by Hannah Jayne
They wouldn’t steal a child.
She sat up when her father turned into the opening of the Blackwood Hills Estates. Everything was manicured and tended to outside the gate, and big spotlights illuminated bunches of petunias and sweet alyssum as they flourished out of their spots and nipped at the edge of the grass. The grass was large and sprawling, so green it looked almost cartoonish and fake. But there was a man in a grey jumpsuit crouched behind a dribbling sprinkler. He had an ill-fitting trucker’s hat with the words STAR LANDSCAPING printed on it, and he looked up as Riley’s father’s car passed through the gates.
“Isn’t it weird to have a guy doing landscaping in the middle of the night?”
“It’s not that late. And to his credit, the guy was out here when I left to get you too. Hard worker. Besides, the floodlights make it look like daytime out there.”
• • •
Riley dropped the plug in her bathtub and nudged on the faucet. She gave it a moment before she sunk into the extra-hot suds. Thoughts of Jane Elizabeth pricked at her peripheral.
I will not think about her. I’m done with that, done with stupid “adventures.”
But even when she pulled her iPad into the bathroom and turned her favorite playlist way up, her thoughts went back to Jane. And every time she closed her eyes, it was a slide show—the plain, boring images on the postcards, the ominous notes on the other side, and the face of the man, smiling down at her from the train platform.
• • •
“You know what? You never finish anything. I’m not going to let you be my Lamaze coach because halfway through, you’ll wimp out and leave me there, half a baby coming out of my—”
“I get it, Shelbs.”
Shelby held the folded certificate and waved it at Riley as if she’d never seen it before.
“I just—I’m done with it, Shelbs. I checked everything. There is no information on any of these people. I’m telling you, it came with the baby book.”
“Right.” Shelby pushed her yogurt away and smoothed the certificate on the table. “They totally use a real sticker seal and actual stamped baby feet to make those throwaway inserts. You think I haven’t seen a thousand baby books? I swear my mom bought an eighty pack after my first brother was born.”
Riley tossed her a look.
“I know, Ry, you’re totally right. You exhausted all available search options. If only there were some other way.” She stroked a long, imaginary chin beard. “Or someone we could ask. You know, like, maybe the people who hid the baby book? If only there were some way to contact them…”
“Fine, Shelby.”
“You don’t even have to mention Jane’s birth certificate. Just ask them to show you yours. That’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s it? You’ll drop this whole thing if I show you my birth certificate?”
“Totally. That way I know that you have one and I won’t be under civic obligation to turn you in to the police. I’ll totally drop the Jane thing. But the postcard…”
Riley felt her eyes widen. She hadn’t told Shelby about the second one, and sitting with her now, Riley wasn’t sure she wanted to. She wanted to pretend they were nothing, but someone sent them. Someone knew her—maybe better than she knew herself. The thought sent icy fingers of fear up Riley’s neck and she shivered. “I’m going to toss my stuff,” she said, standing.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Riley looked up to see JD smiling at her. Her heart did a double pump, but it was because of Jane, not JD.
“So, you’re at school today.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
JD pushed his hands in his back pockets. “I don’t know. Thought maybe if you found out your parents had snatched you or that you were Jane O’Leary, some sort of super spy, you’d ditch this place.” He was grinning, his tone light, but the comment weighed on her.
“No, I’m just plain old Riley Spencer, daughter of Glen and Nadine Spencer.” She said it as much for her benefit as for his. “I’m giving up on Jane. It was stupid anyway.”
JD shrugged. “I thought it was kind of cool—trying to track down this mysterious girl.”
Riley felt herself smile. “It was until I came to a hundred dead ends.”
JD cocked an eyebrow. “Well, what mystery chick would let herself be found the first time someone goes looking for her?”
• • •
Riley was shoving her Spanish book into her backpack when Shelby approached her.
“Need a ride, toots?”
Riley shook her head. “My dad is picking me up on his way home from work.”
“You know what you have to do tonight, right?”
“Um, conjugate irregular verbs until my eyes bleed?”
Shelby let out an exasperated groan. “No, you’re going to get your birth certificate.”
“Right.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“Fine, Shelbs, whatever. Bye.”
Shelby took a few steps backward and waved. “Good-bye, mysterious stranger.”
Riley hiked up her backpack and grumbled. So she would ask her parents to see her birth certificate. They would show it to her. And Riley would know that she wasn’t adopted or kidnapped. She would know that she wasn’t Jane Elizabeth O’Leary.
But who was the real Jane Elizabeth?
“Hey, Riley!” Trevor Gallagher was making a beeline toward her.
Riley waved. “Hey, Trevor. What’s up?”
“Just wanted to make sure you got the card.”
The hairs on Riley’s arms stood upright. “The card?”
“I put it on your purse after the carnival. Just wanted to make sure you got yours.”
Riley nodded, dumbfounded, even as Trevor walked away.
Trevor Gallagher gave her the postcards? But why?
By the time Riley snapped back to reality, Trevor had been swallowed into the crowd of Hawthorne High students on their way out, and Riley couldn’t find him.
“Hey, turnip!”
Riley spun to find her father leaning out the driver’s side window.
“Oh, hey, Dad.”
“Well, are you going to stand out there or get in the car?”
“I’m coming, sorry.”
She closed the door behind her and her father hit the gas. But her mind was still processing Trevor and the postcards. She vowed to ask Trevor about them tomorrow.
“One mystery solved,” she muttered under her breath.
“What’s that, hon?”
“Nothing. Sorry.”
They were just approaching the Blackwood Hills highway by the time the general post-school catch-up—How was school? Do you have homework?—was finished. Riley was quiet for a bit. She had filed away Trevor and the postcards—now it was time to appease her best friend.
Riley played with the seat belt crossing her chest. “So, I was thinking about taking driver’s ed next semester.”
She could see her father’s cheeks push up into a grin. “And here I thought you weren’t interested in getting your license.”
“Well, I wasn’t because I had Shelby, but now that we live all the way out here…” Riley swallowed. “So, you think it’s a good idea?”
“Of course.”
“The thing is, I need to bring my birth certificate to register.” Riley cut her eyes to her father, working hard to track his every movement.
“You know, we’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do. I’m not even sure I know where your mother has your birth certificate, turnip. Maybe you’d better wait on the driving stuff until we’re all settled.”
Tears pricked at the back of Riley’s eyes.
“No, I want to take it next semester. And wouldn’t Mom have all our important records in a safe deposit box or something? Since we lost all our pictures and stuff at the othe
r house.”
Riley thought she saw a look of relief skitter over her father’s face. “That old place! Do you remember that house? We had the most beautiful hydrangeas.”
“I kind of remember. Why were all my baby pictures ruined again?”
“The roof leaked.”
Riley worried her bottom lip. “But my birth certificate was fine. I’ll bet Mom knows exactly where it is.”
Riley watched her father nod slowly and swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Sure. But you know that you won’t be able to drive much next semester. Your mother and I both need our cars. She’ll be off for summer when you are, so then you would be able to get a lot of practice time in. Take driver’s education then and concentrate on school in between.”
“But I can get my birth certificate, right? So I can be prepared?”
“No need to jump the gun, turnip. Mom and I can take care of it.”
He turned and grinned at her, but Riley felt like she had been punched in the stomach.
• • •
Riley lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The glint from the streetlight outside cut a yellow diagonal stripe from end to end that shifted with every howling screech of the wind.
She wasn’t going to fall asleep.
Her mind was a constant churn of the past days’ events, but tonight it always came back to the same thing: the postcards. She knew how Trevor had gotten the first one in her purse—it must have fallen in when Shelby grabbed the bag—but what about the next one?
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
He hadn’t been on the college tour and the two didn’t have any classes together this year. They were just casual friends—so casual Riley didn’t even have his phone number or email address. Why send someone you hardly know postcards with weird, creepy messages?
Riley kicked off her covers and sat on the floor, pulling her purse into her lap. She yanked out everything—whatever she needed always seemed to migrate to the bottom—and pulled the postcards out of the depths. Only now, there was something wedged in between them.
Riley shook out a tiny envelope, her heart thundering in her throat. Another weird message? A note from Trevor explaining the cards?
Her name was written on the front of the envelope in blue ballpoint pen and underlined twice. She popped the envelope open and a gift card to Sweet Retreat fell out.
“Riley Spencer” was written in the “TO” portion; “FROM” was “The ASB.”
She read:
Thank you for volunteering for the HHS Winter Carnival. Enjoy a free ice cream cone courtesy of Sweet Retreat Ice Cream. The Associated Student Body.
Riley started to breathe hard. That’s the card that Trevor was talking about when he asked if she had “gotten hers.” He didn’t know anything about the postcards.
He wasn’t the one who dropped them into her purse.
SOMETHING LOST HAS NOW BEEN FOUND.
Riley felt a tightening in her chest as sweat pricked at her hairline. She felt the familiar pins and needles feeling in her hands and feet. She was starting to panic.
Outside, the wind cut a wild path, and within seconds, the rain started like a snare drum, an insistent rhythm against the window. Her curtains caught and fluttered up, and Riley went to the window, slamming the one-inch open section closed.
A good gust of wind…
The hairs on the back of Riley’s neck stood up, pricking electricity into her skin. Someone had come into her house. Someone had pulled the webpage of a missing child up on her computer and walked out of the house, leaving the front door open.
Someone who knew who she was.
• • •
The house was deathly quiet when Riley woke up the next morning. When she padded down the stairs, hers was the only place setting on the table—the usual bowl-plate-spoon, a glass of juice, and the little white pill. She hadn’t had any reaction since she stopped taking it. She hadn’t felt better or worse. She didn’t want to believe that maybe her parents were drugging her, shoving pills down her throat that might make her forget things or make her more compliant, or whatever they did. She rolled the pill between her forefinger and thumb before dropping it into the sink and flipping on the garbage disposal. The gurgling, chopping sound of the blades felt like they were eating their way through Riley’s life, her normalcy. Everything was a chopped-up mess.
There was a note propped against her juice glass:
We’re at the farmers’ market. Eat breakfast!
There were the usual x’s and o’s, and her mom’s flowery signature on the bottom.
Riley put her unused bowl and spoon away, her stomach turning in on itself, anxiety and uncertainty turning her saliva sour.
She nearly dropped her juice glass when her cell phone started blaring.
“Hey, Shelbs. You totally made me jump.”
“That’s because you’re living in the neighborhood that technology forgot. I’m picking you up. I need a Cinnabon and a new backpack. One of the twins barfed in mine.”
“Gross. But my parents aren’t here. I can’t leave.”
Shelby groaned into the phone. “Call them. Tell them I’ll pick you up and make you wear a seat belt and take your Flintstone vitamins. Seriously. It’s a matter of puke or death.”
Riley sucked in a breath, one that bolstered the nagging suspicion in her gut. “You know what? Head over. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”
Riley shimmied into her jacket and hiked up her purse before settling on the porch steps. The sky was a bright, crisp blue, all evidence of last night’s pounding rain gone. The sunshine bounced off the windows, giving the impression that the half-empty Blackwood Hills Estates was a cheery, bustling neighborhood.
Riley shivered. Her cell phone chirped.
TWIN BARFERS R TWIN BARFING. C U IN 20.
She looked at the locked door behind her then speed-walked to the empty house across the street. If someone was peering into her window, or even just staring her down the night she left for the school trip, she wanted to know who they were.
She knocked and waited, pressing her ear against the door. Silence. She found the doorbell and mashed that too, the same chimes as her house had making a muffled ring inside. Riley was peering into the first-floor windows, her eyes scanning the empty foyer, the desolate living room, when she heard a twig crack behind her.
She stiffened immediately.
“Are you moving in or something?”
Riley whirled. A girl was standing on the stretch of dirt that should have been landscaping, her hands on her hips. She looked to be about Riley’s age.
“Uh, no. I just thought that maybe someone lived here.”
The girl swung her head. “Not likely. My parents just looked at the place. There’s a big gaping hole in one of the windows. Someone was squatting there. The real estate lady was super embarrassed.” The girl grinned. “She ran in front of us and dumped all his shit in the trash.”
Riley’s skin started tingling. Someone had been watching her. It was true.
“Hey, Bryn!”
Riley looked over the girl’s shoulder to see a couple standing outside of a car, waving.
“That’s my parents,” Bryn said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
Riley stared after the girl as her stomach started to roil. Someone was squatting there. Someone was watching her. She edged around the front and tugged at the garbage bag on the curb, yanking until it tore open. A tattered blanket fell out, a crunched up sweatshirt that looked like it had been used for a pillow. A couple of Big Gulp cups and Snicker’s bar wrappers and, shoved way in the back, a cheap pair of binoculars. Riley reached for them, her entire body feeling slimy when her hand closed over them. She pulled them out and the case came with them, a Big Mac wrapper stuck to the side.
“Gross.”
Something
rattled as she went to toss the binoculars back. There was something in the case. Riley rooted around until her fingers closed around the tiny metal charm. It looked like a silver angel—or it would have, if its wing and head hadn’t been broken off. She studied it until Shelby’s beast-mobile coughed up the street. Then she jammed it in her pocket.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or your parents having sex,” Shelby said when Riley belted herself into her seat.
“I think someone has been watching me,” Riley said, turning down the radio. She jabbed a finger toward the house. “From there.”
“Like a new neighbor? Is he hot? Please say he’s hot.”
Riley shook her head. “I’m not even completely sure it’s a guy. I couldn’t see anything. This is getting creepy. I think a guy was following me in Granite Cay too.”
“You think, or you know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Shelby flipped on her blinker, gunning the old car onto the highway. “It means you tend to lean toward the paranoid.”
“I do? You’re the one who’s sure I’ve been kidnapped.”
“And that turned out to be nothing, right? What did your parents say?”
Riley bit her thumbnail. “I didn’t ask them about Jane.”
“Let me get this straight: you jump on a train with a total delinquent to go searching for a girl on a birth certificate, and when that turns up zilch, you don’t even bother to ask your parents. James Bond you are not.”
Riley stared out the windshield, pressing her feet firmly against the floor. She needed something solid; she needed something to connect to.
“They wouldn’t let me see my birth certificate.”
“What?”
Riley swallowed. “They said it was in a box somewhere and they would ‘take care of it.’ My mom told me all my baby stuff was ruined in a flood, but my dad told me it was a leaky roof. My mom gives me pills every morning, but I can’t even look at the bottle.”
“There has to be logical explanations for all that, Ry. I was totally messing with you. I didn’t think you’d take it so seriously.”
Riley sucked in a breath. “There’s something else. I was at home the other night and the doorbell rang. When I came back upstairs, there was a poster of a missing kid on my screen.”