“Or you bet on who’s going to win the World Series, which you already know because—duh!—you’re from the future,” Chip said. “Or you invest in Microsoft stock before anybody’s ever heard of Microsoft.”
Jonah shrugged.
“Maybe there’s something big that’s about to happen here that we don’t know about,” he said. He saw Katherine trying to suppress a shiver. “What I don’t get is why there are two sides fighting over us.” He looked down at Katherine’s list, which was full ofJB ’s andE ’s. “What do they want from us?”
“And how can we find out before it’s too late?” Katherine asked.
TWENTY-THREE
They were stymied.
For the next week, practically every day, one of them had a brainstorm.
On Monday, Katherine thought of actually walking or riding their bikes to visit every single kid in Liston they remembered being on their list. But they couldn’t remember very many street names, and the ones they remembered turned out to be way over on the other side of the highway, too far away.
On Tuesday, Jonah thought of calling other DuPres to ask them if they knew Angela, and, if so, if she was all right.
“JB and E already know that we know Angela,” he argued with Chip and Katherine. “They saw us talking to her. What could it hurt if they find out that we’re looking for her again?”
His arguments didn’t matter—the only DuPre he could find from directory assistance had just moved from Louisiana and had never heard of Angela.
On Wednesday, Chip said, “That’s it. I’m calling Daniella McCarthy back. I don’t care who hears me.”
But her phone rang and rang and rang, and then a computerized message clicked on: “This phone has been disconnected.” There was no other number given.
“Ergh!” Chip kicked his desk chair, and sent it spiraling across the basement floor. “They probably canceled their landline and went down to just cell phones during the move. That’s what we did—oh, why didn’t I call her back last week?” He pounded his fists on the desk.
On Thursday, Katherine thought of riding their bikes slowly down Robin’s Egg Lane, looking forFOR SALE orSOLD signs or—if they got really lucky—moving vans. They did find a McCoy Realty sign stuck in the yard at 1873, whichsounded right to Jonah and Chip. But when they knocked at the door, the sound echoed vacantly. All the windows were covered with blinds, so they couldn’t see in.
A woman stepped out on the porch across the street.
“Nobody’s going to buy your band’s candy or raffle tickets or whatever it is you’re trying to sell there,” she said. “That house has been empty for months. And while we’re at it, I don’t want to buy anything either.”
“Oh, we’re not selling anything,” Katherine said quickly.
Jonah jabbed his elbow into her ribs, because what if the woman jumped to a worse conclusion? What if she thought they were planning to break in?
Katherine ignored him.
“We’re just from the, uh, middle school Welcome Wagon,” she said. “We had information that a thirteen-year-old girl was moving in here, and we came to make sure that she feels comfortable in Liston. Do we have our dates wrong? Do you know when the McCarthys are moving in?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the woman said. “I do seem to remember hearing something about the paperwork on that house being messed up, delaying everything—but, of course, it’s none of my business.” She gave them a sharp look. “Or yours.”
Friday afternoon, Jonah shoved aside his math homework and wrote on a clean sheet of paper:
JB,
We could use a little help here. Hints? Clues? Can’t you tell us anything?
Then he tore the paper into pieces and threw it in the trash can beside his desk, because how would JB know that they called him JB? And what if E found the note instead?
It was a good thing that he’d destroyed the evidence so quickly, because a few moments later his mom poked her head in his door.
“Jonah, I didn’t want to bring this up in front of Katherine, but we got this flyer in the mail today.” She held out a glossy sheet of paper. Halfway across the room, Jonah could read the title:Adoptees on the Cusp of Their Teen Years…a Conference for Adolescents and Their Parents.
“It’s part of a series put on by the county department of social services,” she said. “This conference is just for families in Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson, so it probably wouldn’t be a huge crowd. You’ve just been acting so…disturbed lately, ever since we met with Mr. Reardon. Not that I blame you—I was disturbed by that man too! But even before that, you were asking questions about your adoption…. All the books say the teen years are when a lot of adoptees begin struggling with their identities. I think we should go to this. You and Dad and me.”
Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson, Jonah thought.Perfect.
“Okay,” Jonah said, trying very hard to hide his eagerness. He needed to sound reluctant, put-upon—maybe even still disturbed. He tried to sound as if something new had just occurred to him, as if he didn’t much care: “Oh—could we make a copy of that? I think Chip and his parents will want to go too.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“What if it’s a trap?” Katherine asked.
“How could it be a trap?” Jonah asked. “It’s sponsored by the county.”
The two of them were rather listlessly playing basketball in the driveway. Mom had shooed them outside—“Go! Get some fresh air! You’ve both been so mopey lately. I don’t think you’re getting enough exercise!” So they were standing under the hoop, but they kept forgetting to bounce the ball, to shoot it.
Chip was at a dentist’s appointment, so they hadn’t been able to share the news about the conference with him yet.
“The county,” Katherine snorted, giving the ball a hard shove toward Chip. “Yeah, and we got the list of survivors and witnesses from the FBI, which is also thegovernment . How do you know that E didn’t set this whole thing up?”
How do we know that the government’s not involved in everything?Jonah thought.How do we know that they didn’t help E tap our phones? How do we know that the time travelers—JB or E or both of them—can’t manipulate the government however they want to? How do we know that anything’s safe?
He didn’t care anymore. He was going to the conference, no matter what. He was sick of feeling stymied.
What he said to Katherine was, “I went back and looked at the county Web site—the conference has been on their schedule for more than a year. It’d be hard to set that up as a trap.”
“The county Web site?” Katherine’s eyes bugged out a little. “So you left a trail on our computer….”
“Don’t worry, I went back in and cleared the browsing history,” Jonah said. “A kid at school showed me how to do that.”
He shot the ball with exaggerated swagger, false confidence. The ball sailed through the hoop, but Jonah had the feeling that it could just as easily have bounced off.
Just as the conference could be a trap.
“I don’t like it,” Katherine said, grabbing the rebound. “It just seems too convenient that it’s for Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson, and those are the same places where all the kids on the survivors list moved.”
“But it will be a perfect opportunity to talk to some of the kids from the list—I’m sure at least some of them will be there. You do remember the names, don’t you?” Jonah said.
“Sure,” Katherine said. “Andrea Crowell. Haley Rivers. Michael Kostoff.” She began bouncing the ball in time with the names. “Sarah Puchini. Josh Hart. Rusty Devorall. Anthony Solbers. Uh—” The ball landed on her foot and began rolling down the driveway. She waited while Jonah chased the ball out into the street. “Chip probably remembers the other names, or we’d remember them if we heard them.”
“Wait a minute,” Jonah said, running back. He bounced the ball back to Katherine, a little harder than necessary. “What do you mean, ‘we’
?”
Katherine took a shot. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She didn’t even look surprised.
“I mean, I’m going too, of course,” she said, grabbing her own rebound and holding on to it. “You and Chip will have to pretend to be paying attention to—what are some of the sessions called?—’Identity Issues for Teen Adoptees’? Or whatever. So you’ll need me there too to get a chance to talk to all the other kids.”
Jonah didn’t want to admit it, but what she said made sense.
“How are we going to explain this to Mom and Dad?”
“Easy,” Katherine said. She bounced the ball without looking at it. “You tell them you want me to come.”
Jonah tried to steal the ball from her, but she saw him coming and jerked it out of reach.
“Now, how am I going to get them to believe that?” Jonah asked.
“You’ll figure something out,” Katherine said. She smiled sweetly. “That librarian thought you were a good actor.”
When Jonah went back into the house, he saw that Mom had already written9–3, adoption conference in the October 28 square on the kitchen calendar. Quickly he grabbed a pen and began inking over the words. He hadn’t thought he’d have to worry about Mom and Dad’s writing something that JB or E might see.
Mom came around the corner just as he’d managed to obliterate the laste ofconference.
“Jonah—what are you doing?” she said, startled.
“I just, uh, started doodling,” Jonah said. “Guess it got a little out of hand.”
Mom looked completely bewildered.
“Even when you were a toddler, you didn’t do things like that,” she said.
“Mom, duh,” Katherine said from across the kitchen, where she was pulling a Gatorade bottle from the refrigerator. Both Jonah and Mom turned to look at her. Somehow Katherine managed to roll her eyes and gulp down Gatorade at the same time. She lowered the bottle. “Think about it. If Jonah’s suddenly all confused and worried about his identity, the last thing he needs is to have you writeadoption conference in a public place like that.”
“This isn’t a public place,” Mom said. “It’s our kitchen.”
“Yeah, but Rachel and Molly are in here all the time, and Chip, and all Jonah’s other friends, and my other friends, and your friends, and Dad’s friends….” Katherine made it sound like thousands of people trooped through their kitchen every day.
“There’s nothing wrong with the wordadoption ,” Mom said defensively. “Or with being adopted.”
“Yeah, but Jonah doesn’t want itadvertised ,” Katherine said. “Show some sensitivity. Jeez.”
Mom turned her gaze from Katherine to Jonah and back again.
“I really thought Jonah was capable of speaking for himself,” Mom said, suspicion creeping into her voice.
“Oh, he is,” Katherine said sweetly. “Jonah, didn’t you have something you wanted to ask Mom about the conference?”
Jonah shot Katherine a look that very clearly said,I’m going to kill you when all this is over. To Mom, he said, “Uh, yeah. I was just thinking, since Katherine seems to be having so many issues withnot being adopted, that maybe she should go to the conference too. So she can find out what horrors she avoided by getting birth parents who were crazy enough to want to keep her.”
“Oh, Jonah, that’s not the way to look at this,” Mom protested, at the same time that Katherine said, “Oh, could I go to the conference with you? That’d be great!”
Mom squinted at Jonah.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
It was really hard for Jonah to keep a straight face as he assured her, “Yep. Katherine wants to go to the conference, and I want her to go too.”
“Could I? Please?” Katherine begged.
Mom frowned.
“Some days I can’t figure out the two of you at all,” she said.
Behind Mom’s back, Katherine jerked her head at Jonah, as if to say,Your turn. Close the deal!
“So, can she come to the conference with us?” Jonah asked, trying to keep his eyes wide, his expression innocent.
“I suppose,” Mom said. “Though I really don’t understand why either of you wants this.”
Katherine threw her arms around Mom’s shoulders.
“Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Just think—next year I’ll be a teenager too, and then we’ll really confuse you!”
TWENTY-FIVE
The next few weeks seemed to crawl by. Neither Chip nor Jonah got any more mysterious letters. Neither they nor Katherine saw anyone else appear out of nowhere or disappear into thin air. In fact, if it weren’t for the butterflies that seemed to multiply in Jonah’s stomach as October 28 approached, Jonah almost could have believed that his life had gone back to normal. He took another social studies test, about Mesopotamia and Babylon this time. He attended an informational meeting to find out about seventh-grade basketball tryouts. He went on a Boy Scout camp-out where it rained all weekend and two kids came down with bronchitis and coughed all night long, until the Scout leader gave in and called their parents at 5:00 a.m.
Katherine and Chip stayed obsessed.
“I figured out why you and Chip were adopted in different states,” Katherine announced one night as Jonah was brushing his teeth.
“Why?” Jonah said, through a mouthful of Crest.
“Think about it,” Katherine said, loitering outside the bathroom. She spoke in a low voice, as if she were afraid that Mom and Dad might hear her from downstairs. “There were thirty-six babies. If Mr. Reardon had dumped you all on one adoption agency—or even several adoption agencies, all in the same city—there would have been a lot of talk. But you send one baby to Michigan, one or two to Chicago, one or two to Indianapolis…that’s not so noticeable. There could be that many abandoned babies in each city at once.”
Jonah spit into the sink, bending low so she didn’t see how the wordabandoned stabbed at him.
I wasn’t abandoned, he reminded himself.I was sent. On a plane.
But was that better or worse than being abandoned?
“So do you think Mr. Reardon knows why we’re all being gathered together again?” he asked, mostly to distract himself from his own thoughts. “Is he doing the gathering? Is JB? Is E? Mr. Reardon had all the kids’ new addresses in Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson—washe the one who wanted to force poor Daniella McCarthy to live on Robin’s Egg Lane?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine asked, fiddling with a strand of her hair. “I’m not even sure Mr. Reardon knew about the survivors list.”
“It was on his desk,” Jonah said.
“But JB put it there,” Katherine said. “Not Mr. Reardon. Maybe he was just worried about us seeing the witnesses list.”
Jonah jerked his toothbrush back and forth across his teeth with unusual force. He spit again.
“Katherine, it’s all a big mystery, okay?” he said. “Maybe we’ll never find out all the answers.”
“Or maybe we should figure out as much as we can now, so all the final pieces will fall into place at the conference,” Katherine retorted.
Jonah frowned at Katherine’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. The concentration in her gaze made her look like Sherlock Holmes about to solve his biggest case.
Meanwhile, the toothpaste on his lips made it look like he was foaming at the mouth.
Who’s the crazy one?Jonah wondered.Her or me?
For his part, Chip kept finding excuses to ride past 1873 Robin’s Egg Lane. The house there stayed closed-up and empty.
Chip also tried talking his parents into attending the conference. Embarrassingly, Jonah heard one of his attempts, because Jonah had just stepped onto the Winstons’ front porch, ready to ring the doorbell and ask Chip over to play basketball.
“For the last time, no!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the house. “I’ve got a golf date that morning, and your mother’s got a spa appointment. We don’t have six hours to waste on some namby-pamby, touchy-feel
y types, who are just going to try to make us feel guilty for not being the perfect parents! Subject closed!”
Jonah stabbed the doorbell.
“You can go with us,” he told Chip, as soon as he opened the door. “I’ll make my parents take you.”
Chip just nodded.
October 28 dawned clear and crisp, the perfect autumn day. Jonah woke up earlier than he usually did on a Saturday, probably because Katherine was already up and banging around in the bathroom. He heard her turning the water on and off, switching the fan from low to high, jerking her towel off the towel rack in a way that rattled the rack against the tile of the wall. He stumbled out into the hall.
“Today’s the day!” Katherine announced brightly, as she dodged him to head back to her room, her hair wrapped in a towel.
“Let’s go, team,” Jonah muttered under his breath, because the tone of Katherine’s words made them sound like they should be accompanied by cartwheels and splits and arms thrown victoriously up in the air.
“Ah, jeez,” he whispered, leaning against the bathroom sink. “She really is a cheerleader.” And it seemed suddenly that this was true—not because she was an airhead or a hottie or a nonjock, but because she could throw herself so wholeheartedly into someone else’s cause, because she could care so much and try so hard from the sidelines.
How could he understand so much about his sister’s identity and so little about his own?
Three hours later the whole family—plus Chip—were all loaded into their minivan, headed toward Clarksville Valley High School.
“The weather’s so nice, it looks like they’ll be able to do some of your sessions outdoors,” Mom said, turning around to talk to Katherine, in the middle seat, and Jonah and Chip, in the far back.
“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the hike and outdoor confidence-building exercises,” Katherine said.
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