When Lightning Strikes

by Jenny Carroll

  I'm serious. Look it up if you don't believe me.

  As usual when I got home that night, there was a commotion going on in the kitchen. This one involved my mom and dad and Douglas (big surprise). Douglas was standing there, looking down at the floor, while my mom yelled at my dad.

  "I told you he wasn't ready!" she was screaming. My mom has a pretty healthy set of lungs on her. "I told you! But did you listen? Oh, no. Big Joe Mastriani always knows what's best."

  "The kid did great," my dad said. "Really great. Okay, so he dropped a tray and broke some stuff. Big deal. Trays get dropped every day. It doesn't mean—"

  "He's not ready," my mom yelled.

  Douglas saw me in the doorway. I rolled my eyes at him. He just looked back down at the floor again. There are kids, back at school, who say things to me about my "psycho" brother, about how he's been voted most likely to be a serial killer, and that kind of thing. That's one of the reasons I have detention from now until the foreseeable future. Because I've had to slug so many people for talking dirt about Douglas. But I don't think Douglas could ever be a serial killer. He's way too shy. That Ted Bundy guy, he was pretty outgoing, from what I heard.

  My dad noticed me in the doorway and went, "Where have you been?" only not in a mean way.

  "Band practice," I said.

  "Oh," my dad said. Then he started yelling at my mom some more.

  I grabbed a bowl of cereal—checking the milk carton, of course. As I'd suspected, my mom had seen the expired date and run out to buy a new one. I studied the faces of the kids on this particular box. I wondered if, in the morning, I would know where they lived. I had a feeling I would. After all, the mark on my chest, where the lightning had struck me, was still there. It hadn't faded hardly at all.

  I wondered how Sean was doing. By now he'd probably been joyfully reunited with his family. He owed me, I thought, one heck of a big thank you. And an apology for acting like such a little headcase that day outside his house.

  I went upstairs, but before I got to my room, Mike scared the bejesus out of me by tearing open, not his bedroom door, but Douglas's, and going, "All right. Who the hell is he?"

  I had slammed back against the hallway wall in my surprise at seeing him come out of nowhere like that. I went, "Who the hell is who? And what were you doing in Douglas's room?"

  Then I saw the binoculars in his hand, and I knew.

  "Okay," I said. "It's not what you think."

  "Oh, yeah?" Mike glared at me through the lenses of his glasses. "What I think is that you are slutting around with some Hell's Angel. That's what I think."

  "You are so lame," I said. "He isn't a Hell's Angel, and I am not slutting around with anybody."

  "Then who is he?"

  "God, he's in your class, all right? He's a senior. His name is Rob Wilkins."

  "Rob Wilkins?" Mike glared down at me some more. "I don't know any senior named Rob Wilkins."

  "Color me surprised," I said. "You don't know anyone whose name isn't followed by an A in a little circle and the words AOL dot com."

  He wasn't letting me off the hook though, no matter how hard I dissed him.

  "What is he?" Mike demanded. "A dropout?"

  "No," I said. "Not that it's any business of yours."

  "Well, then, how come I don't know him?" Then Mike's jaw dropped. "Oh, my God. Is he a Grit?"

  "Gosh, Mike," I said. "That is so PC of you. I bet your new friends at Harvard are just going to love your open-minded attitude."

  Mike shook his head. "Mom is going to kill you."

  "No, she isn't, because you aren't going to tell her."

  "Like fun I'm not," Mike declared. "I don't want my little sister going out with a Grit."

  "We aren't going out," I said. "And if you don't tell Mom, I'll … I'll take your shift at the restaurant this weekend."

  He brightened up, his protectiveness for his little sister forgotten. Hey, why not? More time on the Internet for him.

  "Really?" he asked. "The Sunday night one, too?"

  I sighed, like this was a big sacrifice, when really, I would have worked all his shifts for the rest of my natural life if he'd asked me to, in order to keep Mom from finding out about Rob.

  "Sunday night, too, I guess," I said.

  Mike looked triumphant. Then he seemed to remember he was my older brother, and he was supposed to look out for me and stuff, because he said, "Don't you think a senior is a little old for you? I mean, after all, you're just a sophomore."

  I said, "Don't worry, Mikey. I can handle myself."

  He still looked worried, though. "I know, but what if this guy … you know. Tries something?"

  It was my fondest wish that he would. Unfortunately, it did not look like this was going to happen.

  "Look," I said. "Don't worry about it. Seriously, Mike. You just keep on spying on Claire Lippman, and let me do the actual making out, okay?"

  Mike turned kind of red, but I didn't feel sorry for him. He was blackmailing me, after all.

  That night, after I'd gone to bed, my mind was too filled with the whole Rob problem to think about what was going on, you know, with the psychic thing. I mean, the missing-kid stuff just didn't seem that important.

  Of course, that changed completely, the next day.

  C H A P T E R

  10

  Rosemary sounded strange when I called her the next morning. Maybe it was because someone else had answered at first, and I had been all, "Is Rosemary there?" The man who had answered had said, "One moment, please," and then I'd heard a click, and then Rosemary came on.

  "Hey," I said. "It's me, Jess."

  "Hi, Jess," she said. But she didn't sound as excited as she had the day before. "How are you doing, honey?"

  I said, "Fine. I got some more addresses for you."

  She didn't sound like she was any too eager to take them down, though. She said, "I don't suppose you saw the paper, did you, hon?"

  "About the reward, you mean?" I scraped at the words Fuck You, which someone had carved into the metal door over the change slot of the pay phone I was using. "Yeah, I saw about the reward. But that seems kind of wrong to me. Collecting a reward, for something any decent human being would do for free. Know what I mean?"

  Rosemary said, "Oh, I know what you mean, honey. But that isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about the little girl you called about yesterday. You told Larry they'd find her by a tree."

  "Oh," I said. I was keeping an eagle eye out for Mrs. Pitt. I was determined not to let her catch me this time. All I saw, however, was a black car that had pulled up in the teachers' parking lot. Two men in suits got out of it. Undercover cops, I thought. Somebody had obviously narked on somebody. "Yeah. I thought that was kind of strange. What was she doing by that tree, anyway?"

  Rosemary said, "She wasn't by the tree, honey. She was under it. She was dead. Somebody murdered her and buried the body where you said they'd find it." Then Rosemary said, "Honey? Jess? Are you still there?"

  I went, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here." Dead? Little Whatever-Her-Name-Had-Been? Dead?

  This wasn't so fun anymore.

  And then it really wasn't fun. Because I noticed that the two undercover cops were walking toward me. I thought they'd been going into the administrative offices, which would have made sense, but instead, they walked right up to me.

  Up close, I could see that they both had very short hair, and that they were both wearing suits. One of them reached into his breast pocket. When his hand came out again, it was holding a small wallet, which he flipped open and held out toward me.

  "Hello, there," he said in a pleasant voice. "I'm Special Agent Chet Davies, and this is my partner, Special Agent Allan Johnson. We're with the FBI. We have some questions we'd like to ask you, Jess. Will you hang up the phone and come with us, please?"

  In my ear, I could hear Rosemary saying, "Jess, honey, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to have anything to do with it, but they made me."

  Special Agen
t Chet Davies took me by the arm. He said, "Come on, sweetheart. Hang up the phone."

  I don't know what made me do it. To this day, I don't know what made me do it. But instead of hanging up the phone, like the agent asked, I punched him in the face with the receiver as hard as I could.

  And then I ran.

  I didn't go very far, though. I mean, once I started running, I realized how stupid I was being. Where was I going to go? I had no car. How far was I going to get on foot? This was the FBI. It wasn't our Podunk town cops, who are so fat they couldn't chase a cow, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl who'd won the two-hundred-yard dash in P.E. every year since she was ten.

  No offense, guys.

  But it was like I went mental or something. And when I go mental, I usually end up in the same place. So I decided to cut to the chase and go where I'd probably end up anyway. I ran into the counseling office, threw open Mr. Goodhart's door, and collapsed into the orange vinyl chair by the window.

  Mr. Goodhart was eating a cheese Danish. He looked at me over it and said, "Why, Jess, what a pleasant surprise. What brings you here so bright and early?"

  I was panting a little. I said, "Two FBI guys just tried to pull me into their car for questioning, but I punched one of them in the face and came here instead."

  Mr. Goodhart picked up a coffee mug that had Snoopy on it and took a sip from it. Then he said, "Okay, Jess, let's try that again. I say, 'What brings you here so bright and early,' and you say something like, 'Oh, I don't know, Mr. Goodhart. I just thought I'd drop in to talk about the fact that I'm doing poorly in English again, and I was wondering if you could help convince Miss Kovax to give me some extra credit.'"

  Then Mr. Goodhart's secretary, Helen, appeared in the doorway. She looked flustered. "Paul," she said. "There're two men here—"

  But she didn't get to finish, because Special Agent Chet Davies pushed her out of the way. He was holding a handkerchief to his nose, from which blood was streaming. He waved his badge at Mr. Goodhart, but his gaze, which was blazing, was on me.

  "That was pretty slick," he said, sounding a bit nasal, which wasn't surprising, since I guess I'd broken some cartilage or something. "But assaulting a federal agent happens to be a felony, little lady. Get up. We're going for a drive."

  I didn't get up. But just as Special Agent Davies was reaching for me, Mr. Goodhart went, "Excuse me."

  That's all. Just, "Excuse me."

  But Special Agent Davies pulled his hand away from me as if I'd been on fire or something. Then he threw Mr. Goodhart this very guilty look.

  "Oh," he said. He groped for his badge. "Special Agent Chet Davies. I'm taking this girl in for questioning."

  Mr. Goodhart actually picked up his Danish, took a bite, and put it down again before he said, "Not without her parents, you're not. She's a minor."

  Special Agent Allan Johnson showed up then. He flashed his badge, introduced himself, and said, "Sir, I don't know if you're aware of the fact that this young lady is wanted for questioning in several kidnapping cases, as well as a murder."

  Mr. Goodhart looked at me with his eyebrows raised.

  "You've been busy, haven't you, Jess?"

  I said, in a croaky voice, because suddenly I was as close to crying as I'd ever been, "I was just talking on the phone, and then these two men I've never seen before told me I had to get into a car with them. Well, my mother told me never to get into cars with strangers, and even though they said they were FBI agents and they had those badges and all, how was I supposed to know they were real? I've never seen an FBI badge before. And that's why I hit him, and, Mr. Goodhart—I'm afraid I'm going to cry."

  Mr. Goodhart said, in his teasing way, "You aren't going to cry, Jess. You weren't really afraid of these two clowns, were you?"

  "Yes," I said with a sob. "I really was. Mr. Goodhart, I don't want to go to jail!"

  By the end of all that, I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't close to crying anymore. I was crying. I was practically bawling.

  But, come on. You would have been scared, too, if the FBI wanted to question you.

  While I was sniffling and wiping my eyes and blaming Ruth in my head for this whole mess, Mr. Goodhart looked at the FBI guys and said, in a voice that wasn't teasing at all, "You two go and have a seat in the outer office. She isn't going anywhere until her parents—and their lawyer—get here."

  You could tell by Mr. Goodhart's face that he meant it, too. I had never felt such a wave of affection for him as I did at that moment. I mean, he may have doled out the detentions pretty strictly, but he was a stand-up kind of guy when you needed him.

  The two FBI guys seemed to realize this. Special Agent Davies swore loudly. His partner looked a little embarrassed for him. He said to me, "Look, we didn't mean to scare you, Miss. We just wanted to ask you a few questions, that's all. Maybe we could find someplace quiet where we could just straighten out this mess."

  "Sure you can," Mr. Goodhart said. "After her parents get here."

  Special Agent Johnson knew when he'd been beat. He nodded and went into the outer office, sat down, and picked up a copy of Seventeen and started to flip through it. Special Agent Davies, on the other hand, said another swear word and began pacing up and down in the outer office, while Helen, the secretary, watched him nervously.

  Mr. Goodhart didn't look nervous at all. He took another sip of coffee, then picked up the phone. "Okay, Jess," he said. "Who's it going to be—your mother, or your father?"

  I was still crying pretty hard. I said, "M-my dad. Oh, please, my dad."

  Mr. Goodhart called my dad at Mastriani's, where he was working that morning. Since neither of my parents had ever been called to school on account of me—in spite of all the fights I'd been in—I could hear urgency in my dad's voice as he asked Mr. Goodhart if I was all right. Mr. Goodhart assured him that I was, but that he might want to call his lawyer, if he had one. My dad, God bless him, hung up with a brisk, "We'll be there in five minutes." He never once even asked why.

  After Mr. Goodhart hung up, he looked over at me, then reached for some tissues he kept in a box for the losers who sat in his office and cried all day about their unsatisfactory family life, or whatever.

  I'm one of those losers now, I thought, as I dejectedly blew my nose.

  "Tell me about it," Mr. Goodhart said.

  And so, with a nervous glance at the FBI guys, to make sure they couldn't overhear, I did. I told Mr. Goodhart everything, from getting hit by the lightning all the way up until that morning, when Special Agent Davies flashed his badge. The only stuff I left out was the parts about Rob. I didn't figure Mr. Goodhart needed to know that.

  By the time I got done telling Mr. Goodhart, my dad had arrived with our lawyer, who also happened to be Ruth's dad, Mr. Abramowitz. Special Agent Davies had recovered himself by then, and he acted like nothing had happened. Like he hadn't tried to grab me, and like I hadn't hit him in the face with a phone receiver.

  Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. He was way professional as he told my dad and Mr. Abramowitz about how the FBI was very interested in the person who'd been making calls to the National Organization of Missing Children from the pay phone at which they'd found me. Apparently, at 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU, they had caller-ID phones, so Rosemary had known from the very first day I'd been calling from Indiana. All they needed to do was track down where in Indiana, then actually catch me making the call.

  Then, voilà, as my mom would say, they had me.

  Of course, the big question was what, now that they had me, were they going to do with me? As far as I knew, I hadn't actually broken any laws—well, except for striking a federal agent, and Special Agent Davies didn't seem all that anxious to bring that up again.

  All the excitement—having two FBI agents, a father, and a lawyer in his counseling offices—had dragged out the principal, Mr. Feeney. Mr. Feeney rarely came out of his office, except sometimes during assembly to remind us not to drink and drive. Now he offered us the use of his private conference
room, where we sat, the seven of us—me, my dad, Ruth's dad, the two special agents, Mr. Goodhart, and Mr. Feeney—while I repeated the story I'd just told Mr. Goodhart.

  I guess you could say that, when I finished, they looked … well, skeptical. And it was kind of hard to believe. I mean, how had it happened? How was it that I just woke up every morning, knowing this totally random stuff about these kids? Yeah, the lightning had probably done it … but how? And why?

  Nobody knew. My guess was, nobody would ever know.

  But Special Agent Johnson, it turned out, really wanted to. Know, I mean. He asked me a ton of questions. Some of them were really weird, too. Like, had I experienced bleeding from my palms or my feet. I said, "Uh, no," and looked at him like he was crazy.

  "If this is true," he began, after I thought he'd exhausted all the questions anyone could possibly ask somebody.

  "If this is true?" my dad interrupted. My dad's not the world's most even-tempered guy. Not that he gets mad a lot. He hardly ever gets mad. But when he does, watch out. One time, this guy at the municipal swimming pool was following Douglas around, calling him a retard—this was when Douglas was like eleven or twelve years old. The guy was in his twenties, at least, and probably not too swift upstairs himself. But that didn't matter to my dad. He hauled off and slugged the guy, and then he held his face underwater for a while, until the lifeguard made him stop.

  It was way cool.

  "If?" my dad repeated. "Are you doubting the word of my little girl here?"

  Special Agent Johnson probably hadn't heard the story of the guy at the swimming pool, but he looked scared, just the same. Because you could tell my dad was really proud of me. Not just because I hadn't cried this time while I was telling my side of things, but because, when you think about it, what I had done was pretty nifty. I had found a bunch of missing kids. Granted, one of them had been dead, but, hey, we'd never have known that if it hadn't been for me. And considering that he had one kid who was a schizo, and another who was basically a social leper, even if he had gotten into Harvard, well, I guess my dad was kind of stoked that at least one of his kids was making good, you know?