Sought (The Missing) Read online

  It’s kind of comforting that this hasn’t changed. I look down for my cheese puffs, because it would be great to just crunch one of them in my mouth and act like I’m still the same old silly, carefree Daniella McCarthy I was before that first phone call weeks and weeks ago. But the cheese puffs are scattered all over the floor now, leaving trails of orange powder behind them on the carpet. They look like psychedelic-colored slugs.

  It’s so like me to be messy and clumsy; it’s so like me to look at a spill or a mistake and try to turn it into a funny story.

  It would be like me too to go ahead and eat the cheese puffs from the floor, and keep joking with Gavin to keep him from actually telling me anything else.

  I don’t reach for the cheese puffs. I don’t make any jokes with Gavin.

  “Daniella, are you still there?” he asks.

  Good question, I think.

  Am I still Daniella if I don’t have a million friends around me all the time? Am I still Daniella if I can’t think of anything funny to say?

  Am I still Daniella if I find out I’m really supposed to be somebody else?

  “How do you know we’re related?” I ask, which is not quite asking about my other identity. “Did you go on some big search for your birth parents? Or did they find you?”

  “It’s . . . complicated,” Gavin says. “There’s a lot I don’t know either. The way we were adopted—it wasn’t normal.”

  “My parents wouldn’t do anything illegal!” I protest. I glance back over my shoulder toward the kitchen, where Mom and Dad are hunched over their laptops again. But they both have earphones in, probably to tune out the noise I was making eating cheese puffs.

  “I didn’t say your adoptive parents did anything wrong,” Gavin hedges.

  “But my birth parents did?” I say. “Our birth parents did?”

  I’m guessing here. When he said we were related, did he mean we were brother and sister? Originally?

  “I don’t know,” Gavin says, and he sounds so genuinely miserable that I forget I ever suspected him of lying about his identity. There is no way a fifty-year-old man using voice modifying technology could sound so . . . honest. “I don’t know very much about our birth parents.”

  He’s saying “our” too. Does that mean we really are brother and sister? Or is it “our” like, Your two birth parents and my two birth parents—all of them are mysteries?

  I don’t ask.

  “There are people who could answer our questions,” Gavin says. “But they hate me. They won’t tell me anything. They’re kind of mad at me because . . . Well, it’s really just a misunderstanding.”

  “That’s too bad,” I say. But I’m thinking, Oh, well. I guess this means I don’t have to find out anything else.

  “But maybe . . . maybe they’d tell you,” Gavin says, his voice brightening.

  Did he just now think of that, or is that what he’s been leading up to all along? I wonder.

  “Huh,” I say. “So you’re trying to get me to do your dirty work?”

  I try to sound like I’m teasing, but I’m not.

  “Are you mad at me now too?” Gavin asks, and there’s that misery in his voice again. That desperation. I’ve kind of started picturing him as the male version of me. Wouldn’t a brother look like me, if I actually had a brother? Now I’m picturing him as a dejected me-as-a-male, with slumping shoulders and a downturned mouth.

  “I’m just not very good with people,” Gavin says. “People get mad at me all the time, and it’s really not my fault.”

  “Okay, whatever. Go throw yourself a pity party,” I say, because now he’s just annoying.

  Don’t most girls I know get annoyed with their brothers all the time?

  That thought keeps me from hanging up again. But I’m really close to it.

  “I’m messing this up too, aren’t I?” Gavin says. “Look, it’s just a couple of kids you’d have to talk to. Two boys.”

  Two boys, I think. Boy #1 and Boy #2?

  Maybe I’m making too much of a leap. But Boy #1 and Boy #2 already proved that they know too much about me.

  So why didn’t they ever call back, if they wanted to tell me anything else?

  I remember Mom disconnecting the landline phone that very afternoon.

  How much could these boys actually know about me if they don’t even know to call my cell phone number instead?

  I wasn’t born with a cell phone number. Maybe they know a lot about the beginning of my life but not that much about me now?

  Except for the address I was going to move to—before I even knew it myself?

  I’m creeping myself out.

  “Why would a couple of kids know anything?” I ask.

  “They’re adopted, just like us,” Gavin says. “And their adoptions were messed up, just like ours. But they found out the details. They know about our adoptions too.”

  I digest this. What if Boy #1 and Boy #2 were panicked about their own adoptions, not mine?

  “I’ve heard there are ways to contact birth parents,” I say cautiously. “Ways to see if they want to be contacted, anyway.”

  Gavin snorts. Is he skeptical, or disgusted? I can’t tell.

  “None of that would work for us,” he says. “That’s what I meant when I said your birth certificate was fake. All the official records about you and me are fake.”

  The “you and me” gets to me. Are Gavin and I alike? Am I like Boy #1 and Boy #2 too?

  There are so many questions I could ask. I settle for the safest one.

  “What are these boys’ names?” I say. I’m not agreeing to anything. I’m just . . . gathering information. What harm could knowing two names do?

  “You can’t just call them up,” Gavin says, and now he’s the one sounding panicked. “They won’t tell you anything unless they see you in person.”

  In person . . . , I think, and my stranger-danger suspicions come back. If he says I have to meet these two boys in a secluded parking lot, I am so hanging up and never answering Gavin’s calls again.

  “Did you hear me asking for phone numbers?” I say, and there’s an edge to my voice. “I’m just saying, it’s going to be really weird if I go talk to these guys and I don’t even know their names.”

  “Jonah Skidmore and Chip Winston,” Gavin says in a rush.

  The names don’t mean anything to me. They could be anyone’s names, anywhere in the world.

  They could be made up.

  I reach for my laptop, which is on the coffee table, on the other side of the ocean of cheese-puff slugs. It feels as though I’m reaching across an entire ocean.

  I type “Jonah Skidmore” into a Google search. But I don’t hit enter yet. There could be dozens of Jonah Skidmores in the world. Hundreds. Thousands.

  “Where do these two kids live?” I ask Gavin.

  “Ohio,” Gavin says, and his voice is full of panic now. Maybe he’s afraid he’s telling me too much. Maybe he’s got some other reason to be scared. “You’re not going to be able to go talk to them in person until you move.”

  I type “Liston, Ohio” into the search box after Jonah Skidmore’s name.

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell Gavin. “The way things are going, it could be months before we move.”

  I don’t know if Gavin wants to talk more or not, but I hang up on him. I’m no computer genius like my parents, but within about five minutes I’ve found a shaky video of some kind of Boy Scout ceremony in Liston, Ohio, last spring. A kid who’s introduced as Jonah Skidmore does the Pledge of Allegiance. I close my eyes and just listen to his voice. I imagine him saying, Did she say her parents are making an offer on the house today? They don’t own it already? instead of “. . . and to the republic for which it stands . . .”

  It’s bad audio, and it’s been more than a month since I heard the my
sterious boys’ voices.

  But I am as sure as I possibly can be that Jonah Skidmore is Boy #2.

  §

  You don’t have to do anything until after you move, I tell myself. You don’t even have to decide anything about what to do until you move.

  And then it’s like I’ve set up this repeating loop in my mind. Those two thoughts are practically all I can think. That and, What if there’s a way that I never have to decide? Like if we don’t move? Could I get Mom and Dad to change their minds?

  I start a campaign that very night. Over a dinner that’s frozen food heated up in the microwave—because Mom and Dad already packed up most of the kitchen, so we’re down to eating just convenience food—I announce, “Did you know that frequent moves can make kids suffer academically? I just found this study online, and, well, what if it’s not too late to get your old jobs back and stay here? Couldn’t you do that?”

  “Daniella, you’ve never moved before in your life! This is going to be the first time!” Mom counters.

  How about when I moved from wherever my birth parents had me to here? I think but don’t say.

  Dad puts down his fork.

  “Would you like us to make a solemn vow that we will stay in Liston at least until you’ve graduated from high school?” he asks.

  That is not what I want. I’d rather have them promise that we’re not going to stay in Liston long enough for me to meet Jonah Skidmore or Chip Winston.

  I push the last limp noodle of my beef Stroganoff back and forth on my plate.

  “It’s just . . . ever since we started talking about moving, I haven’t felt like myself,” I say. “Mom, remember those talks we had before I started sixth grade about how middle school is such a turbulent, difficult time in a girl’s life?”

  I had a hard time keeping a straight face during all those talks. I did imitations for my friends. I could crack up a whole classroom just by folding my hands together and starting in with my most Mom-ish voice, Now, Daniella . . .

  Mom’s face twitches.

  “You seem to be handling it fine,” she says.

  I stare down into the leftover Stroganoff sauce and hope I look pale and tragic.

  “Maybe I was,” I concede. “But now . . . with the move on top of everything else . . . what if I’m not mentally stable enough to move all the way to Ohio? What if it drives me crazy?”

  “It’s the waiting that’s driving me crazy,” Dad says. He looks down at his own plate. “Am I really eating frozen food for the fifth night in a row? Does anybody care that I’ve been living out of cardboard boxes for the past three weeks?”

  I’m thinking my parents are showing an incredible disregard for my fragile mental health. But suddenly my mom pushes back from the table and grabs her cell phone from the kitchen counter.

  “That does it,” she says.

  She swipes through a few screens on her cell phone, and then puts it to her ear.

  “Joanne?” she says a moment later. “Mark and I have come to a decision. If that title issue isn’t resolved by Friday, we’re forfeiting our deposit and buying a different house. And our main criteria will be how fast we can take possession. We’re moving by the end of this month no matter what!”

  Mom hangs up and sits back down.

  “There,” she says, as if she’s fixed everything. “We can all be mentally stable again now!”

  By trying to stop the move, I’ve just made it happen faster.

  §

  Gavin calls me six times the next day. I let every single call go to voice mail. And then I don’t listen to them.

  Also, the title search company calls Mom and Dad and says we can buy the house and never worry that anyone else will show up saying it actually belongs to them.

  Mom calls this a miracle.

  I call it a tragedy.

  I want to ask Mom and Dad, Didn’t you ever worry, adopting me, that maybe someone would show up saying I actually still belong to them?

  Is that what I would find out if I went and met the mystery boys like Gavin wants me to?

  §

  We’re moving. We’re really moving.

  Mom and Dad sign the paperwork. The house on Robin’s Egg Lane is really ours.

  All my Ann Arbor friends say good-bye for the very last time. Every single one of them promises to come and visit, but I don’t know if they will or not.

  The moving van shows up at our house, the only house I’ve ever lived in—or, at least, the only one I remember living in. After the last box is out, I walk through the empty rooms, and it feels like the house has already forgotten me. It’s already the past.

  It sounds like maybe my birth parents haven’t forgotten me. It sounds like maybe that part of my past isn’t actually over?

  In the car on the way to our new house, I listen to all the voice mails Gavin left me. My phone shows that he’s called me twenty times since I last talked to him, but he left only eight messages. It’s like he’s tried every approach he can think of: pleading, threatening, teasing . . .

  Daniella, those boys are really funny. You’ll enjoy meeting them. . . .

  Daniella, I know you’re a nice person. Can’t you do this one thing, just as a favor to me?

  Daniella, do you want to spend the rest of your life wondering who you really are?

  Do I?

  In one of his voice mails, Gavin gives me Jonah’s and Chip’s addresses. When Mom and Dad stop for a coffee break at a McDonald’s south of Toledo, I log onto the Internet and look up maps.

  Jonah and Chip live on the same street as each other, exactly eight tenths and nine tenths of a mile away from my new house on Robin’s Egg Lane.

  I’m not a big walker or bicyclist—people built like hobbits generally aren’t—but that’s close enough that I could get to Jonah and Chip’s street without having to ask Mom or Dad to drive me.

  I wouldn’t ask them to drive me there. But if I could just walk or bike, all by myself . . .

  I go to Google Street View and examine the entire route. It’s safe, normal suburbia every block of the way. Chip and Jonah’s neighborhood looks like the kind of place where little kids play on swing sets in the backyard, and people put out holiday decorations year-round—not just for Christmas and Halloween, but for Valentine’s Day and the Fourth of July, too.

  Jonah’s house even has a picket fence around it.

  I remember something I thought way back when I first talked to Boy #1 and Boy #2—Chip and Jonah?—when I wondered if I was in any danger: Am I going to be attacked by white picket fences? Or people’s perfect yards? Maybe a single blade of crabgrass?

  Am I going to spend my whole life worrying about such silly dangers?

  We get back into the car after Mom and Dad’s coffee break, and keep driving.

  I couldn’t tell you a single thing we pass between Toledo and Liston.

  We get to the new house right behind the moving van. The movers get out and throw open the van doors, revealing everything we own to our new neighbors. One of the moving guys calls out to me as I walk across the front yard: “Hey, kid, you might want to change before you go out in public again around here.”

  I look at him blankly.

  “Don’t you know you’re in Buckeye territory now?” he asks. “That sweatshirt you’ve got on, it’s like you’re just asking to get beat up!”

  He’s talking about my clothes and some silly football rivalry. I didn’t even think about the fact that I pulled on my favorite Michigan sweatshirt this morning.

  “All my other clothes are in boxes in your van,” I tell the moving guy. I decide to act like the old, normal, goofy Daniella. “I guess you’re going to save my life by bringing them into the house so I can change!”

  He laughs, but his words are still echoing in my head as I walk through my new front door: Hey, kid, you
might want to change . . . change . . . change . . .

  I don’t want to change. I liked being the old, normal, goofy Daniella. The Ann Arbor Daniella.

  But Liston Daniella is already different. She’s someone who knows how to lose friends as well as make them. She’s someone who has secrets, someone who hides.

  She’s someone who’s afraid to find out who she really is.

  I walk through the empty rooms of our new house, and it’s like they’re already haunted—by the calls from Gavin and the other boys, by my own fears.

  I don’t want to live in a haunted house.

  I don’t want to be scared and wondering the rest of my life.

  I am silly, not brave; lazy, not take-charge. But I don’t want to be this kind of Liston Daniella. I don’t want to start out this way. I want to be a Liston Daniella who faces her fears, who finds out her own secrets.

  I circle back to the living room, where Mom and Dad have already propped open the front door and started telling the movers where everything goes.

  “I don’t want to get in the movers’ way,” I tell them. “Is it okay if I go out and look around a little?”

  “Um, sure,” Dad says. He’s distracted, checking off items as the movers bring them in the door.

  “Don’t go far,” Mom says. “We’ll call you when everything’s in your room and you can come back and start unpacking.”

  “All right,” I say.

  I don’t ask if Mom thinks eight tenths or nine tenths of a mile is far. I step out the front door and realize that I still have my Michigan sweatshirt on. Maybe it looks like I’m spoiling for a fight.

  Maybe I am.

  Before, it wouldn’t have been like me to be cautious. It wouldn’t have been like me to think ahead. But now I make rules for myself. I won’t step foot inside anybody’s house. I’ll run away if it looks like anything’s going to be too dangerous. I won’t give away anything I know before they tell me what they know. . . .

  In one of his voice mail messages, Gavin told me to call him as soon as I got to Ohio. He acted like I needed to tell him before I went to see Chip and Jonah; he acted like maybe he could hide in the bushes nearby and keep watch, to make sure I was safe.