Page 111 of A Box Full of Darkness

I had the sudden urge to call Charlotte Ryder, who was the only person who would understand how I felt in this moment, what it felt like to fail over and over, what it felt like to seek and never to know.

I didn’t call her. Because what could she say that would make it better? Nothing made it better.

That was why I was done.

—

The idea came to me slowly, over time, as I worked or landscaped or read in the library or cleaned graves. It started small, but soon it grew. Bigger and bigger.

It bothered me, actually. It shouldn’t have—I should have been able to forget it. But it was like a cold, when you know it’s coming on, when your throat gets sore and you think,Now what?You hope maybe you’re mistaken, but you’re not, and every day it gets worse.

It made me so irritable that I bought a spiral notebook and wrote it down. Then I woke up early and wrote more. Stayed up at 2 a.m., writing in the notebook.

I put the notebook away, tried to forget about it. I was busy. I had no time for ideas.

But it wouldn’t die. It grew and grew. One of the landscaping guys had bought a computer for his son, hoping it would help his son improve his grades, but his son never used it. I offered to take it off his hands for a hundred bucks.

I set up the computer in my parents’ old bedroom, which I had redone. It was nice in here now, with a tidy bedspread on the new bed and a desk by the window where the breeze came in. I divided mysleeping time between this room and my old bedroom, Ben’s bedroom. But I used the desk often to pay bills and keep paperwork.

The computer took up most of the desk. It took me a while to set up as I consulted the instruction book over and over again. Then it took more time to figure out how to use it, but eventually, I got it.

In December, with snow outside much as it had been on the day Ben vanished, I sat at the desk and powered the computer on. It whirred and clanked as it woke up and came to life. Then it beeped, and I entered the commands I’d learned to log in and open WordPerfect.

It had a lot of memory, this thing. You could edit, unlike a typewriter. You could put all of your work on a floppy disk and save it. You could take that disk with you anywhere.

Still, before I started, I went back to the spiral notebook. I had the idea for a story about a boy detective who is also a time traveler. He is sent from one time to another every six years, something he has no control over. Wherever he is, six years is all he gets, so he has to do the most good in the time he gets each time.

In each time and place, he tries to solve a mystery. To make friends. To learn.

Victorian England. Cleopatra’s Egypt. Prohibition Chicago. The boy spends six years in each place, having adventures and solving crime before he has to leave.

My problem was that I hadn’t found a name I liked. He wouldn’t be called Edward or Ben. I had written two pages of possible names, first and last, trying to find exactly the right one before I started.

I looked at those pages now, then picked up a pen and added to them. More names, then more. And then I had it.

I had the boy’s name, first and last.

I had the name my little brother would have in his next life, the life where other people got to enjoy him, to love him, just like I had.

It was perfect.

I looked at the balsam wood airplane with the upside-down wings, which I had taken down from the attic and placed on the desk where I could see it every day. I ran my finger along its smooth, fragile wood. In the drawer next to me, in easy reach, was a small wooden horse and a bag of marbles.

I turned to the screen, to the blinking cursor, and startedwriting.