Chapter Text
When Malcolm first found the note, he assumed it was a joke.
We need time. Don’t try to find us. Take care of each other. Love, Mom & Dad.
It was in Lois’s handwriting. Which meant it wasn’t a joke.
He read it three times, standing frozen in the middle of the living room, the paper trembling just enough to betray him.
Reese was already digging through drawers, pulling out loose change and crumpled bills. "There’s like, twenty bucks here. Maybe thirty if we count the coins."
Malcolm didn’t answer. He just kept staring at the note. The couch springs creaked as Dewey rolled over in his pajamas, dragging a blanket behind him like a cape. He was squeezing Cheez Whiz into his mouth with both hands, expression vacant, eyes fixed on Looney Tunes reruns. It was 10 a.m. On a Sunday.
“Technically,” Malcolm muttered, “this is child abandonment.”
Reese shrugged. "At least we don’t have to go to school."
–
At first, Malcolm didn’t care.
Not really.
He told himself it wasn’t that serious. Their parents were probably doing some kind of weird marriage reboot thing—like a second honeymoon, but with more passive-aggressive silence and no forwarding address. They’d be back. Probably. Eventually.
Right?
In the meantime, it was kind of amazing.
No yelling. No chores. No screaming matches over wet towels and science fair disasters and who left the screwdriver in the microwave. For the first time in his life, the house was quiet in a way that didn’t give him a headache.
They ate junk food. They played Grand Theft Auto until 3 a.m. They fell asleep on the couch in a heap of pillows and candy wrappers. Nobody made them brush their teeth or change their underwear or apologize for whatever it was this time.
Reese stopped going to school on day two. He didn’t even pretend. Malcolm still went for a few days—out of habit, more than anything—but stopped when he realized there was no one to make him. Dewey never even noticed the difference.
The laundry piled up in the hallway. Plates stacked like a geology exhibit in the sink. The fridge started to smell like something was definitely alive in there, and not anymore. But Malcolm kept telling himself it was fine.
They were fine.
He still had some money saved from that summer he spent nannying for the Rabinowitz twins. Plus whatever they’d found in their parents’ room—about eighty-seven dollars in total, some of it in quarters, and a very old condom they all silently ignored.
By the end of the week, the fridge was nearly empty. Dewey had eaten two jars of pickles and an entire box of baking soda because no one stopped him. Reese used the last of the milk for what he called “cereal stew”, which turned out to be Cocoa Puffs, cheese puffs, and instant mashed potatoes mixed in a pot.
The trash hadn’t been taken out in six days. There was a sock stuck to the ceiling fan.
Malcolm sat at the kitchen table one night, looking at the note again. He hadn’t thrown it away. He didn’t know why.
He could feel something starting to crack behind his ribs. Not panic. Not yet.
“This is temporary,” he said out loud, to no one.
Reese burped in response from the living room. Dewey was trying to teach a cat how to play Connect Four. He didn’t know whose cat it was.
And Malcolm suddenly wasn’t so sure anymore.