“Do you mind?” Jonah asked. “I was talking first.”
Katherine took a gulp of milk.
“Okay, okay, go on,” she said. “But hurry up, because this is really funny!”
“All right,” Jonah said with injured dignity. “What I was saying was…I mean…” He swallowed hard.
“Would you just spit it out?” Katherine demanded.
Jonah glared at his sister. He could hear Chip’s question echoing in his head:Have you ever tried to get your questions answered?
“What was the name of the adoption agency where you, you know, got me?” he blurted.
For a moment, it felt like he’d thrown a grenade out into the center of the table. Even Katherine was speechless for once. Then Mom smiled.
“We’ve told you that before, but I guess you forgot,” she said. “It was called ‘Hope for Children.’ Awfully schmaltzy, I know, but it felt right to us then, because we had so much hope—and that was all we had. Until—”
“Okay,” Jonah said quickly, because he could tell she was about to launch into the miracle story (the call out of the blue…the week before Christmas…everything we ever wanted…). He didn’t have the patience for that right now, not when he had so much to think about. Hope for Children was a stupid name, but he was relieved, somehow, that it wasn’t the Happy Family Adoption Agency, the same one that Chip’s family had dealt with. This made the matching letters about being one of the missing seem more like a coincidence, more like an ordinary seventh-grade prank.
Dad was wiping his mouth with his napkin.
“Was there anything else you wanted to know, Jonah?” he asked in a voice that was trying way too hard to sound casual. It was almost as bad as the time Dad had said, on a fishing trip, “You know you can ask me anything you want about puberty.”
“Um…,” Jonah couldn’t decide.
“Can we talk about something that isn’t ancient history?” Katherine interrupted.
“Katherine, wait your turn,” Mom said. “Jonah?”
Across the table, Katherine crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Jonah looked down at his plate.
“Well, I kind of wondered, now that I’m older, if there’s any more information they could give us about, uh, my birth parents,” Jonah said. “I mean, not that it really matters. I’m just curious, like—did either of them have dimples? Like me?”
“Dimples!” Katherine snorted indignantly.
Mom shot her one of those looks that said, as clear as day,If I hear one more word out of you, young lady, before you have permission to speak, I will cover your mouth with duct tape for the rest of the night. Of course, Mom had never done anything like that, but her looks always made you believe that she might.
Dad very, very carefully laid his fork on his plate.
“I can certainly call the agency and see if there’s any more information available,” he said. “But I have to warn you, it’s not likely. They weren’t even willing to give us a medical history.”
“Not that we minded,” Mom added quickly. “We were just happy to get you!”
Now Mom and Dad were both beaming at him, stereo smiles. Jonah kicked Katherine under the table.
“Tell your stupid cheerleader story,” he muttered.
Later that night, while Jonah was sitting at his desk doing his social studies homework, Katherine shoved her way into his room.
“Don’t do this,” she said, standing dramatically in his doorway.
“What? Social studies?”
Katherine cast a glance over her shoulder. She stepped aside and eased the door shut behind her. Then—almost cautiously, for her—she sat down on the edge of his bed.
“No, you know,” she said. “That whole adopted-kid search-for-identity thing.”
Jonah pressed his pencil down too hard on thesapiens part ofhomo sapiens , and the lead snapped. He dropped the pencil and whirled around.
“What’s it to you?” he asked.
“Hey, I’m part of this family too,” Katherine said.
“No, duh.” He thought about snarling,Of course you are. You’re actually related by blood. You belong more than I do. But that wasn’t a very Jonah thing to say. It was like all those cruel things Chip had been saying about his dad all afternoon, that were just Chip being mad and surely couldn’t be true. He decided to stick with “No, duh,” as his best comeback.
Katherine rolled her eyes.
“Look,” she said. “It makes them mental, every time you bring up the adoption, or your birth parents, or anything like that. They start pussyfooting around and being so careful, like, ‘Now, Jonah…’” She’d dropped her voice an octave, in a pretty decent imitation of Dad. “’…I can certainly call the agency…. We’ll do anything we can…. We would never want your adoption to impede your self-actualization….’”
Whoa—where had Katherine learned a term likeself-actualization ?
“So what?” Jonah said. “And why’s it my fault? They’re the ones who always bring up the story of how they got me. ‘Blah, blah, blah, call out of the blue…blah, blah, blah, blinding rainstorm the night we picked you up…’”
Katherine giggled. Then she leaned forward, her eyes round and earnest.
“Yeah, but see, that’s thepast ,” she said. “That’s the beginning of the story of them having kids. It’s their storywith you. It’s like them telling about giving me Barbie stickers to get me potty-trained. Or telling about the time I threw up into Mom’s purse.”
Jonah snorted, remembering. That had been funny.
Katherine eyed him suspiciously.
“You haven’t told anybody at school those stories, have you?” she asked.
“No—why would I? Who cares?”
Katherine nodded approvingly.
“You better not,” she said. She glanced toward the door once more. “When you start talking about wanting to know more about your birth parents, that’s different. You know what they’re doing down there right now, don’t you? They’re reading those books again.” Jonah didn’t have to ask which ones she meant. “They’re trying to figure out what they’re supposed to say so you don’t start acting out and using drugs and flunking out as your cry for help.”
Jonah realized that Katherine had probably readRaising the Well-Adjusted Adopted Child andAdoption Without Secrets too.
“I’m not going to do any of that stuff,” Jonah said. “That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, so’s getting all worried about your birth parents. Because, Jonah”—Now she was leaning so far forward, she was only inches from falling off the bed—“your birth parents don’t matter. You’re Jonah. They could have dimples or they could have three eyes apiece and six fingers on every hand, and it doesn’t change a thing about you.”
Jonah kind of thought that might be impossible—twelve-fingered, three-eyed parents having a ten-fingered, two-eyed kid—but he wasn’t sure. Genetics had never been a big interest for him.
“That’s easy for you to say,” he muttered in a huff. “You can look in a mirror and know exactly where everything came from. Eyes—brown like Mom’s. Nose—ski slope, like Dad’s.”
“I do not have a ski-slope nose!” Katherine protested. “It’s…classical.”
She turned sideways, as if modeling.
“Classical ski slope maybe,” Jonah said.
“It is not! Er—never mind.” Katherine waved her hands in front of her face, like she was trying to erase the nose debate. This was a miracle—Katherine backing away from an argument? “What I meant to say is, that doesn’t matter either. If you’re going through some adolescent ‘Who am I?’ phase, it’s not because you’re adopted.Everyone goes through that. I don’t know who I am either.”
Jonah reached out and tapped her on the arm.
“Katherine Marie Skidmore, remember?” he said. “Daughter of Michael and Linda. Granddaughter of—”
“No, no, who am I really?” Katherine interrupted. “Like, next year when we can try out for thi
ngs, do I want to be a cheerleader or a basketball player? Do I want people to think, ‘Katherine Skidmore, airhead, but what a hottie,’ or, ‘Katherine Skidmore, what a jock!’?”
Jonah was torn. He wanted to tease,Regardless, it’ll be, ‘airhead, definitely not a hottie.’ But he also kind of wanted to offer some profound big-brotherly advice along the lines of,Katherine, you idiot, it’s what you are that matters, not what people think you are. He was saved from making a decision because someone knocked on his door just then. Both he and Katherine jumped guiltily.
“Is this a private party, or are adults allowed too?” Mom called from the hallway.
Katherine shot Jonah a glance that said,See, I told you they’re acting mental.
Jonah frowned back at her and called out, “Come in” to his mother.
Mom pushed open the door, but still stood there a little hesitantly.
“That Cincinnati chili took so long to make—chopping all those onions!—I totally forgot…you got some mail today, Jonah,” she said, holding out a white envelope.
Jonah felt a nervous twitch in his stomach.
Mom walked across the room and laid the envelope on his desk, beside his social studies book. Once again, there was no return address. It was just a plain ordinary unmarked letter addressed to Jonah.
“If that’s an invitation to a birthday party or some other event you want to go to, let me know so I can put it on the calendar,” Mom said, still in that unnatural, careful voice she’d used at dinner.
“Okay. I will,” Jonah said.
He made no move to open the letter. He didn’t even touch it. He bent his head over his social studies book like the most dedicated student in the world—Look, Mom! I’m not in any danger of flunking out!—but he could feel Mom and Katherine both staring at him. He sighed.
“I’ll look at it later, okay? I’ve really got to finish this social studies. We’ve got a test tomorrow, and I haven’t even done the whole study sheet yet,” Jonah hinted.
“Oh! All right. Come on, Katherine, we’re being kicked out,” Mom said. “Jonah, let me know if you want any help reviewing later.”
Jonah waited until they were both gone, and the door was firmly latched. He picked up the envelope and went over to sit on the floor with his back pressed against the door, so he’d have some warning if anyone tried to come in. Carefully, he eased his finger under the flap of the envelope and gently lifted it.
He could tell even before he pulled the letter out that most of it was blank. He fumbled unfolding it, one edge of the paper getting stuck against the other side. And then it was open. He flattened the paper against the floor, so he could see every word all at once.
There were seven this time:
BEWARE!THEY’RE COMING BACK TO GET YOU .
SEVEN
“You didn’t tell anyone?” Chip asked.
“I just told you, didn’t I?” Jonah said.
“No, I mean, like, a grown-up. Your parents.”
Jonah shrugged miserably. They were at the bus stop, but standing apart from the other kids, out of the glow of the streetlight. It was the next morning, and he’d just quietly filled Chip in on the contents of his latest letter.
“What am I supposed to say?” Jonah asked, twisting his face into an imitation of a terrified little kid and making his voice come out high and squeaky: “Oooh, Mommy, Daddy, that piece of paper scared me.” He dropped his voice back to its normal register. “Katherine thinks they’re freaking out anyhow, just ‘cause I asked a few questions last night.”
Chip glanced away, and Jonah followed his gaze. In the darkness, the other kids were mostly miscellaneous blobs, but Jonah could pick out Katherine’s bright orange jacket in the middle of a huge cluster of kids. It sounded like she was competing with her friends Emma and Rachel to see who could squeal the loudest.
“Maybe Katherine’s the one who sent that letter,” Chip said. “I didn’t get one. Maybe she’s just playing a trick on you—remember, she wanted to rewrite that letter on Saturday, to make it a better prank.”
Jonah thought about how serious Katherine had looked the night before, commanding, “Don’t do this,” how desperately she seemed to want him and his parents to just act normal.
“No,” he said curtly. “It’s not Katherine.”
“Well, then…what did the letter say again, exactly?” Chip asked.
“Beware! They’re coming back to get you,” Jonah recited tonelessly. It took no effort to remember; he’d stared at the words for so long the night before that it seemed like they were imprinted on his eyeballs.
“’Coming back to get you,’ huh? Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with your, uh, adoption,” Chip said. Jonah noticed Chip was still having trouble making himself say the word. “Maybe it’s a revenge thing. Have you made anybody mad lately?”
You, Jonah thought, but didn’t say. He couldn’t blame Chip any more than he blamed Katherine.
“I’m sure it’s just another prank,” Jonah said, but he wasn’t sure. If anything, he was almost sure that it wasn’t.
The school bus appeared out of the early-morning darkness just then, and he and Chip crammed themselves into the screaming, squealing line of kids jabbering about how Spencer Patton was going to sneak his iPod into math class today and how Kelly Jefferson had just broken up with Jordan Cowan and, “Did you hear—six kids got sick from eating the cafeteria pizza yesterday! Do you think they’ll finally fire the lunch ladies?” Jonah hoped that no one could tell that he felt like he was walking around in a bubble. Even as he climbed up the bus steps, walked down the crowded aisle, and collapsed into the first vacant seat, he felt like he was in a completely different dimension from kids who cared about iPods and math class and breakups and cafeteria pizza.
Two stupid letters—thirteen stupid words, total—and I’m freaking out? I’m as bad as Mom and Dad!
First period was study center, and he forced himself to look over his social studies notes. He studied so hard that, second period, the test was a breeze. He filled in the meaningless words—Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo sapiens, Neanderthal—with great relief. These, at least, were questions he could answer. He turned in his paper feeling confident that he’d gotten everything right, even the bonuses.
See, Katherine, I am not going to flunk out as a cry for help!he thought.That’s going to be my best test grade all year!
Some of the other kids evidently weren’t so happy.
“Come on, Mr. Vincent,” Spencer Patton said. “Even you’ve got to admit this stuff is stupid. Why do we have to study history anyway?”
“So you know where you come from,” Mr. Vincent said.
I wish, Jonah thought.
“And—Oh! I know!—it’ll help if anyone ever invents a time machine,” Jeremy Evers wisecracked. “This way, when you go back in time, you can recognize people, so you’ll know who you’ve got to speak Neanderthal to, and who just uses regular caveman talk.”
“Very funny, Jeremy,” Mr. Vincent said in a tone that didn’t sound amused. “Let’s stay within the realm of reality, shall we?”
The realm of reality—Jonah liked that term. He imagined telling Mr. Vincent about the letters, and having Mr. Vincent shake his head dismissively and say, “Come on, Jonah. Stay within the realm of reality.” Reality was supposed to be social studies tests and cafeteria pizza, not strange letters and worrying that someone was going to snatch him away, worrying that he’d made a big mistake not telling Mom and Dad about the letters and having them taken to the police to be fingerprinted….
What am I thinking? Mom and Dad would laugh their heads off, me acting like they should report some seventh-grade prank to the police!
Mr. Vincent called on Jonah to answer a question, and Jonah didn’t even know what he’d asked.
The rest of Jonah’s day went like that too. In science class he dropped a test tube full of a liquid that tested as strongly acidic. (It turned out that it was only lemon juice, but his lab partner still
got mad that he’d splashed it on her Abercrombie & Fitch top.) In gym class he got hit on the head with a volleyball. In band he miscounted the rests and came in at the wrong time, the only trumpet playing in a measure that was supposed to be all flutes. It was like he’d used up all his focus on the social studies test. He was glad when school was finally over, so he’d be able to go home and plop down in front of the TV, and nobody would notice that he wasn’t paying attention.
But as Jonah stepped down from the school bus that afternoon, the last one off, he heard Chip say in a tense voice, “Come with me.”
“Huh?” Jonah said, feeling dazed. He hadn’t even noticed that Chip was right in front of him. Had he accidentally agreed to help Chip unlock more safes, sort through more records? Had he even spoken to Chip since this morning at the bus stop?
“Just to my mailbox,” Chip said.
Jonah stopped in the street and squinted at him stupidly.
“You know how you can mail two letters from the same mailbox on the same day, and they might arrive wherever they’re going on different days?” Chip asked. “Even if where they’re going is just two different mailboxes on the same street?”
Comprehension flowed over Jonah.
“You’re scared you might get the letter today,” Jonah said. “The same letter I got yesterday.”
“Notscared ,” Chip corrected quickly. “I mean, if you’re busy, I can get the mail by myself. It’s just—you’re used to being adopted, and you laugh things off, but this is all new to me, you know?”
Oh, yeah,Jonah thought.This day’s been a bundle of laughs. But he silently turned and followed Chip toward the mailbox at the end of Chip’s driveway.
The Winstons’ mailbox was one of the fancier ones on the block. Instead of being on a wooden post, it was on a brick column; at the top, the bricks encircled the entire box in a graceful arc. Dimly, Jonah wondered how the builder had done that, how the flimsy metal mailbox wasn’t crushed by the heavy bricks and mortar.
Chip reached into the mailbox and pulled out a thick stack of letters and flyers.
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