The flight attendant noticed my soda was almost gone and brought me another, along with a third flavorless cookie. This was my first trip on an airplane, and I tried to imagine how different the second one would be, when they’d be deporting me back to Canada and jail time after I was exposed.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
Lex leaned over the armrest and pressed a kiss to my temple. She smelled of fancy shampoo and lavender laundry detergent, and all I could think of was how desperate and stupid she must be to swallow whole the ridiculous lies I’d told her. As she looked at me, her eyes started to shine. Ever since I’d met her, she’d been wide-eyed or trembling or crying, sometimes all three together. I should have felt sorry for her, or guilty for what I was doing, but I wasn’t capable of it.
“We’re together again, and that’s all that matters,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”
• • •
I walked up the jet bridge like a man must walk up to a scaffold. Dragging my feet, eyes on the ground, slipping once again into the traumatized child routine I’d used to fool people so many times in the past. I pulled my baseball cap down low over my eyes like I always did, and I’d shaved carefully that morning, even though what little blond stubble I had was barely visible. Usually these two things were effective at hiding my true age from disinterested cops, but I couldn’t hope this would slow down the Tate family for long. Maybe, if I was lucky, the act would last long enough for me to get away from them and disappear, something I’d been trying unsuccessfully to do ever since this thing started.
Patrick put an arm around my shoulder as we walked, both to reassure me and to move me along. He didn’t seem stupid. Maybe, despite all I knew about deception, I had underestimated people’s ability to fool themselves when it suited them.
The blast of cold air from the AC as we stepped from the gangway into the airport was shocking. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sky was a bright expanse of uninterrupted blue, and the sun made the tarmac shimmer like water. In Vancouver the gutters were still full of slushy brown snow. I had emerged from that plane into a different world.
• • •
Want to know how it happened?
I came up with the plan the night Martin caught me at the bus station. There was no way I was going to let myself be sectioned, but I’d blown most of my money on a bus ticket I’d never get to use and was being watched like a hawk by the staff at Short Term 8, who had also changed the code on the security system. I needed a scam that would occupy the cops for a while and give me the time I needed to figure a way out of there so I could run my traumatized-teen-found-by-a-tourist scheme in another city.
Things were never supposed to go this far.
Martin returned me to my bed at about one in the morning that night. I lay there thinking, figuring out my next move. Every half hour, Alicia cracked open the door to my room to make sure I was still there, and I feigned sleep. Five minutes after her 4:00 a.m. check, when I was sure she’d be back in the office, I slipped out of bed and retrieved my remaining cash from the hidden pocket in my backpack. I had one ten, one five, and a bit of change. Not much, but it should be enough.
I crept out of my room and into the room next door. It was a double occupied by two boys: Marcos, a twelve-year-old who was bigger than most linebackers and talked almost as little as I did, and Aaron, a scrawny kid who was prone to outbursts and mild kleptomania. I shook Aaron’s shoulder to wake him. He blinked up at me in confusion.
“Want ten dollars?” I said.
“What do you want?” he answered.
“I want you to scream.”
He eyed me warily. “Show me the money.”
I pulled the ten out of my pocket and let him see it.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
“None of your business.”
He sat up. “Fifteen.”
I clenched my jaw. That would leave me with next to nothing, but I didn’t have time to waste negotiating with this little asshole.
I handed over the fifteen dollars and told Aaron what I wanted him to do, and then I returned to my room. A couple of minutes later, Aaron started to scream. Tucker muttered a curse but didn’t open his eyes, and Jason just rolled over and covered his head with a pillow. When you grow up in care, you learn to sleep through a lot of shit. Seconds later, footsteps came pounding down the hallway, Martin’s heavy ones and Alicia’s lighter ones. When something set Aaron off, he would not only scream at the top of his lungs but punch and kick. It took two people, one holding on to each arm, to restrain him until he had calmed down. And during the night shift there were only two people on duty.
As soon as I heard Martin and Alicia enter Aaron’s room, I got out of bed again. I only had as much time as Aaron’s lungs would hold out, so I moved quickly. I went straight for the office but found the door closed. I was hoping Alicia would leave it open, but no such luck. The door locked automatically whenever it was closed, so I needed to find a way in. I inspected the doorknob. It was just a standard lock, which seemed generous and not a little naive given the type of kids who occupied Short Term 8. I could crack it easy.
I crossed the hallway to the recreation room and rummaged through a box of art supplies. A handful of paper clips and safety pins floated around at the bottom. I grabbed a long silver paper clip and straightened it as I returned to the locked office. Aaron was still going strong.
It took me a minute or two of fiddling and changing the bend in the paper clip, but eventually I got the office door open. I slipped behind the ancient desktop and jiggled the mouse to wake it up. Alicia had a game of solitaire going; she must have been really bored. I minimized the window and opened a web browser.
After a few minutes of searching, I found Daniel Arthur Tate on the website for the U.S.’s Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I felt pretty clever, coming up with the idea to pose as a missing American child. They wouldn’t section a poor abducted kid, and the amount of red tape that would need to be untangled in an international kidnapping should give me enough time to get my hands on some cash and get out of Vancouver. Daniel seemed like a perfect cover. He looked vaguely like me and would be about the age I’d been posing as, which was several years younger than my actual age. He’d been missing for long enough that the old pictures of him wouldn’t immediately give me away as a fake.
Because I was on borrowed time, I printed his missing poster and the first article I found about his disappearance to read later. Normally, I planned my scams better than this, but I didn’t know how long Aaron could occupy Martin and Alicia. I folded up the printed papers and stuck them in the waistband of my pajamas, cleared the browser history, pulled Solitaire back up, and put the computer to sleep. Then I closed the office door and crept back to my room. Once I was safely back in bed, I banged on the wall with my fist. It was the signal I’d prearranged with Aaron. Over the next few minutes he pretended to calm down, and everything inside Short Term 8 returned to normal.
I read the missing poster and printed article in the dim glow of the blue safety light outside my window, memorizing the details so that I’d have some basic information to back up my claim. If there were any questions I couldn’t answer, I would just claim trauma related amnesia. I stared at Daniel Tate’s face, imagining who he was, imagining myself becoming him. I constructed a story about where I’d been for those missing six years, and I felt Daniel start to take shape inside of me.
It had seemed like a good plan. There was no way for me to know what I was getting myself into.
• • •
Things weren’t supposed to get this far. I kept saying that to myself, like it would make some kind of difference, as I walked with Patrick and Lex toward baggage claim. The racing of my heart had become physically painful. Black fuzz was beginning to encroach on the edges of my vision. We’d see them at any moment.
We got on the escalators and began to descend toward the baggage carousels, and sudde
nly we were engulfed in pops of light. They came from the dozen photographers waiting below. I stared at them dumbly, my comprehension lagging a moment behind events.
Were we standing near someone famous?
“Oh my God,” Lex said. She pulled me behind her, shielding me with her body.
“Sons of bitches!” Patrick said. “How did they know we were here?”
Wait.
“Patrick, don’t—” Lex said, grabbing for him, but he was already storming down the escalator, taking the steps two at a time.
The flashes continued to go off, and now people were calling Danny’s name. Fuck. They were here for me. The press knew—and cared—that Daniel Tate had been found. I was furious at myself for not considering this possibility. I had always been so unimportant that it had never occurred to me that Daniel Tate wouldn’t be, but the Tates were rich, and people paid attention to what happened to rich people.
This was incredibly bad.
Patrick dove into the clump of paparazzi, who split and re-formed around him like a school of fish around a shark. He was red faced and spitting legalese, and he shoved the man closest to him. Hard. I only noticed the security guards who had been struggling with the photographers when one of them grabbed Patrick by the arm to restrain him.
“Patrick!” Lex cried.
A pair of cops rushed to our sides, and my panic doubled. Patrick had told me I wouldn’t have to talk to the cops right away, that he’d take care of things. I’d been counting on that time to get away before the authorities here in the States busted me.
“This way, ma’am,” one of them said.
And then suddenly we were moving, pushed along by the tide of people. Lex called for Patrick again, and he shoved his way through the crowd to her side, braiding his fingers into hers. The cops took us to a door that required a security card to enter. One opened the door and went in, while the second stayed outside to close it after us. As quickly as the circus had started, we found ourselves alone in a quiet hallway.
Lex’s hands were on me, checking to see that I was still in one piece.
“Are you okay?” she said. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I had no idea . . .”
I was shaking. What a terrible, catastrophic mistake I’d made coming here.
“Don’t worry,” Lex said to me. “We’ll be home soon. You’ll be safe there.”
I don’t know what made her think that. Danny hadn’t been safe there.
“If you’ll just follow me,” the remaining cops said. “Your family is waiting down here, and we’ve arranged for you to exit via a side door.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Patrick said.
I’d barely had time to catch my breath after realizing the cops were just an escort and not here to question me before we were standing in front of the door that separated me from the rest of the Tates. I caught a glimpse of them through the small panel of glass above the knob and had only a fraction of a second to size them up. A fading beauty queen, a sharp slip of a boy, and a pigtailed girl. Then the cop was opening the door.
They jumped to their feet when the door opened. I could see how nervous they were. At least I wasn’t the only one. For a moment everyone was silent and still, just staring. I kept my head down, hiding my face beneath the brim of my hat. I waited for someone to see through me, to start shouting.
Mia was the first to speak.
“Danny!” She ran to me, limping from the cumbersome brace on one of her legs. She flung her little arms around my waist, and I jumped. Lex gently pried her off me.
“Easy, honey,” she said. “Let’s give Danny a little space, okay?”
She nodded. Unlike anyone else, her face was shining with pure excitement. It was weird. She hadn’t even known Daniel, could never truly have missed him.
I looked at Nicholas next, eyeing him from underneath the brim of my cap. He was looking me up and down and not bothering to hide it. Nicholas was my first real test.
“Look who it is, Nicholas,” Patrick said.
A creeping, stuttering smile started across the boy’s lips.
“Danny?” he said. He wanted to believe it.
I nodded. “Hi.” My instinct was to call him “Nicky,” and usually my best lies came from trusting my instincts. But I’d already gotten things wrong when I’d called Lex by her full name, which I soon noticed Patrick never did. Better to err on the side of caution and not arouse any more suspicions, however small.
Nicholas shook his head, like he was responding to some internal voice, and then stepped forward to embrace me. His hug was oddly sharp, just like him, all angles and bones.
Two down.
I risked a brief glance at Jessica. This is where the wheels would come off this thing. No mother—not even the woman who’d given birth to me—could look into the eyes of a stranger and see her own son—I was sure of it. Jessica was staring at me, her lips pinched into two thin lines with uneven lipstick drawn over them. I waited for her to open them and scream.
“Mom.” Patrick reached out to her. There was a gray tinge to her skin underneath her blush. “It’s okay. It’s Danny.”
She turned her shoulders ever so slightly toward the door, like she was on the brink of running. The air-conditioning was raising gooseflesh on my arms as I waited to see what she would do. She kept her eyes on me, and I remembered how someone from my dead-and-buried life once taught me you’re supposed to maintain eye contact with a mountain lion to stop it from attacking you.
“Mom,” Patrick said more firmly. “Come hug Danny.”
Jessica took a hesitant step toward me, and I forced myself not to back away. Two fat tears built in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she stared at me silently.
“My son,” she finally said. She reached out to hug me. Her grasp on me was weak, but she held me close enough that I could smell the cigarette smoke beneath her perfume.
I was stunned. Could she really believe I was Daniel? Or was she just bowing to the excitement of the moment and the pressure from Patrick?
“Let’s go home,” Lex said.
• • •
We went out an employee entrance and climbed into a hired car for the trip to the Tate house. It was almost an hour’s drive up the coast from LAX to Hidden Hills, California. From the news story I’d read about Daniel’s disappearance, I knew the Tate family had money, but nothing had prepared me for Hidden Hills. The entire town was cloistered behind a gate, where a guard in a crisp uniform spoke to Jessica before waving the car through. This is what Lex had meant about us being safe here; no press would ever be able to enter the town. Once inside, it was all rolling green hills and elegant mansions bathed in sunshine and hidden from the world. My coat was bundled in a ball at my feet; I’d realized as soon as I’d stepped out of the airport and into the perfect twenty-four-degree weather that I wouldn’t need it here. I would have thrown the ratty thing away if I wasn’t sure they’d be shipping me back to Canada any second now, when the adrenaline wore off and they realized I was a fake.
We drove deeper into the community, and the houses got farther apart and farther from the road. At the top of a winding hill the car pulled up to a scrolled wrought iron gate where the driver punched in a code to open it. We drove into a tree lined lane where the sunlight turned soft as it filtered down through the green leaves and the white and purple blooms of the flowering trees. Then the foliage opened up, and I was looking at a mansion of pale yellow stone and endless windows poised on the hillside, red mountains distant on the horizon.
I struggled to swallow, my throat suddenly tight. What the hell had I done? Without even meaning to, I had stumbled into the biggest con of my life.
“Home sweet home,” Patrick said as the car stopped in the circular driveway, complete with fountain, in front of the house. “Does it look familiar?”
“A little,” I said.
The driver unloaded our bags and left. I felt everyone watching me as we walked up to the house. I didn’t know what they expected me to do,
so I didn’t know how to act. All I could do was try to focus on keeping up the con. Don’t look too scared. Don’t look too shocked.
Patrick opened the door and ushered me inside. “Welcome home, Danny.”
“Thanks,” I breathed. Maybe it was just my imagination, but my voice seemed to echo in the cavernous foyer, reverberating off marble and crystal and glass.
We all stood together inside the door. The Tates just staring at me.
Lex was the one who finally spoke. “You’re probably tired, huh, Danny? Do you want to rest for a little while?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be good.”
No one moved. It took me a second to realize, with horror, why. They were waiting for me to leave, to go to my bedroom. Danny’s bedroom. If I walked in the wrong direction, I risked giving myself away, but if I kept just standing there like an idiot . . .
Lex raised the handle of her rolling suitcase. “Come on,” she said. “I need to drop off my stuff too.”
Saved by Lex again. She might not be bright, but she was helpful.
I followed her up the curving staircase. At the landing she turned right. The hallway was lined on one side with oversized windows that overlooked the velvety lawn below and the mountains in the distance. I counted the doors as we walked. She stopped in front of the fourth.
“Here you go,” she said. “Come back down whenever you’re ready, okay?”
She walked back in the direction we’d come, and I slowly opened the door to Danny’s bedroom.
Like everything else I’d seen of the house so far, the room was pristine. The kind of museum clean that made me simultaneously nervous to touch anything and tempted to wreck it all. It was obvious that no one but the maid the Tates certainly employed had been in here for a long time. The room felt faded and stale, like it belonged to a world that didn’t exist anymore. It was an interior decorator’s vision of a little boy’s dream room, with navy blue walls and framed vintage baseball posters and tasteful furniture. A bulletin board over the small desk held photos from fishing and beach trips, flyers for Little League tryouts, and ticket stubs from sporting events. Something inside of me started to come apart as I looked at these objects. I opened the middle drawer of the dresser and found little-boy clothes inside, the creases in the fabric permanent from going undisturbed for so long.
Here Lies Daniel Tate Page 4