I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Peg Kehret

  “You talk too much,” Mrs. Wren said. Then she laughed and added, “I can’t imagine where she gets it.”

  Dana swallowed the last grape and handed the stem to her mother. “I’m still hungry,” she said.

  Ginger reached for her lunch sack, but Mrs. Wren stopped her.

  “No more grapes,” she said. “Put your crayons in the box, Dana; it’s almost five o’clock—time to go home and start dinner.”

  “What are we having?” Dana asked.

  “Macaroni and cheese. Again.”

  “I LOVE macaroni and cheese,” Dana said. “Almost as much as red jelly beans.”

  “Good luck tonight,” Ginger said as Mrs. Wren and Dana started down the aisle.

  “Thanks. We’ll need it.”

  Ginger watched a little more of the practice, but she couldn’t concentrate. She decided to go over to the administration building, even though the hearing wasn’t until six. Maybe the room would be unlocked. Maybe she could go in and leave the tapes and be done with it.

  She retrieved the bag of tapes from her locker. The anonymous note, which she had written during study period, was already taped to the bag. She carried the bag down the hall toward the front door.

  Partway to the door, she stopped. I am a coward, she thought, to do this anonymously. An unsigned note might not be taken seriously. The board members might think it’s a student prank. What if they ignore the bag of videotapes until after the meeting? Then it would be too late for the tapes to help.

  The board would not be able to ignore a person. If I stand in front of them and hand them the tapes, and say the tapes are proof that Mr. Wren is a good coach, they’ll have to pay attention.

  Ginger imagined Mrs. Vaughn’s furious reaction when she saw what the tapes contained. She also imagined Mr. Wren’s reaction. And Mrs. Wren’s.

  What would Mom say? And Laura?

  Live with Purpose and Honor.

  I can’t just sneak into the hearing room, leave the tapes, and hope the board watches them, Ginger decided. I have to make it happen. I need to stand up at the meeting and explain what I have. It is the honorable thing to do, and Mom and Laura will understand. I hope.

  She pulled the anonymous note from the bag, crumpled it, and threw it in a trash container.

  If Mrs. Vaughn withdraws her business from Celebrations and from B.A. Catering, Ginger thought, I’ll do more baby-sitting, and use the money to help with Laura’s tuition. I’ll baby-sit every night, if I have to. And when Laura does get catering jobs, I’ll go along and help her for free.

  Filled with determination, Ginger headed out the door. She wanted to be first to sign up to speak at the hearing. If she went first, it might save a lot of trouble for other people, like Mr. Randolph.

  The board might not play all the tapes at the hearing, but if they played enough to see that Mrs. Vaughn was wrong, they would probably cancel the rest of tonight’s hearing. They might vote to drop the whole matter. Mr. Randolph would never have to give his speech, and neither would anyone else whom Mrs. Vaughn had pressured. I might be saving Mr. Randolph’s job, as well as Mr. Wren’s, Ginger thought.

  For the first time since her birthday, Ginger did not look at the parking lot before she left the building. For the first time since her birthday, the white car—and the woman who drove it—were not uppermost in her mind as she stepped outside.

  The activity bus had not arrived yet, and the regular after-school buses had long since departed. Rain darkened the concrete, spattering on Ginger’s shoulders. Chilled, she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her hair, blocking her side vision.

  The parking area was empty, except for one car waiting in the shadows beyond the streetlight. The wet yellow ribbon dangling from its antenna waved gently in the breeze.

  Ginger did not notice. Her eyes, and her thoughts, were focused on the administration building across the street.

  She crossed the parking lot, head down because of the rain, and hurried toward the street, clutching the bag of tapes.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  “WAIT!”

  Ginger recognized Joyce’s voice immediately. She glanced over her shoulder, surprised that she had not noticed the white car.

  Joyce stood beside the car, waving at Ginger.

  Ginger kept walking. She had told Joyce she would not talk to her anymore, and she intended to keep that promise.

  “Ginger!” The voice was louder now. “Wait! I need to talk to you.”

  Ginger broke into a run, rushing toward the administration building. She heard footsteps on the pavement behind her, but she did not look back.

  A man’s voice sliced through the rain. “We have your little brother,” he said.

  Ginger froze, horrified.

  “I suggest you stop and talk to us,” the man said.

  Slowly, Ginger turned around.

  “That’s better.” The man wore jeans and a dark jacket; his hair was covered by a baseball cap. He spoke with a slight southern drawl, as calmly as if he were asking her to please pass the cupcakes. “Now, don’t even think about yelling for help, little lady,” he said. “Because if you do, we won’t be able to take your brother home again.”

  “Who are you?” Ginger asked.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. What’s important is who you are.”

  “I’m not who she thinks I am,” Ginger said, pointing at Joyce, who stood beside the man.

  “It seems you’re a bit mixed up about that,” the man said. “My friend needs to spend some time with you, and she tells me you haven’t been very polite.”

  “Where is Tipper?” Ginger said.

  “You’ll get to see him,” the man said, “as soon as you do what Joyce wants.”

  “How do I know you have my brother?” Ginger said. “Maybe you’re bluffing.”

  “Oh, we have him all right,” the man replied. “He’s at Joyce’s apartment, waiting for you. All you have to do is get in the car and let us drive you over there. Then, after you’ve had your picture taken, and had a nice little mother/daughter chat with Joyce, we’ll untie your brother and take both of you home.”

  Ginger’s mind raced, trying to think what to do. She found it hard to believe that they could have kidnapped Tipper. He and Marcus stuck together as if their clothes were glued, and Marcus’s mom would be especially vigilant about watching them this week, when she had full responsibility for both boys.

  If Ginger got in the car and went with Joyce and the man, she had no way to control where they would take her. They might not go to Joyce’s apartment. They might take her a thousand miles away and make her pretend to be Joyce’s daughter. She might never see Tipper, or the rest of her family, again.

  But what if the man spoke the truth? What if he and Joyce had tricked Tipper into going with them? What if Tipper really was locked in an apartment somewhere nearby, and the only hope of rescuing him was for Ginger to go along with what Joyce wanted?

  If I go with them, Ginger thought, no one will know I’ve gone. No one will know where I am. I won’t be missed until after six o’clock, when Karie realizes I’m not at the school board meeting. And she’ll wait until after the meeting to call and ask Laura why I wasn’t there. By then, it will be too late to help me.

  The rain came harder, drenching Ginger’s sweatshirt. An icy fear soaked into every pore of her body.

  I need to buy some time, Ginger thought. I need to stay here until other people arrive. Then I’ll signal for help somehow.

  She realized the man was waiting for her response.

  “Why do I have to get my picture taken?” she asked.

  “The only picture I have of you is the one taken when you were newborn,” Joyce said. “A mother needs to have current pictures of her daughter.”

  Ginger wanted to shout, I am not your daughter!, but she swallowed the words. There was nothing to be gained by making Joyce and the man angry.

  “I’ll go home with you,” she said. “But I can�
��t go until after I speak at the school board meeting.”

  The man’s eyes closed slightly. “You’re stalling,” he said. “You can come with us now.”

  Ginger held up the bag of tapes. “There’s a special hearing tonight,” she said, “and this is crucial evidence. If I don’t show up, my favorite teacher is going to get fired as coach of the girls’ basketball team.”

  “So, let him get fired,” the man said. “Who cares?”

  “I care,” Ginger said. “Lots of people care.”

  “We don’t,” the man said.

  “We could wait inside,” Ginger said. “There’s a lobby area next to the room where the school board meets. We can sit there and get better acquainted.” She looked directly at Joyce and added, “The coach’s wife is expecting a baby. If he gets fired, they won’t have enough money.”

  “What time is the hearing?” Joyce asked.

  “Six o’clock.”

  “That’s almost an hour from now.” The man put a hand on Joyce’s arm. “If we leave right now, no one sees us. If we wait until the meeting has started, a lot of people will be here. That isn’t good.”

  Ginger noticed that neither Joyce nor the man mentioned that an hour was too long to leave Tipper alone in Joyce’s apartment. I don’t think he’s really there, she thought. I think they made that up, to get me to go with them.

  “If anyone wonders who you are,” Ginger said, “I’ll just say you’re relatives.” She forced herself to smile at Joyce. “That would be the truth, wouldn’t it, Mother?”

  “Oooh,” Joyce said. “Oh, my darling, I’ve waited so long to hear you call me that.”

  The smile stayed on Ginger’s face, but she felt as if she were wearing a mask. The real Ginger was not smiling.

  Inside, she was boiling with rage at this couple. How dare they try to force her to go with them? How dare they bring Tipper into it? Even if they were lying about Tipper’s whereabouts, even if he was at Marcus’s house right now, happily burping or playing Batman, it made her furious that they would use her love for her brother to scare her into going with them.

  As the fury bubbled inside her, her determination grew. She would not go meekly with Joyce and her accomplice, now or later. She would try to outsmart them.

  “It’s really important for me to be at the meeting,” Ginger said. “I’m the only one who can prove that Mr. Wren is a good coach, and if I don’t speak tonight, he’ll get fired.”

  The man reached for Ginger’s bag, opened it, and looked inside.

  “If your evidence is these videos,” he said, “you can leave them here, and let someone else present them.”

  “The school board members won’t watch the videos in time if I’m not here to explain what they are.” Still smiling, she took a step closer to Joyce. “I think you will be proud of me when I speak to the school board, Mother,” she said. She looked into Joyce’s eyes and saw again the strange, hypnotic glow.

  “Yes,” Joyce said. “I will be proud.”

  “If we’re going to take this kid to your apartment,” the man said, “let’s do it. Waiting around here for some meeting is crazy.”

  “We don’t have to stay for the whole meeting,” Ginger said. “I’ll sign up to be the first speaker, and as soon as I have my turn, we’ll leave.”

  “And you’ll go home with me?” Joyce said. “We’ll take some pictures and have a good talk?”

  “We can start talking right now,” Ginger said. “Let’s go in, Mother, out of the rain.” She reached for Joyce’s hand.

  Joyce clasped Ginger’s fingers and climbed the steps with her.

  Behind them, the man said, “Don’t blame me if this doesn’t work out.”

  Ginger opened the door, and she and Joyce walked in, with the man at their heels. They sat on a wooden bench in the lobby area outside the hearing room.

  “When people start coming,” the man said, “I’ll be watching you. If you say or do anything to try to get out of going with us, you’ll regret it. And so will your little brother.”

  Ginger ignored the man and spoke to Joyce. “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “I want to know everything about you. Where you live, what kind of work you do, what your hobbies are. Start with the week I was born, and tell me everything.”

  Joyce began to talk, and Ginger tried to act as if she were listening. In reality, she was trying to think of ways to signal for help without having Joyce and the man catch on.

  Perhaps when she wrote her name on the sign-up sheet to speak at the meeting, she could add the word help. But the next person to sign in would probably say something, maybe even ask who needs help, and then Joyce and the man would know what she had done.

  If only she could be sure whether they really had Tipper or not. If they didn’t, she could simply wait until several people had arrived and then speak up. But what if she did that and it turned out Tipper was being held hostage somewhere? The man would run, and Joyce, too. They could get away and get to Tipper before the police could find them.

  I should have written down the license number of Joyce’s car, Ginger realized. I had plenty of chances to do so; why didn’t I ever think about it?

  A school-district employee arrived. Ginger recognized her from the previous hearing, when the woman had sat at the table with the school board members, apparently taking minutes on a notebook computer. The secretary unlocked the hearing room, brought out the notices with instructions for signing up to speak, and laid the sign-up sheet and pencil on the table. Then she went into the hearing room.

  “Excuse me,” Ginger told Joyce, who was talking about her job. “I need to sign up, so I’ll be the first speaker.”

  She walked to the table and put her name down at the top of the page. As she wrote, the man stood beside her, looking over her shoulder. She realized he was watching to see if she wrote a message in addition to her name.

  When Ginger sat back down, the man stood next to the door. Every time she looked at him, his eyes were on her, watching her every move. He’s ready to run, if need be, Ginger thought. If I yelled Help! right now, he would be in the car before anyone could get here to see what was wrong.

  She wondered where he would go. Would he drive to Joyce’s apartment and untie Tipper and . . .

  Ginger refused to let her imagination travel that road.

  She would have to be careful, to protect Tipper. Whatever move she made, it must be something that the man did not recognize as a plea for help.

  While Joyce talked on, Ginger looked carefully at her and at the man. She noticed exactly what they were wearing. She estimated how tall they were, and how old. She paid attention to the Fred’s Fish House logo on the man’s baseball cap. If she got away from them, she would be able to give the police an accurate description.

  No, she told herself. Not if I get away; when I get away.

  A group of five other people arrived. Mrs. Sumner signed her name below Ginger’s before the group went into the hearing room.

  Joyce talked on about her life, seemingly unaware of what was going on around her. She told of getting married, a year after Ginger’s birth. “I wanted another baby,” Joyce said, “but it never happened, and two years later the doctors told me I would never have another child. That’s when I made up my mind to find you.”

  “Why didn’t you adopt a child?” Ginger asked.

  “No! I wanted you. Only you.” Joyce took Ginger’s hand and held it. Ginger wanted to pull her hand away, but she gritted her teeth and did nothing.

  “My first husband didn’t understand,” Joyce said. “He thought I was a fanatic. He divorced me after I found you the first time. You were three then, and such a pretty little girl. But my husband sent me to a hospital and the doctors lied to me. My second husband, Arnie, agreed to help me get you back. We found you again when you were ten. We were in Montana on vacation, but we had a small problem. . . .” She stopped talking in midsentence, dropped Ginger’s hand, and fidgeted nervously with the hem of her swea
ter. “You know about that,” she mumbled.

  “No,” Ginger said as she tried to make sense of Joyce’s rambling, “What kind of a problem?”

  Joyce did not reply for over a minute. Then she said, “This time, Jake is helping me. For four thousand dollars.”

  “You paid him to kidnap Tipper?” Ginger said.

  “I paid him to arrange our meeting. How he did it was up to him.”

  “Is he armed?” Ginger asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably. He’s done this sort of thing before. He even gave me a secret code word to use, in case something seemed wrong and I wanted to call the deal off. Why would I call it off, after I paid him in advance?”

  As soon as Joyce said “secret code word,” Ginger knew how she could signal for help. When Karie arrived, Ginger would rub her left ear. That signal had been Karie’s suggestion, the day she watched Ginger talk to Joyce in front of the school. She was pretty sure Karie would catch on, especially when she saw Joyce.

  More people arrived. A group of Ginger’s classmates came in, said “hi” to Ginger, and then, seeing that Ginger was talking to the woman, waved and went on into the room. Nancy Randolph and her dad came; Mr. Randolph signed the speakers’ list.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wren came in, holding hands and looking solemn. They went straight to the front, where chairs had been reserved for them.

  The lobby area grew crowded. Four people lined up to add their names to the list of speakers. A photographer from the Daily Journal, laden with camera bags, made his way to the front of the room.

  Mrs. Vaughn arrived, smiling and acting as if this were one of her parties. Ginger noticed that Polly was not with her. Neither was Mr. Vaughn. Come to think of it, Mr. Vaughn had not been at the other meeting, either. Maybe he was out of town. Or maybe he didn’t approve of his wife’s activities.

  Where was Karie? Karie was the only one who would understand the signal. What if Karie’s plans had changed? What if she didn’t come to the meeting?

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  GINGER GLANCED AT HER watch. Three minutes to six. The meeting room was nearly full. Ginger scanned the rows of people, wondering if she had somehow missed Karie.