SPOILERS!!!
I was wrong, and I do not think that Billy is on the autistic spectrum. Billy is just precocious, and maybe even a high capacity children. He wants to be a scientist, so he has a project to study the hermit crab to help a real scientist and maybe get a grant.
Emily, who is the waitress at the café where he and his father go, is also studyhing to be a marine biologist, and she is the one who suggested he help her friend with the hermit crab project. She now jokes and says that he could investigate the disappearance of Olive Curran. So that is what Billy embarks on now. What he knows about her disappearance is that Olive went to the local club disco party with her family. Her family left and Olive stayed with some girls she had befriended. Then she never came home.
Billy records everything he knows on a word page. The theories is that Olive drowned when she decided to swim in the sea after drinking. That theory does not convince Billy because people who drown are washed up to the shore some days later. Besides, where are Olive's clothes? Another theory that a newspaper printed was that Olive might have committed suicide because her boyfriend had left her a few days ago. Her parents denied the whole thing, saying that Olive and her boyfriend were still together. Billy thinks that when he met Olive, she didn't look suicidal at all. The last theory is that she was abducted or murdered.
Billy has no leads, but then one of the boys who bully him at school calls him pedo, and he remembers that they call the same insult to a funny-looking guy with a limp. Billy thinks that this could be a suspect, especially as the night of the disappearance, he saw the man outside the disco in the dark. As he does not know his name, he asks his friend Jody, whose father Billy has seen talk to the man, and Jody says that his name is Mr Foster. The next day while his father is surfing, Billy follows the man to his house on his bike. There is a boat in his yard, so Billy leaves a camera attached to it. When he returns to retrieve the camera, he is annoyed because much of what has been recorded shows a plant that obstructed the view. Yet, there are some good scenes, and he sees footage on which there is a girl opening the door, and he is sure the girl is Olive.
I have the suspicion that things may become troublesome for Billy. He has spotted on the back of his father's truck, a small diamanté piece from the usual girl's hairclip. I wonder if this could man that his father is involved in the disappearance or may be accused. We know that Sam did not leave the party when Billy left as he was taken home by his friend Jody's family. So Sam stayed longer.
I am really enjoying this boy's curiosity and adventure.
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