Mr. Habazz sighed.
“Okay, take five minutes,” he said. “Tell the story. Then we’ll get back to work, and you can save the rest of the conversation for recess, okay?”
“This green car came out of nowhere and hit us!” Tyrell said. “It was like the driver didn’t even see us and, you know, that bus is as big as a house! And—bright yellow!”
“Who has a question for the bus thirty-two kids?” Mr. Habazz asked the rest of the class.
Mr. Habazz kept alternating between having the kids from the bus talk and letting the other kids ask questions. It made Finn a little sad that every answer made the crash sound less and less interesting. Even Tyrell had to admit, “No, I don’t think there was a dent. But they wouldn’t let us get off the bus to look. And we had to sit and wait forever.”
At least five minutes passed without Finn thinking about his mom being away.
Finally, Mr. Habazz said, “Okay, bus thirty-two kids, time to sit down. Back to our normally scheduled programming. Silent reading or page ninety in the math book.”
His heart wasn’t quite in it, but Finn whispered to Tyrell, “At least you got to have an adventure this morning. I wish my bus had been in a crash. I mean, as long as nobody got hurt.”
“Finn, we were saving the big news for you!” Tyrell said as he slid into his seat. “Lucy said maybe we shouldn’t tell, but . . .”
“But what?” Finn asked.
“Tyrell, you know Finn’s mother was not robbing that bank!” Lucy said, dropping a book onto her desk.
“Robbing . . . what?” Finn asked. “My mom? No way!”
“When that car hit us, we were right beside the bank,” Tyrell said, talking fast the way he always did when he got excited. Which was pretty much . . . always. “You know, the one with the red sign? Anyhow, your mom came running out of the bank carrying a big bag, big enough that it was like she might have told the bank lady inside, ‘Give me all your cash.’ And then she got in her car and pulled out of the parking lot, and Finn, she even squealed her tires! Like she was making a quick getaway!”
Finn’s mother did not ever squeal her tires. Much to his disappointment.
“You must have just seen someone who looked like my mom,” Finn said.
“Nuh-uh, it was her,” Tyrell said. “And that was your car, because it had the scratches on the side where you and Emma crashed your bikes into it. . . .”
Tyrell saw Finn’s mom all the time. He knew Finn’s mom’s car, too. In fact, some of the scratches on it were probably from Tyrell’s bike, not just Emma’s and Finn’s. Tyrell hung out at Finn’s house so much that a neighbor had asked once if they were twins—even though Tyrell was black and Finn was white.
So Tyrell should have known that Finn’s mom would never rob a bank.
“Nobody from the bank chased out after Finn’s mom,” Lucy said. “Someone would chase a bank robber. Probably she was just in a hurry.”
“She—” Finn started to tell about how Mom was going on a business trip to Chicago. How she had been in a big hurry this morning.
But suddenly Tyrell grabbed Lucy’s arm.
“Lucy!” he cried. “What if the green car was chasing Finn’s mom? And that’s why he didn’t see the bus? Because she turned in front of us, and then . . . boom! We were in the way! Our bus stopped the green car from catching up with Finn’s mom! What’s it called when someone helps someone else with a crime? We’re—”
“Accomplices?” Lucy asked.
“Oh, my beloved chatty kids! Finn, Tyrell, and Lucy!” Mr. Habazz called from across the room. “Silent reading, remember? Do you need to move to different seats so you’re not so tempted to talk?”
“No, Mr. Habazz,” the three of them chorused together.
Finn, Tyrell, and Lucy all bent their heads over their desks. Finn tried very hard to look like he was reading about Commander Toad standing at the edge of the black hole. But the words swam before his eyes.
“Don’t listen to Tyrell’s crazy stories,” Lucy whispered. She had special skills when it came to not getting caught talking: She kept her eyes down and made it look like she was just moving her lips as she read. “I know your mom wouldn’t rob a bank. Tyrell knows that, too. He’s just having fun.”
It’s not fun today, Finn wanted to say. Not when my mom’s going away. And when kids with the same name as Chess and Emma and me got kidnapped. And . . .
He didn’t let himself think about anything else that might not be fun. But he still couldn’t make himself read.
He just sat there staring at pictures of black holes.
Eleven
Emma
When Ms. Morales came to pick up the three Greystone kids at the end of the school day, she was wearing a lot of makeup and hairspray. She also had on high heels, dramatically flared black pants, and a frilly blouse with swoopy sleeves. Emma thought that if it were wintertime, Ms. Morales could lie down on the ground in that outfit and make snow angels without even moving her arms.
“—and your mother tells me that your favorite food is succotash?” Ms. Morales was saying.
“Yes, ma’am,” Chess said. Then his face turned bright red. Emma wasn’t sure if it was because he’d had to claim in public that he liked lima beans, or if he was afraid someone else in the school office would overhear their secret code word.
Or maybe it was just because he was twelve. Mom had explained once that sometimes when kids got into sixth or seventh grade, they started getting embarrassed easily. She’d explained that to Emma and Finn when Chess was away at a friend’s house. Emma and Finn had thought this news was hilarious, and they’d both told Mom, “That is never going to happen to us.”
Emma wasn’t embarrassed, but it felt really weird to walk out the school door with Ms. Morales. Ms. Morales’s clothes might as well have been shouting, “Hey! Everybody! Look at me!” Emma was more used to being around people whose clothes talked in a normal voice and didn’t saying anything but, “Enh, look at me, don’t look at me, who cares?”
Though Emma herself did have a Math Olympiad T-shirt she really loved. Was it also like shouting to walk around with the words “Math kids get pi” on your clothes?
“My SUV’s over there,” Ms. Morales said, pointing out into the parking lot. “There’s been a tiny change of plans, because your mom ran out of time to drop your suitcases off at my house this morning. So we’re going to swing by your house to get them. You can check on your cat while we’re there and attend to the kitty litter, so we won’t have to go back until the day after tomorrow.”
“But Mom will be back by then, right?” Finn asked, stepping off the curb.
“Sorry, honey,” Ms. Morales said, ruffling Finn’s hair. “She still doesn’t know when she gets to come home.”
Finn stuck his lip out like he was sulking, which wasn’t like him. But Emma liked Ms. Morales a little better, that she’d known to mess up Finn’s hair.
“I can do the kitty litter,” Chess said.
“That’s nice of you to offer, but your mom said it was Emma’s turn,” Ms. Morales said.
Emma felt a little like her own mother had tattled on her.
But I didn’t say I wouldn’t do the kitty litter! she wanted to protest. I was just . . . thinking about more interesting things!
“Susanna!” one of the teachers on bus duty called over to Ms. Morales. “Great to see you back! We miss you at PTO!”
“Oh, believe me, I miss Natalie’s elementary school days, too!” Ms. Morales called back. “Life was so much simpler then. . . .”
What did that mean?
Other teachers and parents kept calling out to Ms. Morales, but she kept shepherding the kids toward the parking lot, even as she stayed a few steps back from them. It almost felt to Emma as though Ms. Morales didn’t want everybody to know the Greystone kids were with her.
Because we’re not wearing makeup and hairspray and swoopy clothes? Emma wondered. Then she giggled, imagining what the three of them wou
ld look like with makeup and hairspray and swoopy clothes.
“It’s the white SUV at the far end of the lot,” Ms. Morales said under her breath, like a spy. Or a gangster. “Go around and get in on the passenger side. Not the side that faces the school.”
Okay, that was weird, Emma thought.
She looked toward Finn and Chess. Her eyes met Chess’s; Chess instantly started patting Finn’s back.
“Hey, Finn,” Emma said. “Look how big that SUV is. And it’s white. What do you bet the Morales family named it Moby Dick, like the whale? Moby for short? Won’t it be fun to drive around in Moby?”
Finn turned back toward Ms. Morales.
“Is your car named Moby Dick?” he asked.
“Er—no,” Ms. Morales said. She was looking around and barely even glanced at Finn. “I guess I never thought of naming it.”
They reached the SUV then, and Emma huddled close to Finn as they circled around it.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “You still have Chess and me with you. It’s not like you’ll be totally stuck with people who don’t even name their cars.”
Emma started to reach up for the handle of the front passenger door, but Chess shook his head.
“Someone’s already sitting there,” he whispered. “The daughter—Natalie?”
He opened the side door, and first Finn, then Emma, then Chess climbed in. As Emma settled into the middle seat, she peeked toward the front. All she could see of the girl sitting there was a waterfall of brown hair and the edge of a cell phone the girl was hunched over.
The girl didn’t turn around or say hello.
Ms. Morales climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Everybody, this is Natalie,” Ms. Morales said. “Natalie, this is Chess, Emma, and Finn.”
“Hi!” Finn shouted. “Nice to meet you!”
“Yeah,” Emma said.
“Er, um,” Chess said. His face turned red again.
Natalie might have made the kind of grunting noise prehistoric cave people made to one another before anyone invented language. But it was kind of hard to tell because Finn had been so loud.
Natalie’s posture didn’t change in the least. She didn’t turn her head. Her fingers kept flying over the surface of the cell phone.
Ms. Morales sighed as she put her seat belt on.
“Natalie, wasn’t it nice to see the elementary school again?” Ms. Morales said in one of those fake-cheerful voices grown-ups used all the time. “Where you have so many happy memories?”
Natalie might have grunted again, and this time the sound could have gotten lost in the noise of the engine starting up.
Something dinged.
“Oh, Natalie, could you check that text message?” Ms. Morales said as she turned the steering wheel far to the right, to back out of the parking space.
Emma found herself deeply curious about what Natalie would do next. Would she:
a)Grunt again, and maybe even make it audible this time?
b)Keep typing on her own cell phone and totally ignore her mom?
c)Actually reach into her mother’s bright red purse and pull out Ms. Morales’s phone and read the text message aloud? In a normal voice even?
Emma would have said there was no chance the answer was c. If she’d had a million dollars to bet on the odds of each answer, she would have put it all on a or b.
But after Natalie let out a loud sigh of her own—the kind of sigh that said someone was in the greatest agony ever—she reached into the red purse on the floor between her and her mother. She slid her mother’s cell phone through her curtain-like waterfall of hair, studied it silently, and then announced in a bored voice, “It’s from those kids’ mom.”
Then she dropped the phone back into her mother’s purse.
Emma was so busy deciding whether to count Natalie’s bored tone as normal that she let it fall to Finn to cry, “What did Mom say? Is she going to call us? Is she coming home tonight?”
Ms. Morales switched the SUV from Reverse to Park and scooped up the phone. She glanced at the screen, then turned to face Finn and Emma and Chess.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Your mom was texting to say that her meetings are going really, really late, and she’s not even going to be able to call you this afternoon or evening. What would you like me to say back to her?”
Emma took a deep breath and grabbed Finn’s hand. She squeezed it hard.
Don’t let Finn cry, she thought. Don’t let Finn cry. Not in front of this awful girl Natalie.
Was it possible that if Emma hadn’t had Finn to think about, she might have needed to tell herself, Don’t let me cry. Don’t let me cry. Not in front of Natalie?
“Can we just type the answer ourselves?” Chess asked. Probably Ms. Morales and Natalie wouldn’t be able to tell that his voice wobbled a little. Probably only Emma noticed, because she knew him so well.
Ms. Morales handed the phone back, and Emma peeked over Chess’s shoulder.
Chess here, he wrote. We’re fine. We all had a good day at school and are with Ms. Morales now. Can you talk to us tomorrow morning? Do you know when you’re coming home?
“Tell her we love her!” Finn yelled, and Chess added that.
Emma stared at the phone screen. Three little bouncing dots appeared, which meant Mom was writing back.
Emma waited. In the driver’s seat, Ms. Morales waited, too.
Natalie kept typing away on her own phone, as if nothing else mattered.
I hate not getting to talk directly! popped up on the screen. Susanna, please pass this along to the kids: I promise, I will make it all up to you when I get home. Just think about all the fun we’ll have then! I am trying to finish up as fast as I can, so I can come home as soon as possible. So I need to stop texting and get back to work. I love you all so, so much!
Mom must have thought Chess gave the phone back to Ms. Morales right away, since she was writing to Susanna, not him. That was weird. Mom hadn’t even answered Chess’s questions.
This was not like Mom at all.
Chess started to hand the phone over to Ms. Morales, but Emma said, “Wait a minute.” She took the phone from Chess’s hand and tilted it to make it look like she was adding a message of her own. But really she was scrolling back through the text conversation, to see what Mom had told Ms. Morales earlier in the day.
Maybe Mom had actually told Ms. Morales how long she was going to be gone, and it was just such a horrifyingly long time that no one wanted to break the news to the kids.
Well, Emma would rather know.
But Emma reached the top of the text conversation between Mom and Ms. Morales, and the only texts from Mom were the ones she’d just sent this afternoon, about how she didn’t have time to call.
What did that mean?
Maybe Ms. Morales is just one of those people who deletes text messages right after she reads them, Emma told herself. Or maybe she has a work phone and a personal cell phone, and all the other messages were on that other phone.
Or maybe there was something really weird going on.
We aren’t being kidnapped! Emma told herself. Not like the kids in Arizona! Ms. Morales knew the code word! Mom arranged for her to pick us up! She told us so!
But none of those thoughts were comforting.
After Emma gave the phone back and Ms. Morales turned back around to drive, Emma slipped her other hand into Chess’s. Now she was clinging to Finn on her left and Chess on her right.
Whatever was going to happen, at least they could deal with it together.
Twelve
Chess
Ms. Morales’s daughter, Natalie, was a Lip Gloss Girl.
Chess hadn’t recognized her until he heard her voice. He still hadn’t seen her face, and he hadn’t figured out until she spoke that she didn’t have the same last name as her mom, and her real name was Natalie Mayhew.
Natalie Mayhew and the other Lip Gloss Girls had kind of run the whole school last year, before they mo
ved on to middle school.
There’d been a moment last spring when Chess was out at recess, pretending to be part of a baseball game—but not pretending very hard, because nobody was actually going to hit the ball that far into the outfield. And Natalie and three other Lip Gloss Girls had walked over to him, and one of them had said, “You know, you’re kind of cute.”
And then Natalie had added in a scornful voice, “For a fifth grader, anyway.”
What was Chess supposed to say to that?
Chess didn’t say anything, and the four girls had walked away, all of them with hair rippling down their backs like they were princesses in some Disney movie.
For weeks after that, Chess had tried to figure out what he should have said. Would “Thanks!” have sounded conceited? Would “You’re really pretty, too” have sounded like he was a jerk? If he’d tried to say anything, could he have gotten the words out without snorting or belching or stammering or doing something else that made him seem like a total dork?
It was probably a good thing that he’d just stayed silent.
But Chess had wondered if that moment was something he could have talked about with his dad, if his dad had still been alive. Dad probably would have been able to give him all sorts of advice about how to talk to girls.
Of course, Chess could have just asked his mom. But . . . it wasn’t the same.
Now Chess was sitting in the SUV with Natalie Mayhew, and his little sister was holding his hand. And, over on the other side of Emma, Finn was holding her hand, so the three of them probably looked like really, really little kids going off to preschool or something like that.
Chess felt his face go hot again. He was not going to let go of Emma’s hand just because Natalie Mayhew was sitting in the front seat and could turn around at any minute and see him.
She probably wasn’t going to turn around, anyhow.
She probably didn’t even remember talking to him last spring.
She was a middle school girl now, and she’d probably forgotten about everything that happened in elementary school.
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