Ann was smart, but she didn’t read outside of class and didn’t care if she got As or Ds as long as she could play soccer. Madison thought of Ann as her “head in the clouds” best friend. Ann probably thought of Madison as her “nose in a book” best friend.
With the first day of school also being the day of tryouts for Pettygrove’s championship soccer team, Madison had to make sure she and Ann wore matching socks, a tradition they’d kept since the first day they met.
Weirdly, Ann’s phone went straight to voice mail, so Madison left a message and rolled out of bed. After her shower, with her thick brown hair still wet, she threw her pajamas back on and went downstairs. On the way to the kitchen, Madison passed her dad’s room. The bed still hadn’t been slept in. It must have been a long night at the jail.
As Madison poured herself a big bowl of cereal, she heard her father working in his study. She carried the bowl into his home office.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Morning, honey,” Hamilton said without looking up from the stack of papers he was reading. Though he had changed his clothes since the night before, his socks were mismatched and his hair looked like a hurricane had roared through it.
“It’s the first day of junior high, Dad.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Hamilton finally looked up at his twelve-year-old daughter. She was tall for her age and thin, with strong legs from years on the soccer field. Madison knew her dad still had trouble thinking of her as anything but the little girl with pigtails who would color and play with her toys amid his law books.
Because Hamilton was a single parent who was addicted to his work, Madison had basically grown up in his downtown law office. When she was in elementary school, Hamilton would pick her up from school and take her to the firm. As she grew older and started to understand what her father did for a living, Madison began asking him about his cases—and giving him her unsolicited advice on how to win them. Eventually she became a file clerk at his office to earn pocket money, and by now she was addicted to anything having to do with law, including old Perry Mason novels and any lawyer TV show. The other kids in her elementary school would say they wanted to be bakers, teachers, and firefighters when they grew up. Madison wanted to be a criminal defense attorney and try murder cases. Now that she was entering junior high, she was more determined than ever to follow in her father’s footsteps.
“New case?” Madison asked, munching on her cereal and pointing at a stack of police reports.
“Uhm,” Hamilton grunted.
“What’s it about?”
“Murder. A man named Mark Shelby is charged with killing his wife, but there’s no body.”
“Shelby? Mrs. Shelby was my second-grade teacher at Lewis and Clark. Remember?”
Hamilton’s face scrunched up. He shook his head apologetically. “I’m not sure I do.”
Madison was annoyed that her dad couldn’t remember her second-grade teacher. His brain was so full of legal facts that there wasn’t room for much else.
“Mr. Shelby’s wife is an elementary school teacher, but I don’t think he told me where she taught.”
Madison put her spoon down, shocked. “Oh man,” she said, horrified. “Mrs. Shelby was really sweet. Is he guilty? Is Mrs. Shelby dead?”
“Well, she might not be dead, sweetie, so please don’t worry yet. My client says he’s not guilty. He has no idea why he was arrested. And, like I said, there’s no body.”
“If there’s no body, how can they arrest him?”
“Circumstantial evidence. If you don’t have direct evidence of a crime, like an eyewitness, you can still use circumstances to prove the defendant’s guilt. Mark’s neighbors have called the police several times because of screaming arguments. Yesterday, Mark and his wife had another argument. A neighbor claims she saw Mark put his wife’s body in the back of his station wagon and drive off at high speed. When the police arrived, the house was empty; there were traces of blood on the floor in the kitchen and a knife with blood on the blade on the kitchen counter. Ruth Shelby is still missing.”
Maybe the police had made a big mistake and Mrs. Shelby was okay. For now, all Madison could do was hope.
“Hopefully soccer tryouts won’t take too long so I can get to the office to help you,” Madison said, sobered.
“Tryouts, for a star player like you?” Hamilton said. “When the coaches see ‘Madison Kincaid’ on the list, they’ll put you on the varsity without a tryout.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Madison said, rolling her eyes. “First of all, junior high doesn’t have ‘varsity.’ You either make the team or you play club. And Pettygrove Junior High has won or placed second in the Junior High City Championship for the past five years. I just hope I make the team.”
“You’ll do great. Go get dressed and I’ll drive you to school.”
Madison ran upstairs and studied her face in the bathroom mirror. Thankfully, her pale skin was zit free. Not wanting to look like she was overly excited about her first day of school, she decided against any lip gloss, but she did blow-dry her hair. Today she needed her hair to be perfect to impress her new teachers and the other students.
When she was finished in the bathroom, Madison took out the outfit she had decided weeks ago to wear on her first day at Pettygrove Junior High. She was slightly bummed that Ann had been in Europe all summer so that she wasn’t around to consult about what to wear. She put on a simple black tank top and pulled on her newish J. Crew jeans, which she’d broken in. Even though she was tall enough for them, talking her father into buying her grown-up jeans hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally worn him down.
Madison felt like she’d been waiting for junior high forever. There would be new teachers, tougher classes, and extracurricular activities like debate club—perfect for someone like her who wanted to get a head start on lawyer skills. There would, of course, be a whole new crowd of boys and girls from the other elementary schools that fed into The Grove, and all of the eighth-grade boys and girls who would rule the school. That made her nervous.
To tell the truth, Madison admitted to herself, as she brushed her hair again, she was never completely comfortable when she wasn’t in a classroom or on a soccer field. In elementary school, she had been a soccer star and the other students assumed she was self-assured, but a lot of her confident air was a front. She was uncomfortable in social situations and never really felt that she totally fit in. A mother could have told her the way she was supposed to act with boys, but she didn’t have a mom to confide in. And Hamilton was clueless outside of a courtroom.
That’s where Ann came in. With her easy, friendly smile, Ann was at home in any social situation. Where Madison worried about saying or doing something stupid, Ann was spontaneous, and the right words always came out of her mouth. Everyone liked Ann, and with Ann by her side Madison knew she’d be okay.
Grabbing her cell phone, Madison tried Ann again. Right to voice mail. Weird; maybe Ann was sleeping in. Madison threw red, green, yellow, white, and black socks into her soccer bag to be safe, along with her well-worn black cleats, sweaty old shin guards, a shirt, shorts, a water bottle, and a snack of crackers and orange slices. Last but not least, she shoved the latest Max Stone legal thriller into her backpack.
Before she was ready to go, she picked up the picture on her night stand. “First day of junior high, Mom,” she said to the photograph of a tall brunette. “Any words of advice?” Even though she didn’t remember her mother all that well, Madison still found herself missing her, and often talked to her picture. Taking a deep breath, Madison put the photo back on her nightstand. Then she picked up her backpack and ran to her dad’s office. After some cajoling, Hamilton gathered up his papers and followed Madison to the garage, where they got into his black Prius.
The Kincaid house was high in the southwest hills of Portland, and the view on the way down to the city was spectacular on a clear day. The Willamette and Columbia rivers divided Portland into an east side and a west si
de, and cars streamed over the eight bridges that crossed the rivers. In the distance, Mount Hood towered over the foothills of the Cascade Range. The mountain’s snow-covered peak made Hood look peaceful, but every mountain in the Cascades was a dormant volcano. Mount Saint Helens had actually exploded in 1980, blowing out the side of the mountain and covering the city with ash.
The Grove was at the edge of downtown, a quick ride down the hill. They didn’t talk much on the ride. Hamilton was busy thinking about his new case and Madison was nervous about the day ahead. As they pulled up, Madison craned her neck to see if she recognized any of the kids streaming into the school. She looked hardest for Ann or Ann’s father’s Navigator but didn’t see either. Kissing her dad on the cheek, she jumped out of the car.
“Good luck today! And kick their butts at soccer!”
“Thanks, Dad! See you at the office when I’m done.”
Hamilton drove off, and suddenly Madison was in the middle of a moving mob of junior high school students. She froze, a knot forming in her stomach. Madison had taken a tour of The Grove on sixth-grader visitor’s day, but she had never seen it filled with a thousand students. Compared to her elementary school, it was huge. By sixth grade, Madison was a big fish at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, but here she was a minnow. Would she survive in these waters . . . or be swallowed up?
Chapter 3
The Bully
The Grove had been built in the 1960s and looked it. The wide, locker-lined halls had ugly, red-and-puke-brown-patterned linoleum-tiled floors. Located on the edge of downtown Portland, it had a reputation for being the richest, preppiest, best-for-preparing-you-for-the-rigors-of-high-school public junior high in the city. Many of Portland’s rich kids went to Prescott-Mather, the closest thing Oregon had to an East Coast prep school, but The Grove had its fair share of wealthy students as well.
An eighth grader’s backpack knocked Madison out of her trance, and she realized that she should keep moving. She didn’t want to pull her schedule out in the middle of the hall and look like some baby who had no idea where she was going, so she found the nearest girls’ room and snuck into a stall. Her first-period class was Pre-Algebra in MH 102. Okay, she thought, where’s the math hall? Luckily all seventh graders got a map of the school with their schedules. Memorizing the location for MH 102, she left the bathroom, trying to look like a confident girl who knew exactly where she was headed.
As she walked to the classroom, Madison searched the halls for Ann. She saw tons of casual friends from elementary school and greeted all of them with a smile and a wave. There was a lot of “How was your summer?” and “Can you believe we’re in junior high?” but no Ann in the halls—or in MH 102. This worried Madison because they were at the same level in math. Then she remembered that there were a few sections of first year pre-algebra and decided she was being silly. The Grove was big and the day had just started.
By the time lunch rolled around, Madison was really worried about Ann, so it was a great relief to see Lacey, one of their friends from sixth grade, when Madison walked into the cafeteria. Lacey shrieked and ran to hug Madison, her blond ponytail bobbing with each step.
“Maddy! Isn’t junior high the best? So much better than elementary school. The guys here are amazing. Love your jeans!”
“Um, thanks,” Madison stammered. “Yeah, the first day has been okay for me. . . . ”
“Grab your lunch. Jessi and Becca are already outside.”
Madison looked down at Lacey’s tray, which contained a salad and a diet Coke, then eyed the pizza bar. She should probably get a salad like Lacey, but she was hungry, and soccer tryouts were in a few hours. Grabbing a personal-size pizza and a carton of orange juice, Madison followed Lacey and her small salad outside.
Students were seated in clusters on the lawn, and surprisingly Lacey and her friends didn’t look like baby sixth graders who had snuck onto campus. Madison said “Hi” to Becca and Jessi. She had been away at soccer camp and hadn’t seen them all summer. Anyway, they were more Ann’s friends than hers. Now, without Ann, she felt out of place. They chatted a bit about their classes before Madison got to talk about what was bothering her.
“Have you seen Ann?” Becca asked Madison.
“No, I’ve been looking for her all day. Has anyone seen her?” Madison asked. The other girls shook their heads.
“Hasn’t she been in Europe all summer?” Jessi asked.
“Yeah, she’s been traveling with her dad. But the strange thing is, she hasn’t emailed, texted, or called me, even though she must be back by now, and I’ve left messages on her cell and emailed but never got anything back.”
“She hasn’t called me, either, and her Facebook is way out of date,” Becca said.
“Yeah,” Lacey added. “Her latest picture is way old, like from May.”
“She probably couldn’t email from Europe,” Jessi said. “Do they even have email over there?”
“Duh, Jessi, of course they have email in Europe. It’s not Mars,” Lacey said.
“I bet something happened in Europe,” Madison said worriedly. “Maybe she was kidnapped.”
All the girls laughed.
“She was probably having a great time with French or Italian boys and was too busy to email or text back home,” said Becca, who had actually kissed a boy and was the expert on anything to do with the opposite sex.
“If she was meeting boys, she would have definitely emailed me,” Madison said, a pit growing in her stomach. “Something horrible might have happened. Her dad is a scientist and he’s really weird. Maybe she was kidnapped by criminals who want a formula he discovered, just like Max Stone’s Project Murder, where the daughter of the rich industrialist was kidnapped so the spies could trade her for the plans for the super computer.”
“Honestly, who is this Max Stone?” Jessi asked. “Can’t you read normal books?” Madison blushed. She adored the Max Stone novels.
“You always think the worst has happened,” Becca said. “It’s ’cause you hang out with your dad too much.”
“Remember in second grade,” Lacey chimed in, “when Madison announced to the whole class that Jessi had been murdered, because she had found a bloody Kleenex in the girls’ room and Jessi wasn’t in class?”
“And I was at the nurse’s office because I had a bloody nose,” Jessi said.
“That’s not fair,” Madison said, embarrassed. “You could have been murdered. Okay, maybe I was wrong about that, but this is serious. Ann could be tied up in a basement in London!”
“Or she just might have decided to skip the first day of school to get over jet lag,” Becca said.
“Are you Madison Kincaid?” someone said.
Madison looked up and saw three eighth-grade girls standing over her. The biggest girl was the one who had spoken. She was two inches taller than Madison and twenty muscular pounds heavier, and she was giving Madison a look of pure disdain.
“Yes,” answered Madison, trying to sound confident even though she was nervous.
“I hear you’re supposed to be a hotshot forward.”
“That’s the position I play.”
“Not any more. I’m Marci Green and I own that position, so you better get used to riding the bench, if you even make the team.”
Marci’s friends sneered at Madison. Becca, Jessi, and Lacey were silent, not knowing how to respond. Then Marci turned her back and walked away with her gang in tow. Madison could hear them laughing as they disappeared from view.
Chapter 4
A Nightmare at Soccer Tryouts
By the time eighth-period science rolled around, Madison had started to get the hang of junior high. She’d figured out where her classes were, where the seventh graders hung out, and where the eighth graders ruled. But she still hadn’t seen Ann, and she was convinced that something bad had happened to her.
When you grow up in a house where a call from prison in the middle of the night is not an odd occurrence, and murder weapons are discu
ssed over cornflakes, you tend to think the worst. And Madison was thinking the worst when she slid into a random seat in her eighth-period science class. She was so preoccupied with imagining ghastly scenarios that she only half heard the teacher drone on about how great science class was going to be—something she ordinarily would have been excited about.
“Hey,” a voice whispered, “you okay?”
She looked up. The boy sitting next to her was tall and gangly with clear green eyes, a smattering of freckles across his nose, and ginger-colored hair that spiked in places and was pressed flat in others.
“I guess,” she whispered back, not wanting to attract attention.
“What word is always spelled incorrectly?” he said. Madison was thrown off. She began cycling through words in her head, puzzled.
“Um, I don’t know,” she said quietly.
“Incorrectly!” he whispered. Madison was stunned for a moment and then, against her will, let out a giggle and rolled her eyes.
The teacher stopped talking and stared at Madison.
“I hope I’m not interfering with your tête-à-tête, Miss . . . ?”
“Uh, Madison. Madison Kincaid,” she answered, feeling her face turn tomato red.
“And your gentleman friend is?”
“Jake Stephenson, sir,” the boy answered.
“Well, Miss Kincaid and Mr. Stephenson, do I have your permission to continue?”
“Sorry,” Madison mumbled. Ann was temporarily forgotten. This really wasn’t the way she wanted to end her first day in junior high.
Vanishing Acts Page 2
