Disappeared Read online

  Emily bit back a sob, but Shara must have heard, because she reached out a hand to rub her back. Gently, comfortingly … which made holding back the tears even harder.

  “Don’t,” Emily said quietly, not daring to look at Shara to see whether there was hurt or understanding in her eyes. If there was sympathy or, worse, pity, she’d lose it.

  Her hands were clenched so hard that if her nails were longer, they’d have drawn blood from her palms. Wouldn’t that give everyone something to talk about.

  Everyone was silent for a second when Ms. Castillo stopped reading, probably in awe. Until one of the boys in the back of the class scoffed, “Doth? Who says that?”

  “Adam, that’s enough. Or maybe you’d like me to read yours next.”

  Adam shut up.

  “Great work, Josh,” Ms. Castillo said, patting him on the shoulder.

  She went back to the front of the class, declining to make anyone follow Josh’s poem.

  “Spend the rest of the class workshopping and critiquing. I want your revised efforts in by the end of the week.”

  “I’ll catch up with you,” Emily told Shara after class.

  Shara gave her a knowing look, which was valid, because they always walked to lunch together.

  “Shut it,” Emily said, before Shara could say anything. “I just want to hear what he has to say.”

  “Okay, but you’d better report right back to me.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “And for that, I want a cookie. No, make it two. That’ll teach you to roll your eyes at your best friend.”

  “Would you just go?” she asked desperately. Josh was almost to his desk, and Emily definitely didn’t want to talk to him with an audience.

  You owe me, Shara mouthed as she swung her backpack up onto her shoulder. Emily rolled her eyes again. If she was going to owe cookies, she was going to get her money’s worth.

  Josh stopped at his now deserted desk and asked, “Is now a good time?”

  “Um, sure.” The class was clearing out around them, Terry sending Josh a backwards glance. “Here?”

  He glanced over at Ms. Castillo, pretending not to watch them, and pulled her toward the back of the classroom, saying, “This is probably more private than the hallway.”

  Her stomach was starting to feel like it might fly away, even though she couldn’t think that he meant to talk to her about anything like what Shara was thinking. She and Josh had barely spoken ten words to each other all semester. But the anticipation was killing her all the same. Once they had the back of the room to themselves, he seemed to struggle. They wouldn’t be alone—or nearly alone—for long before kids from the next period class started to straggle in.

  Someone had to say something, so she started. “I liked your poem,” she said. Lame. “It was pretty amazing.”

  “Oh, um, thanks,” he said, not meeting her gaze. Clearly poetry was the last thing on his mind. “Um, look, it’s about your mother.”

  That was about the last thing in the world she expected him to say, and the way he’d said it, it wasn’t anything good. “What about her?”

  “Word is she took off on you?” he looked up at her briefly as he said it, as though to confirm.

  Emily’s stomach no longer fluttered. The butterflies withered and died. “Yeah,” she answered. If this was about sympathy, she had lunch to get to. Or to skip. She didn’t want to face food or Shara right now.

  “Look, I don’t know if this helps—and I’d never have said anything if things were cool—but my family and I were out to dinner last week, and we saw her with a guy. Well, I saw her, and I’m pretty sure Mom did too.”

  “A guy?” she asked. “Are you sure? I mean, are you sure it was her? I guess you know a guy when you see one.”

  Josh gave a feeble smile. More than it deserved, especially since she hadn’t meant to be funny.

  “I’m sure. It hasn’t been that long since we hung out together. She doesn’t look any different.”

  Emily felt sick. Had Mom been seeing some guy in the two weeks she’d stayed away from them? Getting settled, she’d said. Maybe he’d been helping with that?

  “What did he look like?” she asked.

  Maybe it was a friend, someone they knew. Maybe she and Dad had even met secretly, trying to work things out. She and Josh had hung out when they were kids, so probably he knew her father by sight, but Dad worked a lot. It was possible Josh had never met or barely remembered him.

  “One of those guys with a young face and old hair. You know, gray before his time, but still kind of good looking. Like from a commercial.”

  Definitely not Dad, whose hair was still red-blonde, like hers.

  “Did they—”

  Kids were starting to file in, and she felt really self-conscious whispering in the back of class, but she had to know. “Did they look … cozy?”

  “You mean like dating? They didn’t kiss or anything—at least, not while I was watching—but yeah, if I didn’t know she was your mother, I’d have said they were on a date.”

  Emily’s heart wanted to fall right out of her chest.

  “Why are you telling me now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I thought that maybe if you knew anyone like that, you could start there. You know, maybe she’s with this guy?”

  “Thanks,” she said faintly. “I don’t. Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “I think so.”

  “Will you call me if you do?”

  “If you give me your number.”

  “Oooh!” Jay Radcliffe said, sliding into a seat in the back row. “Getting digits! I’ll take some of that action!”

  Emily gave him a look that should have melted him to slag there in his seat. She gave Josh her number quickly, quietly, hoping he caught it, then took off before she could self-destruct. That hot, horrible pressure was building up again, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Ten

  Monday

  Jared

  School sucked, as always. Though today was a special level of suckage. The math sheet they were assigned in class didn’t make any sense to him. It might as well have been written in gibberish. If he could focus, he might have been able to muddle through, but as it was all he could think about was Mom. Had she really left them? With nothing but a single text?

  Really?

  But what was the alternative? His mind stuttered and stopped at that question every time. He wanted to think she’d been in an accident somewhere and that they’d find her relatively unharmed, although he couldn’t think of an accident that would put her out of touch for two days and still be okay. So maybe she’d been hurt, like a concussion or something, and couldn’t remember who she was or where she was supposed to be.

  Or how to use a phone? His brain taunted him. And what about ID? She’d have her purse with her; she’d be found and identified. Maybe she’d left her purse somewhere with her phone inside. Maybe it had been stolen. It happened.

  But if she didn’t have her phone, then someone else had sent that text, just like Emily thought, and he couldn’t see why anyone besides Mom would text to say she was okay and that she loved them. Unless maybe Mom had asked them to so that she could leave her phone in one place and be in another if anyone tried to track her that way. Maybe she really, really didn’t want to be found.

  Maybe. It was the only thing that even sort of made sense. Either Mom had truly decided to drop off the face of the earth and out of their lives or …

  There was no or. The or was unthinkable.

  And yet … And yet he thought it.

  Or she was dead.

  Dead. Dead. Dead. The thought bounced around in his head as though his skull didn’t want to let it go and release it out into the world. As if that might make it true. It stayed inside, growing in strength until it edged everything else out. He tried to tame it back, but now that the thought was free, it wouldn’t be caged.

  Desperately, his hand sho
t up, waving for the teacher’s attention. He had to get out of there. To the bathroom. To the nurse’s office. It didn’t really matter. But maybe a change of scenery would change his thoughts. Distract him.

  The bell rang just then. He hadn’t realized the time.

  He headed to the nurse’s office instead of his next class and pleaded a headache. He wasn’t lying. His head was pounding now, throbbing behind the eyes as though there was no room for them with the dark thoughts crowding them out. Mrs. Kowalski gave him two Ibuprofen and a cool cloth for his forehead and sent him to lie down in a dark, quiet room. He was not about to call his Dad for a pick up.

  A dark, quiet room turned out to be absolutely the worst thing for him. There were no distractions. Nothing to do but think, and his thoughts wanted to eat him alive.

  He grabbed his phone from the pocket of his backpack and checked it for the fifty-seventh time that day. Just in case Mom had called or Dad or Aunt Aggie sent word saying they’d heard something.

  There was a text from Aunt Aggie. Mom hadn’t shown up to her new job this morning. And she hadn’t called in. His aunt needed to talk to him.

  He went cold. Like his heart, his whole body had flash frozen. The idea that Mom had run off seemed more and more unlikely. She’d left for the night once before when she and Dad got into a really bad fight. Jared hadn’t seen what happened then. He’d already been in bed. But he saw the aftermath, when Mom returned home the next day after Dad left for work, a scarf around her neck and oversized sunglasses not actually hiding the big bruise on her swollen cheek. She didn’t talk much that day, and when she did, she sounded funny. Quiet, like she was afraid Dad might hear them, even though he was long gone. Or like—his brain kept shying away from it, but the thought kept creeping back anyway—or like her throat was hurt. Combined with the scarf …

  He asked. He wasn’t going to be that guy, the one who didn’t know because he didn’t want to know. If Mom was hurt—no, that was stupid. Of course she was hurt. But how hurt? And what did he do about it?

  Mom said her throat was just sore from the shouting match she’d had with Dad and that she’d be okay. He asked about her cheek. She said she’d bumped into the door in her hurry to leave the night before.

  She lied.

  He knew it then, but he didn’t know what to do. Convince Mom to press charges against his own dad? If she lied to Jared, she’d probably lie to the police. Was she doing it to protect them? Keep them from losing their father? Who was protecting her?

  He wished now he’d pushed harder. Done more.

  He tried not to examine why he was thinking about this all now, but the answer wouldn’t stay down.

  He was afraid his father had done something to his mother. He was afraid she was never coming back. And he was tormented at the thought that he’d heard the whole thing. That his mother lay dying while he pretended to sleep, and he hadn’t done a thing to save her.

  Jared texted back to Aunt Aggie promising to call soon and asking for Mom’s address, and sent a message to Aaliyah. You free after school?

  They never got together on Mondays. For one, he had track. He was religious about practices, almost as much as his coach. But this was a special case. He could miss one practice, especially with a headache and clinic visit as alibis.

  Yeah, why? Aaliyah responded a second later.

  Free enough for a road trip? he asked.

  No response. He had to remember that she was in class. He was amazed she’d answered at all.

  “You okay in there?” the nurse asked. Probably she saw the glow of his phone screen in the dark room. Maybe she even thought he was using the headache as an excuse to get out of class.

  “Feel awful,” he answered honestly.

  “Trying to read with a headache probably isn’t helping, especially on a tiny, backlit screen.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t know what else to say. He couldn’t promise to stop. Not yet.

  Need to see my aunt and check out my mother’s place. 45 mins away. Hate to ask, he sent.

  Almost an hour there, at least another checking things out and talking to Aunt Aggie, a third back. How was she going to explain to her parents being out so long on a school night? And with all the homework he knew she had for her advanced placement classes? Maybe he should scrap the whole thing.

  But he couldn’t. One way or another, he had to get out there. In theory, he could just call his aunt. Or ask her to come to him. But really, he couldn’t. She might discourage him, and he had to see his mother’s place. He had to know for himself she wasn’t there.

  He was still holding the phone when his aunt’s text came in. 3562 Greenlake Ter, it said. But I’ve already gone by. No one home. No note.

  She hadn’t given him the apartment number. Probably she’d be suspicious if he asked. But surely he could find out on his own. There’d be mailboxes. Or a directory. He just hoped Mom wasn’t so new she wasn’t yet listed. If he had to, he’d ring all the buzzers. But then what? He couldn’t very well break into any apartment with no answer. He’d figure it out. He couldn’t get it out of his head that this was the thing to do. Maybe Mom’s apartment would hold answers. If nothing else, he’d know for good and all whether she’d packed up and taken off. If her toothbrush was still in the holder …

  He swallowed hard.

  If her toothbrush was still in the holder, then her laptop ought to still be there. Surely all of her passwords—those he hadn’t changed on her—would be preprogrammed in. Why wouldn’t they be on her personal computer? If Dad wasn’t the one to … do whatever had been done to Mom, there’d be some other evidence of trouble—Mom complaining about a stalker or telling someone to f—off. Maybe someone threatening Mom or seducing her away from her family, telling her to leave everything behind; he’d buy her a whole new life.

  Jared had to find the trail that would lead him to Mom. He wanted it more than he wanted anything.

  And if he found evidence that the person after Mom was his own father?

  She should never have come back to the house. Or gone out with Dad to talk about the separation. Maybe Mom had felt safe in a public place. Or coming back to the house because Gran was there with the kids. She should have been safe.

  The pain behind Jared’s eyes flared and he cried out before he could stop himself, letting his arm drop to his side, his phone with it.

  The nurse appeared at the door. “Maybe we should call your mother to come pick you up,” she said kindly.

  She didn’t know. She was probably the only one who didn’t at this point.

  “Mom’s … not at home,” he said, struggling to get the words out around the pain.

  “Your father then?”

  Jared started to shake his head and stopped when it threatened to explode. “No,” he answered.

  “Is there anyone else?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? If his mother was gone and his father … No, he wasn’t finishing that thought again. What would happen to him and Emily? How did he protect her? He’d failed his mother. He couldn’t fail Em too.

  “No,” he said.

  Gran’s car was still in the shop, and she was the only other person close enough to come get him. Even if she could, there was no way he could go home early from school and then take off with Aaliyah later. His father would blow a gasket. The thought sent shivers down his spine.

  “I’m turning off my phone now. If I could just lay here for a bit longer. Until the medicine kicks in?”

  She eyed him, and whatever she saw must have been convincing, because she nodded and backed out. Jared did as promised. He let his phone lie there beside him so he’d hear if it pinged, but he didn’t pick it up again. Instead, he rolled to his side, closed his eyes, and tried to rest. His brain throbbed too much for that, but also for any more coherent thought, so he drifted in a haze of anxiety and pain until he was startled by the class bell and a ping from his phone a second later.

  Aaliyah. Okay, she said. I’ll figure out a w
ay. Parking lot after school.

  Thx, he texted back, and let his arm drop again.

  The plan was in motion. Now his head needed to cooperate.

  Eleven

  Monday

  Jared

  Jared met Aaliyah in the parking lot. She stood by the Hyundai that her parents said would be hers some day and waved at him as he approached. Like he could miss her in that bold blue dress just a few shades off from the car and the white cardigan she wore over it, because the school was terrified that the very sight of shoulders might send boys into paroxysms of lust.

  “Hey,” she said, when he reached her.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  He pulled her in for a kiss … started to, because she pulled him instead until she was leaning up against the car and he was pressed against her. She felt so amazing.

  “Whoo hoo!” someone yelled from a row over.

  “Get a room!” yelled someone else.

  Jared heard them only vaguely and wasn’t going to let it stop him, but Aaliyah froze up and pushed him away, gently but firmly. He went, glaring around to see who’d ruined everything, but no one met his gaze.

  Cowards.

  He sighed and backed off another step to look Aaliyah in the eye. “Thanks for taking me. I hope this is okay. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.”

  Her father already wasn’t too sure about him. Or about Aaliyah dating at all. He’d insisted she hold off until sixteen, and so he and Aaliyah had waited until then to make anything officially official.

  “I told Dad we’re picking up things for that artifact box I have to do for English.”

  “For English?”

  “Yeah, we have to do a presentation of artifacts or evidence from one of the books on our reading list. I picked Devil in the White City. Piece of cake.”