Emma had had the name Emma her entire life. She was used to sharing it with other girls.
She wasn’t used to sharing it with another Emma who also had an older brother named Rochester and a younger brother named Finn. Not when they also all had matching birthdays.
She tried to make herself feel better staring at all the details about Arizona Emma that were different: Look! Arizona Emma is only four foot five, not four foot seven like me! And she weighs five pounds less, too! When Emma clicked over to the other kids’ information, she saw that the kidnapped boys’ heights and weights were different from Chess’s and Finn’s, too. That made sense: Chess was taller than practically every other boy his age; Finn was one of the shortest kids in his class.
Emma zoomed in on the pictures of the two kidnapped brothers, which she hadn’t looked at closely before. The younger boy’s ears tilted slightly, making him look a little elfin, just like Finn. Other-Finn had the same mischievous gleam in his eye, too. Rocky Gustano held one eyebrow higher than the other, as if he hadn’t expected the picture to be taken just then—Chess always looked surprised in pictures, too.
Both boys—and Other-Emma, too—had skin a shade or two darker than any of the Greystone kids’. But that could just be from living in Arizona, where there was more sunshine.
Or it could just be the way the pictures showed up on the phone screen. If the Gustano and Greystone kids were standing side by side, maybe their skin tones would look identical. Maybe their hair and eye colors would, too.
None of those details are things I can count, Emma told herself. But with things that are numbers, like height and weight, I could throw those into the equation if I wanted to calculate the odds of those kids having so much in common with us, and . . .
It really bothered Emma that she couldn’t calculate the odds, because of not knowing all the possible names in the world.
Because without that, she kept thinking, This isn’t random. There are too many similarities. We are connected to those Arizona kids. Somehow.
That was what she wanted to tell Mom. Even if she had to confess that she’d used Mom’s phone without permission.
But when Emma reached the kitchen, she found Finn already sitting at the table, digging French toast slices out of the dish where Mom had been keeping them warm. And Chess arrived right on her heels.
“Emma, your hair,” Mom said. She pressed her hands against her own head and moved them outward, pantomiming an explosion.
That probably was what Emma’s hair looked like. She hadn’t actually checked the mirror.
“It’s the humidity, isn’t it?” Mom said sympathetically. “Chess, you go ahead and start eating. Emma and I will go back upstairs and work on her hair together.”
Perfect! Emma thought. She’d have Mom to herself.
But just then, Mom’s phone pinged. Mom yanked it out of her purse and gave a relieved sigh.
“You don’t have to go to Chicago after all?” Finn said hopefully. Syrup dripped from his forkful of French toast and rolled toward the dimple in his right cheek.
“No, sorry, I do,” Mom said. She quickly typed something into her phone. “It’s just, now I know who’s taking care of you three while I’m away. She said yes. The perfect person.”
“Who?” Chess said.
Emma saw Mom hesitate before she looked up from her phone. Mom glanced at the clock on the stove, then she put down the phone and pulled the ponytail rubber band out of her own hair. She scooped Emma’s hair back and wrapped the rubber band around it.
“Sorry, Emma, I think we’ve got to go with the quick fix today,” Mom said. She reached over and turned the water on in the sink, cupped her hand under the faucet, then slid that hand over Emma’s hair, smoothing down all the stray locks. “There. Now go eat.”
“Who’s staying with us?” Emma repeated Chess’s question as she sat down and began filling her plate alongside him.
“Do you remember Ms. Morales, who was PTO president at Lakeside the year before last?” Mom said.
“Why would we?” Chess asked.
“You’re making us stay with a stranger?” Finn wailed.
Mom looked back at her phone, but not before Emma caught a glimpse of Mom’s face.
Is Mom . . . panicking? Emma wondered.
Emma felt like she was trying to solve some huge math problem that didn’t involve numbers but people and events: The kidnapped kids in Arizona. Mom’s unexpected business trip. And now this, the unknown babysitter. And Mom’s panic.
None of it felt random.
Mom’s trip is connected to the Arizona kids somehow, Emma thought. And even though she doesn’t want to, she’s leaving us with some woman we don’t even know because, because . . .
Emma didn’t know the answer to that part.
What if this was like the kind of huge math problems that Emma hadn’t gotten around to studying yet?
The ones that didn’t actually have any solutions?
Nine
Chess
Chess should never have gone back to bed last night. He should have continued down the basement stairs and turned on the lights and said, Mom, I heard you on the phone. What did you mean when you said, “This is exactly what I was afraid of”? And “Not yet”? Do you think Emma and Finn and I are in danger of being kidnapped, too? What’s going on?
He’d almost done that. He’d even touched his toes to the next step down.
But then he’d heard Mom sniffle. And it was definitely an “I’m about to cry” sniffle. And that made Chess freeze.
What if this has something to do with Dad?
That was the only reason Mom ever cried. After that day when the police officers came to the door, Chess remembered lots and lots of nights when he woke up and heard Mom crying. As a four-year-old, he’d go curl up beside her and try to wipe away her tears. And then one night she’d said, “Chess, this helps me, but I’m not sure it’s good for you. Whenever you’re sad, please come and tell me. You can cry on my shoulder anytime you want. But you really shouldn’t have to comfort me all the time. You’re only four!”
After that, Chess had started pretending he didn’t hear her crying. He made himself stay in bed whenever he heard weeping. Not because he wanted to. But because he knew it made Mom sadder if he was sad, too.
All of that had happened eight years ago, but still, just that one sniffle last night had made Chess move his foot back from the stair below. It had made him decide, I’ll ask Mom about everything tomorrow. When she’s not crying. First thing in the morning, when I get up before Emma and Finn.
And then he’d accidentally slept later than Emma and Finn. And now Mom was leaving. And just as his job last night had been to keep from making Mom sadder, he knew that now she was counting on him to keep Emma and Finn from freaking out about having to stay with a stranger.
“Ms. Morales is the woman Finn always called Perfume Lady,” Mom said, sounding desperate. “Remember? Because he said she smelled good?”
“Oh, right,” Chess said, even though he didn’t remember.
Finn and Emma had puzzled looks on their faces, too.
“So she’ll make our house smell like perfume?” Finn asked doubtfully.
“No, the three of you are going to stay at her house,” Mom said. They had never done that before with a babysitter. “You know, she has a daughter, too, and it wouldn’t be fair to make them uproot their lives when they’re doing a favor for us.”
So there’s some strange kid we have to get used to, too? Chess wanted to wail. It’d be fine for Emma and Finn. Finn got along with everybody, and Emma didn’t care whether people liked her or not. But being around people he didn’t know always made Chess feel like he had to be on his best behavior.
It wasn’t like his worst behavior was ever that bad. But being on good behavior wasn’t relaxing.
“Ms. Morales will pick you up after school,” Mom said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“We get to wear the same
clothes and never brush our teeth the whole time you’re away?” Finn asked, a gleam in his eye. “Because we’re going to her house after that, not ours, and staying there until you get back?”
Finn’s actually going to be okay with this, Chess thought in amazement. He’s acting like it’ll be an adventure.
Of course, Finn hadn’t heard Mom in the basement last night saying, “This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“No, you don’t get to re-wear clothes and have dirty teeth,” Mom said briskly. “I’ll pack suitcases for each of you and give them to Susanna.” She glanced at the kitchen clock for probably the fifth time since Chess had stepped into the room.
“So what does it mean that Ms. Morales is picking us up after school?” Emma asked. Chess knew it was wrong, but he was glad that she sounded sulky. Maybe Emma and Chess together could get Mom to explain what was going on. They just needed to get Finn out of the kitchen so they could ask.
“It means you get to use the code word,” Mom said. “Remember the code word?”
“Succotash!” Finn shouted. “I get to tell Ms. Morales I like succotash!”
“No, silly,” Emma said. “Get it straight. She has to say succotash first. It wouldn’t be much of a code if you told her what it was.”
Mom had gone to some special parents’ meeting a year or two ago about keeping kids safe, and she’d come home determined that the kids all know a code word any adult could say to them to prove that they were trustworthy. Together, the three kids—mostly Emma and Finn—had decided that “succotash” was the best word to use.
“Because,” Emma had explained, “nobody who’s going to kidnap you would promise, ‘Hey, little kid, would you like some succotash?’ No kid’s going to get kidnapped because they loved corn and lima beans too much!”
The family had turned it into a big joke that night. Finn had decided that succotash was the funniest word in the universe. And Emma and Finn had started taking turns pretending to be kidnappers. They’d even written fake ransom notes asking for millions of dollars and then, just to be silly, millions of dollars’ worth of succotash.
“A kidnapper would have to be crazy to think we were rich enough to pay a ransom!” Emma had laughed.
It was true: The Greystones weren’t rich.
But last night in the basement, Mom said, “Not yet,” like she thought we were in danger of being kidnapped, Chess thought. More danger because of those other kids with our names being kidnapped . . .
His stomach roiled, and he put his forkful of French toast back on his plate.
Two years ago, even as Finn and Emma laughed and laughed and laughed, Mom had tried to explain that she wasn’t really worried about kidnappers.
“It’s just a precaution,” she said. “Because what if my car breaks down sometime when I’m supposed to pick you up, and somebody else has to do it for me? I just want you to know who’s trustworthy and who isn’t. That’s all.”
Because Mom is really all we have, Chess thought. Other kids have two parents, and sometimes even three or four. And they have grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, or even brothers or sisters who are already grown up.
Except for Mom, the only relatives the Greystone kids had were each other.
The only ones who were still alive, anyway.
Now Chess really wasn’t hungry. He pushed back from the table.
“Okay,” Mom began. “So I’ve told you about Ms. Morales, and your suitcases, and the code word, and—”
“Are we taking Rocket with us?” Finn asked.
The family cat had just come strolling into the kitchen. He flicked his tail twice, as if to say, What? Were you going to forget about me?
“Oh, um, Susanna is allergic to cats,” Mom said. She squinted her eyes and twisted her mouth, as if she was just now trying to figure out what to do about Rocket. “I guess I’ll leave him with lots of food, and I’ll tell Susanna to bring one of you over here every other day to clean his litter box.”
Emma scooped Rocket into her arms, even though that meant that his tail got dangerously close to the pool of syrup on her plate.
“What if Rocket’s lonely?” she moaned. “We should come every day, just to keep him company!”
“No,” Mom said sharply. “That’s asking too much of Susanna. She’s already doing us a big favor—we don’t want to inconvenience her any more than we have to.”
Emma had her face buried in Rocket’s gray fur, and Finn was watching syrup drip from his fork. So Chess was the only one who saw the way Mom’s face quivered.
Then she caught Chess watching her, and her expression softened.
“I just want you to be considerate,” she said. “I know you’ll pick up after yourselves, and offer to help anytime you can, and . . .”
“Sounds like this is going to in’venience us,” Finn said.
Mom turned her back on all three kids. Chess watched carefully to see if her shoulders started quaking. But she just stood still for a minute, and then she turned the water on in the sink.
“Oh—five minutes until the bus arrives,” she called out over the sound of the rushing water. “Let’s clean off the table and get a move on!”
Normally Mom would have helped. Normally she would have noticed that Chess had barely eaten two bites and that Finn had licked all the syrup off his second piece of French toast but not actually bitten into it. Normally she would have noticed that a few unruly locks of Emma’s hair were already slipping out of her ponytail rubber band and Emma had started absent-mindedly twirling one of them around her finger. In a few minutes, Emma’s hair would probably look as messy as Albert Einstein’s again—even as her brain was trying to solve quantum physics or the mysteries of time travel or some other mathematical or scientific conundrum.
Mom—look at us! Chess wanted to yell.
But he didn’t, and she didn’t turn around.
In no time at all, the three kids had cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, and hurried to the front door to grab their backpacks.
At least Mom followed them to the door. She lifted the backpack strap over Finn’s shoulder and then hugged each of them in turn.
“Have a good day at school,” she said, her arms around first Finn, then Emma. “Be good for your teachers and Ms. Morales.”
She could be any mother anywhere in the world, saying goodbye to her kids headed to school any day of the week.
But then she got to Chess. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, engulfing him and his overstuffed backpack. With her mouth near his right ear, she whispered, “And don’t forget anything.”
Chess pulled back.
“Wait—what?” he said confusedly. He peered into his mother’s face. “Did you just say—”
But Mom was already turning his shoulders, aiming him toward the front door. Finn had opened it and was already leaping off the front porch, skipping all the steps; Emma was holding the door open for Chess.
Mom gave Chess a gentle shove.
“Go on,” she said. “Don’t . . . don’t worry.”
“Mom—” Emma began.
But Mom shook her head and reached for the door. To shut it.
“The three of you will be fine,” Mom said. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Absolutely fine. You have each other. Oh, look! There’s the bus! Hurry!”
Chess looked down at his sister, and it felt like they were coming to understand the same thing at the same time: Mom doesn’t want us asking questions. Mom doesn’t want to explain anything.
Chess stumbled down the porch steps and blindly aimed his feet toward the driveway down to the bus. He kept his head down, as if he didn’t trust his legs to move without him watching. Or maybe it was that he didn’t trust his head not to swivel back toward Mom and the rest of his body to follow.
Once he reached the bus, he went to the very back seat—and only then did he turn around to look back toward the house and Mom.
Mom still stood in the doorway, her
face frozen in an attempt at a smile. And she kept waving and waving and waving, as though she believed she’d never see Finn and Emma and Chess again.
Ten
Finn
Finn sat in a sea of empty desks. His class had already said the Pledge of Allegiance and listened to the morning announcements. (The most important one: Lunch was going to be pizza.) And still his friends Tyrell and Lucy hadn’t shown up. Now he was supposed to be reading quietly while Mr. Habazz helped some other kids with math. Normally Finn loved any Commander Toad book (though he couldn’t read them quietly, because he always laughed). But today he kept looking up from Commander Toad and the Big Black Hole to stare at the empty desks.
It made him think about Mom leaving, too. Was she still at home, or had she driven to the airport already?
Why hadn’t Finn asked what time she was leaving?
What if Finn suddenly got a stomachache? How would he know whether he was supposed to go home or to that strange woman’s house?
Maybe Finn should get a stomachache, just so he could go home and spend every moment possible with Mom, until she had to leave.
If she hadn’t left already.
His stomach did feel kind of funny.
“Finn, don’t worry, I’m sure your friends will be here soon,” Mr. Habazz said from across the room. “I got a message from the office that there’s a late bus.”
Just then, the speaker at the front of the room crackled, and Finn heard the school secretary say, “Pardon the interruption—bus thirty-two has just arrived. Teachers, please admit the late students to class.”
Lucy, Tyrell, and three other kids came dashing into the classroom.
Tyrell raced to the front of the class and cried out, “Someone crashed into our bus!”
Lucy dropped her backpack and put her hands on her hips.
“Tyrell, you know it was just a bump, not a crash!” she said. “‘Crash’ sounds like somebody got hurt.”
“But the police had to come!” another of Finn’s friends, Spencer, added.
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