Nils leaned against the table. Jeremy sat on a folding chair. His mind was full of questions. And full of hope that Nils would be able to answer them.

Jeremy said, “Where do they come from?”

“Everywhere. All over the United States anyway. And one from Toronto. We haven’t had any Forgotten from outside North America.”

“How do you find them?”

“News reports. When a kid finds out that nobody knows who he is, he tends to– well, I don’t want to call it overreacting, but the kid tends to make a hell of a fuss.”

“Like screaming himself into a quivering puddle in a library.”

Nils nodded. “Like that. We check police reports for stuff like that. The kids always make a big fuss with their families, so that’s the signature that we look for. Then one of us goes to see the kid. If the story fits, we tell the kid about our program and invite them to come here.”

Jeremy decided to ask the big question. “Why does it happen? What causes it?”

“We don’t know. We interview each boy in detail, looking for what is common and what is different in their stories. One thing we know is that it happens only when someone is separated from people who know them. We’ve never had anyone who woke up at home in bed to find that they’d been forgotten.”

“Runaways.”

Separation. If Nils was right, if that was the key, then Jeremy had brought his troubles on himself. By running away. By wanting relief from the pressures of his family. He had gotten what he wanted, and it had turned out to be more than he bargained for.

Nils said, “Hey, I can guess what you’re thinking. But don’t blame yourself for this.”

“If I hadn’t run away…”

“Not all of the kids were runaways. Most of us, yes, but every now and then we see something new. One kid, Bobby Scholler, was kidnapped. Some evil bastard grabbed Bobby on the way home from band practice, stuffed him in a burlap sack, and drove him home and locked locked him in a basement. Every few days the guy would bring him food, stuff that would last a while. Bottled water and Ho Ho’s. Stuff like that.”

“Jesus. And I thought my life was rough.”

“Then one day the guy opened the door, saw Bobby there in the dark surrounded by paper cups full of his own excrement, and said, ‘Who the hell are you, and what the fuck are you doing in my basement?’ Bobby was able to run past the guy, who didn’t try to stop him. When Bobby got home, well, you can pretty much guess the rest.”

Jeremy felt himself shaking.

“I know,” Nils said. “It gets to me every time, too. Every story is a little bit different, and a few, like Bobby’s, are a lot different, but that one part is the same. A kid goes home, and home is no longer there. Twenty six kids have come here and told twenty six stories. I cry every time. Having lived through the story myself doesn’t make it any easier to hear.”

Twenty six kids! And now Jeremy was the twenty-seventh. But that meant…

“Twenty six kids came here after you? That means…”

“I was the first. The first that we know about, anyway. We searched older newspapers. We never found anyone who was Forgotten before I was.”

Jeremy thought of Foley. “Until now.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. You never know what we’ll find tomorrow or the day after. In fact, you’re a first for us.”

“In what way?”

“You’re the first Forgotten that anyone here knows. Or knew before you were Forgotten.”

Forgotten. Jeremy shuddered. He didn’t like the term. Perhaps he would get used to it, but it seemed so matter-of-fact. “Couldn’t you come up with a different name for this? I cringe every time you say ‘Forgotten.’”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting– Pardon me. I don’t remember myself what it is like for this to be new. It was three years ago for me. We’ve tried different words, but none of them seem to help. I don’t think it’s the words that you’re cringing at, but the reality of what has happened. Other kids have had the same reaction as you, but none of the other names come out any better. If you can think of something gentler, we’ll be glad to try it on for size.”

Jeremy thought of Foley again. “You keep saying ‘kids.’ Is it only kids that come here?”

“We’ve never–up until now, at least–seen anyone older than sixteen.”

“Only boys?”

“Well, that’s something new, too. It was all boys until about six months ago. Then we got a ten-year-old girl, Margo Feathers, who had been lost on a hike. And one runaway girl named Amber Liddel. All the rest have been boys.”

“Ten years old? Jesus.”

“A few of the boys came here when they were ten. That was a few years ago. We’ve never had anybody younger than that.”

“I wonder why.”

“Well, it makes sense if you consider that, except for Bobby and Margo, everyone else has been a runaway. It’s unusual for kids younger than that to run away from home. Most kids are around people they know all the time, so there’s no opportunity for them to be– for this to happen to them.”

“Why not anybody older than sixteen?”

“We haven’t figured that out. Maybe it just doesn’t happen to older people for reasons we don’t understand. Or maybe it happens and we just don’t find out about it. Maybe they don’t make as much of a fuss. Or maybe it just gets written up differently in the police blotters, so we can’t detect the signature. For all we know, there are dozens or hundreds of homeless people who are homeless in more ways than one.”

Jeremy said, “I spent a lot of time with homeless people over the past year. I never heard anything like that.”

“None of the kids here have ever heard of it, either. Though most spent only a few weeks on the street before coming home. Or trying to come home. So, like I said, we don’t really know why nobody older has been– has come here.”

“If you were the first, how did you end up here? With Aaron? Or how did Aaron end up here with you? What’s the connection?”

“Aaron started attending Dad’s church about three and a half years ago. I didn’t know him very well, but Dad liked him a lot. He was a typical goody two shoes. Around that time, Dad started bugging me about preparing for the ministry. Now, don’t get me wrong, Dad’s a great guy, but he just wasn’t up to the job of raising me on his own. After Mom died he put all of his heart and soul into the church. I kinda drifted. I was about your age, and I guess, looking back, that I rebelled. I started hanging around with some bad guys. They were into drugs, and were starting to get into gangbanging. Dad was horrified and started pushing me toward the church. The more he pushed, the more I rebelled. He caught me smoking down here in this room one day and went nuts. He started yelling at me about the guys I was hanging around with, and how cigarettes lead to hard drugs, that whole line. I swore–and this is the God’s honest truth–that I wasn’t doing any of that stuff, but he wouldn’t hear it. The more I denied it, the more enraged he got. He started shouting, ‘Come to the church, Nils! You need Jesus and Jesus needs you!’ I snapped. I yelled, and I will always regret this as long as I live, I yelled, ‘Fuck your Jesus and fuck you!’ Dad slapped me, hard. I fell, right about here where this table is. Dad stared down at me. I thought he was going to hit me again, but he just started saying, ‘Jesus forgive me, Jesus forgive me’ over and over again. Then he turned and ran out. The next day I ran away. When I came home two weeks later, he acted as if he didn’t know who I was.”

Jeremy had a million questions he wanted to ask. If Nils’s father didn’t remember Nils, why had he let them use this meeting room? How did Aaron fit into all of this? But when Jeremy opened his mouth to ask a question, he realized that the moment was wrong. He felt embarrassed that his curiosity was overwhelming his empathy.

“Jeez, that’s hard,” was all he could think to say.

The door opened, and Jeremy turned to see someone coming down the stairs. Not Aaron, but someone younger. A boy about Jeremy’s age, but short and fat.

“This will be Johnny,” Nils said. “He’s here to see Aaron.”

Johnny’s face came into view, and Jeremy realized that he recognized the boy from somewhere. But where?

Then he remembered. Before he could stop himself, he blurted, “Watermelon!”

Johnny’s face reddened and he started to reply. Then as he stepped off the bottom stair he stopped suddenly and stared at Jeremy. “Do I– Do you know me?”

“You’re Johnny Waterman.”

Behind him, Nils stuttered, “But how– How do you– How do you–” He could not seem to finish the question.