“So, uh, what now?” I asked briskly, rubbing my palms on my jeans.
The two grown-ups shot quick glances at each other. Mr. Griffiths gave his wife a subtle nod, and she turned to me. “James belongs with us,” she said firmly. “I thought I’d lost him forever. Now that we have him back, I’m never letting him go. Do you hear me?” She looked positively fierce, and I held up my hands in the universal “Whoa, Nelly” gesture.
“No one’s going to try to stop you. I think he’s James too. But you know he’s blind.”
“I don’t care,” said Mrs. Griffiths, looking at Iggy with love. “I don’t care if there are a million problems. We can handle anything, if we have him back.”
Okay, that might cover the whole wing wrinkle. . . .
“Iggy? Do you want to stay?” I asked.
His face flushed again, but underneath his reserve I saw the hint of an unbelieving happiness. My heart squeezed painfully, and I thought, I’m losing him.
Slowly Iggy nodded. “I guess this is where I belong.”
I patted his arm. “Yeah,” I said softly.
“Do you have—things?” asked Mrs. Griffiths. “We’ll move a bigger bed into what used to be your room. I haven’t changed anything in there—just in case you came back to us someday.” She touched his face gently. “It’s a miracle. I can’t believe it. If this is a dream, I hope I never wake up.”
Iggy smiled faintly. “I don’t have much of anything,
actually,” he said. He held up the small backpack that we’d filled with a few crucial supplies from Anne’s house.
“Fine,” said Mrs. Griffiths. “We can get you anything you need.”
Spoken like a real parent.
82
And that’s how one of us found his real parents. I won’t bore you with the whole heartrending good-bye scene. Suffice it to say that mucho tears were shed. There was much going on in the “lamenting” department. I really don’t want to talk about it.
Okay, I’ll give you one little insight. I’d grown up with Iggy, known him my whole short, horrible life. I’d known him back when he could see, helped him learn how to fly. He was less obnoxious than Fang, quieter than Nudge, and a better cook than any of us. He was the Gasman’s best friend. And yeah, friends move away, and it’s sad and then you get over it. But there were only five people in the entire freaking world that I cared about and trusted, and I had just lost one of them. I’d had to walk away knowing that Iggy was standing in the doorway as if he could actually watch us leave, watch us leave him behind forever.
Basically, I felt like my heart had been stomped on by a soccer team wearing cleats.
But enough about me. I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
83
Anne was quite the panicky mother hen about losing one of her chicks, especially since we wouldn’t tell her squat about it.
All weekend she made hysterical phone calls and hovered over us, alternately begging, pleading, crying, and threatening. But all we would say was that he had left because he wanted to and he was safe. End of discussion.
Except Anne didn’t understand what “end of discussion” meant. Saying “end of discussion” really only works if the other person actually shuts up about it. Anne didn’t.
By Monday morning, our nerves were all stretched pretty thin. For one thing, I felt like my left arm had been cut off, because Iggy was gone. I’d found Nudge crying in her room twice; and Gazzy seemed practically catatonic without his favorite partner in crime. Angel didn’t try to be stoic but climbed into my lap sobbing. Which meant that Total joined us.
“I’m such a marshmallow,” he sobbed, tears making wet spots on his fur.
It took a lot to make any one of us cry. Losing Iggy was plenty. So with all the tears and heartache and sleeplessness, and then Anne riding me, trying to find out where Iggy was, by Monday morning I was pretty much ready to snap.
I mean, I was happy for him. Way happy. But more than sad for the rest of us. And knowing that this could happen again, to any of us, made me feel like the Titanic, plowing right toward an iceberg.
“I’m going to report Jeff missing at school,” Anne told us as we filed out to the car.
“Okay,” I said wearily, knowing it wouldn’t help. We all piled into her Suburban and she headed to school, back as rigid as a steel pipe.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said, looking at me in the mirror.