69 · LITTLE BROTHER
“But they let us go, and ferried us over today.” I was improvising now. “Are you hurt?” Mom said. “Hungry?” “Sleepy?” “Yeah, a little of all that. Also Dopey, Doc, Sneezy and Bashful.” We had a family tradition of Seven Dwarfs jokes. They both smiled a little, but their eyes were still wet. I felt really bad for them. They must have been out of their minds with worry. I was glad for a chance to change the subject. “I’d totally love to eat.” “I’ll order a pizza from Goat Hill,” Dad said. “No, not that,” I said. They both looked at me like I’d sprouted antennae. I normally have a thing about Goat Hill Pizza — as in, I can normally eat it like a goldfish eats his food, gobbling until it either runs out or I pop. I tried to smile. “I just don’t feel like pizza,” I said, lamely. “Let’s order some curry, OK?” Thank heaven that San Francisco is take-out central. Mom went to the drawer of take-out menus (more normalcy, feeling like a drink of water on a dry, sore throat) and riffled through them. We spent a couple of distracting minutes going through the menu from the halal Pakistani place on Valencia. I settled on a mixed tandoori grill and creamed spinach with farmer’s cheese, a salted mango lassi (much better than it sounds) and little fried pastries in sugar syrup. Once the food was ordered, the questions started again. They’d heard from Van’s, Jolu’s and Darryl’s families (of course) and had tried to report us missing. The police were taking names, but there were so many “displaced persons” that they weren’t going to open files on anyone unless they were still missing after seven days. Meanwhile, millions of have-you-seen sites had popped up on the net. A couple of the sites were old MySpace clones that had run out of money and saw a new lease on life from all the attention. After all, some venture capitalists had missing family in the Bay Area. Maybe if they were recovered, the site would attract some new investment. I grabbed dad’s laptop and looked through them. They were plastered with advertising, of course, and pictures of missing people, mostly grad photos, wedding pictures and that sort of thing. It was pretty ghoulish. I found my pic and saw that it was linked to Van’s, Jolu’s, and Darryl’s. There was a little form for marking people found and