The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Penny Joelson

  Also by Penny Joelson

  I Have No Secrets

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Penny Joelson

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Kerri Resnick

  Cover image © Derek Adams/Arcangel

  Internal design by Ashley Holstrom/Sourcebooks

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Originally published as The Girl in the Window in 2018 in Great Britain by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK, Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from I Have No Secrets

  1

  2

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Cherry

  There’s no one coming to look for me because no one even knows I’ve gone missing.

  —Unrest

  No one sees me. I am a ghost. I am invisible. Life for me stopped still, one day—when I was not expecting it. Out there, I know that life goes on, that time moves forward, but it does so without me. I know I shouldn’t, but I want to look once more—to take a peek out through the window at a world that is not mine. Do I dare?

  1

  It’s dark when I see her. I’m closing my curtains, ready for bed—and there’s a woman hurrying along our street toward the bus stop. There’s something intense about the way she’s moving. She darts like a bird. It’s as if she’s rushing to catch a bus—but there’s no bus there and no one waiting. The street is quiet. I’m not sure why I keep watching but I do. She’s skinny—with long, dark hair, maybe in her late teens, early twenties. She’s barely more than a silhouette in the darkness, but as she passes the streetlight, it casts her elongated shadow across the road. The glow highlights the long, thin cardigan she’s wearing. She pulls it tight around her, head bent against the chill November wind, but she goes past the bus stop without slowing down.

  I see her glance around briefly as two cars pass. Now a silver car’s coming. It swerves and stops alongside her. Her head turns sharply. At the same moment, a man jumps out from the passenger side. He grabs the woman by the arm. She pulls away. They’re struggling. At least, that’s what it looks like. Within seconds, he’s opened the back door of the car and she’s in. He bangs the door shut and jumps back in the front. The car drives off, disappearing around the corner.

  It happened so fast—but I’m certain she didn’t want to get into that car. The man was dragging her—forcing her in. I think he even had his hand over her mouth. I can barely believe it. I keep replaying it in my mind. My heart is thudding like a bass drum.

  I’m staring out at the now empty street, still in shock, when a movement catches my eye. I look up at the house across the street, the window opposite mine. The curtain moved, I’m sure it did. Someone was looking out. Did they see what I just saw?

  Should I call the police? There’s a couple in that house across the street—if one of them saw, maybe they’ve gone to call the police right now. But even so…

  “Mom!” I yell, grabbing my phone. “Mom!”

  She’s watching TV downstairs, and I don’t think she heard me. Anyway, I don’t need her to tell me what to do, and I shouldn’t wait. I shouldn’t let them get too far away.

  I sit on my bed and dial. My hand is shaking. I’ve never done this before—never dealt with a real emergency. I ask for police.

  There’s a calm voice at the end of the phone—a man’s voice. He listens and then starts asking me questions.

  I give my name, Kasia Novak, and address, 47 New Weald Lane.

  “Did you get the license plate number?” he asks. I feel instantly devastated. Why didn’t I?

  “I’m sorry. No. It was all so fast,” I tell him.

  “Don’t worry—you did the right thing to call. Any information you can give us will help. Can you describe the car?”

  “It was silver—a hatchback… I’m not sure what kind.”

  I can describe the woman but I didn’t see the driver and only have a vague impression of the man who jumped out. I’m a useless witness.

  “Silver hatchback,” he repeats, as if he’s writing it down. “We’ll get someone on it right away.”

  “Oh, and I think someone else might have seen it—across the street,” I tell him. “I think there was someone at the window upstairs. They might even have called you, too. It was number forty-eight.”

  “We’ll speak to them. Thank you for reporting the incident. Please call us if you remember any other details.” He gives me another phone number and a case number, which I write on a scrap of paper.

  I have a sinking feeling as I put the phone down. I wish I’d gotten the license plate number. Maybe whoever was watching across the street did. I hope so.

  “Mom! Mom!” I call again. She still doesn’t hear. I want to tell her. I need to tell her. I stand up, holding on to the window ledge for support, and then walk slowly out into the hallway, one hand pressed against the wall. My glands are throbbing in my neck, and my legs are throbbing, too—a constant dull, familiar ache. “Mom!” No reply. I clutch the banister and put one foot gingerly on the top step. I’ve been thinking about trying to go downstairs for a few days, but I know now isn’t really the right moment. I’m too shaken
up on top of everything else.

  “Kasia! What are you doing?” Mom appears at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with concern. My legs give way, and I sit down on the top step.

  “I was calling you. You didn’t hear. I thought I’d come down…”

  Mom’s up beside me now, tutting and holding out her arm. “You look very pale, mój aniele, my angel. Come on, time for bed. How many times do I have to tell you to take it slowly, not do too much too quickly? Just getting out of bed is a big achievement. You’re clearly not up to trying the stairs. You should text me if I don’t hear you.”

  I’m too tired to argue, but I want to prove her wrong. I’m so fed up with being in my bedroom all the time. Tomorrow, I think to myself. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow. But I still want to tell her what just happened.

  Mom helps me into bed and sits on the edge as I tell her all about what I saw. She’s really shocked.

  “Kasia, how awful! Are you sure?”

  “I think so…”

  Mom touches my hand gently. “You did the right thing to call the police. Now settle down and get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

  She goes back down and I lie in my bed, staring at the same four walls. It’s been ten weeks since I’ve been downstairs.

  2

  I’m sitting by my bedroom window, waiting for Ellie to come over after school like she promised. She’s the only one of my friends that still does. The street is busy with cars picking up kids from school and kids walking home. It looks so normal, it’s hard to believe what I saw last night actually happened. I’ve been playing it over in my mind all day. It feels like a bad dream, not something real. Where is that woman now—what happened to her? I wonder if someone has reported her missing.

  I glance at the house across the street. Have the police spoken to them yet? Was someone looking out last night, or did I just imagine I saw the curtain move? At the bus stop, groups in school uniforms stand talking. A toddler in a stroller has pulled off one shoe and is chewing it. I watch as she takes the shoe out of her mouth and flings it under the bench. Her mother is sitting staring at her phone and hasn’t noticed.

  The bus comes, blocking my view, and when it pulls away, the people, including the woman and the stroller, have gone, but I can still see the purple shoe sticking out sadly from under the bench.

  A man in his twenties with dark hair and glasses arrives at the bus stop and kicks at the shoe curiously. I start making up a kind of Cinderella story, where the man takes the shoe and puts a photo of it on a Facebook group, and the woman comes forward gratefully to claim it. Turns out they’re both single, and when they meet to hand over the shoe, it’s love at first sight.

  I see a police car coming along the road, and it pulls into a parking spot farther down the street. Does this have something to do with last night? At first I think they want to ask me more questions, but the officer walks quickly up to the door of number 48. I watch eagerly and see the front door open. The officer talks to a woman, and I can see her shaking her head.

  Once the door closes, the officer knocks on the doors of the houses on either side, but no one is home. Then he crosses the street. He’s coming here! The doorbell rings. I wish I could run down and answer it, but I have to wait for Mom to do it. I hear her talking to the officer, and I wonder if she’ll bring him upstairs, but she says goodbye after only a minute and then comes up.

  “What did he say?” I ask eagerly.

  “They haven’t found out anything about an abduction, Kasia,” Mom tells me. “No one has been reported missing, and no one else contacted them about it. He said the people at forty-eight saw nothing. They were both downstairs watching television.”

  “I thought someone was there, watching,” I say, “upstairs—in the room across from mine. I saw the curtain move, like someone was peeking out.”

  Mom shrugs. “The police are looking into it. If there’s anything to discover, I’m sure they’ll find it.”

  Mom goes back down, and I’m still waiting for Ellie. Where is she? I’m suddenly worried she won’t turn up. I’m dying to tell her what I saw. Maybe I should have texted her, so she’d know I had something to talk about for once.

  Just when I think she’s really not coming, I finally spot her, hurrying along the sidewalk, her ponytail bobbing up and down. I can see she’s trying to be quick, but it feels like a hundred years before she turns into our gate and rings the doorbell. I hear Mom’s footsteps on the hall floor as she goes to let Ellie in, and then more, lighter steps as Ellie pads up the stairs. She comes into my bedroom with a beaming smile and two plates of Mom’s apple cake. I take a deep sniff of the delicious cinnamon smell that has been drifting through the house, making my mouth water.

  “Sorry I’m a little late—it’s all been happening today!” she says, plonking herself on the edge of my bed and handing me a plate.

  “Tell me!” I say. I like hearing what’s going on at school. It makes me feel more part of it, although it also sometimes makes me sad.

  “At lunchtime Serene got into a fight with Bethany,” Ellie tells me. “A real fistfight—Bethany pulled Serene’s hair and a whole clump came out! I saw it in her hand! It was over some boy. I don’t even know who.”

  I feel a pang. I hope it wasn’t Josh. He’s a boy I like who’s a year older—a boy with ocean-blue eyes and a husky voice. I can’t imagine him with Bethany or Serene, though.

  “Then,” Ellie continues, “Dimitri and Rafi were messing around in math class, and Mr. Treaker completely lost it and slammed a ruler on the desk so hard it flipped in the air and hit Serene in the face! She had to go to the nurse’s office and now she’s got a huge black eye, too!”

  “Poor Serene!” I exclaim, though I can’t help laughing.

  “We shouldn’t laugh,” says Ellie, who is giggling, too, “but she’s always so obsessed with how she looks—and I’m sure she started that fight!”

  “Anyway, listen,” she says, when we’ve both finally stopped laughing. “I have news you’re going to want to hear!”

  I want to say, “So do I!” but she’s made me curious. Her eyes are shining, her smile even broader. It must be something good, really good.

  “What?” I ask. I take a bite of cake and lean forward. “What is it?”

  “Guess,” she says. “It’s about you…”

  I hesitate. For one moment I wonder if it’s something to do with Josh. Maybe he asked about me…

  “I can see your dreamy eyes!” she teases. “No, it isn’t about Josh, Kasia!”

  “Okay.” I feel myself blushing. Ellie knows me too well. “I can’t guess—you’ll have to tell me.”

  “You’re going to love this!” she insists, stuffing too much cake into her mouth. “Oh, your mom makes the best cake!”

  “Tell,” I demand, rolling my eyes because now she can’t speak.

  She swallows and grins at me.

  “Remember that story you wrote—that one that was like a mash-up of Hunger Games and Titanic?”

  “Sort of. That was long ago—before I was sick. What about it?”

  “It was sooooo good—Miss Giles said she might enter it in a competition. Do you remember?”

  It’s weird thinking back. I first became sick in June, so it must have been May when I wrote that story. I remember the noise in our English class and the way the room fell silent as I started to read my story out loud. I remember even Rafi and Dimitri had their eyes fixed on me as I read. They clapped at the end, along with everyone else. Miss Giles was full of praise, saying I could be an author one day.

  But that was months ago, when we were all in ninth grade. Now my classmates have moved up—they are sophomores, with a different English teacher. I don’t even know which classroom they are in or what time the lesson is. I’m taking tenth-grade classes, but I don’t feel like I’m in the same year as them.

  �
��Kasia?”

  I realize I haven’t answered her. “Yes,” I tell Ellie. “I remember.”

  “Well, listen to this… She did enter it—and you won! First place!”

  “What? You’re joking!”

  “Look—here’s the proof.”

  Ellie scrabbles in her backpack and pulls out an envelope that has already been opened. It’s addressed to Miss Giles at our school. She slips the letter out, unfolds it, and hands it to me, pointing.

  “See—First Prize awarded to Kasia Novak.”

  “Wow!” I say. I’ve never won anything before in my life—except a tiny rubber duck at a festival when I was five. It used to glow in the dark.

  “Miss Giles is so excited,” says Ellie. “She came running up to me in the corridor.”

  “What did I win?” I ask, scanning the text. I’m hoping it’s money, though I know it’s unlikely to be much. With Mom not working, every little bit helps.

  “You get to go to an award ceremony in a theater,” she tells me. “Oh…”

  Her voice falters and she looks at me, her hand covering her mouth.

  “When and where?” I demand.

  “It’s not until February—and it’s in central London somewhere. Maybe by then…”

  I’m conscious of my throbbing glands, and my heart’s pulsing, too. I feel weak but I also feel a surge of determination. I look Ellie in the eye and tell her, “I will be better. I can’t miss something like that! And I’m going to get back to school, Els.”

  “Have you been downstairs yet?” Ellie asks.

  “No, but I’m going down for dinner today. Don’t tell Mom—she doesn’t know! I want to surprise her.”

  “Really? That’s great!”

  Ellie’s being a supportive best friend, but I can see she still looks doubtful. She knows how long it is since I’ve been downstairs.

  We read the letter again, together. I still can’t take it all in.

  “Oh, look, you get a gift card for books and a selection of books donated to the school,” Ellie tells me.