“Areyou adopted?” Jonah whispered.
Wordlessly, Chip nodded.
THREE
“Well, why didn’t you tell me that this afternoon?” Jonah asked. He felt kind of silly. It was like when he was on the swim team and some of his friends had hidden his clothes, so he had to walk through the rec center lobby wearing nothing but a Speedo while everyone else was fully clothed. “I told you I was adopted—why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know!” Chip exploded. His whole face was red. “Mom and Dad never told me anything! All this time I thought my parents were my real parents—”
“They’re still your real parents,” Jonah corrected automatically.
“They are not!” Chip said furiously. “They’re total strangers to me now! How could they not tell me?”
That wasn’t a question Jonah could answer. After a certain point, he’d stopped reading all the kid-approved “Isn’t adoption wonderful!” books his parents had bought for him and had started sneaking peeks at some of the books on their bookshelves:Raising the Well-Adjusted Adopted Child, What to Tell Your Adopted and Foster Children, Adoption Without Secrets. All the adoptive-parents books Jonah had ever seen acted like there was one commandment Moses had forgotten to bring down from Mount Sinai: tell adopted kids the truth.
Chip was running his hands violently through his hair again. If he kept that up, he’d end up pulling it all out.
“Stop that,” Jonah said. “Your parents probably thought they were doing the right thing.”
Chip laughed bitterly.
“Yeah—the right thing forthem .” He stood up abruptly, knocking the desk chair over backward. “This is just like them. They always want to pretend that everything’snormal , that everything’sfine: ‘No, Chip, you didn’t hear anyone yelling last night. Your father and I never fight—’”
“Adoption is normal,” Jonah said stiffly. “It’s been part of human society for centuries.”
Chip shot him a “get real” look and began pacing. When he reached Jonah’s door, he pounded his fists on the wood. Then he lowered his forehead onto his fists and just stood there.
“Uh, Chip?” Jonah said nervously. “Are you okay?”
“You know what’s funny?” Chip said in a strangled voice, without lifting his head. “It’s kind of a relief…not being related to them. I don’t want to be like Mom and Dad, anyhow. But who am I for real? Who are my real parents?”
“Birth parents,” Jonah said quietly. “They’re called birth parents.”
Chip rolled his head to the side.
“Would you stop that?” he said. “It’s like you’re brainwashed or something.”
“What?” Jonah said defensively. “Those are the correct terms. Birth parents are the people who give birth to you. Real parents are the ones who change your diapers and get up in the middle of the night when you’re a baby and show you how to ride a bike without training wheels and, and….” He stopped because he thought maybe he was quoting directly fromWhat to Tell Your Adopted and Foster Children .
Chip slid down to the floor, crumpling like one of those rag dolls Katherine used to drag around by the feet.
“My parents didn’t show me how to ride a bike,” he said. “They left that to the babysitter.”
Jonah thought for a moment.
“Well, at least they were the ones who paid the babysitter.”
Chip groaned. He balled his hands into fists again and pressed them against his eye sockets.
“Why?” he whispered. “Why did my real parents give me up?”
This time, Jonah didn’t bother correcting Chip out loud, though his brain translated,You mean, your birth mother set up an adoption plan….
“You know, there are lots of reasons people can’t take care of their own kids,” Jonah said cautiously. “Maybe your birth parents died. Maybe you’re adopted from Russia or someplace like that, where things are different.” He waited a second. Chip didn’t move. “Maybe…maybe now that you know you’re adopted, your mom and dad might tell you more about your story, if they know it. Sometimes, even if the records are sealed at the time of the adoption, people change their minds and decide they want to be more open….”
Okay, now Jonah was almost certain that he was quoting directly from one of his parents’ books.
Chip began shaking his head again, so hard it rattled the door behind him. Then he glared over at Jonah, his eyes burning.
“My dad said—” Chip choked, swallowed hard, tried again, “—my dad said I didn’t need to know anything else. He said he never wanted to talk about this again.”
And then Jonah felt the anger boiling up inside of him. Jonah didn’t get mad often. He’d never met Chip’s dad, just seen him drive by. (He drove a nice car—a BMW.) Jonah probably couldn’t have picked Chip’s dad out in a line-up. But right now Jonah wanted to stalk over to Chip’s house, swing his best punch, and hit Chip’s dad right in the mouth. He wanted to hit him a couple of times.
Jonah clenched his fists. Chip was still staring up at him, but his expression had slipped over into helplessness now—helplessness and hopelessness.
“What can I do?” Chip asked.
“When you’re a grown-up,” Jonah said, “you can try to find your birth parents. You won’t need your mom and dad’s permission for anything then. And until then—until then, I swear, I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
FOUR
“Try 10-28-66,” Chip whispered.
“Why?” Jonah asked.
“That’s Dad’s birthday,” Chip said. “He’s so conceited and stupid, he’d use his own birthday as the code.”
It’d been two days since Jonah and Chip had each gotten their “YOU ARE ONE OF THE MISSING” letters, and Chip was acting crazier than ever. Today, coming home on the school bus, Chip had gotten obsessed with the idea that he had to see his birth certificate, that it would tell him everything he needed to know. So now the two boys were crouched beside a wall safe in Chip’s basement.
Jonah paused with his fingers poised over the digital keypad.
“Really,” he said, “even if your birth certificate’s in here, it’s not going to help. Like I told you—like it said on the Internet—when a kid’s adopted, they issue a new certificate and lock all the old papers away. Your original birth certificate’s not going to be in here unless it was an open adoption and somehow, I don’t think, if your parents won’t even talk about you being adopted—”
“Just try the code,” Chip insisted. “My hand’s shaking too bad.”
Jonah glanced over at his friend, who did indeed look shaky. Even in the dim light of the basement, Jonah could tell that Chip had a panicky sheen of sweat on his face. Chip’s curly hair was mashed down because he kept clutching his head, like he had to work hard to hold himself together. He seemed about one step away from being one of those loony types who mumbled to themselves on the street downtown.
Jonah sighed and began punching in numbers: 1 0 2 8 6 6.
Nothing happened.
“When’s your birthday?” Jonah asked.
“Mine?” Chip said. “September nineteenth.”
“And you’re thirteen?”
“Yeah, why?”
Jonah didn’t answer, just began punching in a new combination: 0 9 1 9…
The safe beeped, then there was audible click. The safe door sprang open, just a crack.
“Bingo!” Jonah said. He kind of wished his own mom or dad were there just then, because they would be able to tell Chip, “See? Your parents must care about you some, if they use your birthday as the code to their safe.” But Jonah couldn’t say anything that goopy himself.
“Go ahead and open it,” Chip said. “I can’t look.”
He had his shaking hand over his eyes, but he kept lifting it to peek out.
Jonah gripped the door to the partly open safe.
“Are you sure you want me to do this?” he asked. “This is like breaking and entering or something.�
�
Chip scowled at him.
“You’re inmy house,” he said. “Iasked you to open the safe.”
“But your parents—”
“What they want doesn’t count,” Chip said harshly.
There was some saying Jonah’s mom always quoted—usually to Katherine—about how eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves. Jonah wondered if that also applied to boys opening locked safes and looking at secret papers. But that was something else he couldn’t say to Chip. He jerked on the door, swinging it completely open, and reached in to take out the first few sheets of paper on top of the stack.
“This is just stuff about buying your house,” Jonah said, leafing quickly through the papers. “Real estate settlements, title insurance…”
Chip moved his hand away from his eyes and squinted at the papers.
“Maybe that’s connected too,” he said slowly. “My dad says they got a really sweet deal for this house. Maybe I was supposed to meet you, so that I’d find out about being adopted….”
Jonah carefully put the house papers in a stack on the floor.
“About four out of every one hundred Americans are adopted,” Jonah said. “I think you could have met someone who was adopted inany neighborhood you might have moved to. Now you’re sounding really crazy, like those conspiracy theorists who think the moon landing never happened, or that the government has a bunch of aliens locked up on some military base in New Mexico.”
“But theydo ,” Chip said. “Those aliens are real.”
“You really believe that?”
Chip slugged him in the arm.
“No. Fooled you!”
Jonah was glad that Chip could still show some sense of humor, that he hadn’t totally crossed the line into insanity. Jonah reached into the safe again and pulled out more papers. He was careful to keep them in order as he sorted through them.
Three-fourths of the way down into the stack, he let out a low whistle.
“Here it is.”
He held up a document labeled,BIRTH CERTIFICATE —Cook County, Illinois.
Chip evidently forgot that he was too stressed out to look. He crowded against Jonah’s shoulder.
“Charles Haddingford Winston the third, huh?” Jonah teased.
Chip grimaced.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” he said bitterly. “I’m Charles Winston the third, and I’m not even related. They just had to have some kid to stick that name on.”
“Chip, youare related. Or, as good as related. They’veraised you,” Jonah said.
“Not very well,” Chip said.
Jonah took one look at Chip’s face and decided not to argue.
He rifled through the rest of the papers. Beside him, Chip groaned.
“’Happy Family Adoption Agency’?” Chip muttered. “You have got to be kidding.”
Something slipped out of the stack of papers Jonah was holding against one knee, while he braced his other knee against the floor. Trying to catch the one sliding paper, Jonah lost his balance and fell over sideways. The whole stack cascaded down to the carpet, skidding toward the wall.
“Sorry,” Jonah said. “If things are out of order, your dad’s going to be able to tell—”
“I don’t care,” Chip said acidly.
Jonah frowned and began gathering up the papers. He thought he’d gotten everything until he saw a scrap of yellow sticking out from under a chair a few feet away.
“That’s what started this whole mess,” he muttered. He reached under the chair and pulled out a yellow Post-it note. It said,James Reardon, (513) 555-0192. He held the note up so Chip could see it too.
“Was this with the adoption papers or the house stuff?” Jonah asked.
Chip narrowed his eyes.
“I know how to find out,” he said.
He took the Post-it note from Jonah’s hand and walked to the other side of the basement, where couches and chairs clustered around a huge entertainment center. He reached into a cabinet of the entertainment center and pulled out a cordless phone.
“Here—I’ll put it on speakerphone so you can hear too,” Chip said.
“Chip, I don’t think—” Jonah stopped, because he couldn’t explain why this suddenly seemed like such a bad idea to him.
Chip was already punching in numbers, each digital beep adding to Jonah’s sense of apprehension. Jonah rushed over to Chip’s side, as if being able to see the phone as well as hear it would make everything easier.
The phone clicked, making the connection, and then smoothly flowed into ringing. It rang once, twice…. Another click. Then a gruff voice boomed out of the phone: “Federal Bureau of Investigations. Reardon speaking.”
Jonah stabbed his finger at the button to break the connection.
FIVE
“What’d you do that for?” Chip demanded.
“I—I don’t think this is the right way to do this,” Jonah said. “Sneaking around, looking at papers your parents don’t want you to see, calling people…I know you’re really mad at your parents right now—okay, fine. I don’t blame you. But this isn’t going to help. Calm down; let them calm down; wait until you can all sit down and talk about it….”
Chip shoved hard against Jonah’s chest, pushing him away. The phone fell to the floor between them.
“I don’t know what your parents are like,” Chip said harshly. “But if my dad says he doesn’t want to talk about something, he…doesn’t…talk!” He grabbed the phone and began punching numbers again.
Okay, so maybe family therapist was out as a future career option for Jonah.
“Maybe you should talk to one of the counselors at school or something,” Jonah said.
Chip kept punching numbers, stabbing them even harder now.
“I’m not crazy!” he insisted.
“I never said you were,” Jonah countered. He guessed Chip had hit about five of the seven numbers for James Reardon now. “But tell me—what do you think the FBI has to do with your adoption?”
Chip stopped hitting numbers.
Jonah eased the phone out of Chip’s hands. He pressed the button to hang up.
“Think about it,” Jonah said. “This Reardon guy probably doesn’t have anything to do with you. That Post-it must have been on some other paper in there. Maybe…Is your dad a spy or something?”
“He’s a stockbroker,” Chip muttered. He cleared his throat. “If he was a spy, he’d probably be on the terrorists’ side.”
“Maybe he’s secretly working for the government,” Jonah said. “Maybe he’s like a double agent, and he’s pretending to launder money for some terrorists, but really he’s reporting everything to the government. And maybe if you call this number and blow his cover, like, five years of secret-agent work will go to waste, and they’ll have to start all over again. And it will all be your fault.”
Jonah had seen a movie once where something like that happened.
“You think my dad’s a hero?” Chip asked. “Fat chance.”
But he didn’t grab the phone back to begin dialing again. He just stood there, looking lost.
“I just want to know who I really am,” Chip said. His words came out as a whimper, the kind of sound no self-respecting thirteen-year-old boy would want anyone to hear him making.
Jonah decided not to make fun of him for it.
“I do, too,” Jonah said.
“You do?” Chip asked, and this, too, came out sounding pitiful.
Jonah nodded.
“Well, yeah. I mean, my parents are okay, and I guess it’d bepossible to have a worse sister than Katherine. But sometimes I wonder…who do I look like? Are my birth parents good people who just kind of made a mistake? Or are they druggies, alcoholics, criminals…are they in jail? Mental hospitals? Did they have any other kids besides me? Did they—did they keep the other kids?”
Sometimes Jonah’s mom would say things like, “You have such great dimples and such beautiful eyes—do you suppose those came from your birth mo
ther or your birth father?” Or, “You’re so good at math—wonder who you inherited that from?” It annoyed him, because he knew those lines came straight out of the adoption books. And, generally, people whose lives were going great—NFL quarterbacks, rock stars, famous actors and actresses, genius scientists—generally, they didn’t give up their kids for adoption. What bad things had he inherited along with the eyes and the dimples and the ability to glide through seventh-grade math?
Chip was nodding.
“Monday morning,” he said in a hoarse voice. “When I walked into school, I kept looking around thinking, ‘I could have a brother or sister here, and I wouldn’t even know it.’ So I stared at everyone, looking for curly hair and long skinny legs and nostrils that flare out a little….”
“Is that why you walked into that wall, on the way to lunch?” Jonah asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Chip said. He sounded embarrassed.
Jonah eased the Post-it note out of Chip’s hand. He waved it slightly in front of Chip’s eyes.
“This isn’t any good,” Jonah said. “No matter what, you’re always going to have more questions.”
“How do you know?” Chip challenged him. “Have you ever tried to get your questions answered?”
SIX
It was Cincinnati chili night. Mom liked to have themed dinners every so often, and lately she’d been on a geographic kick: spicy New Orleans jambalaya one week, thick New England clam chowder the next, authentic (she said) Mexican hot tamales the next. At least Cincinnati chili was fairly normal, though Jonah failed to see the point of putting chili on top of spaghetti, when Ragú worked just as well.
“Do you think…,” he started to say, but everyone was passing around the containers of shredded cheese and chopped onions, and no one seemed to hear him.
A few minutes later, while Katherine was chewing and actually had her mouth shut for once, he tried again.
“You know how you always said that if…”
Katherine finished chewing.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” she exploded. “Guess who says she’s trying out for cheerleader next year?”
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