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.
