The Lost and Found

I've been sitting in this particular Starbucks for three hours, watching the door and pretending to work on my laptop. The laptop isn't even on. I realized this about forty-five minutes ago and decided that acknowledging it would require more energy than maintaining the pretense, so here we are.

I'm looking for my brother.

Not in the milk-carton, true-crime-podcast sense—he's not missing-missing. He's just gone in that specific way people can be gone in New York, where eight million people means you can absolutely lose one particular person in the crowd noise and still have to keep paying rent and buying groceries in the same city where they're doing the same thing, probably within a three-mile radius of you at any given moment.

The scrying bowl said he was here. Or near here. (Scrying bowls are notoriously imprecise about "here"—you get a general vibe, maybe a landmark if you're lucky, definitely not GPS coordinates because that would be too fucking convenient.) The water showed me this Starbucks, or one that looks exactly like it, which in Manhattan is basically all of them. Same slightly-too-small tables. Same aggressively neutral beige-gray color scheme that exists specifically to avoid offending anyone while also creating no joy whatsoever. Same barista.

I've tried four other locations already today. This is number five. My coffee is cold and I've had to pee for an hour but if I leave my table, someone will take it—that particular breed of laptop warrior who treats café tables like they're rent-controlled apartments, complete with territorial marking via charging cables and aggressive possession of the outlet.

My phone buzzes. Mom, obviously.

Mom: Did you find him yet?

I stare at this for a long moment, considering my options:

Lie (kind)

Truth (unkind)

Deflect (cowardly but efficient)

Me: Still looking. Scrying is more art than science.

This is true but not helpful. Scrying is exactly as much art as science as throwing darts at a map while drunk, which is to say: sometimes you get lucky, mostly you just fuck up your wall.

Mom: Your sister said maybe you should try the finding spell Nana taught us

Me: Already tried it. He's warded against it.

Mom: Why would he ward against his own family

Because he doesn't want to be found, Mom. That's generally how "leaving without telling anyone where you're going" works. But I don't type this because my mother has enough to worry about without me adding "your son understands subtext" to the list.

Me: Probably just general protection stuff. Everyone wards against everyone these days.

Mom: This family is ridiculous

Finally, something we agree on.

The door opens—that little rush of November air that smells like car exhaust and someone's cigarette. I look up out of habit. Not him. Woman in her sixties, North Face puffer jacket, the kind of purposeful stride that says she knows exactly which table she wants and god help you if you're in it.

I go back to staring at my definitely-off laptop screen, where my reflection looks back at me with what I can only describe as justified judgment.

Here's what I know about why Danny left:

Nothing concrete. (Frustrating.)

Here's what I suspect:

Everything terrible. (More frustrating.)

He'd been weird for months before he left. Quiet in that specific way where quiet doesn't mean peaceful, it means "I'm having thoughts I don't want to share and they're taking up a lot of bandwidth." Coming home late. Not late like normal-person late, like four AM late, smelling like ozone and copper. Ozone and copper means magic, usually the kind that costs something. Usually the kind that costs something you shouldn't be paying.

I asked him about it once. He'd looked at me with the same expression he used to have when he was seven and I caught him trying to animate mom's garden gnomes—guilty, defiant, already planning his next move. "Don't worry about it," he'd said, which is exactly what people say when you should absolutely worry about it.

Then three weeks ago: gone.

Just not at breakfast one morning. He always had breakfast, Danny ran on a schedule you could set watches by. His room exactly as messy as always. His phone off or dead or thrown in the East River for all I know. His wallet and keys gone, which meant he'd left on purpose. His jacket still hanging on the back of his door, which meant he'd left stupid.

I filed a missing person report. The cop had looked at me with that particular expression of someone who's seen this exact situation play out five hundred times and knows exactly how it ends.

"He's eighteen?"

"Just turned."

"Take anything with him? Money? Clothes?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Probably?"

"Drugs? Mental health issues? Relationship problems?"

Magic addiction that's probably going to kill him, the kind of mental health issues that come from being able to see things normal people can't, and I have no idea about relationships because apparently we weren't as close as I thought we were.

"No. I mean, not that I know of."

The cop nodded, typed some things into his computer with the hunt-and-peck typing of someone who learned keyboards after keyboards became necessary rather than natural. "We'll keep an eye out. But look—eighteen-year-olds leave home. Most of them come back when they get hungry or broke or both. Give it a few days."

That was three weeks ago.

Danny's not coming back because he's hungry. Danny's not coming back because he realizes mom's right about community college being a good stepping stone. Danny's not coming back because whatever he's doing, whatever he got into, he either thinks he can fix it alone (wrong) or thinks we can't help him fix it (possibly right, which is worse).

My coffee's definitely cold now. I drink it anyway because it's something to do with my hands and because wasting six dollars feels morally wrong even when I have bigger problems.

The barista looks over at me. We make eye contact. I can see the question forming: You gonna order something else or are you gonna keep squatting?

I should order something else. I should probably eat something. I can't remember if I had breakfast.

I order another coffee. Waste another six dollars. Return to my table, which thankfully no one has stolen in the thirty seconds I was gone.

Back to the laptop. Back to the watching.

Here's the thing about looking for someone in New York: the city is designed to swallow people. Eight million individuals all doing their individual things, crossing paths without intersecting, sharing subway cars without sharing awareness. You could pass your own brother on the street and not notice if he had his hood up and his head down, if he'd timed his walk to slip through the gaps in your attention.

I've walked past him already, probably. Maybe today. Maybe in this very Starbucks before I sat down to wait. Maybe he was here first, saw me coming, left through the bathroom window or the back door or just put on one of those minor notice-me-not charms that every third person in this city uses to navigate crowds without being perceived.

My phone buzzes again.

Alicia: Any luck?

My sister, who's currently at work and is therefore limited to text-based anxiety rather than the full performance-art version my mother prefers.

Me: No. You?

Alicia: Mom's driving me insane

Me: Same

Alicia: Can you ask him to at least text her when you find him?

When. Not if.

I appreciate the optimism even as I recognize it as the same kind of magical thinking we were explicitly taught not to indulge in. Hope as manifestation only works if you're channeling enough power to actually affect probability. Hope alone just makes you tired.

Me: I'll tell him

Alicia: Love you

Me: Love you too

I do, unfortunately, love them all too much. This is the problem. If I didn't love them, I could let Danny stay lost. Let him work through whatever stupid shit he's gotten himself into. Let him come home when he's ready, if he's ready, on his own terms without his older sibling hunting him down like he's a skipped bail.

But I do love them. And Danny's eighteen, which is legally an adult but practically a child, and whatever he thinks he's handling alone, he's probably wrong about his capacity to handle it, and I can't—

The door opens again.

I look up (ninety-eighth time, still counting, and my chest does this stupid thing where it clenches and releases, clenches and releases, like even my cardiovascular system is exhausted from hope and disappointment).

It's him.

My brother, Danny, age eighteen years and three weeks and four days, walking into this Starbucks like it's normal. Like he hasn't been gone. Like he doesn't know that our mother has barely slept and our sister's been crying when she thinks no one's listening and I've been sitting in five different identical coffee shops today alone, watching doors open and close on strangers.

He looks terrible. Not dead-terrible, but alive-terrible, which is its own specific category. Thinner than he should be. Hair longer than he likes it. That particular kind of exhaustion that comes from not sleeping right, not eating right, probably not doing anything right except whatever magic he's been doing that's made him look like this.

He hasn't seen me yet. He's ordering coffee—animated conversation with the barista, probably something complicated because Danny's always been the kind of person who orders complicated drinks and then feels guilty about the complication. The kind of person who says "sorry" to inanimate objects when he bumps into them. The kind of person who apparently also leaves home without warning and then shows up three weeks later in a Starbucks looking like he's been put through a blender set to "trauma."

I should—

What should I do?

Walk over? Aggressive, might spook him.

Call out? Public scene, he'd hate that.

Wait for him to sit down? Too passive, gives him chance to leave.

I'm paralyzed by options, which is how Danny sees me first. Looks over while waiting for his drink and our eyes meet across approximately fifteen feet of aggressively neutral Starbucks interior design and I watch him go through about five expressions in three seconds:

Surprise. Guilt. Resignation. Relief? Fear.

"Hey," he says, picking up his drink and walking over because apparently we're doing this now, here, in the same Starbucks where I've been sitting for three hours pretending my laptop is on.

"Hey," I say back, which is possibly the most inadequate response to this situation but it's what comes out.

He sits down across from me. Doesn't ask if he can sit. Just sits. Like he knows I'm not going to make a scene (correct) and knows I've been looking for him (also correct) and knows that whatever happens next is going to be terrible but at least it's going to be terrible together (hopeful thinking, but I appreciate the sentiment).

"Your laptop's not on," he says.

"I know."

"How long have you been sitting here?"

"Three hours. This location. Longer overall."

He winces. Actual physical wince, like I've hit him. "Mom's freaking out, isn't she."

"Understatement of the year, yeah."

"Alicia?"

"Also freaking out, but with better boundaries and a workplace to distract her."

"And you?"

I look at him—really look at him. At the shadows under his eyes that aren't just from lack of sleep. At the way he's holding his cup like it's something precious, something that might disappear. At the faint shimmer around his hands that means he's either warded to hell and back or he's been doing magic way beyond his skill level, probably both.

"I've been worried," I say, which is the understatement of the decade but it's the truth that fits in this space, in this moment, across this slightly-too-small table in this Starbucks that I'm probably going to hate forever after today.

He nods. Doesn't apologize. I didn't expect him to. Danny doesn't apologize when he's sure he's right, even when he's wrong, especially when being wrong might have killed him.

"Are you going to tell me where you've been?"

"Eventually," he says. "Not here."

"Are you going to come home?"

He hesitates. This is worse than a no. A no I could work with. Hesitation means there are conditions. Conditions means whatever he's into, he's still in it.

"I need to finish something first," he finally says.

"Finish what?"

"Something I started. Something I—" He stops. Starts again. "Something I have to finish."

This is exactly the kind of non-answer that makes me want to shake him until his teeth rattle and also wrap him in blankets and lock him in his room until whatever this is goes away but it won't go away. I know this. He knows this. We're both pretending there's a version of this conversation where I can convince him to stop, and we both know I can't.

"Is it going to get you killed?"

"Probably not."

"Danny."

"Probably not," he repeats, firmer this time. "I know what I'm doing."

You absolutely do not know what you're doing, I don't say, because he can see it on my face and saying it out loud would just make him defensive and defensive-Danny is even harder to reason with than regular-Danny.

"Will you at least text Mom?" I ask instead. "Let her know you're alive? You don't have to tell her where you are or what you're doing, just—let her know you're alive."

He considers this. Nods slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do that."

"Today?"

"Today."

It's not enough. It's nowhere near enough. But it's something, and something is better than the nothing I've had for three weeks.

We sit there for a moment, across from each other, drinking our respective coffees. The Starbucks continues around us—that particular ambient noise of espresso machines and conversations and someone's laptop fan working overtime.

"I'm sorry," he says finally. "For making you worry. For making everyone worry."

"But not sorry enough to stop whatever you're doing."

"No," he admits. "Not sorry enough for that."

I should argue. Should try harder. Should do something other than sit here accepting this completely unacceptable answer.

But I'm tired. Three weeks tired. Five Starbucks tired. And he's here, alive, looking terrible but alive, and that's—

That's something.

"If you die doing whatever this is," I say, "I'm going to find a necromancer and bring you back just so I can kill you again myself."

He laughs. Actual laugh, the kind that sounds like the Danny I remember before he started coming home smelling like magic and mistakes. "Deal."

"And you have to come to Sunday dinner. At least once a month. Or Mom will send Alicia after you, and Alicia's meaner than I am."

"Alicia's terrifying," he agrees. "Yeah, okay. Once a month."

"And if you need help—if whatever this is gets too big—"

"I'll call," he interrupts. "I promise. If it gets too big, I'll call."

I don't believe him but the promise exists now, in the space between us, and that's something to hold onto when he stands up. Too soon. I'm not ready, but when is anyone ever ready, and puts on his jacket. At least he bought a new one, at least he's not freezing. He looks at me with that same expression from earlier—guilt and resignation and relief and fear, all mixed together in a way that makes my chest hurt.

"I love you," he says. "Tell Mom and Alicia I love them too."

"Tell them yourself. You're texting her today, remember?"

"Right. Yeah. Today." He hesitates at the door. "Thanks for not—I don't know. Thanks for not dragging me home by force."

"I considered it."

"I know you did." He smiles, small and sad and still my brother. "That's why I'm thanking you."

Then he's gone. Out the door. Into the street. Into the crowd of eight million people where one person can disappear without trying, where finding someone requires more than magic and hope and five identical Starbucks.

I sit there for another ten minutes, laptop still off, coffee finally empty, before I text my mom.

Me: Found him. He's alive. He's okay. He's going to text you.

Her response is immediate:

Mom: WHERE IS HE

Me: He didn't say. But he's okay. I saw him. He's okay.

Mom: That's not good enough

I know, I don't type. It's not good enough. It's nowhere near good enough. But it's what we have.

Me: It's what we have for now

I leave the Starbucks and stop as the city hums around me. My brother is somewhere in this city. Alive. It's not enough. But I found him, even if I couldn't bring him home. That has to count for something.