lunch. I looked at one of them after he'd left, but the first two pages were so confusing that I soon gave up.

He did get in trouble, once, I heard via Natalie. Some kid got tired of his getting perfect scores at everything and tried to give him a wedgie. "Micah fucked the guy's face up so bad he had to go to the hospital for stitches," she told me. (Natalie started to experiment with hard language that year, about the same time she started to experiment with cigarettes.) Consequently he was suspended from school for three days. I made a point of stopping by his house to see him—his pounding a would-be wedgie-giver made me feel a lot warmer toward him—and found he was all very cool smiles about it. I rashly assured him that I'd never try giving him a wedgie, and without a flicker of reaction he told me that he believed me. Then he told me that he was grounded and it was against the rules for him to talk to me, but he'd see me in school on Monday. He did—in the library—but he didn't pay any attention to me and concentrated on some homework.

"It's on account of Devon," Lewis told me later. He shook his head with a disbelieving sneer. "You know what Micah told me? He said he works so hard because it's so hard having an older brother who's perfect."

* * * * * *

NONE OF THE LITTLE THINGS I'D SEEN had added up to anything, and I hadn't paid any attention to them, except to give me a sense that the Farrington brothers were never going to be my favorite people in the world. But that changed—and not for the better—during the first week of October, when they held a backyard party.

It was originally going to be a "youth fellowship" for kids from the church, but it got expanded to include kids from the high school and the middle school that Devon and Micah knew and liked. The weather had finally cooled, and since there was going to be a big crowd, the party was going to be held in the back yard of their house.

"It's being catered," Melissa had gushed when we had our weekly "Let's Swoon Over Devon" talk at church. "I heard Mrs. Farrington telling my mom that the caterers are coming all the way down from Dallas, it's someone that does parties for Neiman Marcus, and they're coming down to do the food and the decorations and everything! There's going to be games and prizes too!" She twitched excitedly. "And I think it's only going to be people from church and the teams at school so, you know—" She squealed and blushed. "There's hardly going to be anyone there but boys so I'm going to stand out!" She was redder than a ripe tomato by the time she'd gasped that last little bit out.

I asked her if she'd even talked to Devon once since they'd moved to town. She just shoved me and didn't answer.

The evening of the party came, and my mom insisted on dressing me up in long pants and a long-sleeve shirt. Lewis had gotten an invite too on account of sharing classes with Micah, and his mom dropped him off at my house so we could walk down together with Natalie. Both she and Lewis grinned when they saw me, because they were in shorts and t-shirts while I looked like I was going to Wednesday night services at the church.

"Shit, if you're dressed like that," Natalie said as we walked out into the early evening, "I wonder what Melissa's going to be dressed up like. Marie Antoinette?"

"Who's Melissa?" Lewis asked.

"A girl at our church," she replied. "She's hilarious, she's so silly-in-love with Devon."

"Oh. And who's Marie Antoinette?"

She didn't answer that one.

There was already a crowd there when we arrived, and the side gate to the back yard was open so that no one had to tramp through the house to get in. A half-dozen picnic tables had been set up and were covered with snappy white-and-red checked cloths, and two more picnic tables were set up for the food. A clutch of men and women in starched white shirts and dark pants had put out and were watching over buckets of barbecue, coleslaw, potato salad, corn on the cob, and boiled greens. A deep-fryer was roaring in the corner, with breaded catfish, French fries, onion rings and hush puppies going in and coming out. Balloons had been tied in clusters to poles, and Japanese lanterns hung from the branches of the two saplings.

Lewis and Natalie and I were among the younger kids present—it looked like most of the partygoers were drawn from the high school. Devon was holding court near the head of one of the tables, and even though he was a sophomore and several of the guys looked like seniors, he was more than holding his own, talking and laughing with easy confidence. He was immaculate too, I noticed, in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts, and he showed not a stain on his clothes or face even as the more hulking kids near him smeared themselves all over with barbecue sauce. It took me a little while to notice that, even though he had a plate in front of him, he wasn't eating.

There were more kids there than places to sit, and since we were part of the "church kids who have to be invited" group and not the "school friends the boys actually wanted to ask" group, Natalie and I wound up standing in the corner near the fryer. A very disgruntled Melissa—who had shown up in a green and yellow frock with matching flowers in her hair—joined us. So did Lewis, who openly wondered why he'd gotten an invitation since Micah was studiously ignoring him.

"You work on the yearbook," Natalie reminded him. "Maybe he thought you'd bring a camera and take some pictures."

"Some fucking pictures," I corrected her.

"Some fucking pictures," she said.

"God, do you kiss your moms with those mouths?" Melissa asked.

"Do you kiss Devon with yours?" I retorted before I could stop myself. She shoved me, and I fell ass-first onto the grass. Luckily, I spilled my food on the ground instead of myself, and was up and over for refills in a second.

"Where did Lewis and Natalie get off to?" I asked Melissa when I got back. She was standing by herself, and since I didn't hold a grudge about her pushing me, I offered her a couple of hush puppies.

"They went inside," she said, and she took the hush puppies because she didn't hold a grudge either. "Lewis, is that the kid who was here? With the braces?" I grunted an affirmative. "He'd be cute if he didn't have braces."

"I don't have braces," I said.

"You need more than to not have braces in order to be cute." But then she looked at me. "I bet you'll turn out cute when you get to be a junior or a senior. Too bad I'll be in college then," she added, but she made it sound like she didn't think she'd be missing much.

"Why'd they go inside?"

"There's no sugar for the ice tea. The caterers forgot." She popped a hush puppy into her mouth. "Can you believe that? I bet someone gets fired for it."

I only shrugged and looked around. The Farringtons' house sat on a very deep lot, with lots of room to spread out. A badminton net had been set up by the side of the house, and a game of lawn darts was in progress near the back wall. But most of the kids were still at the tables. As I watched, a small food fight broke out between some freshman, but an alert Devon caught it, and a sharp word from him was enough to stop it cold. I heard a lingering sigh from Melissa, and looked over to find her gazing in his direction with a dreamy expression on her face.

Then something else caught my eye. The sliding glass door of the house had opened, and Natalie was beckoning hard at me. I walked slowly over, then picked up my pace when she grimaced impatiently.

"Go put that stuff down," she hissed as she pointed at my paper plate, "and go get Melissa!"

"Why?"

"Just do it! Here, give me—" She yanked my plate away.

I made a face at her, but complied. A minute later Melissa and I were at the back door. Natalie darted a glance past us, then pulled us in, pushed the door shut, and slid the blinds back into place.

"What's your problem?" I asked her. "I mean, your fucking problem?"

"I don't got a problem," she retorted. "But you have to see this." She led us into the kitchen, where Lewis was standing with a queer expression on his face. "We came inside to get some sugar, because the caterers ran out."

"Yeah, I heard. I bet someone gets fired—"

"Well, find the sugar," Natalie said, and she folded her arms with a look of challenge on her face.

I looked at her and looked at Lewis and looked at Melissa.

"What kind of game is this?" I asked. "There's stuff going on outside, and we're playing hide and seek with the Farringtons' sugar?"

"We're not playing hide and seek," Natalie hissed. "But just look for it. Go on. You too," she said to Melissa.

"We shouldn't be in here," Melissa stammered as I looked the kitchen over. The sugar bowl should be next to the refrigerator or the bread, I thought. Right? But the countertops were completely bare. There wasn't even a toaster or a bread box. So I opened up a cabinet and looked inside.

There wasn't any sugar there either, and there wasn't any sugar in the second cabinet. I was about to open a third cabinet when I paused, and went back to look in the first cabinet. Then I looked in the second cabinet again.

I was still staring inside it when I heard Melissa, who'd been grumbling loudly and slamming other cabinets open and closed, also fell silent. I looked back at her. She was staring open-mouthed into a cabinet I hadn't opened, then looked inside another one. She looked over at me, past my head, and at the cabinet I had open.

We exchanged places. She looked in my cabinets, and I looked in hers. Then we opened and looked through every last cabinet in the kitchen.

They were empty. Barren. Unspoiled by even one item. Where you would have expected sugar and spices, and bottles of oil and syrup and honey, and packages of flour and baking supplies, there was nothing. I hopped up onto my toes, then clambered onto a counter for a closer look at the top shelves. Nothing.

When I hopped down, Melissa was already looking at the cabinets under the countertops and under the sink. These were also empty.

It was then that I realized the cabinets weren't just missing food, they were missing dishes. No plates or saucers or bowls. No cups or glasses. No pots or pans or baking ware. No plastic containers.

We opened all the drawers. No silverware, no measuring cups, no measuring spoons. No potholders or dish towels. No baggies or aluminum foil. Not even scissors or pencils or string or paper.

All of them were completely empty.

"Check out the pantry," Natalie said. I opened a door by the refrigerator. Bare shelves. In my house we had canned fruits and vegetables, dried beans and pastas, rices and instant mixes, cereal and oatmeal and extra condiments. The Farringtons had nothing. Nothing at all.

I ran my finger over one of the shelves. It came away clean.

It was not only bare, it had been dusted and scrubbed of any kind of grime.

Melissa looked over my shoulder, then with a dazed expression opened the refrigerator. Empty. No condiments in the door, no meats or cheeses in the deli drawer, no fruits and vegetables in the crisper. No milk, no juice, no cola. No containers of leftovers.

The freezer didn't even have ice, only empty ice trays.

"Maybe they got all new appliances yesterday?" Melissa said.

"Where are the dishes?" Natalie asked. "Do they eat with their fingers?"

"I guess they eat out."

"They don't eat breakfast?"

"Micah doesn't eat lunch," I said.

"And what if they want a drink of water," said Lewis. "There aren't any cups or glasses. Do they just put their mouths over the faucet?"

"Don't be gross," said Melissa.

"It's a real question! How could you eat in this place?"

"They've got paper plates and cups somewhere," Melissa sniffed. "Out in the garage, maybe." She stalked out of the kitchen and down a short hallway.

"I guess that could be what's going on," I said.

"But why not keep them in here?" said Natalie. "They need to have something to eat with."

I thought of Micah, sitting in the library every day at school, not eating. Then I thought of Devon, sitting out at the picnic table in the back yard now, also not eating.

We all looked over as Melissa came back in. She was red in the face.

"So I couldn't find anything," she said crossly. "So what? But I don't know why you're making such a big deal about it."

"Who's making a big deal?" said Lewis. "It's just weird, isn't it?"

"Not really. I mean, maybe they just get a breakfast bar on the way to school. You know that Devon bikes all the way to the high school every morning, right? He passes the 7-11 every day."

"Does he eat lunch?" I asked.

She looked puzzled. "Sure."

"So you've seen him eat lunch?"

"What are you talking about? Sure I've—" But she stumbled and blinked. "I mean, I'm sure he must. Everyone eats lunch. What are you saying?" Spots of red and white struggled for control of her cheeks. "Are you saying he doesn't eat, that none of them eat? Ever? Not breakfast or lunch or—?" She laughed—a noise that sounded strangled in that empty, hollow kitchen.

"Do they drink?" I asked.

"Sure! Like Lewis said—" Melissa pushed the handle on the faucet. "They just—"

She stopped as the faucet made a faint, rushing sound, and we all stared as nothing came out. She pushed the lever up and down. Nothing. "It's just stopped up," she said.

The rest of us exchanged a glance, and Natalie didn't even have to say, "The bathrooms" before we'd scattered, except for Melissa, who squawked after us. I ran upstairs with Lewis. He disappeared inside one of the bedrooms while I looked inside a hall bath. The sink didn't run. And when I flushed the toilet, the bowl didn't fill back up.

I found Lewis inside a bathroom that was inside an expensively decorated bedroom. He jumped back, startled, when I came in.

"Does the toilet flush?" I asked him.

"I didn't check," he said. "The sink doesn't work, and the bathtub doesn't either." He flushed the toilet—it emptied, and stopped. "Doesn't matter." He pointed. "No toilet paper."

He was right. The holder was empty, without even an empty cardboard tube.

We looked in the hall bathroom on our way back down. It was the same thing: No toilet paper.

"This is stupid," Melissa said when we were downstairs again, and had checked the downstairs toilet with Natalie. "You're disgusting! You're saying they don't eat so they don't—" She shoved Natalie before the latter could say, "They don't shit."

Then Melissa got a very lofty, smug look on her face.

"You know what'll settle it," she said. "If they don't eat, then you're right, they don't need toilet paper. But you know what else they don't need? Toothpaste and tooth brushes!"

I felt a chill when she said that. I wasn't scared of being proven wrong—I was sure she was right, that there was some very simple but weird explanation for it all.

But what if there weren't any toothbrushes or toothpaste? I'd seen Micah's teeth, and Devon's too. Bright, white, and cavity free. They had to have tooth brushes.

But what if they didn't?

I looked first in the downstairs toilet. It was a guest bathroom, so I wasn't expecting to find toothbrushes or toothpaste, and I didn't. More slowly I followed Natalie and Lewis, who'd run upstairs. They'd run ahead into the master bedroom, so I stopped in the hall bathroom again. I hesitated, then opened the medicine cabinet.

It was as empty as the kitchen cabinets. And when I looked in the shower I saw that there was no soap and no shampoo.

There weren't even any towels—body or hand—now that I thought to notice.

I was standing there, staring at the vanity, trying to figure out how it was possible to live in a house without food, without utensils, and without utilities, when I saw a movement in the doorway. I jumped back, and almost yelped.

It was Devon.

His eyes were dead, and his mouth slightly pursed as he put his hands on either side of the door frame. I saw a muscle twitch in one of his forearms.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked in a strong but soft voice.

"Uh, I had to use the bathroom?" I squeaked.

"There's a downstairs bathroom."

"Someone else was using it?"

He held my eye, and his face lengthened. "What were you looking at just now?"

I actually wasn't sure, so I had to shrug. "Nothing. I was just thinking."

"You have to think before you use the head?"

I pointed. "There's no water in it."

He glanced down. And because I couldn't bear to meet his eyes, I saw the flutter in his throat.

"I guess it's clogged up," he said. "I'll have to get a plunger."

"I'll get out of your way," I said, and moved toward the door.

But he didn't step back, and I didn't have the courage to try pressing past him. So I stood there, staring at the bottom button of his polo shirt, and trembled.

We stood there like that for what seemed a very long time, neither of us moving. My knees felt watery, and only by concentrating did I keep them from buckling.

Then Devon said, in almost a whisper, "You shouldn't go snooping."

"I know," I said, and cleared my throat, and said it again more firmly.

"I think you should go home now."

I nodded.

His voice fell to almost nothing. "No one will ever believe you."

I said nothing to that, and when he finally fell out of the way I walked with as much dignity as I could muster downstairs and out the front door. I lingered at the front sidewalk, though, waiting for my friends. It was about ten minutes before Lewis and Natalie showed up, and they came out the side gate.

"Sweet Jesus," Natalie said. "What happened? We were coming out when we saw Devon standing in the hall. Did he catch you? Was he talking to you?" I nodded. "What did he say?"

"Not much, except he said that I shouldn't go snooping. What happened to you guys? Did you get caught?"

Lewis shook his head.

"We waited till he was gone," he said, "then snuck downstairs and came back out. Your friend Melissa was already gone."

"I bet she went and told him we were inside," Natalie spat. "But what did you find?"

"Nothing," I said. "The hall bathroom was totally empty. You?"

"Same thing. You know," Lewis added, "if we didn't see them in different clothes every day, I'd wonder if their dressers and closets were empty too. And those beds are really neatly made. They look like something out of a catalog."

"Oh, come on," Natalie snarled. "Melissa's a ... a know-it-all, but she's right that there's something totally normal going on. We just have to think of what it is."

"Whatever it is, you're never going to get back in to check," said Lewis.

I didn't say it, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't matter if we got back in or not. I was almost certain that if anyone did get back into the Farringtons' house after tomorrow, they'd find some fully stocked bathrooms and a kitchen packed with dishes and utensils, and boxes and cans of imperishable food.

Devon would see to that.

* * * * * *

AS IT HAPPENED, there wasn't to be another chance for any of us to get back in to look. About ten days later the pastor got up to announce with regret that the Farringtons were being called away—Mrs. Farrington's mother had had a stroke, and the entire family would be moving to North Carolina to look after her. The move was executed promptly, and only three days later the last of their furniture had been packed up into a giant moving van and hauled off. The family themselves had left the day before to make the drive.

Melissa, naturally, was inconsolable, even to the point that she couldn't bring herself to sign the farewell card that the youth pastor had circulated.

Natalie lost interest in the Farringtons almost immediately after they left, but Lewis and I continued to talk about them some. We often joked that they were really robots or space aliens or zombies. But I could tell that Lewis didn't care all that much, and he certainly didn't believe any of the fantasies that we made up about Micah and Devon and their parents.

I don't think I believed any of them either.

But still, there was that final warning Devon had hissed at me: No one will ever believe you.

But what would they never believe?

That the Farringtons didn't keep food or toiletries in the house? Who would care? As Melissa and Natalie (and Lewis, in his sober moments) showed, even those who had seen it didn't care all that much.

Which left me wondering, years later, if he had meant something else by it. Was there something in that bathroom that I hadn't seen, but he thought I had? Something so peculiar that people would pay attention if I told them about it—but so bizarre that they would naturally be skeptical?

And when I remember the way he kept me trapped in that bathroom, I still get the faintest shiver at the small of my back, and wonder if I didn't have the narrowest of escapes on account of something I saw, but didn't recognize, in their house.