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watching the tanks and trucks go by. He ran outside. Maybe Timmy had gone out there to get a better view. Several other people stood around watching the same thing. But he didn’t see any kids.
    He ran back inside the diner, into the other half of the building, which was a store. Running up and down the aisles, he called out Timmy’s name. He wasn’t there. Colt saw a rack of comic books and stopped there a moment. “Hey, mister!” he yelled to the teenager manning the register. “You seen a little boy in here a few minutes ago? Brown hair wearing a red plaid shirt?”
    “No, sorry. But an older guy wearing a brown sweater and a gray fedora bought a stack of comic books about five minutes ago. Said he was buying them for his son. Was that your dad?”
    “Our dad isn’t here.” Colt couldn’t stand there yakking, so he ran back to the diner.
    He looked at their booth again, half expecting to find Timmy there. He still couldn’t believe he was gone. Where could he be? It bothered him that nobody cared. No one even paid attention to him.
    “Let’s go surfin’ now  . . .” the Beach Boys sang on the radio. He decided it was time to make a scene.
    “Excuse me, everyone!” Colt yelled. Not loud enough. “Excuse me!”
    “What’s the matter, kid?” someone replied.
    A few others looked his way, but still, most of them kept staring out the window. He walked behind the counter, right up to the radio, and turned it off. “Excuse me, I said.”
    “Hey, kid, we were listening to that!” said a blond-haired guy in his twenties.
    “Has anyone seen my little brother?” Colt screamed at the top of his lungs. They heard that. Everyone turned. “My little brother, Timmy, has anyone seen him? He was just here with me a few minutes ago. I went into the bathroom, and when I came out, he was gone. Did anyone see where he went?”
    Almost everyone shook their heads no. A few just stared at him, confused looks on their faces. “You check the store next door?” someone said.
    “He’s not there.”
    “How about the bathroom?”
    “I just came from there.”
    “Maybe he went outside,” someone else said, “to see everything up close.”
    “I checked. He’s not outside.”
    “You check by the street, or just up here near the building?”
    He hadn’t, but he didn’t need to. You could see the whole sidewalk area from the front door. “I looked everywhere,” he said. “Somebody had to see him.”
    “We didn’t,” the blond guy at the counter said. “Now turn the radio back on.”
    Just then, a waitress came out from the kitchen. “What’s going on? What’s all this yelling about?”
    “My little brother’s missing,” Colt said, tears now in his eyes. “And no one knows where he is.”
    “I saw him,” she said. “About five or six? Brown hair, so tall?” She set her hand about waist high.
    “That’s him. You know where he is?”
    “He ain’t missing. He just left with your dad. They must be waiting for you on the bus.”
    Colt looked out the window toward the buses. What was she talking about? “That’s impossible. Our dad isn’t here. He’s back in Daytona, where we live.”
    “Mustn’t be the same guy then,” she said. “Guess that wasn’t your little brother, either. Did you just come out of the men’s room?”
    Colt nodded.
    “Were there any other boys your age in there?”
    “No, no one else was in there.”
    A confused look came over her face. “Then I don’t know what’s going on. I saw a man walk toward the front door with a little boy, headed toward the buses.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He was pretty tall, about six feet, I’d say. Wore a gray felt hat, looked like he needed a shave. Not fat but a little thick around the middle.”
    “That’s definitely not my dad,” Colt said. Usually when women described him, they’d start off with how handsome he was, maybe compare him to a movie star. He never wore a hat anymore (said if President Kennedy wasn’t