by Hannah Jayne
“You just don’t understand. I used to know who I was. Now I have no idea. I don’t know what’s been a lie, what’s real. I feel like I’ve been play-acting this whole time.”
“Riley, there’s nothing different about you. You’re still the same person—you just found a birth certificate. And even if it is yours, it’s not going to change who you are right now or any of your experiences in the past.”
“But—”
JD reached out and put his hands on Riley’s. “You are who you are, period. What you or other people expect you to be doesn’t figure in to the equation. Jane or Riley—it doesn’t matter. You’re you.”
Riley sat back, considering. She pasted on a contented smile for JD, all the while thinking, But who am I?
Riley dumped a few bills on the end of the table, wrestling her coat and backpack from the booth. “This was a mistake. I have to get back. This was so dumb.”
“Ry! Ry!”
She heard JD’s voice behind her, but it already sounded too far away.
I’m no one, Riley thought. Maybe I don’t exist at all.
She slipped into a coffee shop and took a seat by the window, tucking herself against the wall while she pulled her laptop out of her backpack. She started it up, her hands flying over the keyboard.
RILEY ALLEN SPENCER.
The search immediately popped up a half-dozen other Riley Spencer’s before she found a tiny mention of herself tucked between a professor and a mechanic.
Spencer, Riley. Sophomore.
It was a grainy school picture reprinted in the Hawthorne High Hornet. Riley was being quoted about a student and teacher who were murdered last year. It was a brainless, stock quote—“We’re all a little more aware of each other”—that she couldn’t remember saying. And her picture—she recognized herself but just barely. She looked like every other teenaged girl in a school photo in a school newspaper ever.
If she had been kidnapped, did her real family wonder what she looked like? Would they remember her? Would they recognize her? What was going on?
A sob choked in the back of her throat. She snapped her laptop shut and was startled to see JD sitting across from her, holding out her cell phone.
“You forgot this.”
She reached for it, silently, but he didn’t let it go. “You OK?”
Riley blew out a world-on-her-shoulders sigh. “Why would my parents be hiding a birth certificate in my baby book if it wasn’t mine? And then, these people don’t even exist?”
JD shook his head. “I have no idea, Ry. You should just ask them.” He reached over and brushed her cheek with his thumb. She didn’t even know she was crying.
“Second time I had to do that today.”
Riley sniffed and smiled. Something about JD—maybe it was the fact that he was a loner or that he didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought—made her feel comfortable.
“You could just ask,” he repeated.
“No. I wasn’t supposed to be going through my mom’s things when I found the baby book. And then I snooped through that. She’ll be pissed at me.”
JD sat back in his chair and kicked out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “So just decide what’s worse—your parents being pissed at you or you never knowing who Jane Elizabeth O’Leary is.”
Riley chewed her bottom lip. Two days ago, finding Jane seemed like a fun adventure. Now it had turned into an obsession. She had to know.
“Here.” JD pushed a white plate with an enormous chocolate chip cookie on it. “I find sugar is brain food.”
Riley grinned, breaking off a piece. JD did the same and she knocked her cookie hunk against his. “Cheers.”
“To solving mysteries?”
“Something like that.” She popped the cookie piece in her mouth and chewed, very aware that JD’s eyes were on her, studying her.
“What?” she asked, heat burning the tops of her earlobes.
JD looked at the table, but he was still smiling. “Nothing. I just never thought that I would have spent the afternoon skipping school with someone like you.”
Riley’s brows went up. “Someone like me?”
He broke off another bite of cookie. “A goody-goody.”
She rolled her eyes. “And I never thought that I would be sitting in a café, sharing a giant cookie with a juvenile delinquent.”
As soon as the words were out of Riley’s mouth, she wanted to take them back. Something dark flashed in JD’s eyes, but he tried to pass it off, digging into his wallet. All traces of his playful smile were gone as he dumped a few bills on the table.
“No—I didn’t mean—”
JD stood. “What? It’s nothing. I just feel like heading out now. I’ve got some things I want to do before I get back to Boone.”
No more we, and Riley was stung.
“I didn’t mean that I think you’re a criminal or—”
But JD already had his back toward her, his backpack slung over one shoulder. “Later, Ry.”
She watched, breathless, as he walked out the glass door, letting it slam shut behind him. She slapped her laptop shut and threw it into her backpack, trying her best to keep her eye on JD’s retreating back as he beelined away from Riley.
“JD!” she called when she hit the sidewalk. “JD!”
He didn’t turn and she was losing ground. She bolted into the street but didn’t hear the screech until the grille of the car was just inches from her. Everything dropped into a paralyzing silence; everyone moved in slow motion.
She thought she heard someone say her name. She thought she felt hands on her shoulders, around her waist, people carrying her gingerly.
“Riley! Riley!” She blinked, and JD’s face—eyes wide with concern—came into focus.
“I didn’t hit her!” a woman was yelling, her voice high and hysterical. “She ran out into the street.”
Riley was sitting in a metal chair though she had no idea how she got there. JD was crouched in front of her, holding both of her hands. She felt another hand tapping her shoulder gently.
“She wasn’t hit, but she’s rattled. Is there someone I can call for you? What’s your name? I can call your parents for you.”
Riley turned toward the man’s voice. It was the guy from the train station, from the hospital—and now right here, on the street. He seemed to have a very faint accent, but Riley couldn’t place it.
“Are you OK? I’m a doctor—”
She heard JD’s voice. “She’s fine, just a little stunned.”
Riley hoped she was nodding her head, but everything felt totally disconnected—even her own limbs. Finally, she was able to force her lips to move. “I’m OK,” she said, her voice small and breathy. “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
JD looked at her, his eyebrows pressed together. “Do you want me to call your parents?” he asked once the crowd had dispersed.
“That guy. The doctor. I saw him on the train and at the hospital.”
JD nodded slowly, taking her hand and helping her up. Panic shot through the nothingness she felt a second ago. “I think he’s following me.”
“Riley, he’s a doctor. He rides the train.”
“But he was right here,” Riley said, leaning in.
“This town is like four square miles. Of course you’re going to run into him.”
The sobs came out of nowhere.
“Ry—”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“We’ll just get you home and—”
The tears wracked her harder. “That’s just it. What if I am Jane? What if—if my parents have been lying to me my whole life?” She shook her head, horrified at how ridiculous her fit was sounding. “Oh my God. This is so stupid. I’m just spazzing out. I should never have dragged you into this. Riley—Jane Elizabeth—b
oth of us are unstable.”
JD shook his head but smiled. “I’ll be sure to mention both your personalities on the nuthouse intake form.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “Then I’d start out being Jane Elizabeth.” She sniffed. “The girl without a past.”
He slung an arm across her shoulders. “And I’m the guy who can’t escape his.”
Heat flushed Riley’s cheeks, but JD’s smile was soft.
• • •
Everyone else on the bus was asleep except for Riley. JD was stretched across two seats, his heavy black boots sticking out into the aisle, his hands clasped behind his head. Shelby had a brand-new Hudson U sweatshirt balled up under her cheek and was quietly drooling onto the glossy satin D. Riley felt like she couldn’t close her eyes even if she wanted to—like if she did, she might open them up again into a different life, a different person.
What if I am Jane?
The thought was heavy in her gut.
Do I have sisters and brothers? Would I have had a whole different life?
She thought about her parents—overprotective—but benign and sweet. Her father taught her to ride a bike. Her mother helped her paint her room.
But still the thought niggled at her.
This is crazy, Riley thought as the bus crossed the Welcome to Crescent City sign. She knew her parents. She trusted them. And she was a jerk for accusing them of being ruthless kidnappers.
But there are no pictures…
Her head lolled to the side, looking across the aisle where JD was lying, the faint light from outside casting spider-web shadows down his cheeks. He looked peaceful asleep. But suddenly, he blinked at her. Riley’s heart did a little double thump and she saw his grin spread in the darkness.
“You OK?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, totally.”
JD closed his eyes again but didn’t stop smiling. “Lies. I can see it with my eyes closed.”
Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion of the last two days, or that as of now, JD was just as close to Jane Elizabeth as Riley was, but she started talking. “I don’t know. I just feel—”
“Silly? Crazy?” JD shrugged back at her. “Don’t worry, it’s no big deal. You have questions.”
Riley worried her bottom lip and slipped her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves. “Do you think they’re out there looking for me? I mean, if it’s true, you know?”
JD shifted in his seat so he was closer to her. “Ry, it’s not that I don’t believe you, but we looked. There were no missing kid reports that matched your description.”
It was like a fist to her gut.
“That’s right. If my parents snatched me, then no one was looking for me. No one cared that I was missing.”
Before she knew it, Riley had slipped out of her seat and into JD’s. His arm was around her and she was leaning into him, somehow comforted by the constant tick of his heart, the systematic rise and fall of his breath. She didn’t consider what Shelby would say, what her parents would say—what every other person on the bus would say if they saw her curled into him, JD, the bad kid. It felt good to melt into his arms—into the arms of someone she could count on. She started. Did I just say that I could count on JD? She shook herself—or tried to. She was trembling, but she refused to cry.
He looked down at her, his eyes glittering in what remained of the light. “Maybe no one kidnapped you. Maybe there’s another explanation.”
“I don’t want to think of my parents that way, but what other explanation is there? I have no baby pictures, no family, they keep me under lock and key. I’m willing to believe I was adopted—”
JD’s eyebrows went up, slightly amused.
“—but there isn’t even the slightest clue that I was adopted.”
“Ry,” JD whispered, “you don’t have to figure everything out right now, OK? Give yourself another couple of hours to be Riley Spencer.”
“Why should I do that?”
JD wouldn’t look at her. “Because I was just beginning to really like her.”
The bus lurched to a stop and the running lights went on. Everyone started to scramble, Riley included.
“Hey,” Shelby said, her eyes clouded with sleep. “Did you sit somewhere else?”
Riley felt her cheeks flush red. She glanced over her shoulder at JD who was gathering up his backpack. “No,” she said quickly. “I was here the whole time. You’re just a heavy sleeper.” She smiled thinly, the whole time her heart beating a steady rhythm: liar. Liar. Liar.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Cassia Lohmen went into labor tonight.”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yeah. She asked me if I could come over and watch the girls overnight, so I won’t be riding home with you. Her sister is going to come get me and drop me off on her way to the hospital. Do you think you could catch a ride home?”
Riley frowned. “Oh, yeah. OK.” She thought of the long stretch of highway ahead of her—there was nothing for twenty miles between the high school and Riley’s new housing development. It was desolate and blank. “I can just call my parents.”
They shuffled off the bus.
“OK, I’m off to Cassia’s.” Shelby blew an air kiss. “And I still hate you for not telling me everything on the bus.” She pulled Riley close, her fingers wrapping around Riley’s upper arm. “You’re calling me first thing in the morning, right?”
Riley nodded, little pricks of heat going up her spine. She couldn’t tell Shelby about JD—she kind of didn’t want to. But she whispered, “Sure,” anyway.
Shelby ran off and Riley fumbled in her purse, looking for her cell phone. She yanked out her makeup bag, her notebook, and was going for the phone when a folded piece of paper popped out of the depths of the bag and flopped onto the ground. She snatched it up and frowned. Another black-and-white postcard. This one was even more random—a little kid, maybe ten or so—blowing out birthday candles. There were other kids in the picture, most in profile, and a woman leaning toward the birthday boy. Her long hair shadowed most of her face. That was it.
Riley turned the card over, her breath hitching.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
SIX
The words were carefully written in all capitals, same as the other postcard. Her fingers began to tremble.
She wanted to crumple the card. She wanted to tear it up and toss it in the garbage right behind the birth certificate and the first postcard and go back to believing that there was nothing extraordinary about her life. She wished she had never known Jane O’Leary.
Riley didn’t know how long she stood there, staring, examining the note. There were no identifying marks on it, nothing else except the ominous message. She looked up, hoping that someone would take credit, would tell her it was a joke. She waited for Shelby to pop out from somewhere, laughing.
But Riley was alone.
A couple kids had moved to the benches across the lot to wait for their rides. Someone was smoking out against the back forty, the curls of cigarette smoke catching on the overhead lights.
Riley’s heart started to thud.
Numbly, she dug into her purse, this time refusing to look down. Her eyes scanned the parking lot until her fingers closed around her phone.
“Riley!”
Riley whirled, the phone sliding out of her hand and skittering across the concrete. Someone was parked in the darkness.
And now that someone was running toward her.
Adrenaline poured through her, and every synapse was on high alert: move-run-stop-scream. Her chest tightened and everything about the weekend—every dead-end search, every time she saw the strange man in her peripheral vision—came crashing back over her, and Riley willed her legs to move, to turn, to run, but they wouldn’t. Her mind splintered, telling her to go for the phone, to turn around and run.
“Riley!”
“Who’s there?” She was surprised by her own voice.
“Aw, turnip!”
Her dad popped over the curb and gathered her into a tight hug, completely oblivious to Riley’s terror.
“Geez! I can feel your heart practically popping into my chest!” he said jovially.
“That’s because you scared me half to death!” Riley snapped. “What are you doing here?”
“Mama Webber called Mama Spencer and let her know that Cassia was in labor and that Shelby was going to stay with the girls, so here I am.”
Riley followed her father to the car, tossing her backpack over the front seat and settling in. She blew out a breath, hoping to stave off a heart attack as everything churned inside her head: who sent her the note? Was this her real father? She stole a glance, examining her dad’s profile.
Ask them, JD’s voice echoed in her head. Ask to see your birth certificate.
As quickly as the thought appeared, it was stamped out by another, more pressing one: leave it alone. Riley got into the car, slamming the door behind her.
Her teeth had barely stopped chattering, and she refused to look into her purse, knowing the postcard was there. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, and now she couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Any connection to Jane O’Leary—or the mysterious postcards—would keep her tethered here, jumping at every breath.
Leave it alone.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight, turnip.”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.” Riley pressed her head against the cool window glass and closed her eyes, as much to trick herself that she was tired as to trick her father. But she felt every bump in the road, heard her father every time he took a deep breath or rumbled a few lines from whatever song was playing on the oldies station.
Through lowered lashes, Riley watched her father’s hand as it reached across the console, settling on the stereo.
She knew those hands. The long, thin fingers, the half-moon of white on his nails. They wouldn’t hurt her. They wouldn’t hurt anyone else.