The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  My dad shook his head violently, vehemently. “Nuhuh. No way. I’m staying with Kyra.” His hand flipped over and squeezed mine. “No way I’m letting you outta my sight again,” he vowed.

  The emergency room is never the kind of place you want to hang out. The last time I was here the whole team had shown up to check on our shortstop, Carrie Dreyer. She’d come barreling into second and hit the base weird. When she went down screaming and everyone gathered around her, we realized that her bone was sticking clean through her skin. It had been a compound fracture, and she’d needed two surgeries and a titanium rod, and couldn’t come back that season.

  And now, because I’d disappeared, I had no idea if Carrie had ever played again.

  The ER was slow when my mom and dad walked me inside, so we didn’t have to wait long. It was strange to fill out my own admission forms, or any forms for that matter, since I’d never done that before. But now that I was an adult—which was even stranger—my parents were no longer allowed to sign for me. They also weren’t allowed to make decisions on my behalf. The staff made a point of speaking to me instead of to them, and I had to give permission for them even to be in the room while I was examined.

  It was as if I’d suddenly been emancipated, something I’d heard other kids at school talk about before, about how cool it would be to make their own decisions and not have to answer to their parents anymore.

  Yet now that I was here, faced with that exact thing, I was terrified. I felt more and more like a stranger trapped inside my own body. Like a little girl playing dress-up in my mom’s high heels, waiting for someone to come along and send me back to the playground with the other kids.

  I was glad when they stuck me in a private room since it was hard enough to talk about all this with the people who were there to support me. I couldn’t imagine having to explain it in front of complete strangers. The big sliding glass door that led to the hallway outside made a whooshing sound whenever someone came in or out, and I jumped every time it opened.

  Austin’s dad had been right behind us, so after a nurse had taken my vitals—my blood pressure, temperature, pulse—and noted them on my paper-thin chart, he tapped on the door. The glass whooshed as it slid open. “Mind if I come in?”

  I waved him inside, while the nurse told me the doctor would be coming to check on me shortly.

  Gary Wahl didn’t seem any different than he had the last time I’d seen him—a little grayer maybe, if I was looking for it, but other than that the same as he always had.

  He eased onto the stool next to the bed; his eyes, so similar to Austin’s, found me. “I know you already said most of this, but we gotta make it official.” He tapped his pen on a notebook he was holding. “I’ll make it quick,” he adding, smiling in a way that made me think of Austin, and my stomach lurched. But I swear, everything made me think of Austin right about then, and I couldn’t wait for all this to be over with so I could be alone to call him. I just wanted to hear his voice again.

  “You said you don’t remember where you’ve been all this time, the entire five years. Is that right, Kyra?” His voice was so serious, so not-Austin’s-dad’s voice, that I almost—even though it wasn’t even kinda funny—giggled. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never heard him use his cop voice before.

  I took a breath and bit the inside of my lip, nodding solemnly instead. “Yeah. Uh, yes, that’s right.”

  He scribbled my response. “So why don’t we start at the beginning. Tell me where you were and what the last thing you remember was?”

  The game, I thought. I remembered the championship game. I opened my mouth to tell him that. About how Austin had been there, and how he was going to meet us at the Pizza Palace. But my dad answered first. “The light. Tell him about the light.”

  “Oh, Jesus H. Christ,” my mom snapped, pinching her eyes between her finger and thumb. And then she dropped her hand with a sigh and glared at my father. “Are you kidding me with this? You’re not really starting this now, are you?”

  “The light?” Gary looked at each of them and then at me.

  Just then I heard the whooshing sound of the door and I jerked; my attention landed on a woman in the doorway wearing blue scrubs under her white lab coat—the doctor.

  But behind her, in the hallway beyond the door, I saw Tyler, and realized that Gary hadn’t come alone. Tyler had come with him, and he was watching me through the glass, looking at me the way Austin should have been if he had been here the way he was supposed to be.

  Like he was worried about me.

  Things quieted down once I kicked my parents out of my room, something I could do now that I was a legitimate grown-up.

  Before, I would’ve gotten crazy satisfaction from the ability to do things like that.

  My parents went grudgingly, giving the doctor a chance to do her examination, which was pretty limited. She was nice, but there wasn’t much for her to do since I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me.

  “Does this hurt?” Her small hands probed my belly as her eyes, which were sympathetic, met mine.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What about this?” She poked harder, around my hips and into my lower abdomen.

  “No.” I shook my head to emphasize my point. So far there was nothing unusual.

  She looked back to where Gary was making some notes and pretending he couldn’t see or hear us, even though there was no way he couldn’t. I’d asked him to stay, not really wanting to be alone but not wanting my parents arguing over the top of me either.

  “What about sexual assault?” She asked the questions as casually as if she were asking whether I preferred vanilla or strawberry ice cream. “Would you like me to examine you for signs you were assaulted?”

  I wanted to crawl beneath the exam table and never come out. I didn’t bother to see if Gary was looking. I just shook my head again. “I’m fine.”

  She nodded and made a quick note on my chart, and then gave me her hand to help me sit up. “Well, I don’t see anything that jumps out at me. I’ll order up some blood work and send that off to the lab, but I don’t see any reason you can’t go home. Do you have any questions?”

  A million. But again I shook my head. She offered to send in my parents, but I told her to wait. I wanted just a few more minutes of peace.

  I hated this new version of my parents. I hated that they seemed to hate each other and that they couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without freaking out on each other. I hated the blame I could feel oozing from my mom, and the weird stuff my dad was fixated on, and the way the air between them was overflowing with bitterness. But I hated even more the guilt inside me, simmering just below the surface like it was ready to boil over at any moment. Like this was all somehow my fault.

  I clenched my fingers into fists and hid them beneath my legs, where no one could see them, all the while screaming silently inside my own head, where no one could hear my inner tantrum. I bet I could implode, disintegrate into ash on this very spot where I was perched in my hospital gown on the edge of the bed, and no one would even notice.

  I was still answering, or rather not answering, Gary’s questions when a man came in carrying what looked like a blue tackle box filled with test tubes and gauze and white tape and needles.

  “Kyra Agnew?” he asked, as if he had a habit of wandering into the wrong room. He gave Gary a strange look, and I wondered if everyone knew why I was here.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just need to get a little blood for the lab before you go.” He grinned and set his box down while he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He checked the ID bracelet on my wrist against the name on my chart and started getting the tubes and a needle ready.

  Gary pointed to the hallway. “We’re all done here. I’m just gonna have a word with your parents and then we’ll see you back at the ranch.” He leaned down then, not a cop thing but an Austin’s-dad thing, and kissed me on the cheek. “It’s good to have you back, Kyr. Let us know
if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  My eyes stung. I didn’t want to cry, but I kinda was anyway. Even though I hadn’t had the chance to miss anyone, it was nice to know they’d missed me. “Thanks,” I croaked.

  When we were alone, the lab guy examined the crook of my arm. “This’ll only take a second. Anyone ever told you you have great veins?”

  I shrugged because I’d heard that before.

  He seemed pretty young, but I had no idea how to judge that. By the tattoos that covered the parts of his arms I could see? The piercing in his eyebrow that he tried to cover up with one of those little round Band-Aids but was obvious anyway?

  “How old are you?”

  He grinned down at me. “Why? You worried I don’t know what I’m doing? I’m twenty-four, but I been doin’ this for two years at least. I’m the best around; you won’t feel a thing,” he bragged.

  Twenty-four. Just three years older than I was now, and two years older than Austin and Cat.

  My eyes roved over him as he wrapped a strip of rubber around my upper arm and tapped one of the blue vessels that bulged. “Don’t make a fist,” he told me when I started to curl my fingers. “It’s not necessary.”

  He said some things that were probably meant to be distracting, but all I could think was that we could be friends if we wanted to, we were that close in age. He caught me staring, and I dropped my eyes to the needle as it plunged into my arm.

  I’d never been squeamish—not even when it came to watching my own blood being drawn—so it was strange when I felt the prickling, the tingling around the needle.

  “Is it supposed to feel like that?”

  “Like what? Are you feeling a little light-headed or anything?”

  I shook my head. “Just . . . it’s kinda . . . tingly.”

  He popped the second vacuum-sealed vial into the syringe, and it rapidly began filling with blood. He glanced at me and then back to his task, releasing the rubber strip from my upper arm with a snap. “I’m sure it’s fine. And we’re . . . just . . . about . . . done. . . .” With those last words he set the vial back in his box of tricks and reached for a cotton swab, setting it on top of the needle in my arm as he tugged to pull it free.

  But it didn’t budge.

  He pulled again, harder this time, and still the needle stayed where it was, buried in my arm—deep in the vein.

  The tingling sensation persisted, and now I felt a pressure too.

  The guy frowned at it and then at me.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “No . . . it’s, uh . . . fine. . . .”

  We both knew that wasn’t true. The needle should have slid out easily. I’d had this done before, and I’d never seen a needle get stuck before, not ever.

  Beneath the surface of my skin, my vein swelled, bulging outward. The lab guy’s eyes widened. He pulled one more time, this time yanking the thing like he was pulling on a nail stuck in a wall instead of a needle in the soft tissue of my arm.

  I yelped, but more because he scared the crap out of me than because it hurt, although it did kind of hurt too. He staggered backward, a full step away from me, but he had the needle in his hand when he stood upright. He held it in his fist like he was declaring victory or something.

  “Oh, shit!” he cursed when he looked down and noticed the blood that spurted from the wound on my arm. It was only a little bit, but his moment of triumph was over, and he attacked the red smear with the cotton ball. “Sorry about that. Not sure what happened.” He secured the cotton ball with a strip of tape. “It should stop bleeding in about fifteen minutes, and you might have a little bruise for a few days. Nothing to be alarmed about, pretty routine stuff.”

  He had me confirm that my name was correct on my vials of blood and then cleaned and packed up his gear, and the doors whooshed closed behind him.

  By the time I gave my parents the signal that they were out of “time-out” and could come back inside my room, the nurse had returned with my discharge orders. And just like my sketchy memory, there was nothing conclusive about my visit to the hospital. Even the discharge orders were vague. They included scheduling a follow-up appointment with my family doctor to discuss any unusual lab results that might come back, making an appointment with the dentist to have my chipped tooth looked at, a list of phone numbers for local counselors and support groups—in case I wanted to discuss things, which right now sounded like the worst idea ever since I didn’t even know what “things” I would discuss—and getting plenty of rest. That last recommendation was the only idea I could really get behind.

  I had a moment of panic, though, when we were getting ready to go and I was changing back into my filthy uniform—the same one I’d vanished in—and I suddenly realized I had no place to go. That I belonged nowhere.

  I didn’t have a home anymore, not really, because the place I remembered wasn’t really mine anymore; it was just the house I’d grown up in. My home—the house I’d lived in just yesterday, in my mind—was gone now. My parents were no longer together—they’d moved on—and there was a new family living in that house: my mom and her husband and their son.

  I was a stranger to that life.

  The sensation of being unwelcome overwhelmed me even as my dad’s hand closed over mine, and the decision was made for me. “I’ll stay at your mom’s tonight, with you.” And before she could argue or say anything to the contrary, he faced her with his bloodshot eyes. “I’ll sleep in the guest room.”

  “Ben,” my mom interjected, sounding a million times softer than she had when he’d mentioned the light. “Kyra’ll be in the guest room.”

  I guess my bedroom had been part of that whole “getting on with their lives” thing, like getting rid of my dad.

  “Fine,” my dad insisted, his grip tightening. “I’ll sleep on the couch. I already told you; I’m not letting her out of my sight again.” He looked down at me, and for a moment my hurt feelings evaporated. “I’m so so so glad you’re back, Supernova,” he told me on his boozy breath.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS OFFICIAL. I WAS A GUEST IN MY OWN BEDroom.

  It was still my bed and my chest of drawers and probably even my same pillows, but those were the only things that hadn’t changed in the five years I’d been gone. The bedding was new, and still had that stiff, fresh-from-the-bag feel as if it’d never really been used and hadn’t yet gone through a single wash cycle.

  It had been just as weird as I thought it would be, crossing the threshold of the house for the second time that day, only this time understanding that everything really had changed. That this was no longer the home I’d remembered.

  The differences I thought I’d noticed before had finally made sense to my confused brain: the new furniture, no longer the floral-patterned, overstuffed sofas that had once crowded our living room. Now there was a sleek, cool, gray microfiber sectional with a leather ottoman parked in front of it. The big entertainment center that had once housed our giant TV and had been cluttered with books and family photos and handmade ceramic bowls and ashtrays and framed drawings I’d done as a little girl was now gone altogether. There were new photos on the walls, a different family than the one who had lived here before with only one common denominator: my mom.

  I’d wiped my feet on an unfamiliar rug inside the door, and saw that my mom removed her shoes and placed them in a basket by the door—something we’d never done before. I’d followed suit, while my dad came in behind us, ignoring the new rule entirely.

  The kitchen table was the only thing in the house I recognized.

  I didn’t bother asking what they’d done with all my personal belongings. My clothes and my comforter—the one that I’d had since I was eight and was probably too girlie and even a little threadbare, but was so pliable it was like soft, warm dough blanke
ting me whenever I’d climbed into bed. And there were all the pictures of Cat and me that had been plastered on my corkboard, which was also missing, and my posters and ribbons and trophies and stuffed animals.

  A lifetime of memories, all vanished. Erased. As if I’d never existed at all.

  There was a soft rap at the door, and my mom eased inside.

  “I got your dad all set up on the couch for the night, and I brought you these. The pants are probably too short, but you should feel better after you get a shower and put on some clean clothes.” She handed me a pile of clothing, letting me borrow hers since all I had to my name was the uniform I was still wearing.

  I smiled wanly, wishing a hot shower really could fix everything. “Thanks.” I tugged at my grubby shirt. “This thing is pretty foul. I think I preferred the superflattering hospital gown with my butt hanging out for the whole world to see.”

  Her brow puckered. “Are you sure you’re okay? I can call someone from the list the hospital gave us. We can probably get you in with someone tomorrow if you want to talk about . . . anything.” I wondered what the “anything” might be.

  “I’m fine, Mom. All I want right now is that shower.”

  She tilted her head to the side and smiled, and I thought she might be vacillating, trying to decide whether to leave it at that—just light, polite, meaningless conversation. Nothing heavy or real. And then she hesitated. “You can tell me, you know,” she blurted at last, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say it at all. “About what happened that night. About where you’ve been all this time.” She frowned, her face a study in gravity as she came back to the bed where I was sitting cross-legged, my fingers tracing the geometric pattern on the coarse comforter. “I know what your dad thinks, what he claims, but you can tell me what really happened to you.”

  I hadn’t taken the time to consider the endless possibilities that existed, or all the speculations that might have been made over the years about my whereabouts. I knew what Tyler said, about the suspicions about my dad, but I wondered how many nights my mother had lain awake trying to guess where I was, torturing herself with her own version of what-ifs.