See Jane Run

by Hannah Jayne

  “Yours?”

  Riley shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  TWO

  Riley squinted at the birth certificate and turned it over and over in her hands. She had no idea why, but she studied every inch of it, certain that at some point there would be a “Made in China” or “Property of Disney” stamp. There was nothing.

  “It looks authentic enough,” Riley said with a frown. “I wonder who it belongs to.”

  Shelby grabbed the paper and scanned it. “It belongs to Jane Elizabeth O’Leary,” she said. “O’Leary, that’s Irish, right? Oh, me lucky charms! Maybe this kid was the leprechaun your parents stole for their pot of gold.” She looked over the paper at Riley and raised her eyebrows.

  “My parents don’t have a pot of gold.”

  Shelby jutted her chin toward Riley’s new attached bathroom. “Your own bathroom equals pot of gold in my book.”

  “You’re so lame. So, Jane O’Leary, born May 14 to Seamus and Abigail O’ Leary.” Riley shook the paper in her hands. “Who are these people?”

  “Ooh, baby Jane almost might have stolen your thunder. She was born a whole thirteen months earlier. Maybe your mother had baby rage and had to do away with her.”

  Riley snorted. “We do know how violent my mother gets.” She yanked an Easter turtleneck out of one of the boxes. “I mean just look at this. Bunnies. Easter eggs. Nadine Spencer is truly a madwoman.” She tossed the turtleneck back but couldn’t bring herself to toss the certificate.

  Shelby gestured to it. “Are you going to ask your parents about your phantom sister? Tread lightly; they might knock you off next.”

  “I can’t ask them about it. They would murder me—for real—if they knew I was in here, going through their stuff. I mean, the baby book wasn’t exactly in plain sight.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Seriously, who is this kid?”

  “Hey, if you’re that curious about ole Jane, Wiki that crap.”

  Riley carefully—but quickly—shoved everything but the baby book and her dad’s sweatshirt back in the boxes and slid them back into place.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling Shelby by the hand.

  They crossed the hall back into Riley’s room. She yanked her laptop from under her bed and fired it up, tapping the baby’s name into the Google search engine.

  “OK, background check, background check, background check—only thirty-nine ninety-five. No on that one. Jane Elisabeth—Elisabeth with an s—is an ASU alum.”

  Shelby rooted through her backpack then stuck her arm into the Ruffles bag she yanked out. “She would be too old, unless our Jane is a genius. She’s supposed to be only a year older than us.”

  “Then I’m assuming the obituary of eighty-nine-year old Jane Elizabeth O’Leary of Skokie, survived by her eleven adult children, is not our chick either.” Riley chewed her bottom lip while she scanned page after page. “Our kid doesn’t show up.” She typed in the name of each of the parents separately and came up blank once more; it was the same when she tried the last name plus the name of the city, plus every other combination she could think of.

  “According to Google, none of these people exist.”

  Shelby upturned the Ruffles bag and shook the last of the crumbs into her mouth. “Well, if you don’t exist on Google, then you don’t exist at all. Everyone knows that.”

  Shelby sat up with a start. “Ohmigod,” she said, still chewing. “What if the birth certificate is actually yours? What if you’re, like, one of the Amber Alerts? Or one of those Have You Seen Me? poster kids?” Her face was upturned, grease and salt from the chip bag glinting on the finger she used to point at Riley.

  Riley rolled her eyes but got a little niggle of anxiety anyway. “That’s stupid. This kid is a whole year older than I am.”

  “If they snatched you off the street, or out of some Walmart dressing room or something, they may have made you a year younger to throw people off the scent.” Shelby narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Is that your real hair color?”

  Riley’s hand flew to her head. She ran her hands through her pale, red-blond hair. “You know, you’re right. I bet my mother comes in here every month and dyes my hair while I’m asleep!”

  They were silent for a beat before Shelby’s mouth dropped open again.

  “OK, OK, how about this?” She started flapping her arms in an apparent attempt to take flight. “What if you’re Amish, and your mom got knocked up on one of those Rumspringa hayrides? They weren’t married, so once your mom had you, they were shunned, had to leave Amish-town, and then had to have a new birth certificate made for you! Because, you know, you were probably born in a barn or something.”

  She grinned, looking immensely pleased with herself, while Riley cocked an eyebrow. “So that’s why we have that horse and buggy in the garage next to Mom’s Mini Cooper!”

  Shelby glared at Riley as if she were the one acting crazy. “Duh. They’re ex-Amish. They would have adapted to our electronic American ways. No horse and buggy.”

  Riley let out an annoyed puff of air, and Shelby pointed at her. “I’m probably right, you know. You do have a ton of well-made wood furniture.”

  “Don’t you have a boy band to stalk?”

  “No, I’m between obsessions. OK, maybe you’re not an Amish bastard. But it could be something else. Maybe one of your parents isn’t actually your parent? Maybe one of your parents was married before and they had you. The marriage disintegrated amid rumors of abuse, but your mother couldn’t prove it. You were supposed to go to your dad’s for the summer, but she couldn’t let that happen, so she went on the run with you. Your mom would have been on one of those underground railroads, and they made you a new birth certificate so your child-molester louse of a dad wouldn’t find you. Think about it. You’re an only child. You have no family, no cousins.”

  Riley waved the birth certificate. “Not me, Shelb.” She pointed to the birth date again. “Not my birthday.” Then the city of birth. “Granite Cay? Never been there. And this kid was—8.9 pounds! No way that’s me.” She tossed her hair over one shoulder and cocked out a hip. “I was a very svelte 6.1.”

  “I’m telling you, this is you. Have you ever seen your own birth certificate?”

  “No.”

  Shelby bounded up, eyes wide. “Because there isn’t one! I mean look, you and this Jane have the same eye color.”

  Riley’s eyes widened. “Ohmigod. I didn’t realize that. Blue-eyed girls are exceedingly rare.”

  Shelby’s lips pressed into a hint of a smile but not enough to stop her from rambling on. “I bet if this kid had hair, it would be the same color as yours.”

  “You are being ridic.”

  “The milk carton kid all alone out here in suburbia where your real family could never track you down. No extended family to disprove my hypothesis…”

  “That’s because my parents were only children too. That’s not that rare. Your mother was an only child.”

  “Which is why I am one of eight. My mom was so lonely as a kid she wanted to raise a basketball team when she grew up. Mission a-freaking-ccomplished.”

  “Big families aren’t that weird, Shelbs.”

  Shelby made herself comfortable on Riley’s mint-green comforter. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  For every silent moment at Riley’s place, there was a crash, a shriek, or a stain at Shelby’s. While Riley’s parents needed to know—and approve—her every move from after-school activities to whether or not she ate enough breakfast, Shelby’s parents did more of their parenting via headcount. If there were eight kids, everything was OK.

  “Do you have anything else to eat?” Shelby asked, apparently already bored.

  “You know the only way junk food gets in here is via the Shelbyville express.” Riley glanced out her door. “I can probably smuggle you some kale chips or da
rk chocolate grasshoppers.”

  “See? Prison food. I’m telling you, Ry…” Her voice dropped to an ominous whisper. “Whatever happened to baby Jane? She’s living in the suburbs and being force-fed kale chips!”

  Riley considered for a second before flopping down on her bed next to Shelby, blinking up at the eggshell-white ceiling.

  “So my parents snatched me off the street. How did they get my birth certificate then? And why did they keep it? Isn’t that, like, evidence? The first thing you get rid of after committing a crime?”

  Shelby’s eyes sparkled as she inched toward Riley on the bed. “Maybe they stole you right from the hospital. Used to happen all the time. Or I guess you could have just been adopted.” Shelby stuck out her tongue, obviously uninterested in the simplest solution.

  “I wasn’t adopted.”

  Shelby burst out laughing and tossed the birth certificate off the side of the bed. It floated down gently then Riley reached over to grab it.

  “See? You can’t quite let go…Jane.”

  “Shut up.”

  Shelby was silent for a beat then sighed dramatically. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’re not even the slightest bit curious.”

  Riley shrugged. “It’s not that I’m not curious about it. I just—I don’t know.” She studied the certificate, scrutinizing it yet again. Could there be something to this? “My parents are my parents.”

  Shelby snatched the certificate back and raised her eyebrows. “Are they?”

  Something shifted inside of Riley as she stared Shelby down. Shelby’s brows were raised, her head cocked so that a shock of her dark hair snaked over her shoulder. Riley blinked. With her too-small, deep-set eyes, Shelby was a spitting image of her mother. They both had the same relaxed mouth, the same ski-jump nose that hooked just a smidge to the left.

  “You’re lame.” Riley turned away from her friend, her eyes catching the picture she kept on her nightstand: Riley smashed between her mother and father, all three pressing their cheeks together. Riley had a big toothy grin with cheeks that were ruddy and round. Her father’s smile was easy and relaxed, his narrow face regal next to Riley’s. Her mother had high cheekbones and pale, porcelain skin, her heart-shaped lips pressed in a tight pink smile.

  I don’t look anything like them.

  “What if your real parents are looking for you? Or what if they’re, like, serial killers and that’s why your adoptive parents, Glen and Nadine Spencer, are so hell-bent on hiding you from the outside world?” Shelby lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “They could have spies everywhere.” She jabbed an index finger toward a construction worker leaning over the side of a cherry picker as he worked on a telephone cable outside. “He probably isn’t even a telephone guy. He’s probably sitting up there listening to everything we say.”

  “So is he spying for me or on me?” Riley was joking, trying to keep the conversation light, but she crossed the room and pulled the blinds anyway.

  “You know I’m right. They’ve only let you spend the night at my house one time. One time!”

  “Because I came home from that sleepover with gum in my hair.”

  “And how many other slumber parties have you gone to?”

  Riley turned away. There was always a good excuse. Her father surprised her with a trip to Six Flags, so she had to skip Erica Fitzpatrick’s twelfth birthday. And she was going to go to Cassie O’Hara’s slumber party when she turned fourteen, but her mother got tickets to a musical in the city. She couldn’t go to Shelby’s last two slumber parties, but she couldn’t exactly remember why.

  Riley pushed the thoughts out of her head. Her parents weren’t trying to hide anything…

  She knew who she was. She knew who her parents were. But here was a birth certificate, hidden, buried away. Tangible proof that her parents didn’t tell her everything.

  “They probably pried you right out of your birth mother’s arms.”

  “What are you talking about? My parents are the most polite—”

  Shelby snatched a pillow off the bed and clutched it tight to her chest, pleading in a breathy Southern accent. “No, please, sir, not my baby! She’s all I have!”

  Riley wanted to say something back but couldn’t form the words. Even as Shelby went on with her ridiculous rendition, Riley couldn’t find the words to stop her.

  “Oh my God. What if your dad had guns and he was all, ‘pew! pew!’ Like Wild Bill Hitchcock and stuff?”

  “Hickok.”

  “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was Wild Bill Hickok. And my dad doesn’t have any guns.” Riley made a conscious effort to stop biting her lower lip and whirled to face Shelby, who was pantomiming finger guns and kicking down doors. “Well, he has one gun, but it’s like an antique or something. That’s not weird though, right?”

  “Not according to the NRA.”

  “Does your dad have any?”

  Shelby looked over the top of the magazine she had just picked up. “Are you kidding? Eight kids? My parents are unfortunately all about the making love, not war.” She shuddered.

  Riley swallowed and tried to force a smile at Shelby’s joke. But her mind was already spinning off in a thousand different directions. What if…

  “No, you’re being stupid and you’re making me paranoid. This thing probably just came with the baby book, and my parents are overprotective just because they are, and my dad has a super old-fashioned gun that his dad gave him or something.”

  Shelby flipped a page in her magazine. “Whatever makes you feel better, Ry.”

  “That’s not weird.” Riley spoke defiantly to Shelby’s bent head and the couple on the cover of US magazine—but she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

  “Of course not, Ry. It’s like in the Constitution or the habeas corpus or whatever. Americans can have guns and parents can be paranoid. No big.”

  Riley sat delicately at the end of her bed, and Shelby put down her magazine and straightened.

  “Are you seriously freaked out about this?”

  “No—no, it’s just, I don’t know—”

  “A coincidence?”

  Riley turned to face her friend. “Coincidence? Five seconds ago, my dad was a baby-stealing Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Hitchcock. And why don’t you just ask to see your real birth certificate or something? If they won’t let you, then you know.” Shelby’s eyes were glazing again as she came up with a new storyline for Riley’s so-called life. “And then you can confront them with the evidence.”

  “And what am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Mom, Dad, did you snatch me away from my birth parents?’”

  Now Shelby was biting her bottom lip. “Right. If they really are criminals, accusing them like that could make them snap. That could be their trigger.”

  “Their trigger?”

  “For going on a murderous rampage. And since you have no next-door neighbor, I would have to give the interview saying that the Spencers were nice, quiet people who kept to themselves mostly. The girl seemed well adjusted, nice enough. Kind of paranoid, but I guess that’s to be expected of a child cut out of her own mother’s womb.”

  Riley crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So now my parents aren’t just kidnappers; they’re psychopaths on a murderous rampage who cut me out of my mother’s womb.”

  “It’s possible I watch too much TV.”

  • • •

  Shelby blew Riley a kiss before dancing down the newly constructed front steps and locking herself in her Toyota Corolla—a rusting, paint-chipped heap that lacked a left turn signal but had a radio that could be heard from space. She cranked up a Death to Sea Monkeys song, and Riley poked her head in through the passenger side window while she and Shelby belted out the last refrain of “Underwater Universe.” At the last drumbeat, Ril
ey stepped away, watching the Corolla roll down the driveway and into the street.

  Riley suddenly felt very alone—last person in the world alone—as she watched Shelby’s ancient clunker head away from the house. The car looked remarkably out of place against the stark, modern houses all lined up in orderly rows. She stood on the porch, watching as the sun dipped, bleeding a heavy pink into the twilight. There was no sound out here. No sirens, no cars, no horns or echoed conversation, and suddenly the birth certificate, the emptiness, struck an icy finger of fear down the back of Riley’s neck.

  I’m being ridiculous.

  But still she couldn’t tear her eyes from scanning the horizon, from scrutinizing every house she could see: the black, gaping windows, empty driveways, open roads. It looked as if she was in a universe all her own, as if someone had sucked up every human being and left everything else as it was. Out here, all alone, in the middle of nowhere.

  Riley thought of the birth certificate, of Shelby’s ridiculous stories about Riley being snatched and hidden away from her “real” family.

  But if you wanted to keep something hidden, the Blackwood Hills Estates was the place to do it.

  Riley’s phone was chirping with a missed text when she came back into the house.

  RY-PIE DAD & I ARE GOING TO BE LATE. 9:30? EAT SOMETHING. DO HOMEWORK. LV MOM

  She instinctively called back, chewing the inside of her cheek while her mother’s phone rang and rang.

  Did they ever say where they were going?

  Random, irrational scenarios played out in Riley’s head: her parents were shopping for another child. They were spying on her birth parents. They were going to check on Jane.

  She shook her head and laughed at herself for letting Shelby’s crazy ideas get to her. Her parents were her parents, and they were late because they were at a fundraiser or at her father’s work or watching one of their mega-boring foreign films.

  But baby Jane…

  Riley shimmied the birth certificate out from the biology textbook she had absently shoved it in and settled herself in front of her laptop. She typed JANE ELIZABETH O’LEARY into the search engine, culling through the pages and pages of hits that came up. When she exhausted her Google search, she tried out a few others—People Search, People Find, Yellow Pages. Each turned up a handful of names that semi-matched her search parameters, but nothing was a direct match. Riley snatched up the birth certificate then carefully typed in Jane’s city and state of birth, Granite Cay, Oregon. The same pages she had filtered through the night before popped up, but this time, a little animated map also showed up as well. Riley clicked on it then felt her breath catch. Granite Cay, Oregon, was just a few inches from the California university she was about to visit.