Rory skidded to a halt at the table, then made a face. ‘Scrambled eggs stink.’
‘Not as much as you,’ I said.
Rory picked up his fork and prodded me with it.
‘Ow. Mum, he’s hitting me.’
Mum glared at us both. ‘Sit, Rory.’ Sometimes I wonder if she thinks he’s a dog. I heard her say once to a friend, ‘Boys are like puppies. All they need is affection and fresh air. Girls are much harder work.’
So why choose me – a girl – in the first place? I remembered all the times when I was little that Mum talked to me about being adopted – about how they picked me out of some catalogue. It used to make me feel special. Wanted. Now it made me feel like a mail-order dress. A dress that didn’t fit but that was too much trouble to send back.
‘Can Jam come round later?’ I asked.
‘When you’ve done your homework – if it isn’t too late,’ came Mum’s predictable reply.
‘These eggs look like your puke,’ Rory said.
Sometimes I really, really hate him.
* * *
I emailed Jam as soon as I went back upstairs.
C u l8r?
His reply came back in seconds: ill b thr @ 7.
I checked the time on the corner of the screen: 6.15. I was never going to finish my essay in forty-five minutes.
Who am I?
Adopted. Lost. I typed the words into the search engine box.
I’d been thinking about it a lot recently. Last week I’d even checked out some of the adoption information websites. You’d have laughed if you’d seen me: heart thumping, palms sweating, stomach screwed up into a knot.
I mean, it’s not as if there’s going to be some site that says: Lauren Matthews – click here for your adoption details.
Anyway. D’you know what I found out?
That if I wanted to know anything about my life before I was three, I needed Mum and Dad’s permission.
How unbelievable is that?
My life. My identity. My past.
But their decision.
Even if I asked, there’s no way Mum would say yes. Well, you’ve seen how she is about the subject. Gets a face on her like a smashed plate.
It would serve her right if I went ahead and did it anyway. I clicked on the search icon.
Adopted. Lost. Nearly a million hits.
My heart thudded. I could feel my stomach clenching again.
I sat back in my chair. Enough.
I was just wasting time. Putting off the homework. I reached over to close the search. And that’s when I caught sight of it: Missing-Children.com. An international site for lost or missing children. I frowned. I mean, how do you lose a child and them not turn up? I can see how you might lose one for five minutes. Or even an hour. And I know sometimes children go missing ’cause some psycho’s murdered them. But Mum’s always saying that only happens like once or twice a year.
I clicked through to the homepage. It was a flickering mass of faces. Each face the size of a stamp; each stamp turning into a new face after a few seconds.
My jaw dropped. Did all these faces belong to missing children? I saw a search field. I hesitated. Then I tapped in my name. Lauren. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. Just messing about – seeing how many missing Laurens there were out there.
It turned out there were one hundred and seventy-two. Jeez. The computer was flashing at me to refine my search.
Part of me wanted to stop. But I told myself not to be stupid. The flickering faces on the screen weren’t adopted children like me – with no past. They were missing kids. Kids with only a past.
I just wanted to see who was there.
I added my birth month to the search criteria, then watched as three Laurens appeared on the screen. One was black, missing since she was two weeks old.
One was white with blonde hair – she looked about nine or ten. Yeah – she’d only been missing five years.
I stared at the third child.
Martha Lauren Purditt
Case type: lost, injured, missing
Date of birth: March 12
Age now: 14
Birth place: Evanport, Connecticut, USA
Hair: brown
Eyes: blue
I looked at the face above the words. A chubby, smiling little girl’s face. Then at the date she’d gone missing: September 8.
Less than two months before I was adopted.
My heart seemed to stop beating.
The birth date was a couple of days out. And I was British, not from America like the missing girl.
So it wasn’t possible.
Was it?
The question seeped like a drug through my head, turning me upside down and inside out, filling me up.
Could I be her?
Continue Reading…
Girl, Missing
Sophie McKenzie
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie McKenzie is the multi award-winning original queen of teen thrillers, whose debut, Girl, Missing, is still a top-ten YA bestseller sixteen years after first publication. She has followed its success with two further books in the Missing series: Sister, Missing and Missing Me, as well as many other teen thriller and romance novels, including The Medusa Project series, Blood Ties and Blood Ransom. Sophie’s first adult novel, Close My Eyes, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. Sophie’s books have sold more than a million copies in the UK alone and are translated and sold all over the world. She lives in North London.
www.sophiemckenziebooks.com
Twitter: @sophiemckenzie_
www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk/Authors/Sophie-McKenzie
BY SOPHIE MCKENZIE
THE MISSING SERIES
Girl, Missing
Sister, Missing
Missing Me
THE MEDUSA PROJECT
The Set-Up
The Hostage
The Rescue
Hunted
Double-Cross
Hit Squad
LUKE AND EVE SERIES
Six Steps to a Girl
Three’s a Crowd
The One and Only
FLYNN SERIES
Falling Fast
Burning Bright
Casting Shadows
Defy the Stars
Blood Ties
Blood Ransom
Split Second
Every Second Counts
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Text copyright © 2021 Sophie McKenzie
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.
The right of Sophie McKenzie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road, London
WC1X 8HB
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
www.simonandschuster.com.au
www.simonandschuster.co.in
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN 978-1-4711-9910-3
eBook ISBN 978-1-4711-9911-0
eAudio ISBN 978-1-4711-9912-7
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. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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