Tonight the results were clear.
Bea looked stunning, as if the accident had never even happened. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful she was—how her skin was flawless, the color of milk chocolate; and how the sharp angles of her face were complemented by full lips and a pointed chin.
“You look amazing,” Callie whispered breathlessly, tears in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Bea said; her soft brown eyes crinkled up with her smile. “I’m still a little swollen.” She motioned to the sides of her face. “And I’m wearing makeup to cover some of the bruising.”
“Well, you’d never know it,” I said, noticing right away that even her posture had changed—no longer slouched over, trying to hide herself. “It’s good to see you looking so . . . you.”
“Yeah, I’m excited to get back to school,” Bea said. “To get back to normalcy again . . . despite Amanda’s disappearance, that is. That’s sort of why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?” Hal asked.
“I mean, I hope you don’t mind me barging in like this. It’s just that I saw Nia get dropped off, and then I saw Callie pull up on her bike . . .”
I leaned forward, eager to know what she wanted to tell us.
“I know you guys have this Amanda Project thing going,” she continued. “And I thought that maybe I could help.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “‘You’ve got a friend,’” she said, reading the words printed neatly across the front in block lettering.
“Who gave that to you?” I asked eagerly.
“Good question. Someone left it for me at the hospital. I woke up in recovery and found it on my night table.”
“Well, obviously it was a friend.” Hal grinned, and then stopped when all eyes rolled.
“It might also be a song title,” she said, proceeding to hum the James Taylor tune.
“I love that song,” Callie cooed. “My parents used to dance to it in the living room when things were less—” She looked away, unable to finish the sentence.
Hal reached out to touch her shoulder in response.
Callie didn’t talk about it much, but everybody knew anyway: Her mom had left her and her dad right around the time Amanda disappeared without so much as a good-bye note.
“There’s more,” Bea said. She opened the envelope and pulled out a rectangular card. It was a bit bigger than a playing card, and illustrated across the front was a lobster breaking through the surface of the ocean.
“It’s from a tarot deck,” she explained, handing the card to Callie. “I know because I researched it.”
“It’s old,” Callie said, turning it over in her hand. The edges looked worn and yellow.
“It’s probably an antique.” Bea nodded. “Which is sort of significant on its own. You know . . . because Amanda really likes her antiques.”
“So are you assuming that this is from her?” I asked.
“Who else?”
“Odds are—it could be from anyone,” Callie said.
“Not likely.” Hal shook his head. “I mean, we are talking about Amanda here: O Queen of Puzzling Gifts.”
“They’re actually not so puzzling when you stop to think about them,” I argued, still wondering about Amanda and Bea’s relationship. When Hal had broken in to Thornhill’s computer for a second time—when he’d gotten to the page that had the mysterious coding and the list of names—he’d clicked on Bea’s name and saw a black-and-white photo of her and Amanda together, wearing matching wigs and looking almost identical.
“So Amanda visited you at the hospital?” Callie asked Bea.
“I think so. I mean, I was out of it so much of the time. But I know what a fan she is of tarot art . . . at least, she told me she was. She used to talk about different illustrators she admired and collected certain cards.”
“She did?” Hal asked, perhaps as surprised as I was. But then when I thought about it, it made perfect sense: Amanda admired all forms of art.
“Anyway, when I was doing all my research on the card,” Bea continued, “I found that this particular one—with the lobster coming out of the water—symbolizes someone coming out of hiding.”
“Well, she does come out of hiding.” I nodded. “Every time she leaves us a clue.”
“Maybe this is a sign that she plans to come out of hiding permanently,” Bea guessed, unable to keep the sound of hope from her voice.
“How close are you and Amanda?” I asked, cutting straight to the chase.
Bea took a seat on Hal’s bed. “She was always really nice to me. We had Spanish class together, and Amanda stuck up for me when Heidi and her I-Girl clones tortured me.”
“Tortured you?” I asked, taking the card from Callie.
Bea hugged one of Hal’s pillows. “Well, it feels like it. They would sit directly behind me and make fun of my style, saying it’s so from the 1960s, and asking me where my bandana and tiny tinted sunglasses are . . . because I like tie-dye and hemp jewelry. They called me Beastly Bea, the hippie wannabe, and flashed me the peace sign . . . but in a really obnoxious, in-your-face sort of way.”
I glanced over at Callie, who avoided my eye contact, maybe because she’d heard some of these remarks before.
“It’s pretty stupid,” Bea said. “Like middle school times ten. But Amanda made it bearable. She sat beside me and wrote messages in the margins of her notebook . . . stuff like, ‘Is it me, or does Heidi look extra orange today? Too much vitamin C? An accidental collision with a Sunkist truck maybe?’ Because of her fake tan,” Bea explained.
Callie let out a snicker.
“We also used to share favorite books, recommend music to each other, and discuss interesting quotes—the girl could quote from everywhere,” Bea added. “It sounds lame when I try to describe it, but it really helped.”
“So, you and Amanda were friends,” I said to be sure.
Bea shrugged and looked back down at the envelope. “I guess you could call it that,” she said, flashing me James Taylor’s words. “But she did run a bit hot-and-cold sometimes, coming and going as she pleased, so I was never exactly sure of just where we stood.”
“Yes, that sounds like Amanda.” I nodded.
“Can we keep this card?” Hal asked.
“Sure,” she said. “I figured you’d be able to scan it into your computer and add it to the website. I’ve been following the search there during my recovery.”
I ran my fingers over the lobster’s image, suddenly able to picture the card in Amanda’s hand. I even saw her nail polish: a lemon and green blend of colors to go with the chunky topaz stone she often wore on her middle finger.
I closed my eyes and imagined her pulling the card from the middle of one of her collaged notebooks, stuffing the card inside an envelope, and placing it on Bea’s hospital table. I could see Bea all bandaged up and groggy, her eyelids barely peeping out from at least three layers of gauze and tape.
But the image quickly vanished when Hal plucked the card from my grip. “Cornelia will be so excited,” he said, handing one of Cornelia’s business cards to Bea. “She’s trying to make a name for herself.”
Part of me wanted to grab the tarot card back, to see if I could envision anything more. But another part was completely dumbfounded about why this was even happening to me—why I was sometimes able to touch an object and picture bits of its history.
“Do you remember anything specific about that night?” Callie asked Bea. “The night you were hit, I mean.”
Hal and I exchanged a look, surprised that Callie was bringing it up.
“That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Bea said slowly, looking at each of us in turn. “I was wearing Amanda’s pink wig that night.”
“While you were walking home?” I demanded, unable to contain myself.
She nodded. “I’d met Amanda at the library earlier. We were studying for a Spanish test. Heidi was there, too—not with us but at the next table over—and once again she w
as making fun of me, calling my braids all Woodstocky, and begging me to join the twenty-first century. Anyway, after Heidi had left, Amanda said she couldn’t understand what Heidi was talking about—that my funky braids were way trendier than her wig. The next thing I knew, Amanda was taking off her wig and asking if I’d mind combing her hair out and putting a couple braids in to match mine. And so I did, but it felt weird being pseudo-twins . . . Frick and Frack.”
“So, let me guess, you took the wig,” I said.
Bea nodded. “I even wore it home that night.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, remembering that fuchsia wig well. It was unmistakable with its twisty curls, bluntly cut bangs, and the way it cascaded down Amanda’s back. “So, then, do you think you were mistaken for Amanda?” I asked, completely shocked.
“It’s not like anyone else in Orion wears a wig like that.” Hal automatically started drawing the wig in his sketchbook, his instant reaction in times of stress.
“But it’s not like the car hit you on purpose, right?” I ventured, wondering if Bea ever saw Heidi’s face.
And, while I expected Bea to deny the idea that someone hit her deliberately that night, she simply shrugged. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “Maybe she hit me because she thought I was Amanda.”
“She?” Callie asked, knowing the answer better than anyone, and perhaps wondering if Bea did, too.
“It was Heidi,” she whispered. “After she hit me, she pulled over to see if I was dead. I remember lying on my side. Every bit of me was screaming in pain.”
“Were you conscious?” I squeaked out, trying to focus on her answer.
“That’s the tricky part. I mean, it was all so surreal: Heidi peeking out the window of a dark car, calling out Amanda’s name, but then realizing that it was me. She seemed as startled as I was, almost scared.”
I looked at Callie, eager to know, since Heidi had been driving her father’s car that night, if Mr. Bragg’s Beamer was indeed dark blue. But, from the look on Callie’s face—eyes wide, lips parted, cheeks drained of all color—it clearly was.
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked.
“What makes you think that I didn’t?” She wiped her tears on the corner of Hal’s pillow. “I told the police what I saw. They came to talk to me at the hospital, but unfortunately the officer who questioned me was Heidi’s own father. Chief Bragg told me I’d imagined the whole thing, that the medics said I wasn’t conscious when they found me, and that it wasn’t uncommon for trauma victims to enter dreamlike states before they fall unconscious.”
“Then why bother questioning you at all?” Hal asked, shaking his head in frustration.
“Bragg asked me why I was biking by myself in the first place, if I’d been drinking or doing drugs and had stumbled out into the road as a result. I told him what I remembered about the accident, but he said that Heidi was with him that night.”
“Excuse me?” Hal asked, glancing over at Callie.
“Apparently, he’d picked Heidi up at the library and took her out to dinner,” Bea said. “They were sitting at the restaurant not thirty minutes before he got paged to come question me at the hospital.”
“That’s a lie,” Callie blurted, clearly referring to the fact that Heidi had gone to her house that night, looking for an alibi. Little had Heidi known that her dad would be giving her an alibi, too.
I waited for Callie to elaborate, but when she didn’t I scooted closer to Bea. I took her hand, grateful that she had survived, especially considering that Heidi was obviously much more lethal than any of us ever fathomed, and that as long as Officer Bragg was chief of police none of us would be safe.
CHAPTER 16
At school the following day, I just couldn’t get everything Bea had told us out of my head. Seeing Heidi swanning down the hallways now—and in classes, in the cafeteria, applying a fresh coat of lipstick at her locker mirror—took on a whole new edge, because I couldn’t help but wonder: Did she really have the potential to kill?
Needless to say, we never did get to the pharmacy that night. After Bea left, it was all we could do not to tear Hal’s bedroom to shreds. That’s how angry we were. And how desperate we felt.
And so during trig class, I gave myself little tests. I found myself touching various objects, looking for answers—from Stew Loicamar’s dropped pencil to the hood of Tanya Rosegrey’s sweater when she draped it over her chair.
But I felt nothing. And I pictured even less.
Completely frustrated, I pulled Bea’s tarot card from my backpack. I’d managed to pocket it before I left Hal’s last night, promising to return it later today so that Cornelia could add it to the website. I slid my fingertips over the card’s edges, suddenly able to visualize it perfectly in Amanda’s hands.
Only this time she wasn’t in the hospital. I was picturing her on a different day—Amanda had different nail polish (plum) and she was wearing a big ruby stone on her index finger.
In my mind’s eye, I could see her in a tiny, eclectic book shop—just like the one I’d seen when I touched my edition of Ariel. She was sitting in a red velvet chair, reading an old copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. When she was finished with her page, she tucked the tarot card into the book as a placeholder.
“Nia?” Mrs. Watson’s sharp voice interrupted. She was squatted, one seat back, in the row beside mine, checking over Muriel Spencer’s polynomials. “Do you have a question?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, slipping the card beneath my notebook so she couldn’t see it.
“So, then, do you always talk to yourself for no apparent reason?” she asked.
A sprinkling of giggles erupted in the classroom.
“I was thinking out loud,” I corrected her. “It’s hard to concentrate with all the chattering going on.” And I wasn’t just referring to her chattering as she worked with students. I was also talking about the whispering going on at the rear of the classroom, where Darryl Coppersmith and Goofball Gus were comparing the stench of each other’s breath by exhaling on graph paper. “Since we’re working independently today, would you mind if I took the rest of the block at the library?” It wasn’t as if I hadn’t gotten all of my word problems right within the first ten minutes of class. I’d even finished the assignments for the next three nights, including some extra credit exercises I’d thrown in out of sheer boredom.
“Fine,” she said, after a five-second pause, unable to come up with a good reason to deny my request.
I hurried out of class and headed to the library, eager to start researching antique book shops in Orion. There were two: a large one with its own website with clickable links, and another nameless one by the train station—nameless, because it was merely called Antiques. Semi-anonymous and obscure: I assumed that was the one.
I’d seen it many times before, but had never actually gone inside. I scrolled down over the snapshot image on the computer, remembering everything I’d pictured when I touched my copy of Ariel: the tiny, frail man who worked the front desk, the calculator and notepad he used to record the day’s sales, and the random trinkets lined up on dusty shelves.
I was relieved when the bell rang to switch classes, when I could finally get to the cafeteria to tell Hal and Callie what I’d seen.
“A velvet chair?” Callie asked, pausing from her yogurt to give me a puzzled stare.
“Mark Twain?” Hal made a face. “That doesn’t exactly sound like Amanda. Isn’t she more into modern-day poetry and Gothic fiction?”
“She likes all literature,” I corrected him, “including classics, which definitely includes Twain. Plus, what happened to pursuing any and all leads we get? We need to go to that bookstore.”
“We also need to go to the pharmacy and the airstrip,” he said. “I think those are our priorities.”
“They are all priorities,” I snapped.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that what you pictured was indeed a real scene involving A
manda,” Hal said, letting his plastic fork drop. “What makes you think you’ve got the right antique shop?”
“I don’t just think,” I insisted, correcting him. “I know. I’m confident. It’s the right shop.”
“So?” Callie asked, seeming confused. “Not that two plus two always has to equal four, but where are you going with this?”
“I’m not sure. But she left the card, and I touched it, and now I’m seeing her there . . . I just want to pursue this and see where it takes us. So, anyone up for skipping our next period? The shop is only a five-minute ride away.” I showed them the address scribbled on my palm. “We’ll be back before the bell even rings.”
“What’s the rush?” Callie asked. “I mean, I’m just nervous about cutting classes. I can only get us out of so many detentions.”
“Especially if Amanda had the tarot card with her at the bookshop,” Hal said. “I mean, if what you pictured is actually correct, she’d have gone to that shop even before she went to visit Bea at the hospital. So she would be long gone by now.”
“Look, it’s not that I’m one for taking skipping classes lightly,” I told them. “But I just feel like we’re running out of time here, and we still have so many places left to investigate. Meanwhile Amanda remains missing, potentially in danger.”
“You have to look at this from our perspective,” Hal continued. “You touched a card, which conjured up an image of something that supposedly happened at least a week ago—”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I interrupted him, wondering why he was being so narrow-minded, especially considering how many of his harebrained hunches we’d followed in the past. “But maybe she left us a clue at that shop. Maybe we could talk to the shop owner, or search for that copy of Huck Finn . . .”
“We’ll find Amanda,” he promised. “But we’re not going to be able to do it within the next sixty minutes. I have an essay due next period.”
I ignored him by taking an extra-large bite of my mother’s homemade pasta, making it hard to talk. We barely said anything about Amanda for the rest of our lunch period together. We barely even spoke at all.
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