by Luanne Rice
Outside my door, I overheard Astrid on the phone. Obviously she had called my father. Words and phrases like “somatic,” “depressed,” “talking to Gillian,” “the garage,” “that damned car,” and—naturally—“suicidal” burned my ears.
“Of course it’s psychosomatic, Andrew,” she said. “It’s just like the last time. She had the stomachache, and she started up that car, and that night she was in the hospital. Let me call Dr. Bouley right now and get her admitted. Walking out of school with just one period left to go, Andrew. That’s another sign.”
She talked on and on, her voice clipped and efficient, as if she knew better than my father what was best for me.
Hesitating could be my downfall, but I knew I couldn’t leave town, not yet. School was out by now; the buses would be dropping everyone off. I lay the car key on my bureau and reached into the top drawer for my binoculars.
I trained them on the Home. Billy’s room was on the second floor, all the way on the right. At night, when the lights were on, I could see him clearly. The Home had always pierced my heart. Even before I knew him I would turn off my lights before bed, kneel by the window with binoculars pressed to my eyes, gaze at the Home, and whisper good night to the parentless kids.
Nine months ago, the night before school started in September, I looked up and spotted a boy I hadn’t seen before. He stood at a window—second floor, all the way to the right—staring over the hills with unbearable longing. I kept the binoculars on him for a long time. He was tall and lanky with such tension in his body I felt as if he might fly out the window, to wherever—or whomever—he was thinking about.
The next day a new kid showed up at school: the boy I’d seen in the window. It was Billy Gorman. He had no idea, but I’d claimed him that night. The more I watched him—not that I got to know him, he never let anyone in—the more I cared. I’d see him in that upper right window, sleepless just like me, staring out with a silent yearning that matched my own.
Only mine was for him, and his was for … I had no idea. His terrible story was on the news, whispered in huddles outside lockers.
Billy’s mother had been murdered. By his father.
It was in all the papers, and on TV, and talked about by everyone in school, town, all through the state. Billy had grown up on the Connecticut Shoreline, but after what happened, he got sent to Stansfield.
Our classmates acted one of three ways toward him: as if he were a celebrity and they wanted to get close to him and learn all the dirt; as if he were a wounded bird and they wanted to heal him; or as if he were a pariah and they were afraid the crime and his tragedy would rub off on them.
But Billy was quiet and kept to himself. He didn’t react to any of the kids who sidled up to him or spurned him. Girls of the “wounded bird” school of thought circled around, wanting to draw him close. Clarissa called him “poor Billy.” Other kids called him “the murderer’s son” behind his back. It made me mad because it reminded me of things kids said after my family fell apart and I wound up in the bin. But Billy just did his schoolwork.
As the school year went on I begged my father—could we adopt him? He needed a real home; could it be ours?
Shocker: The answer was no.
One day in December, just before the first Christmas without his mother, Billy and I stood next to each other in choir. Our music teacher had arranged everyone according to the way we sang harmony. So Billy and I being side by side was accidental, and no one had any idea what it made me feel inside. Not even Gen and Clarissa.
Music books rustled as we prepared to sing “The Birds’ Carol.”
The audience was packed with parents. My dad and Astrid were there. Billy’s arm accidentally brushed mine. I blushed like mad and forced myself to stand stiff instead of leaning into him.
I wanted to say: I miss my mother so much. Christmas is hard. It must be for you, too.
Mrs. Draper, the music teacher, rapped on the podium to get our attention, shot us a raised-eyebrow glare to get us to start singing, so we did.
“From out of a wood did a cuckoo fly …”
“Ha, cuckoo like Maia,” Jason Hollander said under his breath, and he and a few other kids snickered as the song went on.
“Crazy girl!” Pete Karsky said.
Billy cleared his throat—was it a chuckle? My heart practically stopped. It was bad enough being teased by stupid Jason and Pete, but having Billy join the mental-patient bashing made me want to disappear.
My mouth moved, but no words emanated.
Then Billy did something strange. He stared at me with such intensity I felt it in my blood.
“Don’t let them get to you,” he whispered, looking stern, almost angry. He didn’t look away until sounds came out of me again.
Had he been mad at me for screwing up the song by shutting down? Or was he reacting to the boys’ meanness, their borderline bullying?
I thought about all that now, in my room, revving up to leave.
My dad was very protective of me. Especially when it came to boys. I’d never even been on a date. He’d been that way since my mother left—when I was thirteen, prime time for me to start really liking boys. He didn’t mind my going to dances or the movies with groups, but he kept saying he didn’t want me getting hurt.
After I got depressed, forget it. His overprotectiveness went into high gear. Then it became about stability. I might crash at any moment. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle a boyfriend. If someone wanted to come to the house for snacks while he and Astrid were home, that would be fine. Get this: Astrid said we—this imaginary boy and I—could have those little cocktail hot dogs impaled on frilly-ended toothpicks along with Bugles and her famous cream cheese clam dip, the recipe direct from some supermarket magazine.
I would sooner stick a frilly-ended toothpick in my eye than have Billy come over and sit in the living room while my dad and Astrid sat there summing him up and passing plates of gross snacks.
It was seventy-two-going-on-seventy-three months since my mother had left and eleven and three-quarters months since my father had remarried. I wanted things the way they’d been when it had been just the three of us, pre-Astrid. Cocktail franks had played no part in our lives. My mother was real, deep, and couldn’t be bothered making recipes from the Food Network.
Now she wrote me every two weeks, sometimes more often, on cream vellum stationery sealed with red wax.
I’d just gotten a letter from her. She’d sent a picture of herself outside her cabin, on the banks of one of the only fjords in North America. She looked exactly as I remembered her the last time I saw her: just like me, but twenty-five years older, with straw-colored hair, a slightly long nose, and eyes that crinkled when she smiled. Our need for braces was undisputed—we each had two crooked bottom teeth and a space between our front teeth. I’d gotten braces the week before she left and pulled them off myself a month later.
I didn’t want my smile to change, to be different from hers.
I loved her letters, and she always said how much she missed me. Everything should have been fine. There were no major triggers in my life. So why was I going off the deep end now? I’d been seeing Dr. Bouley faithfully, once a week. I took my antidepressant every morning, never missed a dose. But I was crashing.
Astrid was still on the telephone. Her voice was nasal and grating; it bothered me all the time, even when it wasn’t talking about me to my father.
“Andrew, just look at the calendar if you need to be convinced. Do you think the timing is an accident? Hello, one-year anniversary, sweetheart.”
Silence while she listened.
“Yes, you’ve got it,” she said, continuing her rant. “She wanted to spoil it for us, she couldn’t help herself, and now, well, it doesn’t take Freud to tell us she can’t stand the fact of our anniversary.”
More silence; my dad must have been talking.
“Yes,” Astrid said, lowering her voice. “Talking to Gillian, I heard her. Yes, out loud.
Come home now. I’ll call Bouley and get things started.”
She might as well have said she was calling the men in the white coats. Trust me, there was no way I was going back to the Turner Institute. Never, ever again. Ever.
I knew Astrid would be guarding the stairs, so I locked my bedroom door from the inside, grabbed my duffel, opened my bedroom window, and climbed out onto the roof. My mother had shown me the way when I was seven.
She and I would sit here at night—it didn’t matter the season, winter, spring, summer, or fall—and she’d teach me celestial navigation. She let me hold the sextant she’d had since grad school.
“We’re the Whale Mavens and Construction Crew,” she said. “And my fellow whale maven had better learn how to patch a leaky boat and how to steer by the stars. Show me Polaris.”
I pointed at the North Star, and she gave me a long, strong hug that made me feel like I’d gotten straight As, discovered a new constellation, and shown her a rare whale.
“Identification is good, but navigation is hard. Here’s how you hold the sextant,” she said, positioning my hands on the delicate instrument, made of brass, with a handle and wheels and a long scope. She showed me how to rock it, how to bring a sky object down to the horizon. During the day we did it with the sun, and I thought of what an amazing mom I had: She could tame the sun.
When she had been out at sea on the Knorr, her favorite research vessel, she’d learned how to navigate by the stars at night, shoot sun lines at noon, and determine the ship’s position at sea.
I couldn’t think about that now. A white pine grew close to the house, thick with long needles and smelling of pitch, and I took a leap and landed in the middle branches. I scrambled down the trunk, my hands sticky with pine tar, and slunk around the corner of the house. Reaching into the pocket of my jeans, I found nothing.
That’s when I realized: I’d left the car key upstairs, on the bureau next to the binoculars.
I am so grateful to my brilliant, kind, and insightful editor Aimee Friedman. Everyone at Scholastic has been endlessly supportive and creative, including David Levithan, Ellie Berger, Lori Benton, Alan Smagler, Elizabeth Whiting, Betsy Politi, Nikki Mutch, Sue Flynn, Tracy van Straaten, Brooke Shearouse, Rachel Feld, Isa Caban, Lizette Serrano, Emily Heddleson, Anna Swenson, Mariclaire Jastremsky, Elizabeth Parisi, Baily Crawford, Olivia Valcarce, Rachel Gluckstern, Melissa Schirmer, Cheryl Weisman, and Christy Damio.
I have been with my agent Andrea Cirillo forever, and no wonder. I am thankful to her for everything. The Jane Rotrosen Agency is my other family, including Meg Ruley, Annelise Robey, Christina Hogrebe, Amy Tannenbaum, Rebecca Scherer, Kathy Schneider, Jessica Errera, Christina Prestia, Julianne Tinari, Michael Conroy, Donald W. Cleary, Hannah Rody-Wright, Ellen Tischler, Danielle Sickles, Sabrina Prestia, and Jane Berkey.
Amelia Onorato, the graphic novelist and comic artist, is incredibly wise about story, characters, dialogue, and the dark side of fictional families, and I am grateful for her generosity in discussing writing with me.
Molly Feinstein’s compassion, wisdom, and support mean so much to me. Every time we speak on the phone, I feel as if we’re taking a walk on the beach, looking for sea glass, talking about life as we go along.
Madelene McDuff Grisanty views the world, even the painful moments, with humor and perspective. She keeps me laughing. In her own words, spoken when she was ten years old, “I care so much.” She does.
Twigg Crawford is, as always, an inspiration. He’s my friend of longest standing. Knowing each other’s history so well is a great gift, and it has helped me weave friendships with old friends into my novels, including this one.
Teachers are everything. I’m so thankful to Laurette Laramie. She taught history but also social justice and the need to look beyond the lessons for a deeper truth. She introduced us to the New York Times’s feature, “The Neediest Cases Fund.” We read them in class. She helped me imagine other people’s lives, to care about their suffering, to want to help.
Librarians provide a place to read, learn, and imagine. I am thankful to all, especially Amy Rhilinger of Attleboro Public Library, Beverly Choltco-Devlin of Tacoma Public Library, and my first librarian, Virginia Smith of New Britain Public Library. Mrs. Smith told me I could get a library card as soon as I could write my name, and she gave me one, even though the “ce” of “Rice” trailed off the line. She handed me the key to the world of books, and I’ll never forget her.
Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-four novels, which have been translated into twenty-four languages. The author of Dream Country, Beach Girls, The Secret Language of Sisters, The Beautiful Lost, and others, Rice often writes about love, family, nature, and the sea. She received the 2014 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement in the Literary Arts category. Several of Rice’s novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Beach Girls for Lifetime. Rice is an avid environmentalist and advocate for families affected by domestic violence. She lives on the Connecticut Shoreline. Visit her online at luannerice.net.
YA BOOKS BY LUANNE RICE
The Beautiful Lost
The Secret Language of Sisters
ALSO BY LUANNE RICE
The Lemon Orchard
Little Night
The Letters (with Joseph Monninger)
The Silver Boat
The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners
The Geometry of Sisters
Light of the Moon
Last Kiss
What Matters Most
The Edge of Winter
Sandcastles
Summer of Roses
Summer’s Child
Silver Bells
Beach Girls
Dance with Me
The Perfect Summer
The Secret Hour
True Blue
Safe Harbor
Summer Light
Firefly Beach
Dream Country
Follow the Stars Home
Cloud Nine
Home Fires
Blue Moon
Secrets of Paris
Stone Heart
Crazy in Love
Angels All Over Town
Copyright © 2019 by Luanne Rice
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rice, Luanne, author.
Title: Pretend she’s here / Luanne Rice.
Other titles: Pretend she is here
Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Scholastic Press, 2019. | Summary: Fifteen-year-old Emily has six siblings, but she was also close to her best friend, Lizzie Porter, who died nearly a year ago, and she is still grieving; but Lizzie’s family are also grieving, so much so, that they use Lizzie’s younger sister, Chloe, as a lure and kidnap Emily, forcing her to dress, talk, and act like Lizzie, and threatening to go after Emily’s family if she does not become the replacement for the daughter they lost—and Emily is caught between fear for herself and her family, and concern for Chloe, who she sees is also a victim of Mrs. Porter’s madness.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018035371 | ISBN 9781338298505
Subjects: LCSH: Children—Death—Juvenile fiction. | Kidnapping—Juvenile fiction. | Identity (Psychology)—Juvenile fiction. | Bereavement—Juve
nile fiction. | Mental illness—Juvenile fiction. | Sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Kidnapping—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction. | Mental illness—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | LCGFT: Psychological fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R53 Pr 2019 | DDC 813.54 [Fic] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035371
First edition, March 2019
Cover photos ©: center: Jovana Rikalo/Stocksy United; clouds: Wang Xi/unsplash.com; denim: bloom/Shutterstock; paper tear: Robyn Mackenzie/Dreamstime; bees: Protasov AN/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Baily Crawford
e-ISBN 978-1-338-29851-2
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