Page 154 of Slumming It

"Well, you didonetime."

"When?"

"Last Saturday. After martinis."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "That wasn't asnore. It was a snort."

I tried to look smug. "Oh, yeah? How doyouknow?"

"Because I was wide awake." His eyes narrowed. "And you were poking me."

"I wasn'tpoking. I was tickling."

His mouth tightened. "I know the difference."

"Iknowyou do, because you're totally ticklish. Thus, the snort."

Abruptly, he stood. "Are we done?"

As I stared up at him, I tried to understand exactly where I'd gone wrong. I had been teasing him like this for weeks, and until now, he had seemed to actually enjoy it.

Not anymore.

In that moment, I felt just a little foolish for thinking that I could tease away the demons that were tugging him in the wrong direction – toward darkness instead of light. But foolish or not, I stubbornly kept my seat. "Done?" I scoffed. "I haven't even started."

He just looked at me.

I tried again. "So you should probably sit back down."

He didn't move.

I sighed. "Fine. IguessI'll get to the point." I reached into my purse and pulled out both photos – the framed one from Chicago and the one from my mom's old photo album.

I placed the photos side-by-side on the coffee table and waited for his reaction.

He didn't even look. But I knew Reese.He saw everything.

As the silence stretched out, I considered what my mom had told me about that summer at the hotel, where my brothers had made friends with a scrawny kid named Buddy whose parents never seemed to be around.

The kid was a long-term guest, staying in room number fifteen – until one morning, my parents had found him sleeping undertheirbed in room number seven.

Apparently, the whole thing had been Dean's idea. He'd snuck Buddy into the room after Buddy had balked at returningto his own room because his mom was, in Buddy's words, spazzing out.

Turns out, the spazzing was contagious, because my own mom had just about flipped after discovering a kid who wasn't her own sleeping under the bed. She'd been so angry, she'd just about lost it – not because Buddy was intruding, but because Buddy's mom must've been frantic with worry.

Except she wasn't.

When my parents returned Buddy to his own room, not only had his mom seemed unconcerned, she'd seemed irritated to have her own kid back underfoot.

After that, Buddy had spent most of the summer hanging out withmyfamily instead – until one morning they woke up, and Buddy simply wasn't there.

He hadn't even said goodbye.

And now in the quiet suite, the adult version continued the trend by saying nothing at all.

My voice grew soft with sympathy. "My parents looked for you, you know."

Sounding bored, he asked, "Oh, yeah? When?"