Seth remembers. I have no idea what Austin means by that; he said he could "just tell". As I head up to my room alone, I'm lost in thought about the possibility. Why would Seth keep the truth to himself when there's a chance his kidnappers could be brought to justice? Why feign amnesia? And most importantly: what happened to him?

Before he left, Austin neatly rolled up the sleeping bag and the air mattress in my room, setting them in front of the closet. I look at them, the only signs that he and Pixie were ever here, and sigh heavily. I can't figure out why he wouldn't just stay here. I think about them out there sleeping in a van, and my chest clenches with worry. Pixie's fever broke, and she's on the mend from the penicillin shot, but Austin was still limping around and breathing funny when he left.

I don't know how he's planning to take care of them, but his stubborn pride won't be enough. I wish he had a cellphone so I could have some way to get in touch with him other than waiting behind my register and just hoping he'll show up.

Just before I head to bed, I decide to find Seth and try for once to have an actual conversation with him. Maybe I'll see what Austin saw. His room is locked. I knock on the door and try to fight back panic as I wait and wait and wait for him to open it or even respond. Did he run away? Kill himself in there? I can't help imagining all the horrible scenarios that might lie behind this closed door.

Then, finally, his voice: "Alright, I'm coming! Chill out."

When he opens the door, I'm greeted by a cloud of smoke. Pot smoke. I cough, waving my hand in front of my face.

"Thought you were Dad," he mumbles.

"You're smoking pot in here?" I ask.

"Please don't tell Dad," he says.

When he looks at me like this, it's like he's a little kid again. His baby blue eyes are so big. I'm suddenly nine years old, standing in front of a pile of broken plates. Seth had taken every single one of our plates out of the kitchen cabinets and smashed them to pieces in the backyard. No clue why. He was manic, his eyes blazing. "Please don't tell Dad," he'd said with his five year old lisp. I couldn't deny him then, and I can't deny him now.

"You owe me," I say, "So you gonna share?"

Seth smiles slowly. "Seriously? You smoke?"

"Not regularly, but I have at parties and stuff. Why are you so surprised?"

"It's like... you're this little goodie-two-shoes. Dad's golden child," he says bitterly.

I laugh. "It's called acting. Try it sometime. Things might go easier for you."

Seth stands aside so I can walk into his bedroom. After he disappeared, we kept it exactly the same: Batman poster, shelves full of toy cars, swords, and action figures, Buzz Lightyear bedspread. Now everything looks so out of place in the hazy pot cloud hanging in the air. Seth looks out of place: an angry teenager with red eyes standing in a lost little boy's room.

He flops down onto his unmade bed and passes me a small bag of weed.

"It's shitty. Definitely no Sinsemilla, you know?" he says.

"No. I don't know. How do you know the difference between this and whatever the fuck Sinsemilla is? Are you, like, a pot connoisseur now? How much do you even smoke?"

"It's a Spanish word," he mumbles.

"What is?"

"Sinsemilla. It means it has no seeds. Sin means without. Semilla means seed."

"Again, you know this how?"

He ignores my question. As I start rolling myself a joint, Seth takes out a pipe bowl.

"Where the hell did you get that?" I ask, pointing at it. How does my little brother have drug paraphernalia? How does he even know how to use that? My level of shock just keeps rising.

He shrugs. "School."

"What else do I not know about you?" I ask.

He tosses me his lighter. "A lot of stuff, I guess. I've pretty much been on my own since I got back. You haven't really tried to talk to me."

"Bullshit," I say, coughing from the hit I just took. "You've treated me like garbage since you got back, and you know it."

Seth rolls his eyes at first but then his face softens. "Not just you," he mumbles.

"Well that's progress. At least you admit it," I say, "What I don't get is why."

Seth starts packing the pipe bowl with what's left of the weed after I'm done rolling my joint. It's so surreal watching my baby brother act out this ritual in such an absently effortless way. I know it can't be the first time. I wonder how many nights he's laid in here by himself getting high while Dad and I were gone, too busy to bother with him and his attitude. Guilt twists my stomach into knots. The cheap pot high doesn't help either. I feel sick.

"I tried to come back," Seth says softly, "I tried to be normal. But it's just not working. I don't fit where I used to. And everyone treats me like I'm this fucking mental case because I can't remember jack shit about what happened."

I sigh. Here we go.

"Seth, I need you to be really honest with me. Do you remember anything?"

Austin couldn't give me specifics to support his suspicions, but shouldn't I be able to read my own brother better than someone he just met this morning and talked to for less than five minutes? But then again, this Seth is a stranger to me.

Stranger-Seth just looks at me. "What kind of a question is that? You know I can't."

"What if I said I don't believe you?" I say.

He glares at me, exhaling a cloud of dirty, gray, pot smoke. "So now I'm a liar too?"

I'm losing him. I need to pull it back.

"No. I mean, if you did lie, I'm sure you had a good reason for lying. Maybe someone threatened you. Maybe what happened is really bad and you just can't talk about it. Maybe-"

"Maybe you should just shut the hell up!" he snaps suddenly, "I don't want to talk about it, Rory, even if I did remember! And it's really shitty of you to come in here acting like you're my friend and then accuse me of lying!"

"Seth, relax," I say. I used to be so good at this, so good at talking him back from his mood swings. "You can tell me what happened. I promise-"

"No! Just get out! GO!" he shouts.

Seth shoves me away from him with such force, I have to grab the nightstand to keep from falling off the bed. His bedside lamp falls off the nightstand when my elbow collides with it and crashes to the floor. He's never hurt me before. I can feel the imprint of his fingers along the edge of my collarbone, throbbing.

"Seth, calm down!" I say, catching my breath. I can't let him see how much he just hurt me.

Tears are streaming down his face. I stand up, slowly backing away from him. I haven't seen Seth cry since he came back. Not once. But he's crying now, sobbing like the little boy he used to be. I just want to wrap my arms around him like I always did before, but he pushes my hands away when I get close.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" he shouts, "Just go! GO!"

He turns away from me and flops on the bed facedown, sobbing. I don't know what to think, so I just back out of the room slowly, slowly. Before I go, I say the one thing I realize I haven't said to him since the day we found him:

"I love you, Seth. Even if you hate me. I'll always love you," I whisper, tears filling my own eyes.

The next morning when I get up for school, I find a note taped to my bathroom mirror.

"I don't hate you," is all it says.

——————

When I walk downstairs for breakfast, Seth is already sitting at the table. Our eyes meet, and he actually nods at me.

"Hey," he says.

This small crumb of civility brings a huge grin to my face and encourages me to push a little further. "Good morning. Sleep well?"

He shrugs. "Okay."

Blanca isn't here yet, but the coffee's already made and steaming in the pot.

"You did the coffee?" I ask, surprised.

Seth looks up. "Yeah."

"Thanks," I say.

"I wanted some," he mumbles, but I can tell he's pleased that I noticed his efforts.

I have my coffee with a bowl of whole grain cereal while Seth picks at a strawberry Pop-Tart. He doesn't mention the note, even though he must know I've seen it. I don't mention the scene last night either. I can't help hoping that this will be the turning point for us, that the roughest days are behind us.

After Seth leaves for school, I head up to his room to look for more of his secrets. I need to be more involved. I've overlooked too much since he came back, too discouraged or infuriated by his behavior to even try to mend our relationship. That's changing now.

In Seth's nightstand drawer, I find the pipe, a few more small bags of weed but thankfully no other drugs, and a half-empty box of condoms. It's this last item that shocks me the most. I just stand there holding it, my hands shaking. My thirteen-year-old brother is having sex? With who? I can't believe I've been so blind! Seth has gone from being ten to twenty-five overnight! Thirteen is way too young! Does he have a girlfriend? Why have I never heard of her?

I didn't lose my virginity until I was sixteen, when I still thought (stupidly, yes) that I'd be with Kyle forever. I don't want Seth to go through the same disappointment as I did... or to put some innocent girl through it. But whether or not I like it, I have the proof right here. My baby brother is doing drugs and sleeping around and God knows what else.

The last thing I find is the bottle of his prescription Lithium pills for his bipolar mood swings. Blanca picked the prescription up three weeks ago, a full month's supply... but all thirty pills are still here.

He's not taking his medication.