Jake loved Monday mornings because he got to make his own breakfast and eat Special K. Mom scampered about the house, getting ready for work, and had no time to eat herself, so he always ate alone. He hated the weekends with Dad. He never felt comfortable in his house, especially since that new lady who called herself his “stepmom” had moved in. (“She’s no mother of yours,” Mom warned him.) So Jake never asked for food and hardly ate anything at Dad’s. On Monday, with no one watching, he could sneak in two bowls.
He sat alone at the tiny kitchen table, still in his Star Wars pajamas, loudly munching on his cereal and staring at the newly opened milk carton. Jake never tired of looking at it. The carton became a tall house with no windows, freshly painted in red and white, the tiny beads of water slowly trickling down its sides like the end of a rainstorm. He carefully wiped the water with his index finger, tracing the strange figure on the side that looked like a collection of hearts. He read the letters over and over, though he couldn’t understand many of them. “2%” was his favorite because it looked cool and appeared in so many places. He always forgot to ask Mom what “r-i-b-o-f-l-a-v-i-n” meant.
The pictures of the boys decorated the side of the house. Jake imagined that he and the boys became friends and lived together. David and Regan and Ethan and Paul. Most of them smiled like you did in a school picture, except David, who needed a haircut and kept his lips puckered, like he was ashamed of his teeth. Maybe he had cavities. That might explain why he didn’t look happy like the others.
“How had they all come to live in the same house?” Jake wondered. The red and white house occupied a secret place. That’s why the boys were MISSING. A phone number bordered the pictures of the boys. What if he called it? Maybe someone would tell him where the boys were. Still scared to talk on the phone with strangers, Jake never made the call. But each weekday morning, eating his cereal and listening to his mother curse over something else she couldn’t find, Jake talked to his friends.
