The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  It wasn’t anything elaborate, the bag. There was no tissue paper or sparkly shreds or anything, just a single piece of paper, rolled up and secured by an ordinary rubber band.

  Slipping the rubber band free, I uncurled the sheet of paper and gasped.

  I leaned in closer, to get a better look as a wide smile slowly drew my lips apart. It was incredible.

  I’d been wrong when I’d assumed it wasn’t another chalk drawing, because it was. Only this one wasn’t drawn on the road. This one was so much more personal, and meant solely for me.

  It was me.

  Me, the way I’d looked the day I’d come home, when I’d first stumbled across the street and fallen into Tyler’s arms, still wearing my uniform, with the ribbons tangled through my hair.

  He’d captured my image perfectly, with precision and depth and life. Somehow he’d made my eyes, which I’d always thought were too big, seem beautiful in a haunted kind of way; and I no longer questioned whether they fit my face. He managed to re-create the arch of my brows and the shape of my jaw and each and every freckle splattered across my nose.

  Immediately, I texted him back: I love it. Thank you. Because what more could I possibly say?

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Day Five

  THIS WAS MY MOM’S FIRST DAY BACK AT WORK since I’d been home—probably the longest she’d been off work at one time since she’d squeezed out her new kid, so it hadn’t been hard to convince her I’d be fine and that I could fend for myself for a whole eight hours.

  It was Thursday, according to my obsession with the calendar, which meant Tyler, the only other person who might’ve kept me company, was at school too. I was completely on my own for the day.

  By 8:01 I was pacing the house.

  By 8:16 I’d taken a complete inventory of the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets, and the pantry, and noted the sad lack of nonnutritional, preservative-laden snack foods.

  By 8:43 I was bored out of my frickin’ skull.

  I finally settled down on the couch and started flipping through the channels, most of which were morning talk shows aimed at the stay-at-home-mom crowd. I paused when one of those talk shows was interrupted by a local news segment. My throat felt tight and scratchy as I stared at the familiar face on the screen.

  I knew him. It was the lab guy who’d taken my blood at the hospital the night I’d come home. And according to the news report I was watching, he was dead.

  I tried to read the ticker that ran continuously across the bottom of the screen, but I could only catch bits and pieces of it:

  . . . A phlebotomist from Skagit General Hospital . . . found dead in his apartment last night by his girlfriend . . . hemorrhaging from his mouth and eyes . . . autopsy will be performed to determine exact cause of death . . .

  I switched to several other channels to see if there were any other details, but when I couldn’t find anything, I gave up and decided to see if I could find anything online. Trouble was, the computer was password protected, and I would rather have been forced to wear my mom’s high waters every day until the end of time than to break down and ask her, even via text, what her password was.

  I tried a few semi-obvious combinations: Password, Kyra, Logan (because it seemed logical), Supernova (which was far less likely), and my birthday. I would’ve tried “my brother’s” birthday, but I had no idea what that was.

  After a while I got bored with that, too, and gave up.

  Eventually I took a shower and started sorting through the clothes my mom had picked out for me.

  I had to admit, and this was coming from someone with zero idea of what was in style anymore, I didn’t hate what she’d selected. I’m guessing she’d steered away from anything supertrendy, which was probably good since I doubted she had any better notion than I did what would rock the community college scene these days. But at least she’d remembered my size and that I liked vintage-style tees and jeans that felt broken in already.

  I spent forty-three minutes unpacking and cutting off tags from T-shirts, underwear, pajamas, socks, tank tops, and jeans—everything a girl newly returned from a five-year hiatus could possibly need. I slipped into a pair of jeans and a worn-looking T-shirt with the Count from Sesame Street on the front and couldn’t help smiling just a little that my mom remembered, too, how much I’d loved the number-obsessed vampire when I was a kid.

  When the doorbell rang, I stopped what I was doing and checked the digital alarm clock against my phone to make sure the two were still in sync. 9:33.

  I slipped my phone into my pocket and went to see who it was.

  The man standing on the front step looked like any other man who wore stiffly starched suits and stiff, plain black ties: Stiff. I couldn’t tell if he was a salesman or one of those church guys who goes around trying to convert people, but he definitely wasn’t a deliveryman, not in that getup.

  I would’ve discouraged him right off with an immediate “My parents aren’t here,” but the first rule drilled into every latchkey kid is: never tell a stranger you’re home alone. So I waited to see what he wanted.

  Shockingly, it wasn’t my parents he was looking for.

  “Kyra Agnew?” His voice came out just as stiff as his suit. It was sort of daunting, the way he said my name—and the fact that he knew my name—with authority, like a principal or a coach, and I found myself standing straighter because of it.

  “Uh . . . I . . . yeah . . . ,” I stammered, because sometimes when I was intimidated, I was smooth like that. My pulse sped up the tiniest bit.

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out some sort of leather wallet thingie. It was black, too, like his suit, and when he flipped it open, there was a slick-looking badge inside. I focused on the golden beetle in the center of it while he said his name in that same no-nonsense manner that made me want to salute him. “Agent Truman. National Security Agency. May I come in?”

  He tucked his wallet back inside his jacket and took a step forward. My mind reeled, but before his foot even hit the ground I was yanking the door closed. I didn’t slam it on him, but I closed it enough so that I was wedged between the opening. It was the same move The Husband had pulled on me when I’d tried to barge in on him that first day. There was no way I was letting this guy into my house.

  First of all, neither of my parents was here, something I obviously couldn’t tell him without violating latchkey kid rule number one. Second, I had no way of knowing if that shiny badge was even real. I had a badge once too. I got it from my Cracker Jack box. So, yeah, no thanks on letting the potential serial killer inside.

  “We can talk out here.”

  He raised his brows and considered me, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Whatever you prefer,” he said in his authoritative voice.

  I lifted my chin a notch. “What’s this about? You said National Security Agency? What’s that?”

  “Miss Agnew, I have some questions for you,” he answered, not really answering my question about his “agency.” He pulled out a notepad and flipped open the cover, perusing whatever was written in there and then addressing me again. “We heard about your disappearance. What was that, five years ago?”

  My pulse picked up, and the sound of blood rushing filled my head. I swallowed. “That’s right.”

  “According to the police report, you were on your way home from a baseball game.” He glanced up with just his steely eyes, the leathery skin around them crinkling as he trained his gaze on me.

  “Softball,” I corrected, reaching up to scratch my elbow.

  “Softball,” he amended, scribbling the note in his book. “And you were in the car with your”—he consulted his notes—“father, on Chuckanut Drive, when you got out of the car.”

  This wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway, scratching harder.

 
“What happened next?” This time he wasn’t looking at the notepad; his gaze was directed solely at me, and I had the feeling my answer was important.

  I stopped scratching, my mouth suddenly too dry to answer. I lifted my shoulders, my eyes widening slightly and my mouth turning down in a frown.

  He waited for something more, and then when it was obvious that was all the answer he was getting from me, he pried. “What does that mean, precisely? Are you saying you don’t know what happened?”

  I shrug-nodded and then tried my voice, because I thought I should be a little more decisive than a bobble head doll. “I mean, I guess so.”

  “Nothing”—his eyes narrowed as he prompted me—“unusual or out of place?”

  I thought of the light. The flash. And the importance my dad placed on in. I thought of my dad and the way he’d become obsessed with where I’d been, and my stomach clenched.

  I didn’t want to answer these questions.

  “No, nothing. I’m sure you already know I had a fight with my dad, and I got out to walk. After that . . . I don’t remember anything.”

  The man—this Agent Truman, he’d said his name was—sighed. His expression relaxed. The lines in his face that a moment ago made him look hard and a little threatening now reminded me of the way my grandpa had looked right before he’d died. Weary. I could almost imagine this man smiling. Almost. “Look. I get it. This is a tough subject. You’ve been through something difficult. You’re confused. We’re just trying to help. We want the same answers you do. We want to help sort this whole mess out.” He did smile then. It wasn’t exactly endearing or anything, but it was nice enough. “Are you sure I can’t come inside?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. I was confused enough about who he was and why he was here without him playing both bad cop and good cop. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. . . .”

  His hand was now on the door, gripping the wood as if I’d already given him permission. “We can talk about your father’s version of events. See what he thinks happened to you.”

  My dad? Why was he talking about what my dad thought happened that night?

  Or was he talking about that other thing, the one Tyler had mentioned where some of the people in town thought my dad might have had something to do with my disappearance in the first place?

  He might as well have smacked me in the face with that enormous hand of his, the one that was still on my door, and I suddenly felt cornered, trapped. He was bigger than I was. And if his badge was real, then he actually had some authority and maybe could insist on coming inside. Maybe I had no right at all to keep him out.

  Right now, though, none of that mattered. I lodged my foot against the bottom of the door to keep it from budging. “My father? He doesn’t have anything to do with this.” I didn’t wait for his rebuttal, because I didn’t care what he had to say. I leaned my shoulder and all of my weight against the door, surprised that Agent Truman was pushing from the other side in an effort to stop me. “I have to go,” I insisted. “I don’t have time to talk to you.” I shoved harder to emphasize my point.

  Through the opening, we faced each other, and Agent Truman didn’t try to convince me again. After a moment, the longest split second of my life, he let the door close, and I locked it behind me.

  Then I bolted it and sagged to the floor, my heart pounding in my chest.

  I never saw Agent Truman leave, probably because I’d never seen his car in the first place, but after an hour or so of patrolling the windows—and after the third time I’d read Goodnight Moon—I was sure he was gone. I was also sick to death of being cooped up in the house and watching the clock. Check that, clocks.

  Scrounging through the change jar my mom still kept in the kitchen, I took a pocket full of quarters, deciding to walk the mile to the Gas ’n’ Sip. I almost changed my mind when I came outside and found Agent Truman’s business card on my front porch, but instead, I glanced in every possible direction, and then, in case he was watching, I tore it into tiny bits and tossed it in the trash bin on my way out. I wanted to make it clear that there was no way I was talking to anyone from the National Security Agency about my dad.

  No one could ever convince me he had anything do with my disappearance, no matter how unhinged he might be.

  The Gas ’n’ Sip had always been my favorite junk food dealer. When we were finally allowed to walk there on our own, Austin and I used to pool our allowance money and trek there during the summer for ice cream bars and Mountain Dews and packages of powdered doughnuts. When Austin got his license and started driving us to school, we’d stop there in the mornings for some of the strongest-brewed coffee in town. And sometimes for powdered doughnuts too.

  I’d spent almost as much time at the Gas ’n’ Sip as I had on the softball fields.

  Being here now, though, I felt like a total loser. A loser with a pocketful of change.

  I strolled the aisles in record time, picking up some Red Vines, a Dr Pepper, and obviously doughnuts, before dropping my mountain of change on the counter. The cashier glared at me for not paying with bills or a debit card, but I ignored her, making it her problem to count it out while I perused the trashy magazines displayed in front.

  Not much had changed in the gossip magazine since I’d been gone; a lot of the same celebrities hooking up and breaking up or checking into rehab. One of the less-reputable newspapers had a headline that made me think fleetingly of my dad because of how far-fetched it was: “Bat Boy Spotted Living in Cave in Arkansas.”

  I glanced away guiltily when I realized just how far my opinion of my own father had fallen.

  I noticed him then, the boy standing in the same aisle I’d been in just a moment earlier, rapt in concentration over the selection of Snickers and Milky Ways.

  I might not have given him a second thought, or even a second glance, if it hadn’t been for his eyes. Eyes that I’d seen before.

  Eyes that were strikingly copper colored.

  He was the same boy from the bookstore. Not the hipster cashier who’d sold Tyler his magazine thing, but the one I’d run into on my way out. The darker-skinned boy who’d made me pause because of his unusual eyes.

  He wasn’t looking at me now though, and I tried to study his features without him noticing me. There wasn’t much else distinguishable about him. His hair was cut short, almost to his scalp, and his skin was smooth. His mouth and nose were normal sized, and he was average height.

  He was just . . . normal.

  “Need a bag?”

  I turned back around to face the lady at the cash register. “I . . . yeah, sure.” I took my change and the receipt, and after she bagged my loot I took that too.

  And when I turned back around, the boy was gone.

  As if my day couldn’t get any worse, it totally did.

  When I got back, my former best friend was sitting on the front porch of my mom’s house, looking as if she belonged there and had been sitting there every day for the past five years without skipping a beat. If it hadn’t been for her oversize shoulder bag, an accessory she used to insist was for women who’d given up on trying to be sexy, I might have overlooked how . . . grown-up she looked.

  Except that I probably wouldn’t have. Because she did. Look grown-up, I mean.

  So, so much more than I did, standing there in my Sesame Street T-shirt and Chucks.

  Her expression, though, that Cat expression of unbound exuberance that no one else in the whole wide world could emulate, hadn’t changed a bit. And when she saw me wandering up the sidewalk, that liveliness that I’d always loved about her lit up her entire face.

  “Kyra!” she gasped, jumping to her feet as she clutched her grown-up purse in front of her.

  “Cat? What the hell?” I gripped my plastic bag in front of me as if it could somehow shield me. I wasn’t sure what I was more indignant about, being blindsided by her visit or suddenly realizing just how different she was from the last time I’d seen her, and how exactly the same I was. “
Shouldn’t you be at school? Shouldn’t you have called or something?”

  She frowned. “I did. I called like a million times, Kyr. I left messages with your mom and your dad. Didn’t they tell you?”

  I thought of the sticky-note rainbow my mom had left on my bed.

  I glanced at my feet, shoving down the deluge of feelings I couldn’t sort through. I was more than just confused or hurt. Yes, she and Austin had betrayed me, but it was different seeing her in person now than it had been seeing Austin. It was harder, somehow, to ignore the years—the lifetime—that she’d just been Cat, my BFF. “You shouldn’t be here.” It was difficult to say, but I so wasn’t ready for this.

  In the fringe of my vision, I saw her take a step closer. “What did you think, that I was gonna stay away? You’re my best friend, Kyra, and you’ve been gone for five whole years. I had to come.”

  “Were,” I told her, looking up to find her watching me with those perfectly lined eyes. Even her shockingly blond hair looked less high school and more college. No longer ponytailed or braided with wild strands flying loose the way it had been when we’d been on the field. Now it fell in perfect waves that made it clear she’d made a skilled effort with it. “You were my best friend.”

  She stopped, and for a long—I mean a really long—time we were both quiet. I thought that was it, that I’d pushed her away, too, like my dad. But then she laughed. “Okay, well, just because you say we’re not best friends anymore doesn’t make it true.”

  I looked up, and I saw the person she was now. The person Austin went away to school with . . . and was probably living with. That he was definitely-positively-for sure in love with, because how could he not love Cat. She was everything I wasn’t, and just because I had no idea what was cool anymore, I knew that this Cat was the epitome of all things cool, right down to her knee-high, lace-up boots and her knotted batik scarf.

  I loved her even while I hated her. “You might not want to be my friend,” she declared vehemently. “But you will always, forever, be mine. So don’t be stupid, of course I was planning to come here and see you.”