1-800-Where-R-You: Missing You

by Meg Cabot

Instead I looked cranky and sort of annoyed. I had gotten lost on the subway on the way to my appointment, and I had been hot and exhausted, and a homeless guy had just spat on me for no reason.

  Oh, yeah. I love New York, all right.

  “I can always get a new one,” I said with a shrug, not mentioning the forty-dollar lost ID replacement fee. Or the fact that the thought of going back to school in the fall made me feel like I might barf.

  And then, just as my photo got nearly all the way peeled off the card, the door opened a fraction of an inch.

  I put my finger to my lips and looked meaningfully at Rob. Then I pushed the door the rest of the way open and called into the apartment, “Randy? You around?”

  But I could see by the fact that none of the lights was on that no one was there.

  I reached around the doorjamb and flicked on the overheads. They shined down on an apartment that was almost exactly like the one upstairs in which I’d found Hannah, even down to the same hideous leather living room set.

  I signaled for Rob to follow me into the apartment, then shut the door behind us.

  “So,” he said, looking around the nondescript—and, frankly, depressing—living room. “What now? We going to wait and jump him when he gets home?”

  “No,” I said. “I told you. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. And if you’re going to hang around with me, you can’t, either. There are better ways to make someone sorry for what they’ve done than smacking them.”

  “Really?” Rob had stooped to pick up a magazine someone had left lying on the glass-topped coffee table in front of the flat-screen television. Teen People. “I’d be interested in hearing about them.”

  “Watch and learn, my friend,” I said, heading to the bedroom. “Watch and learn.”

  The bedroom was as depressing as the living room. Not because it was drab or poorly furnished. The opposite, in fact. The king-size bed was covered in a tasteful beige spread, the walls decorated with nicely framed Monet prints. There was an expensive gilt mirror above the long, modern-looking dresser, and the bathroom fixtures were top of the line.

  It was a room that simply bore no hint of the personality of the person who lived in it. There was a hairbrush on the vanity, and a scattering of makeup. In the closet hung a few dresses and tops of a style that indicated their owner was young and reasonably attractive—or at least assured of her own good looks, since they were pretty skimpy.

  But there were no photos, no books, no CDs—nothing at all, really, that gave any hint as to who the dark-haired girl really was.

  “What are we looking for?” Rob wanted to know, pulling open dresser drawers and finding only jeans and—somewhat provocative—underwear in them.

  “I’ll tell you when I see it,” I said, looking around the room. There was a smoke detector on the ceiling, centered directly over the bed.

  “Maybe he went to his parents’ house,” Rob said, meaning Randy. “They live right here in town, you know. Over in that new subdivision behind the mall.”

  “What new subdivision behind the mall?” I asked, startled.

  “The one Randy Whitehead Senior built,” Rob said, looking surprised I didn’t know about it. Then he said, “Oh, that’s right. It was while you were gone. Well, he built a new subdivision. It’s full of five-, six-bedroom homes with three-car garages and in-ground pools.”

  “McMansions,” I said.

  “Right. I bet that’s where we’ll find Randy,” Rob said. “Holed up with Mom and Dad. They probably have a security system, even the subdivision is gated.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “A gated community? Here in town? Seriously?”

  “Keep out the riffraff,” Rob said. “And enraged older brothers who want to beat Randy’s face in.”

  “We’re not looking for Randy,” I said, staring at my reflection in the gilt mirror above the dresser. The king-size bed was directly behind me.

  “Well, what are we looking for?” Rob wanted to know.

  “I told you,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I find it. Help me move this mirror.”

  Rob looked at the mirror, which was huge. “No way. It’s probably bolted to the wall.”

  “It isn’t,” I said simply, and moved to put my hands under one end of the frame. “Come on. Lift.”

  Rob went to the other end of the mirror, and together we lifted it off the wall. It wasn’t easy—the thing weighed a ton. And with the dresser in the way, it was hard to balance.

  But eventually we got the mirror down, and leaned it up against the bed.

  Then we both stared at the spot in the middle of the wall where the mirror had hung. The spot where a section of the wall had been cut out and a video camera tucked inside, where it had apparently been filming through the glass in the mirror, which was apparently not a mirror at all, but a piece of two-way.

  Rob, seeing the camera, said a very bad word.

  “Remember how you told me to tell you what we were looking for?” I said. “And I said I would when we found it? Well, we found it.”

  Twelve

  “But, seriously, Jess,” Rob said. “How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. We were sitting on the floor of the walk-in bedroom closet of Apartment 1S. Around us lay a pile of men’s shoes. They were what we’d pulled down from the closet shelf on which the video camera sat, pointing through the hole in the closet wall into the bedroom. Randy had obviously hidden the camera from view under piles of Adidas and JP Tod’s driving moccasins.

  “I just guessed,” I said. “Something he said.”

  Rob looked at the tapes we’d pulled down from a closet shelf high above our heads—I’d had to be lifted to reach it. Randy obviously used a stepladder. Each tape was neatly labeled with a name. CARLY. JASMINE. ALLISON. RACHEL. BETH.

  There were multiple copies of each. Sadly, I think we were going to have to watch them in order to see if they were multiple copies of the same tape, or different movies of the same girl.

  Not that it mattered. Except that if they were multiple copies of the same tape, it meant they weren’t merely for home use, but for distribution.

  I wasn’t sure whether or not this had occurred to Rob yet, and I wasn’t about to bring it up. He looked pale enough as it was.

  “He’s taping them,” he said dazedly from where he sat on the closet floor…which was carpeted in—what else?—beige.

  “Some of them,” I said. I’d been relieved there’d been no tapes marked HANNAH. I just hoped the reason why—that the tapes of Hannah, if they existed, were upstairs in 2T—didn’t occur to him.

  “You don’t think he’s got tapes of Hannah somewhere?” Rob demanded.

  Ooops. So I guess it had occurred to him.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said.

  But it was too late. Rob was already on his feet.

  Damn it.

  I struggled to put all the videotapes we’d pulled out back into the boxes they’d come from.

  “Rob,” I said. “Wait. Don’t do anything—”

  “Don’t do anything what?” Rob demanded, whipping around to glare down at me from the closet doorway. “Hasty? Violent? What? Jess, what do you want me to do? That’s my sister.”

  Then he turned around and stomped from the room.

  Damn it again. I shoved all the videos I could grab into the box I was holding, and staggered out after him. I’m not kidding, that box was heavy. There were a lot of videos in it.

  “Rob,” I called. “Rob, don’t—”

  But it was too late. He’d left the apartment.

  I knew where he was going, though, and I hurried after him, lugging the box of tapes.

  “Rob,” I said, lurching out into the warm evening air and following him up the outdoor cement steps to the second floor of the apartment complex. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Actually,” he said, as he breezed past 2S, and found himself outside 2T. “I really do.”

  “Well, at least let me�
�”

  But it was too late. Before I had a chance to take out my ID card, he’d kicked the door open with a single powerful blow from the heel of his motorcycle boot.

  “Well,” I said, putting down the box of tapes and following him inside, “that was subtle. No one noticed that, I’m sure.”

  Two-T looked exactly the same as I’d left it a few hours before. And the setup was exactly the same as it had been in the apartment below. The camera was in the bedroom closet, behind the mirror. Only the names on the videotapes were different. There were, unfortunately, several marked HANNAH.

  “That’s it,” Rob muttered. “He’s dead.”

  “No, he isn’t,” I said tartly, taking the videotape from his hands and putting it back in the box it had come from. “You aren’t going to do anything to him, Rob. I mean it. The police can handle it.”

  Rob’s breathing was on the heavy side. He seemed to be trying to force down something that wouldn’t stay put.

  “That’s what you’re going to do with those?” he demanded, thrusting his chin towards the box I was holding. “Hand them over to the police?”

  “Eventually,” I said. “First, I’m going to watch them.”

  Rob made an incredulous face. “You’re going to—?”

  “I have to,” I interrupted quickly. “Somebody’s got to try to find out what happened to all these girls, don’t you think?”

  Rob’s expression changed. “You think he—?”

  Again, I interrupted. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. And then…well, I plan on using them as leverage.”

  “Leverage?” Now it was Rob’s turn to follow me. He trailed after me as I left 2T, putting the box I held on top of the box I’d taken from 1S. “Leverage for what?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said, straightening. “But one thing I do know—this is a lot bigger, Rob, than just one guy shacking up with multiple girls. This looks like it might be a little home-based business Randy’s got going on the side, and that’s different than if he was just a horny jerk with a penchant for teenage runaways. You see that, don’t you?”

  Rob’s breathing was still pretty heavy. In the quiet evening air, it was all I could hear, aside from the crickets and the occasional laugh track from someone’s TV inside their apartment.

  The gaze he focused on me in the glare from the outdoor overhead bulb was laser sharp.

  “Jess,” he said. His voice was laden with suspicion. “What are you doing?”

  “Let’s not talk about it here,” I said as a woman with a golden retriever on a leash came out of 2L and looked at us questioningly before heading down the stairs. “Come on. Grab a box.”

  Rob—to my surprise—did as I asked…only he grabbed both boxes, and started down the stairs.

  “Moving out?” the woman asked me pleasantly as we went by her on our way to the parking lot.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s much better looking than your last boyfriend,” the woman said with an approving wink, nodding towards Rob’s departing back.

  “I’m not—” I started to stammer, realizing she thought I lived in 2T with Randy. “He’s not—” Then, blushing scarlet, I just said, “Thanks,” and hurried to catch up with Rob.

  “What did she say?” he asked me as he headed towards his truck.

  “Nothing,” I said. I hoped he couldn’t see how red my face was in the glow from the streetlamps. “Will you follow me home and drop these off with me? I can’t take them on my bike.”

  Rob looked like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded and climbed into his truck, after stowing the boxes in the back. I went to the next parking lot and got my bike—trying not to think about how nicely Rob’s backside had looked in those faded jeans as he’d climbed into his truck—then cruised over to where he was waiting.

  Then we both headed out of the Fountain Bleu apartment complex, and towards my house on Lumbley Lane.

  It was a warm summer night in southern Indiana. Downtown, the high school kids were out in full force, tooling up and down Main Street in their parents’ cars, and gathered in clusters outside what had been the Chocolate Moose but what was now a Dairy Queen. As I stopped at a red light—had there always been a traffic light there or was that new, too?—and gazed at the kids clutching their Peanut Buster Parfaits, it was hard not to think how young they looked, even though it hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been in one of those clusters myself….

  Although, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t, really. Ever hung out much downtown, I mean. I hadn’t had that many friends in high school, aside from Ruth, who’d always been on a diet, anyway. I know how much my mom had longed for me to be like the girls I saw now, swinging their long hair and laughing up in the faces of the clean-cut looking guys who’d brought them there.

  But I’d always worn my hair short, and the only boy I’d ever been interested in wasn’t exactly one my mom approved of….

  “Jess?”

  I turned my head. Had someone said my name?

  “Jess Mastriani?”

  There it was again. I looked around and saw a woman standing on the curb, her arm through the arm of a dark-haired guy in an IZOD and jeans.

  “Oh my God, that is you!” the woman cried, when I flipped up the glass shield on my helmet to get a better look at her. “Don’t you recognize me, Jess? It’s me, Karen Sue Hankey!”

  I stared at her. It was Karen Sue. Only she was looking much, much different than the last time I’d seen her.

  Then again, considering the fact that one of the last times I’d seen her, her nose had still been in a splint from when I’d broken it, this wasn’t much of a surprise.

  Still, she looked totally different than she had in high school. She had done something to straighten her hair, and had ditched her usual frills for a sophisticated sleeveless sheath of some kind, in cream.

  And obviously, she’d had her nose done.

  “God, I can’t believe it’s you,” Karen Sue enthused. “Scott, look who it is! Jessica Mastriani. You remember, the one I told you I went to high school with? Lightning Girl? The one that television show is based on.”

  Scott—whom I took to be some kind of frat guy Karen Sue had brought home from whatever Ivy League college she was attending, in order to meet her parents—drawled, “Oh, sure. Jessica Mastriani. I’ve read all about you, of course, and the incredible things you’ve done for our country. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  I just stared at them. The last time I’d seen Karen Sue—well, close to the last time, anyway—I’d had my fist in her face. And now she was acting like we’d been the best of friends?

  This is what happens when you get even a little bit of fame. Everyone—even your sworn enemies—tries to make nice with you.

  “You do remember me, don’t you, Jess?” Karen Sue didn’t look worried. She let out one of her annoying, tinkly laughs. “I’d heard you lost your powers, and all, but nobody said you’d lost your memory! Listen, what are you doing tomorrow morning? Want to have brunch? Maybe we could do some shopping after. Call me. I’m at my parents’ for the week. Just visiting down from Vassar.”

  The light turned green. I flipped my visor down.

  “Or I guess I could call you,” Karen Sue screamed. Now she was looking worried. “You’re at your parents’ place, right? Jessica? Jess?”

  I gunned the engine and took off. Whatever else Karen Sue said was lost in the roar of my muffler.

  I didn’t slow down again until I’d reached my driveway. I cut the engine and was pulling off my helmet when Rob pulled up alongside me.

  “What was that all about?” he wanted to know. “Who was that girl?”

  “No one,” I said. “Just someone I used to know.”

  Rob studied me through the open driver’s-side window. “Someone you used to know, eh,” he said tonelessly. “Guess there’re a lot of people around here who you could say that about.”

  “Guess so,” I said, not rising to the bait�
��whatever it was. “Can I have my boxes, please?”

  Rob shook his head. But he got out of the truck and went around to get the boxes of tapes, and set them gently on my lawn.

  It was quiet on Lumbley Lane, which wasn’t exactly a main thoroughfare. There were only a few lights on in Tasha’s parents’ house across the street, and only a few on in my own house, as well. People in southern Indiana go to bed early—after the eleven o’clock news, at the latest. It’s not like in New York, where sometimes the parties don’t even start until midnight, or two or three A.M. The only things still up at two or three A.M. in this part of the world were crickets.

  “Are you going to let me in on the plan,” Rob wanted to know, breaking the evening’s stillness, “or are you going to keep on shutting me out?”

  I felt my jaw clench. “I’m not the one shutting people out,” I said.

  “Oh, right.” Rob actually laughed at that.

  “I’m not,” I insisted. How dare he laugh? He was the one who wouldn’t level with me about Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-My-Head. Not that I’d brought her up lately. But still.

  “I can’t sit around and do nothing about this guy, Jess,” Rob said.

  “I know that,” I said. “And we won’t be doing nothing. We’re just not going to hurt him. Physically, anyway. Look. You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”

  Which was when he looked down at me and said, an incredulous look on his face, “Oh, right. You mean the way you trust me?”

  I knew what was coming then.

  And I also knew I was nowhere near ready for it.

  “I gotta go,” I said, and whirled around to seize one of the boxes and head for my parents’ front porch.

  But Rob—just as I’d feared he would—slipped out a hand to catch my arm.

  “Jess.”

  His voice, in the still evening air, was gentle…though his grip, as I tried to shake it off, was most definitely not.

  “I seriously don’t want to talk about this right now,” I said through gritted teeth, keeping my gaze rooted on my parents’ front door. No way was I going to look him in the eye. No way. I’d melt if I did. I’d melt into a puddle of tears right there on the lawn.