Step 4: Start to Suspect the Terrible Truth

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m in the kitchen, trying to decide if I want a snack before dinner, when Nico slips in through the back door.

I haven’t seen him since the morning. That’s not unusual these days though. I used to spend practically every second of the weekend with my brother, but now he’s either at Little League or locked in his room. I managed to catch him a few times to walk to the bus stop with him, but it didn’t help. He didn’t want to talk.

So it’s not weird that I haven’t seen him all day. But it is weird that he is sneaking in through the back. And it’s even weirder that there’s what looks like a pee stain all over the front of his pants.

Did Nico wet his pants? “Nico?” I say.

He tries to hide his pants behind the kitchen table, but I already saw it. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I was at the Lowells’ house, and I spilled some water I was drinking on myself.”

Except I don’t think he did. Because now that he’s closer, he also smells like pee. He can tell that I don’t believe him, and then he gets a worried look on his face.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay, Ada?” he says. “I won’t,” I promise. “But I mean how ”

How does a nine-year-old kid wet his pants? There was a time when Nico was about four years old when I remember he used to wet the bed, but that was a long time ago.

“I just held it in too long,” he says.

I still don’t get it. But he looks so embarrassed, it’s not like I’m going to give him a hard time about it. “Okay ”

“You swear you won’t tell anyone?” “I swear.”

“Because if you do, then you’re a tattletale.” “I said I wouldn’t!”

Finally, he looks satisfied, and then he hurries up to his room to change. But I can’t stop thinking about what happened. Nico is already acting weird, and this was the most weird thing ever. I wish he would talk to me. I wish he were the way he used to be.

I wish we never moved here.