Surprised?

by Nick Day

  “I’m not with him!” I barked. “I’m looking for him!”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” the woman said. “I hope you find him. Selfish little brat.” Then she promptly hung up.

  Now I did drop my phone—just like I did when Dad had first called me. Unconsciously my hands flew to the top of my head and pulled my hair right at the roots. I ground my teeth together and wished to go back to that sunny day on the lake. I would do everything differently. I would hang up on him, and never think about him again.

  Where could he be? He wasn’t with me, he wasn’t at home, and he wasn’t at work . . . Is this the real Danny Jackson? I asked myself. A liar?

  I could barely get my feet to move, but I knew I had to. I still had this liar’s daughters to find, and they were innocent in all of this.

  As soon as I got to my feet, my phone rang—was it Dad?

  No, it was Pete. My heart skipped a beat—it was beyond time for some good news. “Hello?”

  “I’m at the customer service desk,” Pete said flatly. “I told them the girls are missing. They’re radioing all the security guards and they’re going to make an announcement on the PA system. Just come meet me down here. There’s nothing else for us to do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.” I hung up, and looked on the nearby directory for the office.

  Just then, a stern male voice came over the intercom. “Lily and Anna Jackson, please report to the security office, or find a guard in a blue uniform. Again, Lily and Anna Jackson, please report to a nearby guard, or to the security office. Thank you.” That was it. No urgency at all. If the girls hadn’t been listening carefully, they almost certainly wouldn’t have heard it. I had no hope left.

  I needed a distraction while we waited or I was going to drive myself crazy. So as I walked to the security office I called the only person who could be a total breath of fresh air.

  “Hey, girl,” came Maria’s haggard voice from the other end. “What’s shakin’?”

  “Wow, you don’t sound good,” I said, chuckling. Just hearing four words out of her mouth made me smile, and made me miss her more than I was prepared for.

  “Yeah, a long night plus a three-hour gig this morning where I sang the same Jessie J song eight times. No bueno.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t have long to talk,” I said.

  “Okay?” she asked, concern flooding into her voice.

  “So, it’s a long story, but right now I’m at a mall in Texas with my two half-sisters.”

  “OMG! Are they so cute?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “They’re little monsters, honestly. But here’s the big thing, Pete and I were talking just now . . . and please don’t say ‘I told you so.’ But . . . he told me he’s in love with me?”

  An eternity passed after the words left my mouth. I was almost sure the call had been dropped when Maria laughed on the other end of the line, a booming, earth-shattering cackle. Finally, she found words again, and bellowed, “No he didn’t!”

  “Yes he did!” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “He was like, ‘Sara, I’ve loved you since the moment I met you.’”

  “Whoa,” Maria said with a little chuckle. “So what’d you say?”

  “I, like . . . I don’t even really know,” I said. “He, like, reached out to touch me and I think I . . . slapped his hands away?”

  Maria groaned. “What? Come on!”

  “I know, I know. It was just like instinctual, you know? I was so overwhelmed! I don’t even remember saying anything, I think I just like turned away from him.”

  “Wait so are you like still standing next to him right now? Why are you calling me? Why aren’t you ring-shopping at this mall?”

  I couldn’t even laugh about that one. “We’re not together because right after that happened, I realized Lily and Anna had run away while we weren’t looking and now I’m like frantically searching this giant mall for them.”

  Maria groaned. “So, things are going well for you!”

  “You could say so, yeah,” I said. “Anyway I don’t really know why I called, and I’m gonna have to hang up soon, because Pete’s in the security office waiting for the mall cops to bring the girls back. I just wanted to tell somebody, I guess.”

  “So, why are you so upset about it?” Maria asked, ignoring the fact that I would need to hang up soon.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it the fact that he said he loves you? Or the timing?”

  “Both!” I said. “Definitely both.”

  “Well, he definitely didn’t time it right,” Maria said. “But honestly, I think you’re blowing this a little out of proportion.”

  “What?!” I yelled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “I know it seems like a big deal,” she said, “but this happens between friends. Things get confusing when it’s a guy and a girl. You guys really care about each other, right?”

  “I guess,” I mumbled.

  “Of course you do. So you just need to have a talk and get on the same page again. Honestly, it’s good he told you, because if he didn’t—”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” I yelled, power-walking across the first floor of the mall towards the security office in the distance. “You, too? God, can’t I get anybody to give me a lifeline here?”

  Maria spoke quietly. “Sara, come on, I’m just telling you—”

  “Sorry, I have to go,” I said, hanging up. I shoved my phone back in my pocket without another thought.

  When I found Pete inside the security office, I gasped. I had never seen him look so hopeless, so pathetic.

  “Hey,” I said softly, sidling up to him.

  “Hey,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

  “You’re Sara?” asked the sleepy-eyed guard behind the desk.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m their half-sister. Will this work?”

  “We always find ’em,” she said. “Don’t you worry.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to relax. “Okay. If you say so.”

  “Nothing to do but wait. Have a seat.”

  Both Pete and I sat in the rigid plastic chairs. Tacky smooth jazz was playing on the speakers in the room, probably to calm anxious parents and guardians just like us. We sat stone-faced and silent for what felt like hours, looking blankly at the desk in front of us. A cheesy, faded poster hung on the opposite wall: a friendly mall cop standing next to two white kids in brightly colored polos. The big, cartoonish text around them read, “Safety! It’s always on sale!”

  Just then, the sleepy-eyed cop’s walkie-talkie crackled to life. “Found ’em, boss,” came a young woman’s voice.

  I practically leapt out of my chair and so did Pete. My heart was going to beat out of my chest. The cop slowly picked up her radio. “The Jackson girls?” she asked.

  “That’s them, sir,” she said. “Bringing them to you now. The parents there?”

  The cop eyed us, skeptically. “Half-sister and . . . ” She gazed at Pete, evaluating him. “Friend.”

  There was murmuring on the other end of the radio. I heard a little girl’s voice. Then the security guard again. “Yep, they say that sounds right. Just making sure.”

  “Good job, Martinez,” the guard said. “We’ll see you soon.”

  Pete and I sighed and looked at each other. I gave him a half smile. “I was ready to give up! Thank you.” I meant it sincerely, but I didn’t want to make him think I’d changed my mind about what he’d told me.

  Again, we were out of words to say to each other. We had to have a big talk, I knew, but this was definitely not the place to have it. I looked straight ahead at the same dumb poster and willed the girls to get back to the office as fast as humanly possible.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out, grateful for the distraction. It was a text from . . . Pete? I looked at him next to me quizzically. He met my eyes and nodded back at my phone, imploring me to read what he had sent. I opened the text.

>   Sorry about that, crappy timing. Can we talk later? I feel like there’s more to say.

  I locked my phone and put it back in my pocket. I looked at Pete for half a second but I couldn’t hold the eye contact. He looked completely devastated, and in spite of myself, it hurt to see him that way.

  I heard Maria’s words echo through my skull. I know it seems like a big deal, but this happens between friends. Things get confusing when it’s a guy and a girl.

  So he’s just confused, I thought to myself. He thinks he loves me, but what he’s just feeling is the love that friends feel—not romantic love. Was that it?

  It’s not like you’re the world’s expert on romantic love, I said to myself, seeing as you’ve never had a boyfriend.

  But you know it when you feel it, right? I wondered. I tried to distract myself from continuing the argument raging on inside my head, but the boring office and the dreadful music made it difficult.

  Finally, I heard two voices pipe up from outside the door. Lily and Anna were back, being led inside the door by a young cop, who must have been Martinez. The girls looked completely chill about the fact that they had been separated from their guardians in this giant crowded mall. I guess it’s hard to feel totally alone when you have your sister next to you, I thought.

  I jumped up from my seat and hugged the girls. “Where did you guys go?” I asked urgently, squeezing their small, soft bodies.

  “Barnes & Noble!” Lily crowed.

  “Yeah, we always go there after American Girl,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “Then TCBY, then home.”

  “Oh,” I said, smiling. I pulled back from the hug and looked at them sternly, trying to convey some sense of authority. “I wish you had told me that. We didn’t know about your favorite stores. You have to tell me those things, okay?”

  Lily and Anna nodded solemnly. I sighed. “Well, I’m just glad to see you again.”

  Lily looked behind me and beamed. “Pete your hair got even redder!” She cackled, and Anna marched over to inspect Pete’s hair. I rubbed my temples, having almost succeeded in forgetting Pete was there. Looking at him, charmed all over again by Lily and Anna, broke my heart. He was a nice guy, he was my friend. But he had made a big mistake. Would we ever be okay again?

  But that question was suddenly erased as a much more urgent thought exploded in my head. Dad. Where’s Dad?

  TEN MINUTES LATER WE WERE BACK IN THE Suburban hurtling towards home. I couldn’t put the Wild Western Mall in the rearview mirror fast enough. It would forever be filled with bad memories for me—of potentially losing my best friend, and actually losing my two young sisters. Never again.

  A Spongebob DVD was playing quietly in the backseat of the car, but the girls weren’t listening to it. They had promptly passed out after I started the engine. I was grateful for it—just to have some peace, but also to think about what we were going to do next. I had told Pete about my conversation with Dad’s colleague, and about the confusing and scary situation we were in. I wasn’t ready to talk with Pete about anything else, but I knew I needed his help in tracking Dad down.

  “Maybe he has two offices?” Pete whispered.

  Fighting the late-afternoon glare coming through the windshield, I shook my head. “Even if that were the case, that woman I talked to would know he was there. As far as I can tell, he was telling the truth about just two things. One, that he is actually important at the company. And two, that something major is happening there. I don’t know what exactly it is, but the woman I talked to sounded totally frantic. Like they couldn’t do anything without him.”

  Pete slumped in his seat. “Man.”

  “I’m just worried he’s not safe. Like, what if he got in an accident or something?” I said.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Pete said. “He called you saying that he’d already been at work, and needed to stay longer. Right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I know. But maybe . . . maybe he was lying about going to work the first time, but then he actually meant to go, and . . . ”

  Pete looked over at me, sadly. He didn’t have to say anything.

  “I know,” I said. “I just can’t believe he’d lie to me like that! I just met him, I know, but he seems like a pretty decent guy, and he’s just trying to do the right thing. Right?”

  Pete said nothing, but looked back at the girls. They were still sound asleep. “What should we do about them?”

  “We can’t tell them,” I said. “I mean, what would we say? ‘Your dad’s been feeding us a pack of lies all day and we don’t know where he is’?”

  “But at some point—”

  “No, we’ll just have to track him down before too long. We told them he’d be working late. If we get him home sometime tonight, they won’t know any different.”

  Pete fell silent for a few minutes. “I don’t know how I’d be handling this if I were you.”

  I shuddered. Any comment from him that tiptoed back toward “I love you” territory made me queasy. I stared straight ahead at the road and said nothing.

  Back at the house half an hour later, Pete and I sat in the kitchen while the girls played in the basement.

  “All right, so you called him twice—when?” Pete asked.

  “Two forty-one.”

  “And you left a voicemail.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no way to know if he listened to it—”

  “Are you sure there’s not a way?”

  I handed Pete my phone and sighed. “Go ahead, MacGyver.” Pete took it and scrolled through a few things, looking at the screen intensely. But he gave up as quickly as he started.

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” he said.

  Suddenly, I had an idea. “Give me my phone,” I said quickly. Pete handed it to me, his eyes wide.

  “What are you gonna do?” he asked.

  My pulse was racing. “I called him, yes, but I didn’t text him,” I said.

  “Okay . . . ”

  “I’ll know if his phone is on if a text goes through.” I opened up Messages and sent him something brief.

  Hey, where are you?

  I hit SEND, watched the blue bubble sit, and sit, and . . . delivered!

  “Ha!” I cheered, showing Pete the phone.

  But Pete didn’t quite share my enthusiasm. “So, his phone is on. How does that help us?”

  I knew what to do. “One time,” I said, feeling on top of the world, “in fall quarter, I may have gone to a frat party. I left my phone there—but I didn’t realize until the next morning.”

  “Rough night,” Pete said.

  I soldiered on, trying not to even smile at his asides. “Anyway, I woke up, and I realized it wasn’t there. So I found Maria, and we used this little app.” I held up the phone for Pete to see, and pointed to the green radar scanner icon. “Find My iPhone. It was crazy easy. It dropped a little pin, and we followed it up to north campus, and dug my phone out of a bush under the fire escape. Boom.”

  Pete smiled, impressed. “All right, so let’s go!”

  I opened the app, but was immediately thrown off guard. Of course. We needed Dad’s log-in information.

  “Ugh!” I groaned. “We need his email and password.”

  Now it was Pete’s turn to be confident. “I know two people who might be able to help.”

  We jogged down the stairs into the basement, to find Lily and Anna sprawled out on the carpet watching more Doc McStuffins. They still looked pretty wiped out after the long day.

  “Hey, girls,” I said. “Question for you.”

  They looked up at me, as if they had forgotten who I was. “What?” Lily asked.

  “I need to get on your dad’s Apple account,” I said.

  Anna raised an eyebrow. “Why? That’s weird.”

  “He asked us to check something for him,” Pete said quickly. “You guys don’t know what his log-in info is, do you?”

  Anna and Lily looked at each other. My fingers twitched in anticipation. Eventually Lily turned ba
ck to us. “We know the Netflix,” she said, “and the Amazon and the Xfinity.” Anna nodded solemnly, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Hmm,” Pete said. “Do you know if he has a list of the passwords anywhere?”

  The girls immediately nodded, and tore off ahead of us back upstairs. We sped after them. I wanted to hug them and tell them how they deserved so much better than this messed-up family situation they were in . . . but I decided to save that for later.

  Anna was rooting around in a desk in the living room when we caught up to them. She pulled out tons of papers, tossing them on the floor. “Taxes . . . taxes . . . taxes . . . ” she mumbled, bored. “Taxes” seemed to be a catchall term for everything adult. The papers looked more like coupons and thank-you notes but I said nothing.

  Eventually, Anna pulled out a crisp piece of paper with a bunch of handwriting on it. “Here!” she cheered, presenting me with the information.

  “You’re perfect,” I said, taking the paper.

  “You are, too,” Pete whispered to Lily, who was disgusted at Anna getting the only compliment.

  I scanned the list. Anna had nailed it. There was his Apple log-in info, right in front of me.

  Email: djackson@jackson-flowers.com

  Password: saraj1018

  My stomach lurched. His password is my name and my birthday. I fought off the pit in my stomach and turned back to the girls.

  “Thank you guys so much,” I said. “This is what we needed.”

  “Can we go watch TV now?” Lily whined.

  “You bet,” I said, and they took off. Pete and I sped back to the kitchen, where my phone sat, with the app open.

  I entered his log-in information, and we watched the radar animation go around and around and around . . . until it stopped. There was the pin, at the corner of Alamo and Peterson, twenty minutes away.

  “Well okay,” Pete said. “At least it’s not far.”

  I wasn’t completely happy to see where he was. It was indisputable evidence that he’d lied to us today. He’d planned all along to go to this intersection, to whatever was there. Now I almost didn’t want to know.

  I didn’t have to imagine too long. Pete had quickly pulled up an image of the intersection on Google Maps's street view. “Hey, take a look at this,” he said. I peered over and looked at the 360-degree digital picture. The intersection was desolate. Two corners were abandoned lots, one corner featured a shabby Mexican restaurant, and the other was home to a small motel.