All That's Missing by Sarah Sullivan

again.
Taking the ramp to the boulevard,
Arlo thought. The driver made two turns and then stopped. Arlo crouched behind the box and waited. When the rear door opened, he peered through a space between the boxes.
    There was the sign for the Fairfield Inn. Perfect. He was right across the street from the post office. He waited till the driver wheeled a dolly down the ramp.
    Now was his chance. Arlo made a dash out of the truck and across the parking lot. The driver spotted him as he headed toward the boulevard.
    â€œHey! Where’d you come from? Come back here, kid.”
    Arlo didn’t stop. He kept running. The next stop was his house. All he needed was a couple of shirts and some underwear and — the most important thing — money for a bus ticket.
    He had lawn-mowing money stashed in a box in his sock drawer. He’d been saving it for the school trip to Washington in the spring. But school trips were ancient history now. After an hour in a room with Purvis O’Dell, all Arlo could think about was survival.

Arlo wasn’t crazy about going into an empty house before daylight. The house didn’t look so good these days. Paint (what little paint remained) was peeling off the shutters, and the screen door hung by a single hinge. People might think the place was deserted if they didn’t see any lights on. Still, it wasn’t like he could afford to sit around and wait for the sun to come up. So he climbed the stairs to his room and slid the drawer open.
    His money was supposed to be there. Second drawer. Left side. In the cigar box Mr. Fanucci had given him last winter. But when Arlo reached into the drawer and moved his hand side to side, he felt nothing. He jiggled the drawer and tried again.
    Side to side.
    Front to back.
    Still, nothing.
    He couldn’t believe it. After mowing lawns and raking leaves and shoveling snow and even helping Mrs. Beakerbinder clean out her garage — he’d worked his rear end off for that money. He yanked the drawer out of the chest and dumped it over his bed.
    two pencil stubs
    a rock
    three Band-Aids
    eight gym socks
    five pairs of underwear
    six rubber bands
    and part of a wooden knob that had fallen off one of the drawers
    Wait. There was something else.
    Two wrinkled bills. A ten and a five.
    Fifteen dollars. That’s all he had? Out of the hundred and fifty dollars Arlo had saved over the past two years, all that remained was a measly fifteen bucks. The rest was gone.
    Vamoosed. Vanished.
    The worst part was, Arlo knew who had taken his money. There was only one person who could have done it. Heck, nobody else ever came in their house. It was just the two of them. Poppo and Arlo. OK, maybe Sam came over from time to time. But mostly they went to Sam’s house, because Aunt Betty liked to know where Sam was all the time. And even if someone had come in their house, why would they rifle through Arlo’s underwear drawer? Unless it was some pervert. And Arlo wasn’t going to think about that.
    No. It had to be Poppo.
    Arlo knew Poppo didn’t mean to steal. He didn’t even realize he was doing it. It was part of the wonkiness of his brain, being confused and time traveling all the time. Like the way he forgot to pay for food at Fanucci’s sometimes. Poppo would wander down the aisles all absentminded, and there would be a package of crackers and they would look pretty good to him, so he’d pluck the box off the shelf and open it up and start eating. And pretty soon after that, he’d spot a bag of pepperoni slices and he’d figure those would taste good with the crackers, so he’d take that bag and pop it open and start eating the pepperoni, too. And before you knew it, he’d be at the front door, and out he’d go, never even remembering he was supposed to pay.
    Mr. Fanucci was nice. Sometimes he let Poppo go, and sometimes he called Arlo and asked him to bring money to the store.
    â€œYour grandpa’s