Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth

 

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For Ruth

 

For me, O Partha, there is naught to do in the three worlds, nothing worth gaining that I have not gained; yet I am ever in action.

—
B
HAGAVAD
G
ITA

 

PART I: INNOCENTS

Q:
Let me put it another way. What, of your own experiences, have been the most frightening?

A:
Betrayals. Abandonments.

—T
RUMAN
C
APOTE
,
Nocturnal Turnings,

bcp §81¶1987

 

CHAPTER 1

The Better Part of Neglect

As far as Patrick Griffin could tell, the only good thing about being the middle-most of seven children was that he tended to get ignored. Getting ignored meant he could
sometimes
have time, toys, and thoughts to himself—things that were otherwise pretty hard to find in the bustling, helter-skelter Griffin home.

The rest of it, of course, was that being one of
seven
Griffin kids meant he had all the problems that came with receiving only
one-seventh
of his parents' attention and resources. And, in reality, he figured he got less than that.

But to his mind not a single piece of neglect had ever come close to that rainy Saturday morning in March—the morning of the day he disappeared—when he arrived downstairs to find there were no waffles.

There had been an eighteen-pack yesterday. He'd pulled it out of the freezer case at Kroger himself. Friday afternoons, while most of his siblings were at sports, Patrick would go shopping with Mom and the Twins, and they would pick out a treat for Saturday breakfast: coffee cakes, sticky buns, bagels, sometimes even a big box of some sugar-crusted cereal.

Yesterday, the four of them had decided on toaster-ready waffles.

If you counted Mom and Dad, there were nine people in the family. Divide eighteen waffles by nine people and you get two waffles per person—two waffles; not three, not four, not one, and definitely not
zero
waffles.

“Mom!”

He padded to the top of the basement stairs, yelled her name another time, then went to the den. Annoying Neil would probably be in there holding a game controller—or Dad the universal remote—and would know where she was. But neither Neil nor Dad was there. Nobody was there. He observed the rain pattering on the casement window and decided there was no point checking the yard.

“Mom!!!” he yelled up the front-hall stairs. “Somebody ate my waffles!”

For the third time there was no reply. And something was strange. This was different from those rare moments when the Twins weren't awake, Neil wasn't getting yelled at, Carly wasn't throwing a fit, Mom wasn't on someone's case, Dad wasn't trying to find something, and Eva wasn't laughing at somebody. No, it was more than quiet right then at 96 Morningside Drive; it was
silent
.

He took the stairs, two at a time, to the second floor. His parents' bedroom, and the rooms of his younger siblings, Carly and the Twins, were all vacant. And neither was there anybody in the bedrooms or bathrooms on the third floor. Which left only one place to check: he drew a deep breath and climbed the steep, creaky fourth-floor stairs to the attic, and the lair of his oldest sister, Lucie.

“Lucie!?” he asked from the wooden landing. “Lucie—are you there?”

He knocked loudly four times before turning the handle. It was risky enough touching something of Lucie's she'd left on the kitchen counter; entering her room without permission …

Every one of Patrick's siblings terrified him on some level—the Twins for their control over his parents, Carly for her eardrum-splitting temper, Neil for his inability to leave any other human (and especially Patrick) at peace, and his second-oldest sister, Eva, for her sarcastic and confidence-shattering putdowns—but nobody scared Patrick like his eldest sibling, seventeen-year-old Lucie. Lucie who lived in the attic. Lucie who wore a black leather jacket even when it was hot out. Lucie who painted weird paintings. Lucie who listened to heavy electronic music that made Patrick feel seasick. Lucie who gloomed in and out of the house as if she were a gothic priestess renting an apartment that—to everybody's discomfort—didn't have a private entrance.

Patrick stepped into the shag-carpeted, incense-smelling room and, just to be safe, called her name once more. But she clearly wasn't there. The easel in the middle of the room held a charcoal sketch of a squirrel with its head twisted around the wrong way. Above, in harsh, dripping letters, it read, “LOOK FORWARD TO THINGS, IT'S BETTER FOR YOUR POSTURE.”

He shivered and went to the window. It happened to be the only place in the house with a good view of the driveway.

He stood a moment, resting his cheek against the pane, his breath fogging the glass and obscuring his view of the wet blacktop where his parents' cars would have been parked, had they been home.

*   *   *

Patrick pulled his face from the window and blinked hard, reassuring himself that this really wasn't such a bad situation. Was it not one of his most frequent, if not heartfelt, wishes that they all just leave him alone? And, if he was now here in the house all by himself, was that not exactly what was happening?

There in fact was right now
nobody
around to tell him what to do or, for that matter, what
not
to do. He could go pick what he wanted to watch on the TV and even turn the volume up too loud. He could go play one of Neil's treasured PlayStation 4 games. He could go search through Carly's room and find the
Westing Game
book she claimed not to have stolen. He could go take back his Legos Mom had given to the Twins. He could go to his parents' room and eat some of the candy that Dad kept hidden in his sock drawer. Or he could stay right here and look for evidence that Lucie smoked cigarettes like the kids at school said she did.

Patrick bolted from the room, a crooked grin on his face. He knew exactly what to do about the missing waffles.

 

CHAPTER 2

Cat's Away