Camden-Part 1-Helen's disappearance

Helen went missing.
There; that’s the truth of it. That’s where it all started for us. The thing that triggered everything else. The changes. In our eyes, just that single sentence tells the whole story. I need not wear out my pen another minute. That’s what Boxer would have said. But he’s dead now- which isn’t suprising but nevertheless painful- and the others don’t find it as hard as he did. Or maybe they- and I- do, and Boxer was just the truthful casualty, the one the world could see. Maybe the rest of us are still hiding beneath all the masks and the lies and fear and everything else that came with it. Heathcliff said (for we smuggled books into our lives; that was one privilege that Chey would never let them deny us) that O God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul. Well, I think he was right, even though the blurb on my copy of Wuthering Heights calls him a ‘demonic creature’ and demonic creatures usually are not supposed to be bothered by all that emotion. But ‘unutterable’- there- that is the word that described Helen, and what she meant after she was gone.
I think about what Helen would say to that, and she’d say:
‘Don’t be so dramatic, or Chey will get worried about you, and it’ll be for no good reason.’
It was our mantra. We mustn’t worry Chey. We mustn’t worry Chey. We must not worry Chey. Especially over things that weren’t real.
Helen even gave us a list.

Things that will worry Chey unnecessarily (for no good reason)

1) Us fighting (like when Boxer and Camden used to fight over whether Holden BamBam was real or not. Chey doesn’t need to worry about that).
2) Us answering back when we don’t have to argue (Catcher, I mean you).
3) Us coming back late and not telling him why or where we are (Catcher, I mean you again). Though Ree and Boxer- there was that time when you wandered off in Piccadilly Circus and we had to call the police and they were really mean to Chey and called him a junkie no-hoper which as we all know is stupid because Chey has never ever taken a drug in his life which is more than anyone can say for you, Catcher.
4) Us talking about our mothers all the time because it makes him think he doesn’t love us enough, and anyway it’s stupid because Catcher doesn’t even remember his because she left, and mine is dead, and Camden and Ree and Boxer’s got locked up ‘cause she went crazy.

The list provoked mutinous mutterings from Ree and Boxer, because they said if they annoyed each other, how could they not fight? But Catcher went a bit quiet at the mention of his mother and walked away, already reaching in his pocket for a joint. I expect that Helen went after him and took it away and stood on it, and then hugged him, but I don’t know for sure because I was too preoccupied with thinking about my own mother, whom I remembered more as a sort of shadow of the past than a real, solid human being. I’d been three when they took her away, but I still couldn’t remember. She used to think everything was following her, creeping up behind her like sinister stalkers in the night. They took her away because she was crazy. Even though Boxer and Ree were tiny babies and needed a mother. They almost died, Chey said, because they wouldn’t drink anything other than mothers’ milk, and that had vanished along with the mother.
Vanished.
Helen vanished without a trace. That’s what the newspapers all said, in one form or another. Caulfield Vanished Without A Trace From Her Home Last May. H.Caulfield Unlikely Ever To Be Found. Or even Yet Another Junkie Kid Gets What They Deserve. We tried to hide that one from Chey, because it was wrong. Helen wasn’t a junkie, and she wasn’t even a kid. And it wasn’t what she deserved. Chey, when he eventually discovered it, sighed and looked at it with eyes already wasted with sadness and said that they were having a dig at him, not Helen. Another rant about what single-parent families cost the state each year. That was before the ban was enforced, of course. Before the revolt. But, Chey said, all those headlines were leading up to it. It was just a matter of waiting. For us, it all started with Helen’s disappearance, although really it didn’t have anything to do with her. But, for us four remaining Caulfield junkie kids, it started with Helen. And so along with missing her and crying for her and all the changes after she went, we began blaming her as well.