Beschrijving

From The Dragons of Autumn:

May became June, which became July, which became August, and I didn’t see Ghost … although I left him something every day, something which was always gone when I returned, at least at first. By September, however, he’d stopped taking what I left him completely—nor would he appear when called—and I began to worry. That would have been about the time I started getting serious with Jenny—holding hands at the indoor skating rink, kissing for the first time in the balcony at The Muppet Movie—as well as my first growth spurt, all in the legs, which made me feel gangly and insecure but also made me taller than Jen, which I liked, and which she liked, too.

It was also around the time the murders started happening, and what become known as the Comet’s Tail Mangler—at first just in the local paper but soon the national ones as well and finally the NBC Nightly News—started making waves across the country. Nor was that the only national news story to touch me; for my parents’ missing flight was back in the spotlight also—primarily because the business tycoon who had resumed the search (after the Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration abandoned it) had now given up, too.

For Shad and my grandma, it was case closed—again. For me, it was the beginning of a season of denial that would last clear through September and into the school year; a season in which I became more convinced than ever that my parents were still alive. \