“Bill, bill, ad…,” Chip flipped through the stack, sounding more relieved with each letter thatwasn’t a plain envelope addressed to him, without a return address. Jonah noticed that some of the Winstons’ letters had those yellow forwarding stickers the post office used when people moved, covering an old address with the new one.
“Wait a minute,” Jonah said. “When you got that letter on Saturday, was it forwarded from your old address, or was it this address?”
“I don’t know.” Chip looked up from his sorting for a moment. “This address, I guess. Why?”
“Oh, good,” Jonah said. “That means it could just be kids from school, fooling around. They wouldn’t know your old address.”
Maybe most of the seventh grade had gotten weird letters like his and Chip’s. He should have surveyed everyone he knew, instead of wandering around in a daze.
“But how did they know I was adopted—when I didn’t even know?” Chip asked, his voice breaking. He bent his head down over the mail again.
“Missingdoesn’t necessarily mean ‘adopted,’” Jonah argued. “Or, maybe there’s some list in the school office of which kids are adopted, and somebody hacked into the computer system, and they think it’s really funny to…”
He stopped because Chip didn’t seem to be listening anymore. Chip’s face had suddenly gone deathly pale. Slowly, he held up three letters, all of them plain envelopes without return addresses. All of them were addressed to Chip; two of the letters had yellow forwarding labels. One of the labels was peeled back a little, and Jonah could see the words, “Winnetka, Illinois” below.
Winnetka was where Chip used to live.
“You open them,” Chip said. “I can’t.”
Jonah took a deep breath and took the letters from Chip. He ripped them open quickly, the same way he took off Band-Aids.
“You are one of the missing,” he read from the first letter. Then, “Beware! They’re coming back to get you.” And the next one, again, “Beware! They’re coming back to get you.”
Someone had sent Chip two copies of each letter, one to his old address and one to his new.
“Wow,” Jonah said. “Whoever sent these letters really wanted to make sure you got them.”
Chip opened his mouth, but it didn’t seem like he had anything to say—it was more like he’d lost the power to control his jaw.
“JO-NAH!” someone shouted far down the block, from the direction of Jonah’s house. It was Katherine.
“What?” Jonah shouted back.
“There’s a message on the answering machine,” Katherine hollered. “Dad wants you to call him right away.”
Jonah didn’t care about Katherine’s big identity crisis—cheerleader versus basketball player?—but, he reflected, she certainly had the lungs of a cheerleader.
And it was such a relief to think that, to think about something ordinary and pointless and annoying, like Katherine.
“Okay!” he yelled back, sounding completely normal.
Chip grabbed Jonah’s arm.
“You can use my cell,” he said. “Dad just doubled the number of minutes I’m allowed to use. It’s a bribe, I guess. Like that’s going to make up for keeping a secret for thirteen years? Like it even matters? Like minutes can make up for years? I’m going to go over the limit anyhow. If you don’t use my cell phone, I’m just going to have to call some recorded message, leave the phone on for hours….”
Jonah wondered if Chip was going into shock. It seemed a little irresponsible to leave him alone, babbling like that, so he took the cell phone Chip offered him. He punched in Dad’s work number.
“Hey, Jonah buddy,” Dad said, too heartily, as soon as Jonah said hello. “Did you have a good day at school?”
“I think I got an A on the social studies test,” Jonah said, trying to sound however he would normally sound on a normal day.
“Great!” Dad said with way too much enthusiasm.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Well,” Dad said. “I called the adoption agency today, just like I promised.”
He paused. Jonah could tell he was supposed to say, “Oh, thanks, Dad,” or “Really, Dad, you didn’t have to do that,” or even just, “Yeah?” But Jonah found that his mouth was suddenly too dry to say anything.
“Eva, the social worker who helped us—such a great lady—she’s not there anymore,” Dad said. “But I talked to another woman, who looked up your file, and…Jonah, thereis new information in your case.”
Jonah pressed the cell phone more tightly against his ear. He swayed slightly.
“Oh?” he said, and it took such effort to produce that one syllable.
“A name,” Dad said. “The social worker was a little confused—she wasn’t even sure at first that she was allowed to tell me, but…it wasn’t one of your birth parents. It was just someone listed as having information about you. A contact person.”
“Who was it?” Jonah asked, pushing the words out through gritted teeth.
“Some guy named James Reardon,” Dad said. “And—get this—he works for the FBI.”
EIGHT
The world spun around Jonah. He clutched the cell phone tight against his ear. Normally he was a big fan of cell phones—it was so frustrating that his parents had decided to buy only one cell phone for him and Katherine to share, which meant that Katherine usually had the cell phone and he got nothing. But right now he wanted something a lot more substantial than a cell phone to hold on to: a phone rooted in concrete, maybe.
He settled for grabbing the Winstons’ brick-encased mailbox.
“James…Reardon?” he repeated numbly.
“Yeah—have you heard of him?” Dad said, puzzlement creeping into his voice.
Was his name written on a Post-it note stuck to my file?Jonah wanted to ask.A yellow Post-it note just like the one that was in Chip’s family’s safe, probably stuck on his adoption records? Identical Post-it notes, even though Chip was adopted through a different agency and lived in Illinois his whole life until now?
Jonah felt so dizzy, even solid brick was barely enough to hold him up.
“Jonah?” Dad said, sounding worried now.
Jonah realized he’d probably let a lot of time pass, not answering Dad’s question, trying to make his vision stop spinning.
“I’m here,” Jonah said. “The phone must have cut out for a minute.” If in doubt, blame the technology. He gulped and tightened his grip on the bricks. “This guy…what does he know about me?”
“I’m not sure,” Dad said. “The social worker said it was highly unusual, the way the name was entered in your file….”
Post-it note, for sure,Jonah thought.
“She offered to call him for us, but she was so scattered I thought it might be better if we met with him ourselves.”
Jonah glanced over at Chip, who looked as shell-shocked as Jonah felt. And Chip had heard only Jonah’s end of the conversation.
“Would you like me to arrange that, Jonah?” Dad asked, in the same super-patient, super-careful voice that he’d used when Katherine was a toddler throwing temper tantrums.
No,Jonah wanted to say.Tell him to keep his information to himself. Tell him, if he’s not busy hunting down terrorists right now, I’d appreciate him taking care of whoever’s sending strange letters to thirteen-year-old boys. Tell him…
“Yes,” Jonah said.
NINE
Jonah sat in a molded plastic chair. Mom sat in the chair to his right and Dad in the chair to his left, and Jonah knew that if he gave either of them so much as a flicker of encouragement, they would both start clutching his hands and holding on to him just like they had when they’d walked him to his first day of kindergarten.
Jonah was very careful to keep his hands in his lap, as far as possible from his parents’ hands. He kept his eyes trained straight ahead, hoping that the FBI had no way of knowing that he’d once hung up on the man he was waiting to see.
By right
s, Jonah thought, Chip should be with Jonah too, waiting in this bland government office to meet with James Reardon. Whatever James Reardon knew about Jonah, he probably knew the same information about Chip. It’d be…kinder…if they could both get their facts at the same time.
Information…facts…I just want to know who I am,Jonah thought.And why I’ve been getting those letters. Does James Reardon know that? Does he know who Chip is?
Chip was not sitting in any of the molded plastic chairs near Jonah. Jonah had not been able to figure out any way to convince his parents that his new friend, whom he’d barely known for three months, should be included in this intimate, private moment, when Jonah might be about to learn deep dark secrets about his past.
“Maybe you should just tell them the truth,” Chip had suggested, as a last resort, in desperation.
Jonah had considered this for a millisecond.
Telling his parents the truth would require informing them that he’d been involved in breaking into somebody else’s safe. And that their new neighbors—whom Mom had taken fresh-baked banana bread to and heartily welcomed to the neighborhood—those same neighbors had been lying to their only son for his entire life. And he’d have to tell them that he was receiving threatening letters, and he believed somebody wanted to kidnap him.
If he told them all that, he wouldn’t get to take Chip with him to meet James Reardon. He wouldn’t get to go himself. He’d be locked up, either to punish or protect him.
“No,” he’d told Chip. “I can’t. But I promise, I’ll tell you everything this guy says. And then you can get your parents to—”
“My parents aren’t talking to me about the adoption, remember?” Chip said harshly. “Ifthey won’t even talk to me about it, what makes you think they’d take me to the FBI to talk about it?”
So Chip wasn’t waiting with Jonah. But there was a fourth person sitting in a molded plastic chair on the other side of Dad: Katherine.
Katherine had thrown a fit when Mom and Dad had told her about the meeting, about how she’d have to be home alone for a little bit while they were away with Jonah.
“We should be home in time for dinner,” Mom said. “But if you get hungry without us, there’s some of that leftover chili—”
“No,” Katherine said.
“Okay, if you don’t want chili, there’s always—”
“I’m not talking about food,” Katherine said irritably. “I mean, no, I’m not staying home alone. I’m going with you.”
Mom and Dad exchanged glances.
“Katherine, this doesn’t really pertain to you,” Dad said. “This is about Jonah—”
“And he’s my brother and I’m part of this family too, and doesn’t everything that affects him affect me, too?” Katherine had said, sweeping her arms out in dramatic gestures, seeming to indicating a family so broad it could be the whole world.
Funny, Jonah thought.That’s not what she said that time I broke a lamp playing Nerf football in the house.
The argument about Katherine going or not going had raged through the house for three days. And then, inexplicably, Mom and Dad had given in. Mom and Dad didn’t usually cave in to Katherine like that. Jonah wondered what she’d promised in exchange: to clean up the kitchen after dinner every single night for the rest of the school year? To do her homework without complaining ever again? To not have a boyfriend until she went to college?
Something beeped and Jonah jumped. Okay, he was overreacting. It was just Katherine playing Tetris on her cell phone. (Ourcell phone, he corrected himself.) He felt the annoyance bubbling up, stronger than ever. Here he was, staring at a door that maybe hid all the secrets of his life. And Katherine was just sitting there playing a video game?
The door opened, and a man stepped out. But the man was wearing a gray sweatshirt imprinted with the wordsMaintenance Staff . It was a janitor.
“Hey,” he said. “Any of you want something to drink while you’re waiting? The vending machine spit out two Mountain Dews, and I only wanted one.”
“Jonah likes Mountain Dew,” Katherine said, pausing her Tetris long enough to point to her brother.
The janitor held out a green bottle to Jonah.
“You should probably call the vending company,” Mom said. “If the machine’s malfunctioning like that, maybe next time you’ll put your money in and not get anything out. And really…” she began fumbling in her purse “…we can pay for this bottle, if Jonah’s going to drink it….”
“No, no, it’s all good,” the janitor said. “I’ve put in money before and gotten nothing back. So this is already paid for. I just don’t want it. You enjoy it, kid, okay?” He tossed the bottle lightly to Jonah, and Jonah caught it.
Jonah did like Mountain Dew. At his tenth birthday party, he’d drunk an entire two-liter bottle of it, all by himself, on a dare. And he was thirsty. But something about the whole exchange struck him as weird and fake, like in a soft-drink commercial, where people took one sip and were suddenly dancing and singing and hugging total strangers. Was there a secret camera rolling somewhere? Would he be expected to do a testimonial at the end?
There I was, bummed out and a little scared, wondering who I really was, when Buster gave me that Mountain Dew and, whoa, suddenly I realized, it doesn’t matter; we’re all brothers under the skin.He and the janitor would have their arms around each other’s shoulders by then, with a kick line of dancing girls behind them, and birds twittering around their heads, and the dreary waiting room transformed into a lovely meadow….
The janitor disappeared back through the door. So no dancing girls and twittering birds. Mom was still pointlessly reaching into her purse—all because of that “Pay your own way” virtue she and Dad always preached.You’d think they’d want to emphasize the whole Don’t-take-candy-from-strangers message too , Jonah thought. He stared suspiciously down at the bottle. This Mountain Dew could be poisoned. It could be laced with a dangerous narcotic, and the next thing he knew, he’d be waking up in a dark room, his mouth gagged, his wrists and ankles tied together. Maybe James Reardon was a kidnapper, maybe he was the one who’d been sending Jonah and Chip those weird letters, maybe…
Jonah noticed that the cap of the Mountain Dew bottle had never been opened. It was still connected to the ring of plastic below it.
You are so paranoid, he told himself.The reason Mom and Dad aren’t suspicious is because there’s no reason to be suspicious. You’re thirsty; someone was nice enough to give you a Mountain Dew—drink it!
Jonah unscrewed the lid, raised the bottle to his lips, and took a huge gulp. Beside him, Dad patted his leg comfortingly.
Jonah was done with the Mountain Dew by the time the door opened again. This time a man in a suit stood framed in the doorway.
“Mr. and Mrs. Skidmore?” he asked, reaching out to shake hands. “I’m James Reardon. Come on back.”
The Skidmores followed Mr. Reardon down a long hallway. The offices on either side of the hallway were dark, with the doors shut, as if everyone else had already left for the day. Mom must have noticed this too because she said, “We really appreciate you staying late to meet with us after my husband and I got off from work. We really could have—”
“It’s no problem,” Mr. Reardon said. He showed them into the only well-lit office, a large room dominated by a huge desk. He shut the door behind them. “Please, have a seat.”
There were only three chairs lined up in front of the desk, so Jonah had to tug a fourth one over from beside a couch at the right side of the room.
Couldn’t Katherine have gotten the extra chair?Jonah fumed to himself.She’s the extra person!
He didn’t seem to have any control of his emotions suddenly: he was so mad at Katherine, so annoyed with Mom and Dad for sitting down so obediently in their low chairs and staring up at Mr. Reardon like little kids sent to the principal’s office. What he wanted to do was just blurt out, “What do you know about me?”
No, he didn’t want to do that. H
e was too scared about how Mr. Reardon might answer.
Mad, annoyed, scared, confused…, Jonah listed to himself.Want fries with that?
In spite of himself, Jonah grinned. His brain was a mixed-up, bizarre place, but at least he could amuse himself sometimes.
Mr. Reardon cleared his throat. Jonah stopped grinning.
“I thought it was important to have this meeting,” Mr. Reardon said in a smooth, silky voice, looking carefully at Mom, then Dad, then Jonah and Katherine, each in turn. “When you called, Mr. Skidmore, it became apparent to me that information had been released that was, ah, inappropriate.”
Dad leaned forward. “You mean—”
Mr. Reardon held up his hand, as if only he was allowed to talk.
“Please, let me finish,” he said. “I wanted to meet with you to assure you that we aren’t trying to hide any information that you’re entitled to. But you must understand the delicacy required in matters of national security. And—”
“Our son’s background is a matter of national security?” Mom asked incredulously.
Mr. Reardon glanced away for a second, then locked his gaze on Mom’s eyes. This reminded Jonah of a spoof he’d seen once inMAD magazine that was supposed to teach kids how to lie convincingly. “Peer deeply into your target’s eyes” had been one of the first rules on the list.
“I didn’t say that,” Mr. Reardon said soothingly, his eyes still fixed on Mom’s face. “Of course that’s ridiculous. To the best of my knowledge, his actual adoption was a very routine matter. But there were various government agencies involved…beforehand…and some of us do require a certain level of secrecy, just by the very nature of our work. So, there you have it. Really, you should never have been given my name.”
He sat back in his chair, smiling apologetically from across the vast reaches of his desk.
“Let me get this straight,” Mom said. “You’re saying that the FBI had some connection to Jonah’s life before he joined our family—and you’re not allowed to tell us what it is? You don’t think he has a right to know?”