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For a beat, he looked at me with an expression of sadness so complete, I mistook it for calm.

He turned and walked down the hall and I went back to my bed and continued writing. I wrote about how I imagined Brooke and I would be excellent friends because I truly thought she was a gifted actor, though I didn’t believe she’d yet had the right role, with the exception of Pretty Baby.

A few hours later I went upstairs to his room looking for him. He wasn’t there.

I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.

I immediately went into the kitchen, grabbed the phone book and looked up the number for Amtrak. It only took a five-minute call to discover that a one-way ticket to New York City from Springfield, Massachusetts, had been purchased in the name of Neil Bookman.

I ran straight to Hope’s room and pounded on the door. “Bookman ran away,” I shouted. “Hope, wake up, Bookman’s gone.”

The door flew open. “What? What’s going on?”

I told her what had happened, then about my hunch and how I called Amtrak and it turned out he was on that train.

If there was one thing I could count on from Hope it was that she never minimized.

“This is not good,” she said. “I’ll go wake Dad.”

I ran back into the kitchen and paced frantically around the table. I grabbed a dried, raw hot dog off the counter and drummed it against my chest. “What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?” I was like an autistic sitting against a wall.

A moment later, Hope reappeared. “Dad said to call Amtrak and see if they can stop the train.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got the number right here.”

“Wait,” Hope said, pausing my arm. “How do we get them to stop the train, what do we say?”

“Okay, lemme think, lemme think,” I said. “Let’s tell them that—here.” I handed her the phone. “Say you’re his psychiatrist’s daughter, that he’s run away from treatment and that he has a bomb.”

“That’s smart,” she said and dialed the number.

But it was too late. The train had already arrived in Manhattan.

An hour later, Hope and I were in the Buick, on our way to New York. We’d thrown a change of clothes into a paper bag, taken all the money out of her father’s wallet and filled the car with gas. “Jesus, Hope, why is he doing this?”

“Because, Augusten,” she said, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s been very angry with Dad lately. Dad’s been worried about him.” She glanced at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s true. Dad’s been worried.”

I thought back to one night last week. Bookman and I were lying upstairs on the floor in his room, side by side. He was telling me that it had all become too much. “What?” I had asked.

“You, your mother, Hope, and especially Doctor.” He spoke slowly, his teeth clenched, eyes focused straight up at the ceiling. When I pressed him for more he said, “I’m afraid I’ll end up killing myself or Finch or you or all of us.” At the time it had given me shivers, a clammy feeling that ran throughout my body. But then I talked myself out of it, saying he was only being dramatic because he wanted attention. I thought it was another ploy to make me admit that I was still madly in love with him.

“What if we can’t find him?” I said to Hope.

“We’ll find him, Augusten. Don’t you worry.”

I had reason to believe her. When I was eleven and still living in Leverett my dog ran away from home. It was Hope who showed up at my house with five hundred fliers that read LOST DOG. And it was Hope who drove me around Leverett all night long sticking the fliers in mailboxes. My father had called it a “tremendous waste of time and energy” but the next day I got a phone call and my dog was returned.

“We’ve got to find him, Hope,” I said.

We arrived in New York City five hours later and Hope drove straight to Greenwich Village. “It’s the gay section of the city. It’s where he’d most likely go.” We parked in a twenty-four-hour garage and set about on foot.

The problem was, there were too many bars. We’d never be able to hit them all. My eyes burned from exhaustion; it was as if I could feel the blood vessels