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living with . . . living with the person who abducted me. And I found me.
    Alexandra: What do you mean, you started searching? If you don’t really remember your family, how would you know to search?
    Me: Once I ended up at the youth home, I started realizing, or remembering or whatever, that I came from somewhere else. It was just cloudy, you know? So I looked on this one website for missing children, to see if anybody reported me missing.
    Alexandra: So you’re saying that you somehow hung on to that one memory that you came from somewhere else, but you forgot everything else?
    Me: Yes . . . that’s about right.
    Alexandra: Ethan, you seem so poised, so together, so . . . so healthy after all you have been through. I have to ask the question all of Belleville is wondering: Were you harmed? Abused?
    Me: Wow, uh . . . ha-ha. You really went there, didn’t you. Um . . . jeez. I guess you could say not physically harmed by my abductor, not really. But I don’t want to discuss that.
    Alexandra: Not physically? What do you mean?
    Me: Not . . . not harmed.
    Alexandra: Who abducted you, Ethan? Who did this horrible thing to you?
    Me: I . . .

CHAPTER 9
     
    . . . These are the questions I dread, but I thought I could answer them. I thought I could give her up.
    I picture her. Ellen. She called me David, until she abandoned me.
    She said she loved me. But she never came back.
    I look up at Mama. Her face has gone pale in spite of her makeup, and she grips my shoulder now, whispering, “Oh, Ethan . . .” And I feel so cold and twisted up inside. This mother sitting next to me is the one I should love, but I don’t. And the mother I do love is the one I should hate. But I can’t.
    I fall apart.

CHAPTER 10
     
    Alexandra: Ethan?
    Me: I don’t know. I don’t know.
    I feel the mess inside me start to quiver. Mama grabs my hand now, her other arm still around my shoulders, protecting me, and Dad is on the edge of his seat.
    Alexandra looks at me for a long moment as I pull away from Mama and sink back into the couch, covering my face. Feeling the panic rise in my gut. Alexandra raises her hand to the camera team. “Cut. Shut it down,” she says to them, and they do it. To me, she asks, “Are you okay?”
    I shake my head. Embarrassing sobs and inappropriate laughter force their way out like vomit I cannot stop.
    I get up and Mama leads me out of the living room, away from the questions, away from the cameras. But I feel exposed in this house.
    Mama whispers comfort and encouragement to me, but I tell her I really just need to be alone. She stares at me for a long minute, then nods and squeezes my shoulder and goes back out to do her piece for the news crew. I don’t want to listen. Instead, I sneak downstairs in the dark and burrow out a place for me among boxes marked ETHAN and books about lost things.

CHAPTER 11
     
    Things are happening backward. I didn’t want it to be like this, out of control. Emotional. I feel like I really fucked this up.
    I lie curled up on my side on thin green carpet in my basement hideout and try to figure out how I can fix this mess. I’ll explain to Mama that I felt threatened by the reporter and that’s why I was crying. I’m just not ready to talk about Ellen yet. I mean, everybody in my life now—they’re all strangers. All of them. You don’t just blurt out stuff like that to strangers when you have no ally. I hear their voices and footsteps above my head and, not long after, the steady, soft rumble of the reporter and crew walking from one end of the house to the other. Doors closing.
    Mama doesn’t come after me and I’m glad. I wonder if she even saw me sneak down here, if she’s worried about where I am. I hear her footsteps overhead walking from one part of the house to another, as if she’s looking for me. But soon I hear her at the top of the stairs, calling down, “It’s time for me to pick up Gracie from kindergarten. Dad’s working in the den. He’d love to talk