Penpal

The novel flashes back to the narrator’s first day of kindergarten. He accidentally gets his arm cast wet while showering. Afterward, his arm has a rotting smell, and his cast starts to disintegrate. He increasingly worries that his ruined arm cast will discourage other kids from befriending him. He’s so nervous that he disrupts the activity of the group he’s placed into, earning his new classmates’ ire.

At lunch, a kid sits across from the narrator and compliments his lunchbox. The narrator initially thinks the kid is making fun of him but then realizes the other kid has the same lunchbox. They bond over their shared love of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The narrator invites his new friend to sign his cast. He writes his name: Josh.

Josh and the narrator quickly become best friends in and out of school. The two boys take on each other’s habits and nearly become nearly indistinguishable from one another. Only their hair differs: Josh has straight blonde hair, while the narrator has curly brown hair. The narrator finds it difficult to imagine life without Josh. When the narrator and his mother move after first grade, he worries that the distance will threaten his friendship with Josh. To his delight, it doesn’t—until after their search for Boxes, when Josh and the narrator begin to drift apart.

For the narrator’s 12th birthday, his mother plans a party, complete with games and an amateur magician. The narrator invites Josh, who declines because he isn’t in the mood to go. The narrator asks to cancel his party altogether and lashes out at his mother for planning childish activities. She reassures him, and Josh eventually says he’ll attend after all. Josh is quiet at the party, which bothers the narrator. He confronts Josh, telling him that it isn’t fair to begrudge him for what happened with Boxes. Josh explains that their strained friendship is strained because the narrator “left.” The narrator doesn’t have the opportunity to ask Josh what he means.

Among the narrator’s gifts is an unsigned, reused greeting card. The only thing written inside is, “I Love You,” which the sender has circled. The narrator initially thinks his mother wrote it, but she denies this, suggesting that two people love him now. She gifts him a new pair of walkie-talkies. This mortifies Josh, so he calls his father to pick him up. The narrator offers Josh the second walkie-talkie, but Josh refuses to take it. Before leaving, Josh decides what to give the narrator for his birthday but indicates it will take him a while to give it. As he exits the house, Josh tells the narrator that he has been sleepwalking. It’s the last time the narrator ever sees Josh.

Years later, the narrator begins trying to piece together his memories of the past, consulting his mother for the truth, which strains their relationship because of its impact on her emotional stability. Unsure if he can fix his relationship with his mother, the narrator shares the last story she told him.

After Josh’s disappearance, his family launches a public effort to find him. Most of the tips they receive are from prank callers, so they enlist a friend to take calls on their behalf. Veronica’s death plunges her mother into a heightened state of grief, and she takes leave from work. Josh and Veronica’s father takes on odds jobs closer to home so that he can look after his wife.

At one point, Josh’s father takes a job to level a deforested section of the woods to prepare it for development. He finds a depression in the earth that he can’t level, so he digs around the site with a shovel to inspect the problem more closely. The narrator notes that it’s the same hole he fell into years earlier, the night he and Josh went searching for Boxes. Josh’s father digs for half an hour, unearthing a large box covered with a brown blanket. Moments later, he calls the narrator’s mother to come. When she arrives at the dig site, she finds Josh’s mother there in a state of shock and disbelief.

The pit is Josh’s crypt: His corpse is inside the box. Based on Josh’s state of decay, the narrator’s mother estimates that little time has passed since his death, though she’s unsure about this. Soon, she realizes that a second corpse is on top of Josh’s. It belongs to a man whose dying act was to entangle himself with Josh in an embrace. She finds a photo of her son as a child pinned to Josh’s shirt.

The narrator’s mother never told Josh’s family anything about the narrator’s traumatic experiences, like the photos and the narrator’s abduction. She decides to continue withholding this information because Josh’s father urges her not to tell his wife the truth about Josh. Enraged, he tears the second corpse away from his son. He discovers a bottle of ether, likely used to incapacitate Josh before he was killed.

The narrator’s mother looks at the narrator’s pen pal for the first time and is shocked by how normal he seems. The smile of “bliss” and “love” on his face disturbs her. His neck is wounded (likely the injury that killed him). She deduces that Josh bit his kidnapper but lacked the strength to escape him. She searches the pen pal’s pockets and discovers a drawing of a man and a small boy with the narrator’s initials next to the boy. The narrator pretends not to know what it is.

Josh’s father observes that Josh’s hair was dyed dark brown and that he’s wearing clothes that are too small for him. Inside one of Josh’s pockets, Josh’s father finds a key in a folded map. The narrator realizes that the birthday gift Josh promised him was a completed version of the map of the woods. This makes him weep.

Josh’s father blames himself for what happened. A month earlier, a man contracted him to fill holes on his property for $100. Josh’s father accepted the job, thinking it would be easy extra money since he was already contracted to clear that lot for another project. He identifies the narrator’s pen pal as the man who gave him the $100. This explains how the box was buried with the pen pal inside. Josh’s father resolves to cremate the pen pal’s body and bury Josh somewhere else.

The narrator’s mother ends her story there, and the narrator realizes that she also withheld the truth from Josh’s parents when they told her that Josh was missing. Driving away from his mother’s house that night, the narrator wonders why the pen pal, who was originally interested in him, abducted Josh instead. Anguished, the narrator theorizes that the pen pal settled for Josh when he noticed their resemblance and decided he was too weak to take the narrator.

The narrator remembers Josh fondly, loving and missing him now that he’ll never see his best friend again. He worries about bumping into Josh’s parents, knowing the truth that they don’t know. He affirms his love for Veronica. In addition, he acknowledges his mother’s attempts to protect him as a sign of her strength. He wonders what would have happened had his Balloon Project experience gone any other way and expresses his guilt over knowing that Josh and Veronica might still be alive. He wishes that he had never become friends with Josh and thereby have spared his life. He knows that resolution or justice can never come for Josh now. He ends the novel by affirming their friendship.