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but not anymore.
    You would think my mom would want to take him to the doctor. Now, more than ever. But after that first checkup at the hospital, it’s like my mom wants to act like everything is going to be okay if she just says it over and over enough. (“Let’s just get Dylan back in his regular routine. Let’s not make anything about this bigger than it is. He was barely gone from us.”) It pisses me off the way she seems to want to pretend nothing happened. And my dad spends so much time taking extra calls for the exterminating company he works for, he’s not around enough to give an opinion. He spends most of his days in people’s attics chasing rats, which is a probably a heck of a lot more satisfying than taking care of a kid who’ll never get better. Who’ll never change.
    But Dylan is changing. For the worse. Like tonight. Tonight was crazy awful. We were eating dinner and my dad got up suddenly to go to the refrigerator to get something. Probably another can of whatever cheap beer was on special at the Tom Thumb.
    Slam!
    Dylan’s blue bowl was on the floor, spaghetti everywhere. Then he scooted into the corner of the kitchen like some sort of hurt animal, crouching into a little ball, and he wet his pants, a little yellow pool forming underneath him on the floor.
    â€œJesus,” my dad said, closing his eyes, standing by the fridge, still holding his beer.
    â€œDylan, honey!” my mom yelped, running over to him.
    The rest of my spaghetti became as appealing to me as a bowl of worms. I stopped eating and made my way over to my screwed up baby brother.
    â€œHey, Dill. Hey, Dill Pickle.” That’s my nickname for him. Sometimes it works.
    But not tonight. He just cried and sat in his own pee. Then he sucked on his fingers and said, “Damn, damn, piece of cake. Damn.”
    My eyes met my mom’s over Dylan’s head. Sometimes Dylan parrots back stuff he hears on television and from other people, but it never makes much sense. This piece of cake thing was new, though, something he’d only started repeating since he was taken. When I’d asked my mom early on what she thought it meant, she’d just sighed and said he probably picked up the swear word from my dad. Like anything connected to the kidnapping, she’d only wanted to ignore it.
    â€œDamn, damn, piece of cake!” Dylan yelled.
    My dad sighed really loud.
    â€œI need some air for a sec,” he said, and he headed onto the back porch with his beer. My mother acted like it was nothing. She’s always cutting Dad slack over Dylan. She says he has it harder than any of us because he always thought he would have a son he could talk about sports with and take hunting.
    After we got Dylan all cleaned up—and not without a struggle—my mom took him into her room and let him lie down on her and my dad’s bed and watch the same DVR’d episode of Jeopardy! that he watches like a hundred times a day. We all have it memorized by now.
    The categories are … Potent potables, By the numbers,19th Century France.…
    It’s a Daily Double!
    I’ll wager two thousand, Alex.
    My mom headed into the kitchen to clean up, and I thought to myself that if I were a better daughter, I would probably go and help. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And anyway, why doesn’t my dad ever help? He doesn’t even help with Dylan very much. That’s always on me more than him.
    So I just scowled to myself and shuffled into my disaster of a room, where I’ve been hiding out since, surrounded by my mess of a life.
    I love my room, but I hate it, too. I love it because it’s my escape, but I hate it because it’s where I was hanging out the morning Dylan was taken. I hate that I can’t remember exactly what I was doing when it happened, which proves to me how epically selfish I must have been that day if I couldn’t even figure out what