Splinter (Fiction — Young Adult)

by Sasha Dawn

  Praise for

  “Readers will feel unmoored until the last few pages of this novel, and that’s all right—so does the story’s narrator, Callie.” —starred, Booklist

  “Thoroughly compelling.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “An exciting page-turner.” —School Library Journal

  “[A] gripping, psychologically intense mystery . . .” —VOYA

  “I could see the tension rippling through every scene. A fabulous book that readers are going to inhale.” —Jessica Warman, author of The Last Good Day of the Year and Between

  A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens 2014

  A 2016 Illinois Reads selection

  Text copyright © 2017 by Sasha Dawn

  Carolrhoda Lab™ is a trademark of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Lab™

  An imprint of Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Cover and interior images: © imagenavi/Getty Images (fragments); iStockphoto.com/raywoo (tally marks).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 10.5/15.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dawn, Sasha, author.

  Title: Splinter / by Sasha Dawn.

  Description: Minneapolis : Carolrhoda Lab, [2017] | Summary: “Sami’s mother disappeared ten years ago, and the police have always suspected that Sami’s father killed her. But they’ve never had any convincing evidence . . . until now. Sami’s sure her father’s innocent. Or is she?” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016008994 (print) | LCCN 2016036377 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512411515 (th : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512426953 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.D32178 Sp 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.D32178 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008994

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-39668-21289-8/23/2016

  9781512434347 ePub

  9781512434354 ePub

  9781512434361 mobi

  For my hickory and sunflowers:

  JMD, SMK, and MJM.

  My feet hit the pavement in even cadence, keeping time with a song that’s been repeating in my head: “Photograph” by Def Leppard. I haven’t heard the song in a long time, maybe even since before my mother left. Glam bands of the late eighties were definitely her thing, not Dad’s.

  I can’t shake free from the song. It came to me the moment I pulled the mail from the box and saw the postcard. This one came from Charleston, South Carolina, and it’s adorned with a picture of an old mansion, situated among thick-trunked, moss-draped trees, the kind of place where ladies might eat scones and sip English tea.

  Like all the other postcards I’ve received over the years, this one is vague. She didn’t sign it, or even address it by hand. My name and address are typed on a label pasted to the right side of the card. Directly opposite is the same message she sends me time and again—a handwritten 11/7, usually scrawled in Sharpie. Sometimes, she writes 117. Sometimes XI and VII.

  November seventh. The date my mother, Delilah Jennifer Lang, was supposed to return home. The date she never came home.

  Eleven and seven are also Mom’s favorite numbers—used to be, anyway, which is why they’re my favorite numbers too. Both prime. Indivisible by anything but themselves.

  Plus, they rhyme, which I got a kick out of when I was a kid.

  And if I wanted to rationalize it, maybe I’d say Mom writes numerical poems on these postcards, and poetry means something. But I’m well past rationalization, well past trying to understand her.

  In accompaniment with the music in my head, the early autumn wind rustles through the gold and burgundy leaves overhead. The trees reach from both sides of the road and create the illusion of an arbor above me. This is a common sight in neighborhoods like mine, neighborhoods planned and constructed on a predictable grid in the Victorian era, when everything was straight and proper, thank you very much, with shade trees planted at intervals in the parkways.

  These trees have been here a long time.

  Likely, they watched as my mother walked out the front door.

  And they, like me, couldn’t do a thing to stop her.

  I see her in the archives of my mind, crouching in front of me, the very last time I saw her: caramel waves of hair streaked with pale blonde, bright blue eyes like mine, freckles sprayed over her cheeks like stars in the sky. See you Wednesday, Samantha-girl. The sunflower locket strung around her neck bouncing against a yellow tank top. The pink caterpillar keychain spinning as she jingled the keys in her hand. My fingers feathering over holes in her denim capris. Cork-heeled wedges on her feet, carrying her far away from me.

  For a while, I kept waiting for the next Wednesday and the next. But over five hundred Wednesdays, and ten November sevenths, have passed since she uttered those words, and honestly, I think I lost faith in Wednesday somewhere around my twelfth birthday.

  Mom obviously hasn’t, if she keeps writing 11/7 on these cards. But I mean, would it kill her to actually say something to me, if she’s going to write anything at all?

  I left a message for Lieutenant Eschermann just before my run, letting him know that another of Mom’s postcards had shown up. Not that it’s likely to change his mind about anything. Eschermann has had the same theory about my mom for years. That she’s dead. But if she’s sending postcards, it means she’s alive, right? And if she’s alive, the good lieutenant’s hypotheses are wrong.

  Eschermann is a veteran from the first conflict in the Gulf, and for the past ten years he’s been the police detective in charge of finding my mom. But he’s found people before—soldiers who’d disappeared in the dunes of the Middle East—and if he can do that, my believing he’ll find my mom can’t be that unrealistic.

  It’s a lose-lose scenario, though. Either she can’t come back, which means she’s in a bad situation, or she chooses not to, which means she isn’t thinking of me at all and I shouldn’t think of her.

  And frankly, this postcard today did more to piss me off than give me hope anyway. If she’s out there, I need more than a random 11/7 on the backs of postcards of places I’ve never been. Blank postcards are no substitute for having a mom at home with you, playing rummy with you, praising your school projects, baking cookies for you.

  Technically, I do have a mom in Heather, even though she and Dad separated a few months ago. She’s been around a long time—almost as long as Mom’s been gone. The gist is that she and Dad were childhood friends and high school sweethearts, and that fate brought them back together. Fate did more than that, actually. It brought me a sister. In a way, Cassidy and I melded long before our parents made the official jump to husband and wife.

  It took them a while to get married, but I can’t blame Heather for that. After Mom left, Dad starting drinking way too much. Heather insisted that Dad get permanently sober before they tied the knot. And in the meantime, she picked up the slack. If I needed
a ride to Little League—this was before I realized I was too uncoordinated to play baseball—Heather served as taxi. If I needed a costume for a class play, Heather stepped up. And when I was in tears over the disaster of my Bridge to Terabithia diorama in fifth grade, it was Heather who helped me pull it together. She never tried to replace Mom in my life, though, for the eight years she lived with us. She knew nobody could do that.

  I’m rounding the corner at Schmidt’s place, which bears the honor of being the oldest and largest house in the neighborhood. It’s kitty-corner from the rear of my house. Prime real estate. A red-bricked path—which winds through an arbor of vines, clinging to their last breaths of life for the season—leads to the front door. The house itself is white with navy blue trim and a door the color of black cherries. A bronze plaque is affixed to the siding next to the door, declaring it a landmark. An identical one adorns our carriage house, which was originally part of the same property.

  The sweeping lawn holds more trees than I can count. There used to be sunflowers, too, when I was little. The scent of a backyard bonfire fills the air. Schmidt’s always burning lawn refuse, and although it’s against city code, no one seems to bother him about it.

  I breathe in the smell of it, which always makes me think of Mom, who often stood at an open window to relish the scents and sounds of autumn. “Listen, Samantha,” she’d say. “Do you hear the crackle of the leaves?”

  I listen for it now and smile when the sizzle and pop of Schmidt’s fire reaches my ears. Yes, Mom. I hear it. Angry as I am about this postcard, I wonder if she’s standing at a bonfire in South Carolina right now, saying the same thing to some other kid—a kid she deemed worthy of sticking around for.

  When my mother first disappeared, I thought she was hiding at Schmidt’s place. It would be an easy house to hide in. According to town records, there’s an underground tunnel connecting his place with our carriage house. Rumor has it, it was a means to carry contraband liquor from the street to the house during Prohibition, which makes it sort of mysterious. And there is a door in the floor of the carriage house that makes the rumors actually seem possible.

  Dad put a lock on the door in the carriage house floor when I was little. It both intrigued and terrified me to think of people descending into a dank cellar and worming through a narrow tunnel to emerge hundreds of feet away, in the basement of Schmidt’s grand house. Maybe that’s why I used to imagine that Mom had escaped down through the carriage house floor to Schmidt’s house. Intriguing and terrifying.

  The familiar feeling of loss creeps in again, along with a sense of inadequacy. If she’d loved me the way moms are supposed to love their kids, wouldn’t she have come back by now?

  My feet fall a bit faster on the pavement.

  My breath comes in sharp intakes. I close my eyes for a second or two.

  Look for the map in my mind. Watch the pushpins pop up from the tiny towns that Mom has sent postcards from, and see them connect to one another with veins of a road system. Breathe.

  I know it’s weird, but it works. Some people envision serene landscapes or oceans to calm down. I see maps when I close my eyes. It helps me remember that even if Mom is far away, all towns are connected somehow.

  I open my eyes and breathe deeply, inhaling the scent of burning leaves. Inhale for eleven seconds, exhale for seven. Inhale for eleven, exhale for seven. Okay. Better now.

  Schmidt’s nephew, Ryan, is in the front yard, trimming branches off the sadder-looking hickories. He’s visiting for the week, probably helping with the enormous task of tending to the plants and trees on the property. He waves, and I raise a hand in return before I round the corner.

  Ryan used to come here often when I was younger, and I have vague recollections of playing with him when we were little. I haven’t seen him in about five years. Can’t imagine hanging out with him now. He’s grown into one of those unapproachably good-looking guys, and since he arrived last Sunday, I’ve kept my distance, if only to avoid looking like an idiot in front of him.

  Besides, it’s not as if my dad and I are on especially friendly terms with Ryan’s uncle. Schmidt’s an older guy, single, not very sociable. Our households have an unspoken agreement to mutually keep our distance.

  I run through the neighborhood, all the way to the lake, and down the shoreline to the strip of shops where Cassidy, my once-step-but-always-sister, is closing up at the Funky Nun.

  Streetlamps begin to buzz, washing the bricked path with their amber light, and the sun is dipping in the sky, painting the horizon apricot. I don’t usually go running this late. Because where there’s light, there’s shadow. I pick up my pace. The shop is all the way at the end of the Lakefront Walk.

  When I enter the shop, some low-volume, drum-heavy soundtrack greets me. Cassidy is at the register, probably adding up the day’s receipts. She glances up at me. “Whatcha doing, chickie?”

  “Knitting a scarf.” I flip Heather’s homemade sign from open (COME IN AND LOSE YOURSELF) to closed (GET LOST AND FIND YOURSELF) and turn the lock. “What’s it look like I’ve been doing?”

  “Well, duh. But at this hour?” She knows I hate running at dusk.

  “Got a late start thanks to Charleston, South Carolina.”

  “Huh?”

  “I got another postcard today.”

  “Oh, Sam.” She tilts her head a little to the left, and her brows slant downward. She never knows what to say when this happens.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  She takes my words at face value and quickly changes the subject. “Is Dad home?”

  “Wasn’t when I left.”

  My dad’s not her real father, but she still calls him Dad. Her biological father was never interested in filling the job, and ever since Heather married Dad, the four of us seemed to fit together naturally.

  We were meant to be. At least that’s what we thought up until their abrupt end this past spring.

  They filed for divorce on vague grounds. Irreconcilable differences. Which is Lawyer Speak for Sami-and-Cassidy-don’t-have-to-know-exactly-what-happened. But Dad and Heather are eternally entwined, connected by the sisterly bond Cass and I share, and by the bond Cass has with my dad, whether they like it or not.

  “You should try running in the morning instead of the afternoon,” Cassidy says in her best imitation of my father. “Invigorating!”

  I roll my eyes. She knows better than anyone that I’m not quite myself until noon, and I’d probably fall flat on my face if I laced up my Nikes at six in the morning. “While you finish, I’m going upstairs to see Kismet”—yellow lab extraordinaire—“and maybe grab a shower.”

  “No time.” Cassidy clips the receipts together and flips her long black hair over her shoulder. “We’ll be late.”

  On Thursdays, Heather teaches an evening textiles class at the community college, so Cassidy has dinner with us and often spends the night. But if she’s worried about being late, I must’ve run for longer than I thought. I mentally retrace my winding route. “What time is it?”

  “Five thirty-six.”

  So very like Cassidy to be so exact. It’s probably why she and Dad get along so well.

  “Well, then. We’re already late, by Dad’s timetable.” We’re still twenty-four minutes early, as he dictates six as dinnertime. Yet if I know my father, he’ll be checking his watch at the window, waiting.

  “By the time you shower, we’ll be at least ten minutes late,” Cassidy says. “And the food will be getting cold—it’s Chinese tonight, remember—and he puts a lot of effort into our Thursdays. We should be on time.”

  “Okay.”

  We walk through the shop to the back door. I punch off the sound system, silencing the clanks and clatter of the tribal drums, while Cassidy hits the lights and turns on the security system. Good night, Funky Nun.

  Cassidy’s Jeep Wrangler smells faintly of vanilla, thanks to the satchel Heather made to mask the stench of wet dog after Cassidy and I took Kismet to the do
g beach last summer. Dad originally bought the Jeep for us to share, but now I only see it when Cass is chauffeuring me.

  Def Leppard serenades me in my head once more as we buckle up.

  “Zack texted me during government today,” says Cassidy.

  I offer a fist for a bump.

  “I mean”—her fist meets mine—“I didn’t actually get the text during class—”

  “Of course not.” That would require her taking her eyes off the Smart Board, and Cassidy just doesn’t do that.

  “—but once class was over, I got the text he sent during class. And . . . apparently Brooke’s been putting in a good word, so . . . he wants to hang out.”

  “Awesome. So what’s the plan?”

  “Friday night. Party at their place.”

  “Brooke’s grounded.”

  “She doesn’t seem to care. Their parents are in Door County.”

  “Is this a party party? Or, you know, just the four of us?”

  “She didn’t say. Knowing Brooke, she’ll invite Alex at least”

  Not that it matters, really. I’ll go, either way. I just prefer smaller gatherings to big bashes, and I prefer not to be a fifth wheel.

  “Zack’s a senior,” Cassidy continues. “It’s now or never. He’s going to Virginia next year.”

  Yeah. Full-ride scholarship. Brooke’s older brother is amazing with a soccer ball.

  “Shit,” Cassidy says under her breath as we near my house.

  An Echo Lake Police cruiser is parked at the curb.

  I figured Eschermann might show up when I left him a message about the postcard, but I wish he would’ve called instead. This display leads our neighbors in the wrong direction, makes them think things that aren’t true. When people don’t have all the information, they tend to fill in the blanks.

  I’ve heard the story a thousand times: Mom was planning to go away for the weekend, so on Friday night Dad got me a sitter while he and Heather were out. When they came back from dinner, the sitter was gone, I wasn’t home, and neither was Mom. They assumed Mom had left for her trip and taken me with her. A couple of hours later, Schmidt found me in his basement and walked me home. No one ever saw or heard from Mom again.