The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  Outside, my mom faltered for a moment, looking up at the blue-gray house I’d tried to barge into before she made her way across the street toward Austin’s house.

  Toward me.

  My stomach fluttered nervously.

  “This must be so weird for you.” Tyler’s voice came from behind me. It was the first time I’d heard him say anything in his new, deep voice since that moment I’d collapsed in his arms in the kitchen. Vaguely, I could make out the shape of him, still too tall to reconcile with the Tyler I remembered, in the reflection of the glass. But all my focus, all my energy was directed on her . . . on my mom.

  I nodded and then slipped away from the window to meet her at the front door. She didn’t go around back like I had.

  I opened it before she could knock, startling her.

  Seeing her there, her face looking drawn the way it did, her lips pinched and her eyes strained, I could almost believe that everything I’d been told was true. It truly had been five years since I’d last seen her.

  Tyler looked five years older. My mother looked five years wearier.

  Tamara had said that, after a few years of private investigators and police, my parents finally had to go on with their lives and had left it at that, even when I’d tried to probe to find out what exactly “go on with their lives” meant.

  I guess I was about to find out.

  “Kyra?” My mom’s voice was more like a question. A terrified, hopeful, incredulous question. And suddenly she was just my mom. The same mom I’d had breakfast with yesterday. The same mom who shared dorky memes on Facebook and who laughed at my dad’s lame jokes and who’d continued making me Mickey Mouse pancakes on Sunday mornings long after I’d told her I didn’t care if my pancakes were shaped like cartoon characters.

  “Mom . . .” Just saying the word made it real, and I started to cry, but really only because she was crying, while at the same time she did the mom-thing and wrapped me in her arms and started whispering nonsense words that tumbled over one another. Words like how she never thought she’d see me again and how I hadn’t changed a bit and how she was never letting me out of her sight again.

  I stayed inside the circle of her embrace, listening to it all. She made promises and we cried, and she hugged me and I hugged her until my arms ached and hers probably did too. When her grip loosened, I finally found the words to ask “Where’s Dad? Is he coming too?”

  I thought she might have stiffened, but I couldn’t say so for sure. I didn’t have the chance to decide, because we were interrupted by that man, the one from across the street. The one who’d chased me out of his house earlier.

  His actions made sense now, I guess, since I was a complete stranger who’d been trying to shove her way into his home; but it didn’t make me bristle any less when he appeared at my mother’s back.

  Or when his hand fell on her shoulder.

  Like he knew her.

  Knew her, knew her.

  Her brow crumpled when she turned to face him. “Grant.” She spoke to him in such a familiar way, in a way that made my stomach drop. The same way she spoke to my father. “I haven’t had a chance to tell her yet.” When she looked back to me, her expression was apologetic. “Kyra.”

  “I’m so sorry,” the man said. “I should’ve recognized you. From your pictures.”

  I looked up at him, really looked at him. Tall and dark eyed, and, even now, holding the little blond boy in his arms. She didn’t explain who he was. She didn’t have to. The toddler reaching for my mother said it all when he squealed, “Mommy!”

  She took the little boy, and he clutched her, looking more like a monkey than a child the way he clung to her. He dropped his head on her shoulder and sighed contentedly, and I briefly wondered if I’d done that, too, when I was his age.

  I looked at the boy, and then my mom, and then the man again, at the way his hand stayed on her shoulder.

  Five years . . .

  My parents had gone on with their lives. . . .

  But not with each other.

  This was her new family. This was her son. And her husband. Her new husband . . . shiny and sleek and new, like the car parked in front of the house.

  “I didn’t want you to find out this way,” she told me, reaching for me with her free hand. She squeezed my arm, trying to pull me to her, to make me part of the embrace with her and the little boy in her arms.

  Maybe she didn’t get it, how much this was for me. That this was happening too suddenly, and it was too, too, too much. Or maybe she did, because then she said, in a voice that was almost too hopeful, making me wonder if she was talking to me or to the little boy in her arms, “This is Logan. Your brother.”

  I tried to look at him—this replacement child—but I couldn’t. He might be my brother, but I’d never asked for him. I didn’t want him. I wanted my old family. The one I’d had yesterday. “Where’s Dad?” I finally asked, turning to look at my feet, the only place that felt safe.

  “He’s coming, Kyr. He’s on his way.” She was trying to sound sympathetic; I knew she was.

  “Good. I’ll be inside. Let me know when he gets here.”

  “What else do I need to know?” I asked when Tyler appeared in the doorway to Austin’s bedroom, the only place that seemed semifamiliar and nontoxic at the moment.

  Tyler smiled at me from where he leaned against the doorjamb, and I realized why I’d mistaken him for his brother when I’d first seen him. His hair was slightly darker and longer and more mussed, and his skin was lighter than Austin’s, as if he spent more time indoors than out, but there was that same confidence about him. Those same green eyes that crinkled when he grinned his sideways grin.

  Tyler shrugged. “Flying cars, for one.”

  “Shut up,” I scoffed from where I was sprawled on my back on the bed. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Well, not so much flying as hovering, but we’ve almost got the technology down.”

  I lifted my head, unwilling to allow myself to smile. My eyes glanced over to the clock on the wall, and I wondered how much longer it would be till my father would get there.

  “Oh, and mind reading.” His teasing half grin grew to a full-blown smile, dazzling me because it was so reminiscent of his brother’s.

  A pang of longing threatened to do me in.

  I threw a pillow at him, and he dodged it. “Can I call him?”

  I didn’t have to explain who “him” was, and Tyler came inside, joining me as he sat on the end of the bed. It was strange to be here with him. In one sense I’d known Tyler his whole life. I’d been to all of his birthday parties, teased him when he had a lisp because he lost his front teeth, walked him to school on his first day, pushed him on the swing set until he cried mercy because it was too high, and built snowmen with him on snow days.

  In another sense he was a virtual stranger, someone I barely knew.

  But at this very moment he felt like the only link I had to Austin.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Mom called and left a message, letting him know you were back. I’m sure he’ll try to get in touch with you.” Even his voice was too similar. It was so freaky uncanny.

  I pulled out my phone, suddenly understanding why I didn’t have service. Life went on, cell phone contracts didn’t. “I don’t have a phone.”

  Tyler thought about it for a second and then handed me his.

  “What’ll you use?”

  “I already told you . . . mind reading. No phones necessary.” He shrugged when I raised my eyebrows at him. “I’ll get a burner. Besides, your mom’ll probably get you a new one in a couple’a days.”

  Now it was my turn to shrug. “Or my dad.” He didn’t say anything to that, so I ran my thumb over the screen of his fancy phone, rubbing away the fingerprints he’d left there. “How long have they been divorced, anyway?”

  He shifted on the bed, and I figured I’d made him uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck and leaned forward, balancing his elbows on
his knees. “I don’t know about the divorce, but your dad moved out about a year after you . . . you know. . . .” His words trailed away. “I don’t know if I should even say this, but it got weird. After a while there were accusations. I don’t know who started them, but people started saying it was him, your dad. That he was the one responsible for . . . well, for you going missing—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “No! No way. Not my dad. We were fighting, yeah—arguing over college and Austin. Stupid stuff, really. I got mad and decided to walk. But my dad would never hurt me.” I shouldn’t even have to say that, I thought, defending the man who would’ve thrown himself in front of a bus for me.

  Tyler made an apologetic face. “That’s what my parents always said too. They said rumors are dangerous, and people talk when they have nothing better to do. My dad said no one believed it, at least no one that mattered.”

  I nodded, relieved, at least that his parents had believed that my father was innocent. Austin’s dad was a cop, and I felt better knowing that the police, even if he was the only one, hadn’t suspected my dad of anything shady.

  Then Tyler’s eyes met mine, and he asked me the question I’d been asking myself over and over again. “So where were you then? This whole time you’ve been gone, where were you?”

  If I had an answer I would have given it to him. Surely I wasn’t asleep behind the Dumpster for the entire five years—the Rip van Winkle of the Gas ’n’ Sip. The same went for wandering along Chuckanut Drive after my fight with my dad. I had no memory of anything past getting out of his car that night.

  Just the flash of light. And then nothing.

  Five years gone in a blink.

  I glanced again at the clock, but its hands hadn’t moved since the first time I’d looked, perpetually frozen at 3:34. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t remember anything at all. For me it’s like it was yesterday.” I shook my head, as baffled as everyone else by the question. “They looked for me?”

  “Of course,” he offered, his green eyes earnest as they sought mine. “Everyone. Not just your parents or mine, but the entire school. The whole city, maybe the entire state. There were flyers and alerts, and private investigators. You were like one of those milk carton kids.”

  “And Austin?”

  His head bobbed. “Austin too. And Cat. They searched with everyone else.”

  Cat. I hadn’t even thought of her, and my eyes stung all over again. My face crumpled as I clutched Tyler’s phone even tighter in my fist. I’d have to call her tonight. She’d want to know I was back. Of course she’d want to know.

  He studied me, silent for a long, tense moment. “Can I tell you something strange?”

  I half choked on a sob. “Stranger than me reappearing after all this time with no memory at all of the last five years?”

  The corners of his mouth slid up the tiniest bit, and he cocked his head. “Yeah, sort of. It’s just that . . .” His eyes slid over every part of my face. “You don’t look any different.” His brow fell as he tried to explain. “What I mean is, Austin looks older. He looks twenty-two. But you . . . you still look . . . sixteen.”

  My dad had always been dorky. And by dorky I guess I mean cheesy but sweet.

  He was the hands-on kind of dad. When I was little, he was the dad who volunteered to go on class field trips, and coach my softball and basketball teams when all the other dads were too busy working. He worked, too, but his job as a computer programmer gave him the flexibility to telecommute, which meant he’d collected coach’s trophies until I went into middle school and his role was usurped by coaches who collected real paychecks for what they did.

  But he’d never missed a single game or recital or parent-teacher conference.

  He was that dad.

  So seeing him now, five years—and one missing daughter—later was like a punch to the gut.

  It wasn’t just me he’d been missing all these years later . . . it was him.

  He was no longer the same man I remembered from our fight over which college scholarship I should pursue. This man, this dad, was a bedraggled version of that one.

  His eyes were what I noticed first. Where my mom’s had been tense and drawn, his were red rimmed and vacant. Hopeless.

  Unlike with my mom, however, there was no awkward hesitation. He was running toward the house the moment he stumbled from the beat-up van he’d parked haphazardly at the curb, the door still dangling wide open. I met him on the lawn, barely registering the fact that I was pushing my way past my mother and her new son and husband, past Tyler and his mom and his father, who was planning to meet us at the hospital—something my mother was insisting on, that I be checked out.

  Gary Wahl—Austin and Tyler’s dad—would take my official statement there. I was pretty sure that because I was twenty-one, and no longer a minor, I could make some of these decisions on my own, but I still had to answer questions about where I’d been, or at least about what I could recall . . . which was pretty much less than nothing.

  But none of those things mattered now. I didn’t care that we had an audience or that my dad smelled of whiskey or gin or some noxious combination of the two and that he probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. He was here, and that was all that mattered.

  “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . ,” I mumbled at the same time he did.

  His shirt smelled stale and warm—like him, but not. He was fatter and softer than I remembered, and my arms had to reach farther to find their way around him. The scruff of his chin against my forehead had gone past grizzled and grown softer, like a beard, even though it was patchy and, from what I’d seen of it before he’d grabbed me and clutched me to him, grayer than I thought he should be.

  I felt a hand on the small of my back, a light touch. “We should get going,” my mother said softly. “We can take my car.”

  I glanced up at my dad, feeling like this might be too weird for him, but not sure which of us I was more worried about, him or me. He just shrugged, as if he didn’t care about her or who drove, but his grip on me remained the same. Firm. Secure. Like an anchor.

  We followed her, and I didn’t look back to see if her new family followed us.

  The inside of her car was cramped. Or maybe it was just me, sitting in the passenger seat feeling all awkward with my parents, who were now eyeing each other warily, like they were complete strangers.

  My mom sat beside me, fumbling with the ignition and her seat belt, and then some more with the seat belt, pretty much anything to avoid looking in the backseat, where my dad was straining to lean forward, trying to be as close as he could to me.

  Finally, when we were away from Austin’s house and from the new husband and the house I’d grown up in, away from everything and everyone that should have been comforting and ordinary but made me feel as out of place as I did sitting here trapped between my parents, my mom broke the silence. “Can you remember anything, Kyra? Even the tiniest detail so we can try to figure this out?”

  But it was my dad who answered as he slumped forward, his elbows on the center console and his fingers slipping through his greasy hair. “It was the light. How many times do I have to tell you? It was the goddamn light that took her.”

  They argued the entire drive, and I just sat there, listening mostly, because I didn’t have anything to offer.

  “Do you remember the light?” my dad kept asking.

  I’d already answered his question. Of course I remembered it. How could I not? It was bright, blinding, brilliant.

  There was the light . . . then . . . nothing. Not a single memory.

  “How many times do we have to go over this? How many times?!” My mom’s voice bordered on hysteria as she clutched the wheel, and I knew why. He was repeating himself—maybe he had been for years. Maybe this was the same argument she’d been hearing from him since the night I’d vanished.

  I knew what she was thinking: how could he possibly blame a light for my d
isappearance? It was . . . well, it was insane to say the least.

  But my dad didn’t see it that way. He was convinced. And not just convinced, but the way he talked about that light—all reverential and crazy eyed—reminded me of those guys who made tinfoil hats or pulled out all their fillings so the government couldn’t read their thoughts through radio frequencies.

  That kind of convinced.

  He didn’t actually say the word aliens, or even abduction. Instead he talked about internet message boards and government cover-ups, and he’d even mentioned crop circles at one point, so it wasn’t exactly like he was being subtle either.

  Aliens. My dad thought I’d been abducted by aliens. Awesome.

  I guess it sort of explained the nonshowery look he had about him and the stench of booze he wore like cologne. And I was starting to also-maybe-sort of see why my mom had kicked him out.

  But from where I sat, he was still my dad, and the sense of guilt that this was all somehow my fault was overwhelming. If only I hadn’t argued with him. If only I hadn’t forced him to stop the car. If only I hadn’t gotten out in the middle of Chuckanut Drive.

  If only . . .

  It was a terrible game to play. One he’d probably played a million times over.

  I twisted around in my seat, and put my hand on his. It was like a role reversal of all the times he’d squeezed my hand, silently reassuring me with his touch that everything would be okay. I wanted to convey that too. To let him know I was here now. That I wasn’t leaving again.

  His bloodshot eyes found mine and stabbed my heart. “They work like that, you know? They just take people.”

  I tried to shake my head, to deny his words. I might not have my memory to rely on, but I was certain it hadn’t been little green men who’d come down in their flying saucer and whisked me away to probe me for five years, only to bring me back and deposit me behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip.

  “Ben,” my mom said when I didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything useful to add. “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”