Joe Hardy woke with a start and looked around, bewildered.  He was in his room, lying on his bed- but he was lying on top of the covers and he was already dressed.  He was even wearing his socks, though not his shoes.  Wondering, the boy turned over, then blinked a few times in surprise.  His brother was lying on the bed beside him, his eyes closed, and that was very odd.  Usually it was Joe who ended up in Frank’s room, not the other way around. 

Joe sat up and frowned.  He felt weird- his head seemed sort of thick and a bit achy, and his stomach definitely didn’t seem to be very happy.  He didn’t feel sick, but he didn’t feel like eating, either.  Maybe those chicken nuggets he’d had in the mall had-

The mall!  Joe’s eyes went wide and he shuddered as the memory rolled over him.  The mall- the department store!  The man who’d dragged him away; screaming for Mom and Frank; the cloth that had stunk so badly and made him feel so sleepy...  “Frank?”  Joe’s voice came out sounding more shaky than he expected.  “Frank...”  Reaching out, he shook his brother’s shoulder.

“Mmm?”  Frank’s eyes blinked open and he raised up on his elbows.  “Oh!  I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he remarked, rubbing his eyes with one hand.  Then he sat up and looked intently at Joe.  “Do you feel better now?”

“I- I- what happened?” Joe whispered, biting his lip.  “That- the man, he-”

Frank’s arms went around him and Joe shivered.  Normally comforting, Frank’s hug reminded him vividly of his fear and confusion, with the man trying to pull him away and Frank grimly clutching him.  He’d been too tired to hang on to Frank, though he’d  tried desperately to do so; now he made up for it by clinging to his brother as tightly as he could.  He barely heard Frank’s voice urging him to calm down, to relax, that he was safe.  He had to hold on to his brother! 

It took a few minutes, but gradually Frank’s calming, familiar voice and his tight hug did their work.  Joe’s fear slowly melted away, like an icicle turning to water, and at last he sat up- still shaky, but much calmer- and wiped his eyes.  He hadn’t really cried; only a few tears had sneaked out of his eyes while he was so scared.  “I- I feel kinda weird,” he replied to the half-forgotten question.  “My head feels funny- sorta thick.  And my stomach isn’t feeling good, either.  I mean, not bad, just not good.”

“The doctor- nurse, actually, I think- said that would probably happen,” Frank said consolingly.  “It was the stuff that jerk put on the cloth, some drug to make you fall asleep- she said it might mess up your head and stomach for a little while.  But it’ll go away soon,” he finished with an encouraging look.

“Good,” Joe muttered, slumping back against the headboard and trying to surpress another shiver.  Frank settled down beside him, patting his arm.  “Nurse?” the blond boy asked in an afterthought.

“Mom took you to the hospital and gave ‘em the cloth he used on you, so they could figure out what that stuff was.  Some sleeping drug, I guess, I can’t remember what they called it.  A pretty long scientific word.  They let me go in the ambulance with you and Mom- Mom held you the whole way, since you were mostly asleep, so I sat next to her.  She held you at the hospital, too, since I don’t think you would have liked sleeping in a chair.”

“Probably not,” Joe had to agree.  “Oh, Frank, I’m so glad you heard me,” he added with a little gasp, and clutched his brother’s hand hard as the fear tried to freeze him again.

“Man, so am I!”  Frank squeezed back.  “But you sure made enough noise, Joe.  It was those rotten mall people who were doing everything wrong, they wouldn’t believe me when I told him that you weren’t that- that...jerk’s nephew.  They weren’t even really believing Mom, either, but then this lady cop came in and took over just like that- she was really cool!  She made those dumb mall guys feel incredibly stupid.  You should’ve heard ‘em trying to apologize to Mom.”  Grim satisfaction oozed through Frank’s voice.

“I think I remember that,” Joe murmured, frowning in concentration.  “She had red hair, right?”

“Yep.”

“And she asked me who Mom was, and who you were...and she talked about putting those guys in jail for letting that jerk grab me, didn’t she?”

“She sure did.”  Frank smiled. 

“Something else happened, didn’t it?  ‘Cause I remember a big noise.”

“The guy had a gun,” Frank admitted after a moment’s hesitation.

“A- a- g-gun?” Joe stammered, staring at his brother’s suddenly serious face.

“Yeah.  A little one, but a gun.  He pointed it at the lady cop, but her partner came up behind and surprised him and the lady grabbed the gun and-”  Frank paused, a sly smile spreading over his face.  “She hit him.”

Joe, sensing there was something significant here, repeated, “Hit him?”

“Yeah, she was kneeling down and she grabbed the gun and pushed it up away from her head, and made a fist, and as she stood up, she walloped him!  Right......there,” the eleven-year-old concluded significantly.

“Right...”  Joe paused, letting the word trail off suggestively. 

“Yuuuup,” Frank drawled, nodding.

“In front of everybody?”

“Yep.”

“Ouch,” Joe said cheerfully.  Normally he didn’t like that idea at all, but that man had deserved it.

“Very ouch.  He went sorta ‘arrrggh’ and fell over and that was when the gun fired.  I don’t think he meant to do it; I think he hurt so bad he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“No one got hurt, did they?” Joe asked anxiously, meaning no one other than the kidnapper, who didn’t count.

“No.  It was loud and pretty scary, but he only hit one of the dummies.  I mean, you know, the ones that don’t move, that they put the clothes on.”

“Oh, the models.”

“Yeah.  Not the security mall dummy or the store manager dummy,” Frank agreed contemptuously.  Joe giggled a little at the wordplay and found he was feeling a good deal better. 

“So what happened after that?” he urged.

“Well, the cop and her partner- another lady, only she had black hair- got the guy all handcuffed, and then some more police arrived, and the ambulance people got there, and we went to the hospital.”  Frank paused for a breath.  “The first lady and another cop, a guy, showed up while we were waiting and the guy- Riley, he was pretty cool, too- asked Mom and me a lot of questions.  He said he’d talk to you after you’re feeling better, and he drove us home.  Then-”

“Why?”

“Why, what part?”

“Why’d he drive us home?”

“‘Cause Mom didn’t have the car.  Remember,” Frank added at Joe’s perplexed look, “Mom drove to the mall and parked, and the ambulance people took us from there-”

“Oh, oh, right.  Okay.  I knew that,” Joe added, annoyed at himself.  “I just didn’t think of it.”

“Must be that sleepy drug.”  Frank grinned.  “This time, anyway.”

“Hey!” Joe squealed indignantly, and gave his brother a punch on the shoulder. 

“Hey yourself, horsie-”

“You’re the horsie!” Joe retorted.  “Or maybe the piggie, since you gave me a piggyback ride this morning!”

“I think I’d rather be a horse,” Frank remarked.  Then he grew serious.  “You know, we ought to tell Mom you’re awake and feeling kinda better.  She was really worried.  I was, too,” he added quietly, and Joe leaned up against the shoulder he’d just punched with a sigh. 

“I hope she doesn’t yell ‘cause I went too far away.”  If he’d just stayed next to Frank, the guy probably wouldn’t’ve tried to grab him at all.

“I don’t think she will.  I was only a few feet away from you and he grabbed you anyway.” 

“Yeah...but even so-”  Joe stopped, because Frank was shaking his head.

“Joe, most people don’t go around with a drugged cloth to put somebody to sleep. He was all prepared to kidnap somebody; he even had his lie all worked out.  And there weren’t any other kids there, just you and me.”

Joe sat up again, blinking as he thought that over.  “You mean...he- he meant to kidnap one of us, and I was...but why, Frank?”  He hadn’t thought- hadn’t had time to think- that the man might have actually planned it out.  He’d assumed that the man saw a chance to grab somebody and took it.  The somebody who got grabbed just happened to be Joe himself.

“I dunno,” his brother admitted.  “But maybe ‘cause of Dad.”

“What?”  Joe stared at his brother in astonished dismay.

“You really are foggy,” the older boy remarked.  “You know Dad’s got enemies, Joe.”

“Of course I know he’s got enemies- Frank, what d’you mean?  Dad wouldn’t’ve gotten one of his enemies to try and kidnap me, or anyone!”

“I didn’t say he would-”

“Yes you did, Frank, you said ‘because of Dad’,” Joe reminded him agitatedly.  “And he wouldn’t do that.”

Frank sighed.  “Okay, I guess I didn’t say it very well for your confused head to understand,” he said, and there was an edge under his patience.  “I didn’t mean Dad would do it, I meant: Dad has enemies and one of them might have wanted to get back at him by kidnapping one of us.  He told us about that, remember?  And if he didn’t have people mad at him, they wouldn’t try to kidnap you.  So in a way, it is because of him.”

“Oh.”  Joe subsided, feeling a little foolish for misunderstanding, then wrapped his arms around his knees, scowling to hide his fear.  Dad had warned them, a year or two ago, that they had to be more careful about strangers than most kids.  Dad had put a lot of bad guys in jail, but the bad guys might get out, and they would be angry when they did.  They might decide to get revenge by kidnapping Frank or Joe, or both of them, and hurting them. 

“They know they could hurt me more by harming you than they could by hurting me directly,” Dad had said.  “I can take pain, up to a point, but knowing that someone was being cruel to my sons because they were angry at me would be hundreds of times worse.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” the blond boy said at last, trying not to let his voice quiver.  Somehow, he’d never really thought it would happen, despite Dad’s warning.  “I guess next time I’ll stay right next to Mom,” he added.

“Me too.”  Frank sounded less annoyed now, and he put his hand on Joe’s back and gave him a gentle shake.  “Let’s go downstairs.”

“Okay.”  Joe slid off the bed and padded across the room in his sock feet.  “We didn’t get any ice cream,” he remembered suddenly, and smiled as Frank laughed.

“Maybe we can have some for dessert, if your stomach’s feeling better.”

Joe descended the stairs with that happy thought in mind and glanced around curiously, looking for his mother.  A rustle caught his attention and he turned to see her getting up from one of the dining-room chairs.  Mom didn’t say anything as she came over, just dropped to her knees and hugged him.  Joe hugged back, and to his immense surprise, felt himself starting to shake again.  A moment later, the ten-year-old found tears welling out of his eyes and sobs rising in his throat.  As his mother rocked him gently back and forth, he buried his face in her shoulder and cried, vaguely wondering at himself.  He felt Frank’s hand stroking his arm, almost as soothing as Mom’s hand rubbing his back.

***

Frank chewed on his lip and tried to swallow a painful lump in his throat as his brother suddenly burst into tears in their mother’s arms.  He wished he hadn’t talked about the almost-kidnapping; he should have let Mom talk about it and explain everything instead of telling Joe himself.  All he’d wanted to do was help, but all he’d managed to do was make Joe try to hide his fear.  Mom would have done it right, without making Joe feel like he had to be brave and pretend he wasn’t scared.  The dark-haired boy reached out to smooth Joe’s arm, hoping the touch might help a little.

Joe quieted after a few minutes, and a few minutes later, he stopped crying altogether.  Finally he lifted a pink, wet face, rubbed determinedly at his eyes, sniffled several times, and said shakily, “I don’t know why I did that.”  Frank didn’t try to answer, just bit his tongue a little harder and squeezed his brother’s arm tighter.  Seeing Joe cry always made him want to cry, too. 

“You’ve had a rough day, honey.  It’s natural to feel overwhelmed after everything that’s happened,” Mom responded.  She let go of Joe and stood up, but left her hand on Joe’s shoulder and turned him towards the kitchen.  “Let’s get you some tissues.”  Joe obediently entered the kitchen; Frank followed a few steps behind and leaned against the doorframe as Mom handed Joey some napkins.  “How does your stomach feel?”

Joe finished wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, threw the napkins in the trash, and finally replied,  “I don’t feel sick, but I’m not hungry, either.”  He paused, then added, “And my head’s kinda...”

“Painful?”

“No, it just feels sorta- I dunno.  Thick, kinda.  Like somebody put junk in it and I can’t think real good ‘cause all that junk is in the way.”  Joe shot Frank a warning look, but Frank was in no mood to tease his brother and looked down at the floor, avoiding his gaze.  He wished he hadn’t been so unkind about Joe’s earlier confusion.  The only reason Joe was having trouble thinking straight was because of the drug that had made him so sleepy, but Frank had gone and made him feel stupid. 

“That’ll go away,” Mom assured him.

“It better, it’s annoying.”  Joe sniffed once more, then sighed.  “I feel a little tired, too, even though I just woke up.”

“Well, you can go back up and nap a little more if you’d like.  It’s nearly suppertime,” Mom remarked, looking up at the kitchen clock, “and I was just thinking of getting a start on that, but if you’re not hungry, maybe we’ll wait a little longer, till your father gets in.”

“Where is Dad, anyway?” Frank wondered suddenly.  Joe looked a little surprised; it apparently hadn’t occurred to him to wonder if Dad was home or not.

“A good question,” Mom answered, and her voice was a little stern.  Frank glanced at Joe, who was glancing right back at him.  Neither of them liked to hear that note in Mom’s voice; it meant she was getting worried, and it usually meant she’d fuss at Dad when he got home.

“He went to the police station,” Frank remembered.  “To make sure that guy got put in jail.”

“Yes,” Mom agreed, opening the refrigerator.  “But he said he’d pick us up from the hospital-”  She stopped at a sudden noise and turned quickly, then crossed the kitchen and brushed past Frank, who was still standing in the doorway.  Frank, who had recognized the sound of the screen door being pulled open, craned his neck to try and see around his mother as the front door swung open.  But Mom blocked his view, and it wasn’t until she said, “Oh, hello, Gertrude.  Did you have a good time at the flower show?” that he knew who had come in.

“It was a very reasonable time,” Aunt Gertrude’s voice replied, mingling with the sound of the front door closing.  “Except for the pollen, which got quite a few people’s allergies going.  They’re going to hold it outdoors next year.”  A moment later she entered the kitchen, looking very tired.  “Hello, boys.  Where’s Fenton, Laura?” she inquired as she hung her big black purse on one of the keyrack hooks.

“We were just wondering that ourselves,” Mom answered, stepping back into the kitchen.  “We’ve had a...an eventful day.”  She took a deep breath, then quickly explained what had happened in the mall and why she was worried.  Auntie listened without saying anything, which was peculiar, but she suddenly looked less tired and more frowny.  Not a good sign, Frank thought.

“Well, he probably did go to the hospital, as Frank suggests,” Auntie said at last, and Frank’s eyes widened in surprise.  That almost felt like a compliment!  “He probably had some trouble getting them to tell him what happened and where you are.  You know how close-mouthed doctors and technicians can be, Laura.  And consider the time, it’s the height of rush hour.”

“True, that’s true,” Mom agreed quickly.  “I didn’t think of that.  I just wish he would have called.  There’s no point to having a cell phone if the man won’t use it.”

“What do you want to bet he let the battery run down?” Gertrude asked dryly.  “As much traveling as he does, it’s a wonder the thing has the time to recharge when he does remember to plug it in.”

Mom gave a small smile, then sighed.  “Well...I was trying to think about supper, but neither the boys nor I are very hungry yet.”

“Neither am I,” Aunt G agreed.  “It’s much too warm.  All I’d like is some ice water, something for a heat headache, and somewhere to put my feet up.”  Then she turned and looked down at Joe, who met her gaze with an inquiring look.  “You be more careful, Joseph Hardy,” she said in a softer voice than Frank had ever heard her use.  “Stay nearer your mother.  We can’t have anything happen to you again; there’s been more than enough trouble for you this summer.”

Joe’s quizzical look turned to one of mingled astonishment and indignation.  “I- I don’t mean to get in trouble,” he began.

“I’m not saying you meant to,” their aunt replied, sounding more like her usual brisk self.  “I’m saying, this summer hasn’t been a very good one for you and we want to be careful that it doesn’t get worse.”

Frank stared after their aunt as she left the room, wondering at her words.  It was true that it hadn’t been a very good summer for Joey, and they didn’t want anything else to happen to him, but she did make it sound like it was Joe’s own fault that he’d ended up in bad situations.  And the only one that had been his fault had not really been bad at all- when he’d run away and worried them and twisted his ankle.  Frowning, the eleven-year old turned back to the kitchen and watched his mother fill a glass with ice water for their aunt; she didn’t seem to have paid any attention to the strange remark.  Frank waited until she carried the glass out of the kitchen, then looked at Joe, who was still wearing his indignant expression.  “Let’s go down into the basement, where it’s cooler,” he suggested quietly.

“Yeah,” Joe agreed, frowning.  “Let’s.”  He pulled open the basement door and clumped down without even turning the light on first, which was unusual for him.

Frank did stop to flick on the light and was halfway down the steps when Mom’s voice called anxiously, “Boys?”

“Yeah?” he called back, turning to face the kitchen doorway.  Mom appeared at the top of the steps and looked down at him and Joe, who had paused on the bottom stair.

“Oh, there you are.  I am going to start supper soon, half an hour or so.  And I’ll need you two to set the table, so don’t get too involved in anything down there.”

“We won’t.”  Frank turned back and descended the steps, sharing a grimace with Joe as they reached the bottom.  ‘Don’t get too involved in anything’ meant ‘don’t get distracted playing video games’, and both boys knew it. 

“Oh, well.”  Joe shrugged.  “After supper, then.”

The dark-haired boy brightened a little.  “Let’s pick out which game to play now, so we won’t spend five hours trying to decide after supper.” 

“It doesn’t take that long,” Joe said in a half-disgusted voice, “but okay.  Not Myst Junior, something exciting.”

“Star Battle?”

“You always pick that, and you’re too good at it!  We haven’t done Apeman in a long time...”

“Apeman is boring, Joe.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause I beat you last time.”

“No, I’m saying it ‘cause it’s boring.  All you do is swing on a vine!”

“Okay, okay.”  A brief silence fell while the two boys studied the shelf of game cartridges.  “I know, let’s play Dad’s old Breakout.”

Frank considered and decided he liked the idea.  It wasn’t really an action game, just catching a ball on a flat paddle and boinging it into a wall of tiles, wearing them away and gaining points.  But once the ball went through the wall and touched the top of the screen, he suddenly only had half a paddle and the ball was going twice as fast.  The game itself wasn’t too active, but when he played it, he did get pretty active.  “Okay, that’ll be cool.  Progressive, since it keeps bringing more wall in,” he suggested.  All the other versions stopped after a couple of screens, which meant their scores didn’t get so high.

“All right.  If we can just find those funny dial-sticks.”  That was Joe’s word for the paddle controllers, which were not joysticks but worked rather like radio dials.

“They’re around here somewhere,” Frank asserted, and the two boys began searching.

***

Joe Hardy sighed, put down his paddle controller, and leaned disconsolately against his older brother’s shoulder. 

“Tired?” Frank asked, hitting the spacebar to freeze the game.  The boys were sitting side-by-side on the carpeted floor of the basement, the computer monitor on the desk above them.  The little round ball that had been zooming down towards Frank’s paddle hung in midair, looking more like a square than a circle.

“Not...really.”  Joe was having trouble concentrating on Breakout, but it wasn’t because he was tired.  It was because they’d found the paddles, then read for a while, then gone upstairs when Mom called them for a later supper than usual.  They’d had dessert and cleaned up and come down nearly an hour ago to play Breakout...and Dad still wasn’t home.

“Oh, worried?”  Frank laid down his own paddle and put an arm across Joe’s back. 

Joe nodded, feeling Frank’s bones under his cheek, and sat up a bit.  “Are you?”  He figured Frank was; how else would he have known Joe was worried if he wasn’t worried himself?

“I guess.”  Frank stared at the frozen screen, his brow furrowing.  “Some.  I can’t decide exactly how I should feel.”

“How come?” 

“’Cause we don’t know anything about it,” Frank explained, scratching his cheek.  “It does seem weird that first someone would try to kidnap you and then Dad wouldn’t come home or call.  Feels like...like the two things might have something to do with each other.  I mean, that might not be bad- Dad might be fine.  And it could be he’s late ‘cause of whatever he was working on at the office today.  Or something else that happened in the police station.  But maybe it’s two separate things- and maybe it’s one big thing.  I just wish we knew.”

Joe took a moment to digest that; his thoughts were a lot clearer than they had been when he woke up, but it was still a fairly complicated thought.  “Well, we know he’s late a lot, and we know he doesn’t call a lot, so it shouldn’t be anything to worry about, right?” he ventured at last.  “But I can’t help worrying anyway.  If that was one of Dad’s enemies in the mall...but they arrested him, so it couldn’t be him going for Dad.  But then, there might be someone else, some friend of his...”

“Right.  See, that’s what I mean, we don’t have enough information to figure anything out.  And guessing doesn’t help.”

“No,” Joe agreed, frowning.  “The more I guess, the worse I guess.”

“Me, too.”  Frank’s arm tightened, pulling Joe a little closer; Joe laid his cheek against his brother’s shoulder again for a few moments.

“You’re all bony,” he complained after a while, sitting up and rubbing his cheek.

“Oh, excuuuse me,” Frank returned wryly, smiling.  “I guess you want me to grow a pillow on my arm so you’ll always have a comfortable place to lie down?”

Joe had to giggle at the notion of a pillow growing out of Frank’s arm.  “Then you wouldn’t be able to take a bath; we’d have to put you in the clothes-washer.  And the dryer!”

“That might be fun, actually,” the older boy mused, and Joe poked him for being so silly.  He got poked back, and that went on until Frank got him in a headlock and mussed his hair up something awful.

“Okay, okay, I give up, sheesh.  Mess up my hair in the morning, mess it up again at night...”  As Frank released him, Joe sat up and tried to unrumple himself.  With no mirror and no comb, it wasn’t a very successful attempt.

“Is that a suggestion or a complaint?” the older boy inquired, grinning at Joe’s snort of annoyance.  Then his smile faded and he looked at Joe seriously.  “Joey, I’m sorry if I scared you, earlier.”

Joe stopped trying to smooth his hair and blinked at his brother, not sure how to take that.  “You didn’t scare me.”

“Not even when- when I talked about everything that’d happened?  ‘Cause...when you woke up...”

“Oh.  Well, I was kinda scared, yeah,” Joe admitted, looking away as his face heated up in the most uncomfortable way.  “But it wasn’t your fault.  I kept thinking about that rotten jerk and his nasty cloth, that’s all.  You helped me feel better.”

“Did I?”  Frank sighed, frowning in the way that meant he wasn’t too sure about that.  “Good.  I wanted to, but then I thought Mom would’ve done it better.  And it- it seemed like you were trying not to be scared ‘cause you thought I’d- I mean-”

Joe watched his brother struggle for words, perplexed.  “I wanted to know what happened,” he reminded Frank.  “It didn’t matter if you told me or if Mom did, it still woulda scared me.  ‘Specially when you said he had a gun; I didn’t like that.  He coulda shot someone.  But I wanted to know what happened.”

Frank nodded, but he looked unsatisfied.  “Well, you were scared at first, and then you seemed to stop being scared, and then we went downstairs...”  He paused and Joe blushed fiercely.  “So I thought maybe you were acting like everything was okay but still scared inside, and didn’t want me to know.”

Joe thought about that.  Gradually, the hot embarrassment faded from his face; he picked up the game controller and toyed with it, looking down but not seeing it.  “Maybe I was still scared inside, but if I was, I didn’t know it till- till we went downstairs,” he said at last.  “I dunno, I can’t figure out why I got so...upset when I saw Mom.  I thought I was fine until she came over.  And then I wasn’t so fine,” he concluded, grimacing at the memory.  He glanced up at his brother and shrugged.  “I’m fine now, though.”

“That’s good,” Frank said softly, his expression changing from troubled to relieved. 

“I’d be better if Dad would just come home or call,” Joe muttered in an afterthought.  “And if Auntie hadn’t said that about being more careful.  She makes it sound like I went up to that guy and asked him to kidnap me!  Or like I told Stupid Sean to throw that firecracker at me.”

“I think she was trying to say something different,” his brother ventured, “but yeah, that was how it sounded to me, too.  Like she was trying to be nice and didn’t know how she sounded.”

“I guess she doesn’t really know how to be nice to kids,” Joe concluded with a sigh.  “She was okay when I couldn’t see, understanding why I didn’t want so much help, but now...”

“She’s been okay to you now,” Frank pointed out encouragingly.  “It’s just that one thing she said, Joe, it’s not like she’s been rough on you for the last few days.”

“Well...”  Joe let his breath out with a sort of a huff.  “I guess,” he admitted reluctantly, his stubborn streak warring with his sense of fairness. 

“Frank, Joe!”

Both the boys stiffened in surprise at the sound of their mother’s call and traded a suddenly excited glance.  Then Joe scrambled to his feet and ran to the stairs, Frank on his heels.  “Yeah, Mom?”

“Shut down the computer and start getting ready for bed, please.”

Joe felt his shoulders sag in disappointment.  “Rats,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Frank called up, and then he tugged Joe’s arm, pulling him back over to the computer.  “Help me put away the paddles.”

“I was hoping it was about Dad, not bed,” Joe grumbled as he knelt to wrap the cord around the controller he’d been using.

“Me, too.”

The computer shut down with its usual little melody and the screen stopped buzzing, leaving a suddenly deeper silence in the basement.  Joe crammed the two controllers into one of the desk drawers, so he’d know where to find them, then turned to follow Frank up the stairs.  He felt tired, but not sleepy, and he wondered if he would be able to fall asleep.  He thought the nap he’d had might make it tough, and he knew that wondering about Dad was definitely going to be a problem.