Sought (The Missing) Read online

  “Hold on,” this voice says.

  Still a boy, I think. Still about my age, still confused-sounding, maybe not talking quite as close to the phone. . . .

  “Did she say her parents are making an offer on the house today? They don’t own it already?” Boy #2 asks, and I realize he’s asking Boy #1.

  Both of them pause for a moment. I pause too, to hear what they’re going to say next.

  “You’re talking about the house on Robin’s Egg Lane, right?” Boy #1 asks, and he seems to be saying this straight into the phone. Asking me. There’s a sound like he might be unfolding a sheet of paper. “Um, 1873 Robin’s Egg Lane? In”—he almost seems to be guessing now—“Liston, Ohio?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s what you asked me about. Mom and Dad saw it yesterday and just ‘fell in love.’” I can hear the bitterness in my voice. Well, why shouldn’t I be bitter?

  “You say they just saw the house yesterday? For the very first time?” This time it’s Boy #2 asking the question. He sounds as worried as Boy #1 has all along, and that freaks me out.

  “Yes . . . ,” I moan. “Yesterday, for the first time. And just like that they’re going to try to buy it today. I think they’re having a midlife crisis. They’re insane. Why do they have to ruin my life?”

  It turns out, screaming didn’t actually keep me from crying. I’m wailing now.

  “I hate Ohio! I’m going to be miserable there! I— I—” I sniffle, and I decide I’ve humiliated myself enough. “I can’t talk anymore. I’m too upset.”

  I slam down the phone, rush into my room, and throw myself across my unmade bed.

  Mom is there before I’ve reached for my second Kleenex.

  “Daniella!” she says, easing down onto the bed beside me. “This isn’t like you! We knew you’d miss your friends, of course, but we really did think you’d be excited, too. Aren’t you the one who’s always longing for adventure?”

  “Moving to Ohio is not an adventure!” I grumble.

  But she’s making me think.

  Would I be at least a little excited if it hadn’t been for that phone call? If I hadn’t started thinking that there’s some connection between moving and my being adopted?

  Am I the one who’s acting crazy? How could the two things be connected?

  §

  It’s lunchtime, and I’m having to comfort my friends. Is it really selfish of me to be glad that several of them are crying over my move?

  “I’ll come back to visit all the time,” I say. “And you can come to visit me, like, every weekend. Mom and Dad say the new house has a giant rec room in the basement. They feel really guilty about making me move, so they’ll let me have as many friends as I want come for sleepovers. Maybe you can all come for the entire summer!”

  “That would be so awesome,” Ilka murmurs through her tears, and I realize I’m doing just what my parents did: making Ohio sound like paradise on Earth.

  “And of course we can still text and tweet and Facebook and Skype. . . . I guess moving won’t be so bad as long as we can all still stay in touch,” I say. “And as long as—”

  I stop before I let anything slip about my weird phone conversations this morning. And I can hear Mom saying This isn’t like you in my head. Normally I tell my friends everything. Normally I would have been making fun of myself for getting so freaked out over what some stupid boys said.

  Your friends know you’re adopted, I remind myself. They’ve always known.

  Still. I don’t say anything about the phone calls.

  §

  I’m walking up the driveway after school when I suddenly realize, I can just call those boys back.

  I will call them back, and I will be calm. And this time I will get them to explain everything. Boy #1 will admit that he is the Realtor’s son and he’s really good at pretending to be scared—at pretending that something is life-and-death when it really doesn’t even matter.

  I will get him to promise to never make phone calls like that again.

  Or . . . if they really do know something about my adoption . . . what then? Do I still want to call?

  When I walk into the house, Mom is already home from work. And she’s unplugging the kitchen phone from the wall.

  “What are you doing?” I shriek.

  “Checking things off my to-do list,” she says. “So far I’ve turned in my job resignation, gotten price quotes from moving companies, made the official offer on the new house, contacted a Realtor to sell this house, canceled our home phone service—”

  “But I need to make a phone call!” I protest.

  She gives me an odd look.

  “I said ‘home’ phone service, not ‘cell’ phone service,” she says. “You’ve been telling me to get rid of the landline for years. Besides, it’s been acting weird. This morning it rang once and then just stopped before I could even go over and pick it up.”

  Mom thought the phone just stopped ringing this morning, I realize. She doesn’t know I answered it. If she heard me talking, she thought I was on my cell. Mom probably thinks it’s always just the phone being weird when I answer and pull my pranks.

  So I can’t say anything else. I can’t ask if there’s still any way to look up a number from this morning.

  What if Boy #1 and Boy #2 really do know something about my adoption and I never get to talk to them again?

  §

  It turns out there’s a Boy #3, too.

  It’s a month later when he calls—a month that I have spent packing and having good-bye parties, and packing and having good-bye parties . . . and then waiting. There’s something wrong with that perfect house in Ohio. Somebody who owned it twenty years ago didn’t write his will right, and it looks like one of his descendants could pop up after we move in and say, What are you doing here? This isn’t your house! This is my house!

  Mom and Dad don’t want that to happen. So we are still in Ann Arbor, waiting for the title search company to track down all that guy’s descendants and make sure they’ll never try to claim our house.

  Who even knew there were such things as title search companies?

  Mom and Dad have already started their dream jobs, but they’re working from our house in Ann Arbor, around all the boxes. (This is, as Mom keeps saying, not ideal. Both Mom and Dad are grumpy.) We could have moved into temporary housing in Liston, Ohio, but they don’t want to do that to me. Because what if the house deal falls through and that means I have to change schools twice?

  Meanwhile . . . my friends here are still great and all, but sometimes I catch them looking at me like, Aren’t you supposed to be gone by now? Haven’t I already spent three weekends going to good-bye parties for you? So leave already!

  It’s like I kind of only half-exist in Ann Arbor anymore.

  So what I’m saying is, I’m . . . vulnerable . . . when Boy #3 calls.

  He calls my cell.

  It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I’m watching cat videos on my computer because we canceled our cable TV three weeks ago, and, well, see above for why I’m not hanging out with any of my friends.

  I am so bored.

  I see a strange number come up on my phone, and because of Mom and Dad calling back and forth to Ohio a billion times, I recognize the area code.

  Whoever’s calling me is from Liston, Ohio, or someplace close by.

  Honestly, my heart beats a little faster, because I’m thinking, What if it’s those boys again? What if they explain everything this time?

  I swipe my finger across my phone at the same time that I freeze the video on my computer. A cat named Precious cowers at the edge of a cliff that I know she’s going to jump from, because I’ve already seen the video six times.

  “Yes?” I say into the phone.

  “Is this Daniella McCarthy?” a voice asks.

  I can tell right aw
ay that it’s not Boy #1 or Boy #2, even though I barely talked to them, and that was a whole month ago. This is another boy, though, probably about the same age. His voice is reedier, and maybe he’s scared too. But he’s trying harder than the other two were to sound tough.

  “This is Daniella,” I say, and I sound stupid. I sound like some girl who’s sitting home alone on a Saturday afternoon watching cat videos and just waiting for some guy—any guy—to call.

  “Who are you?” I growl, because I can put on the tough act too. And I learned my lesson the last time. This guy is not getting off the phone without telling me his name.

  “Gavin Danes,” the boy says. “Oh, er, I guess it’s okay for you to know my name. But don’t tell anyone.”

  So, my asking his name wasn’t in his script? And why is he nervous about saying his name? Is it some state secret?

  Should I recognize it?

  “I don’t have any reason to tell anyone your name,” I say, trying to butter him up a bit. Though I’m thinking, Yet. I don’t have any reason to tell anyone your name yet.

  “Okay, then,” Gavin says.

  He hesitates, and I’m really tempted to say, Dude, you’re the one who called me. You might want to start talking.

  But then he says, kind of in a rush, almost as if the words are joined together, “You’re not in Ohio yet, right?”

  What is it with people in Ohio being so eager for me to move? Are things so dull there that they’re planning a big “welcome to our state” party for some kid from Michigan they don’t even know? And they need to know when to schedule it?

  “No,” I say, trying to sound like it’s all the same to me, and I don’t care where I live. “I’m not in Ohio yet.”

  “Oh,” the boy says. It is really hard to figure out anything about where he’s going with this from only one syllable. So I decide to throw in a little humor.

  “Don’t you know you’re supposed to say, ‘O-H,’ and then I say, ‘I-O’?” I scold him. This, I’ve learned, is a big thing in Ohio. It’s some cheer for the Ohio State University football team. Personally, I’m starting to wonder if the whole state’s got memory issues. Do they really have to keep reminding themselves how to spell a word that’s only four letters long? “If you say ‘O’ and I say ‘H-I-O,’ that’s making me do most of the work. Not fair.”

  The boy is silent for a moment. Maybe I’ve confused him.

  “Did you know your birth certificate is fake?” he asks.

  And then he hangs up.

  §

  I try to call back. Of course I try to call back. The mysterious Gavin Danes called my cell phone, after all, and so I’ve got his number. There’s no danger that I’ll lose track of Boy #3 like I did #1 and #2.

  His phone rings and rings and rings, and then it goes to voice mail.

  “Hello?” I say after the beep. “What was that? You call and say mysterious things and then just hang up? Don’t you know—even if this is just a prank—you’ve got to work it better than that?”

  Then I balance my phone on the edge of my laptop keyboard, because I’m sure this Gavin Danes kid is going to call back right away. While I’m waiting, I click out of Precious the cat waiting to jump off her cliff, and I Google Gavin’s name. Nothing that comes up looks like it could be some kid from Ohio.

  So did he lie about his name? Is he hiding something? Why would some kid from Ohio know anything about my birth certificate?

  Why would two other kids from Ohio know that I was moving before I knew myself?

  I am so not a Detective Daniella type. I’m pretty sure there are things other people could figure out to look up online that would tell me all about this Gavin. Either one of my parents would probably know how to do that.

  I’m not asking them to do any Web research for me.

  But I do go into the kitchen, where both my parents are sitting at the table scowling at their work laptops.

  “Where’s my birth certificate?” I ask.

  Mom and Dad both look up, blinking. Sometimes I think they forget there’s any world outside their computers. They’re like moles surprised by light.

  Or maybe they’re surprised that I’m asking about my birth certificate? Am I making them suspicious?

  “I, uh, wanted to make sure everything’s ready for enrolling me in that new school in Ohio,” I say. “If we ever go ahead with this move, I mean.”

  Both Mom and Dad are staring at me now. Mom looks like she’s going to say, just like before, This isn’t like you. And it isn’t. I’m not the type to keep track of official papers, any more than I’m the type to keep track of math homework. It’s not like me to even remember that official papers would be necessary for starting a new school.

  Mom narrows her eyes at me, but all she says is, “Your birth certificate is in the box at the top of the stack by the front door. The box that says, ‘To go in car, not moving van.’”

  Maybe I look at her blankly a little too long. Or maybe she remembers how easily I lose things. Because she sighs and says, “I’ll show you.”

  We go into the living room together. It used to be a nice place, but now it’s blank walls, two couches, and six stacks of cardboard boxes.

  Mom pulls the tape off the top box by the front door, reaches in, and hands me a paper. She holds on to the corner of it, as if I would be capable of losing it even as she’s watching me.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my birth certificate before. I’ve never even thought about it. I squint at the official-looking document, which says I was born right here in Washtenaw County, Michigan, to Mark and Diane Mc—

  Wait a minute. My birth parents had the same names as my adoptive parents? I marvel.

  No, those are my adoptive parents’ names.

  “You’ve been lying to me all along, saying I’m adopted?” I gasp, staring at Mom in dismay. “Didn’t you want to claim me?”

  Mom screws up her face in confusion. She peers at me, peers at the birth certificate . . . and then her face straightens out.

  “This is how birth certificates are done for adopted kids,” she says. “Remember? They put adoptive parents’ names as mother and father because—you know?—we actually are your mother and father. We claim you every single day of your life!”

  I don’t say anything. Mom goes on.

  “I’m sure we talked about this ages ago, when you were five and really curious about being adopted,” she says. “We talked about everything about adoption.”

  “Well, excuse me for not remembering every little detail from eight years ago,” I say. But I’m thinking, I know we didn’t talk about why three kids from Ohio would know about my being adopted. I know we didn’t talk about looking for my birth parents back then.

  Mom takes her glasses off and rubs her forehead.

  “Daniella, I know we’re all stressed out about this move—or non-move—but is there something else going on? Something you want to tell me?” she asks.

  “No,” I say.

  She goes back to her laptop in the kitchen. I go back to my laptop in the family room. My phone is still lying on the edge of the keyboard. Gavin hasn’t called me back. I call him again instead.

  When the voice mail beeps this time, I say, “Why are you avoiding me? And FYI, you didn’t tell me anything new. Every adopted kid’s birth certificate is fake.”

  §

  Gavin calls again two days later.

  It’s after school, and all my friends are at basketball practice or play practice or orchestra practice or stuff like that. I didn’t sign up for any winter trimester activities because, duh, I was supposed to be in Ohio by now. It was supposed to be perfect, how I was going to arrive just in time for all the winter activities to start gearing up there, and I was going to make a million and one Ohio friends that way.

  The way everything’s working instead is still
perfect—perfectly awful. It feels like I’m unmaking all my friendships here, and I’ve got nothing to replace them with.

  So I’m happy when I see Gavin’s number on my phone. It’s someone to talk to who isn’t grumpy Mom or grumpy Dad or an almost un-friend.

  And maybe he really does know something about my adoption? Maybe he really can solve the mystery of who I am?

  “Gavin!” I gush into the phone as soon as I pick up. “Great to talk to you again!”

  “I—er—what?” Gavin says on the other end of the line.

  I’ve thrown him off. This is something I’m good at, when I want to be. I flop down onto the couch with a bowl of cheese puffs in my lap.

  “Isn’t this what every girl dreams of? Some mystery guy calling her?” I tease.

  I realize some girls from my school would be bragging, I haven’t even moved to Ohio yet, and already I’ve got three guys calling me all the time!

  Except Boy #1 and Boy #2 never called me back.

  And should I be worried about that whole stranger-danger thing? What if Gavin and Boy #1 and Boy #2 are all fifty-year-old men using those voice modifier things to make me think they’re kids?

  None of them has asked me to meet them in some secluded parking lot somewhere, I remind myself. They’ve just asked if I’ve moved to Ohio yet, which they could find out by driving by my house. Either house. And Boy #1 asked if I was adopted, and Gavin already seems to know that I am. . . .

  Gavin is silent on the other end of the line.

  “You’re not a big talker, are you?” I ask in a slightly flirty voice.

  “Daniella, I think we might be related,” Gavin says.

  Now it’s my turn to be stunned into silence. The bowl of cheese puffs slides from my lap, and there’s time for me to catch it, but I don’t even try.

  “I’m adopted too,” Gavin says. “I—”

  I hang up on him.

  He calls back right away. I answer it.

  “What if I don’t want to know?” I ask. I’m holding on to the phone so tightly that its edges dig into my fingers.

  “Why’d you answer the phone then?” he asks.

  Because who can resist a ringing phone? I think, which is the same thing I thought when I had my first conversation with Boy #1.