Hal, too, still seemed upset. His arms were folded, and he was much quieter than usual.
I, on the other hand, was over any notion of upset. What I wanted was answers. I turned to Zoe, interrupting her from stuffing an obscenely realistic-looking gummy worm into her mouth. “Why didn’t you agree to be Amanda’s guide right away?”
“Because of what I’ve seen,” she said.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked.
She shook her head. “If you knew what I know, you might not be so eager to dish all the details either.”
“Did Amanda want you to do something that made you uncomfortable?” Callie asked.
“Let’s just say that I saw something that made me uncomfortable. And what I lived through was even worse.”
I wanted to ask her more, but I could see she was getting emotional—her face was blotchy and her hands kept fidgeting.
“Amanda’s world can seem pretty exciting at times,” she continued, “but it can also be downright terrifying.”
We exchanged looks—and silently agreed not to press her right away.
“So, how about catching me up to speed,” Zoe suggested. “Tell me what I need to know about your search so far.”
“If you’ve been following us, then you should know for yourself,” Hal said.
I took a deep breath, holding myself back from launching a gummy worm at his head. His obvious pride was clearly getting in the way of hearing Zoe out.
“We owe it to Amanda to give Zoe a chance,” I told him.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I’m a guide just like you,” Zoe said, giving a nervous tug to her cobalt-blue hair.
“Prove it,” he said.
Zoe looked back and forth between him and Callie, as if choosing her words carefully. “I was there that night . . . on Crab Apple Hill,” she said finally. “And I overheard everything.”
It had been a couple of weeks since what had happened on Crab Apple Hill. A couple of weeks since we had all received cryptic messages from Amanda, ordering us to meet at the very top. Only once there, contrary to what Amanda had promised us, she’d never even come. We ended up alone, and yet together at the same time.
Callie sat up straight on her bale, and the color drained from her face. That night on Crab Apple Hill was the night when she’d told us about Beatrice Rossiter’s accident, and how she’d helped Heidi to cover it up by acting as an alibi.
Obviously Zoe had heard the confession, too.
The weird thing was that I wasn’t too surprised that Zoe had been there that night. I remembered hiking up to the top, hearing a female voice call out Amanda’s name a couple times, and thinking how the voice sounded way deeper than Callie’s. I also remembered hearing footsteps that couldn’t be accounted for, and wondering if they might’ve belonged to Amanda. Now I knew it had been Zoe.
“It was really brave of you to open up like that,” Zoe said, turning toward Callie, “and to figure out how to make it right.”
“Yeah, well . . . ,” Callie said, and looked away, pleased for the praise but still her eyes filled with tears.
I handed her a tissue from my bag, and Hal offered her some water.
“So, if you’re really a guide”—Hal turned to Zoe—“then you must have a totem, too.”
“According to Amanda, everyone has a totem.” She smiled.
I smiled, too. Because it was true. Amanda has this thing about totems—basically that we all have animal spirit guides that look after and protect us. My totem was the night owl, symbolic of wisdom and intuition, both of which stem from burying myself in books, doing what I believe to be just, and observing others’ actions from afar.
“Amanda stenciled my totem on my locker that night, just like she did with all of yours,” Zoe continued. “A chameleon.”
“Ever changing,” I said, thinking how it made complete sense.
“But Thornhill must not have seen your totem,” Hal said, referring to how Thornhill had called the three of us into his office to accuse us of graffitiing his car and explain the tagging on our lockers.
“Yes, but then why did he seem to know that we belonged together?” I asked, remembering how, in the hangar basement, he’d referred to the four of us.
“Maybe Amanda told him?” Hal shrugged.
“It didn’t sound like he’d even seen Amanda,” Callie argued.
Zoe looked clueless as well. Between bites of gummy-worm-and-Cheez-It sandwiches, she went on to explain how, on the day that our lockers were tagged, she’d gotten to school extra early to finish up some pieces for the school newspaper, where she was in charge of the final layout as the photography editor. En route to the journalism room, she’d spotted the totem right away. “I scrubbed it off before Thornhill saw,” she explained. “Some pretty heavy stuff had just gone down, and I didn’t want anyone to see it—to know that I’d been connected with Amanda in any way.”
“Heavy stuff?” Callie asked.
“Amanda stuff,” she said, remaining as mysterious as Amanda herself. “Amanda had wanted me to be a part of your group—to help you guys search for her. But, after everything that’d happened, shadowing your investigation was as close as I was willing to get. Until this.” Zoe reached into her bag again and pulled out a card. On the front was a print from Henri Matisse’s Jazz series.
I’d recognize it anywhere. In the sixth grade, Ms. MacKenzie, our art teacher, had us do a whole unit on Matisse’s career. The Jazz series was particularly interesting, because unlike Matisse’s other work, it’d been made up of colorful paper cutouts assembled on gouache-painted paper. This particular print was from the front cover of his Jazz book, a compilation of more of his work done in the same style.
“It was her way of trying to rope me in again,” Zoe explained, pointing out the chameleon totem inked in the corner of the card. “Amanda knows how passionate I am about jazz. Anyway, this one’s my copy . . . and these are yours.” She reached into her bag a final time, and pulled out three more Jazz cards. “When I got to the airstrip, I found these clipped to the spokes of your bike wheels. She did the same with my card; only I got mine yesterday, when I had my bike parked behind the library.”
“So, she was here?” Callie asked. “At the airstrip, while we were inside the hangar?”
“Looks like it.” I sighed. “And she’s still playing games.”
“Not games,” Hal said, coming to Amanda’s defense. “There’s a reason she can’t show herself, remember?”
“Yes, but it’s pretty easy to forget that while trying to outrun armed guards in the middle of nowhere and dump-the-body-land, where the only adult who seems to believe you is literally tied up,” I snapped at him.
“Amanda comes so close,” Callie said, thinking aloud, “giving herself ample time to dig up clue cards and pin them to our bikes. So, why not come just a little bit closer and actually talk to us—give us a real clue as to what’s going on?”
“Because she can’t,” Zoe stated simply. Instead she handed us our Jazz cards.
As with Zoe’s, Amanda had inked our individual totems in the corners.
“The little bear is mine,” Callie said, taking her card.
“And I’ll take the cougar,” Hal said.
My card was on the bottom. The night owl looked almost as if it were grinning at me—as if this were indeed one big game.
A game that couldn’t be won.
I ran my fingers over the card, wondering if I’d envision anything. As I did, my finger brushed across something on the back side. “What’s this?” I asked, flipping the card over.
There was a poem on the back. Apparently Amanda had pasted it to my card.
“What is it?” Hal asked.
“‘The Road Less Traveled,’” I whispered, “by Robert Frost.” I looked at the back of their Jazz cards, but they were all blank.
And so this message was just for me.
“What’s ‘The Road Less Traveled’ have to do with anything?” Cal
lie asked.
I bit my lip, knowing all too well what the message meant. The memory was still vivid, like it had happened only yesterday.
With my parents’ permission, Amanda and I took a trip into the city to see a special exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh’s work. Like much of my time with Amanda, the whole experience was completely surreal. Several of the paintings had come from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Getty Center in California.
And now they were right in front of us: Starry Night, Starry Night over the Rhone, Irises, and The Night Café . . .
We were halfway through Van Gogh’s Sunflower series, when Amanda grabbed my arm and ushered me into another room entirely. “Look at this one,” she said, pointing to an Impressionist piece. The title was The Road Less Traveled, by an anonymous artist.
“Do you think it’s a tribute to the poem?” I asked.
“Could be.” She gave me a mysterious smile. “Or it could also be a sign that you need to branch out a bit . . . explore some new and uncharted territory.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” she said, answering with a proverb. “Or in this case, it makes Jill a dull girl.” She smiled, softening the blow.
I opened my mouth, unsure of how to respond and disappointed that she saw me that way. Because ever since Amanda Valentino had come into my life, I felt like I’d been “playing” more than ever.
“Remember to be open to that which crosses your path,” she continued when I didn’t answer.
“Where is all of this coming from?” I asked her.
“It’s coming from me: Amanda Valentino.” She smiled wider. “Because Amanda thinks it would be absolutely tragic if her good friend Nia Antonia Rivera were to miss out on something great because she is so wrapped up in the routine of work.”
“I’m not missing out on anything,” I retorted, irritated that she would think so. “There’s much more to my life than work.”
“Of course there is,” she said. “But, still, you have to admit, you’re not the most trusting individual. And you’ve meandered down this path of distrust and standoffishness for far too long. It’s time to take another road.”
I looked away—toward the road-less-traveled painting—noticing the path that forked in two directions.
Amanda slipped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Not everyone who crosses your path is going to hurt you, you know. There are some really remarkable people out there, and you deserve to meet them. And they, in turn, deserve to get close enough to know what a remarkable person you are as well—just as I do.”
“These cards are proof that Amanda wants us to work together,” Zoe asserted, plucking me out of my daydream. She muttered something else about visiting a Matisse exhibit, but I was barely even focusing on her words.
“Nia?” Callie asked, reaching out to touch my forearm.
Instead of answering, I looked back down at the Robert Frost poem, and that’s when I noticed.
The postage stamp just beneath it.
On it was a picture of a 1974 Alfa Romeo. The words “A Classic: Built to Face the Road Head On” were printed on its racetrack.
I felt a smile cross my lips, wondering how Amanda could possibly have known. Had she spotted me eyeballing him in the parking lot earlier? Had she seen him drop by Hal’s place the other night? Maybe she’d noticed him reading Letters to a Young Poet somewhere and suspected we’d have a lot in common.
“Nia!” Callie bellowed into my ear.
I opened my mouth, trying to find the words. I was so used to always having the most perfect response in every situation. But, as Amanda had pointed out, this was definitely new territory.
Tired of waiting for me, Hal grabbed my Jazz card and flipped it over to see the stamp. “This is just like West’s car,” he said.
“‘A classic,’” Callie read over his shoulder, “‘built to face the road head on.’”
“Do you know what it means?” Zoe asked.
“It probably just means that Amanda likes classic cars.” He shrugged.
“A classic car that’s the same exact make and model as West Kincaid’s?” Callie asked. “With the same exact bronze color? And the same exact year?”
“Did Amanda even know West?” I finally found my voice.
Hal shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, personally, I think this is more than a coincidence,” Callie said.
“So then the question becomes: What does West have to do with our search?” Zoe asked.
“Maybe nothing.” Callie smiled. “Maybe the question we should really be asking is: What does West Kincaid have to do with Nia? Did anyone else notice how West could barely keep his eyes off Nia the other night? It was like she’d lost her glass slipper and he had it stashed inside his pocket.”
“It was actually a book on poetry,” I said, correcting her.
“Even better.” She brightened up even more. “A match made in Literary Heaven.”
“Okay, I’ll play. But how would Amanda have known that this West character was all foaming-at-the-mouth for Nia? And, no offense, why would we care?” Zoe asked.
“Honestly, I’m over questioning what Amanda knows,” Callie said, “because she seems to be just about everywhere, and knows just about everything.”
“At least everything pertaining to us.” I took a deep breath, picturing myself walking down a less-traveled road, and knowing that Amanda was right. There were definitely amazing people in this world. People that I could trust.
Like the people in this room.
“May I?” Zoe asked, turning to Hal. Before he could answer, she snatched the card out of his grip and looked closely at the stamp. “Okay, let’s take a look at his car at our first opportunity.”
“Good point,” Hal said. “And can we stop talking about West now? It’s kind of freaking me out.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. My stomach still rumbled with hunger, and I was in desperate need of brain fuel. Then I remembered that my mother had packed me some afterschool snacks. I’d told her that Hal, Callie, and I were going to the Villa after school for a Humphrey Bogart movie marathon.
I opened her bag of treats, surprised to find that she’d given me four colossal, no-way-you-could-eat-more-than-just-one, double-fudge, chipotle-infused brownies, as well as four napkins and four boxes of juice. Obviously enough for each of us, including Zoe.
A lucky coincidence, or something more?
CHAPTER 27
We wound up in the barn for a little while longer, eating my mom’s brownies and deciding our next steps. Zoe became the necessary piece in our jigsaw puzzle of an investigation, filling us in on what she knew about Amanda and her family—basically that Amanda, her sister, Robin, and her mother traveled around a lot, inexplicably moving from place to place.
“When Amanda first got to Orion,” Zoe told us, “she said that she was staying with a friend of her mother’s.”
“Do you know the friend’s name?” Hal asked.
Zoe shook her head. “Course not. Amanda was always so secretive about everything. Not only did she change mailing addresses constantly, but she also changed her name a bunch of times. She shed it like an outgrown skin. When we lived in Pinkerton, she went by Arabella.”
“Excuse me?” Hal asked.
“It’s true,” Zoe said, warming to her role as sage. There was a knowing smile across her pale chapped lips.
“Holy aliases, Batman,” Callie said. “That’s so seriously weird. I’m still adjusting to Ariel.”
“I know, and speaking of . . . remember the gift she left me—the first-edition copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel? Some part of her wanted us to know that she changed her name.”
“Let’s also not forget about the hospital bracelet in Amanda’s box,” Hal continued, proceeding to tell Zoe about the maternity ward bracelet/ring. “Except the name on
the bracelet was Ariel Feckerol.”
“Feckerol, Valentino, Beckendorf . . . ,” Callie sighed. “Which one’s legit?”
“Good question,” I said. “And here’s another one: If that was indeed Amanda’s baby bracelet, then what was Thornhill doing wearing it in the photo I found under the vase on my mother’s desk?”
“Hold up,” Zoe said, in desperate need of more filling in.
And so while Hal and Callie did just that, I got up from our circle of bales and paced the floor, scarfing down the remainder of my brownie. “Call me crazy,” I began, unable to get the question out of my mind. “But has anyone considered the fact that Thornhill is related to Amanda in some way?”
“Like an uncle or a cousin?” Hal asked.
“Or her father,” I said, releasing a ten-pound pause in the conversation.
“Okay, first of all, what the . . . ?” Callie said. “And, second of all, no. I mean, it can’t be, right?”
“Well, it would certainly explain his involvement in all this,” I said. “Not to mention why he’s willing to remain locked up in a hangar basement because he thinks it will help keep Amanda safe.”
“It does sort of make sense,” Hal admitted.
Zoe couldn’t argue either, making me wonder if she had known it all along.
“But if Thornhill is Amanda’s father, then why is he keeping it a secret?” Callie asked.
“Think about it,” Zoe said. “I mean, if it is true, then his wife—Amanda’s mother—is dead. She was killed. Do you really believe that was an accident, especially considering that he, himself, was attacked, and that Amanda’s in hiding? He might have no other choice but to keep secrets.”
“Do you think Amanda knows he’s her father?” I asked, assuming that it was indeed true.
“I’d tend to doubt it,” Hal said. “I mean, the items in her box seemed so fragmented . . . so searching—the maternity bracelet, the photo with the heads cut out. I’ll bet she doesn’t know. Or didn’t know when she collected all those scraps.”
“So, then, what do these people want with this family?” I asked, thinking out loud.
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