This time it was me reaching for Tyler. I gripped his sleeve, tugging him closer so he was forced to meet me over the top of the small table. Under any other circumstances I would have noticed the coffee smell of his breath and the way my heart fluttered from having his mouth so close to mine.
But this wasn’t that time.
“Do you know that guy?” I murmured, trying my best to keep my voice down. For the moment I’d forgotten all about Cat and Austin, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dark-skinned boy who seemed to be everywhere I was.
Tyler sneaked a glance out of the corner of his eye to see who I was talking about, and then when he’d gotten a good look, he shook his head. “Nah. Never seen him before. Why? Do you know him?”
Frowning, I told him, “I keep seeing him everywhere I go. I think he might be following me.” It sounded way crazier outside of my head; I knew it the moment Tyler cringed. “Okay, maybe not following exactly,” I amended, trying to do some damage control before this whole thing got out of hand and Tyler ranked me right up there alongside my dad. For all I knew, insanity was hereditary. “But it’s definitely weird. He was at your friend’s bookstore the night we were there. And then I saw him again this morning at the Gas ’n’ Sip.”
“So basically you’ve seen him twice, and now you’re accusing him of stalking you?”
“This makes three.” Again, my evidence wasn’t exactly rock solid or anything. Especially since the guy hadn’t looked my way once. Considering that I was the one talking about him, he could probably argue that I was the one being creepy.
“You do realize that nothing’s really changed in the past five years, don’t you? Burlington’s still a small town. Getting some new shops didn’t exactly transform us into a metropolis. People run into each other all the time.”
He waited a minute for me to process what he’d said. He was right, of course. The whole point of coincidence was that it was purely accidental. Chance. Like two people being in the same place at the same time.
Or one person being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I released his sleeve and sagged forward on my elbows. “Ugh. I’m sorry. You’re right. I totally ruined our . . .” I stopped short. I’d come this close to saying “date,” which would’ve been a million times more embarrassing than admitting I’d been watching him from my window. Besides, it wasn’t a date. “ . . . coffee,” I said instead.
His smile, when it lit his face, was mesmerizing. “You didn’t ruin anything,” he assured me, cocking an eyebrow. “I thought it was the perfect coffee.”
I blushed again and tried to think of something to deflect attention away from my verbal slipup. “Metropolis, huh? Nice word.”
“You like that? I like to pull out the big guns when I’m trying to make an impression.”
My eyes lifted. “Is that what you were trying to do, impress me?”
There was a beat, a moment in which our eyes met and my heart leaped, and then his voice dropped, feathering my skin and making me shiver. “Of course I am, Kyra. I was sort of hoping you understood that.”
Flustered, I shot to my feet, probably too fast. Definitely too fast. If I hadn’t drawn attention to myself before, there was no doubt I had now with my graceless dismount from my chair. “I—I . . . uh . . .” I stammered superarticulately.
Tyler got up too. He didn’t look embarrassed or confused by my reaction. Instead he grinned as he reached for my coffee before I spilled it everywhere. “Take your time, Kyra. I’m not going anywhere,” he told me as he came around the table and pushed my chair in for me. “I’ll wait till you figure things out.”
My mouth was suddenly too dry to speak even if I had been able to form a coherent thought. I let him lead me out then, between the maze of tables and chairs. We passed the boy in the corner who hadn’t even looked up when I’d jumped out of my seat. My chest was tight and tingly, and I couldn’t decide if it was elation over Tyler’s not-so-veiled revelation about liking me or if I was experiencing the first symptoms of a heart attack.
When we reached the door, I stopped and turned back, curiosity about the other boy finally getting the best of me.
Only this time he was looking right at me.
6:44.
I wasn’t a neat freak, not the way my dad had been before . . . well, before everything had changed. But since I was pretty much limiting most of my time at home to my fake bedroom, I decided not to let it be a total pigpen. I was just throwing out the plastic bag filled with my garbage from the Gas ’n’ Sip when I noticed something written on the receipt.
I fished it out of the bag and smoothed it flat so I could read what it said.
Kyra, call me. And was signed by someone named Simon.
I threw the receipt on the floor, seriously creeped out by the idea that someone had somehow managed to slip a note into my bag—on my receipt, no less—without me noticing. Someone who knew my name.
I thought of Agent Truman, who clearly had boundary issues, and wondered if this was his way of forcing me to talk to him.
And then I thought of the other guy, from the bookstore, the coffee shop, and—what do you know?—the Gas ’n’ Sip. Why would he be following me and leaving me cryptic messages? Why not just come up to me and say, “Hey, we should talk”?
I’d be a lot more likely to have a conversation with him if that had been the case. Now, after reading his “call me” message, I was pretty sure I never would.
I collapsed on my bed and glared up at my ceiling as I tried to imagine what was so important that he’d slipped a secret message in with my junk food.
My mind poured over a hundred different scenarios, ranging from completely innocent—like he was into me—to downright menacing—like he wanted to wear me like a skin suit. But no matter how hard I tried, there was no clear explanation.
And then there was that other thing I couldn’t stop thinking about no matter how hard I tried. The thing where Tyler had all but confessed he was interested in me. Even though it was way less mysterious, it was no less overwhelming. And even when I tried to push him out of my head, he found his way back. His green eyes, his new deeper voice, the way he teased me, his disarming smile. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
He hadn’t said much the entire ride home, but what went unsaid was palpable. Like a heartbeat pulsing between us so loudly it continued to reverberate inside my head long after we’d parted ways at the curb.
It hadn’t helped that after he’d cut the engine, he’d leaned across me to unlatch my door, as if I were suddenly incapable of letting myself out. He’d taken his sweet time about it, too, lingering over me; and I knew full well what he was doing. It would have been impossible not to know. The way he smiled teasingly, boldly, as if daring me not to react to his nearness.
With that smug grin he wore, I wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of a response even if my underwear had caught fire right then and there. Secretly, however, everything inside me strained to be closer to him, to stop pretending there was a chance I might still be Austin’s girl and to undo my seat belt so there was nothing separating us.
A part of me longed to know the feel of his lips and his skin and his heart beating against mine.
I wanted to touch my fingertip to his dimple.
Just once.
I hated how easily he kept wriggling his way back into my thoughts.
My phone buzzed, and again I moved to hit IGNORE. Already I’d disregarded a call from my dad. I knew I wouldn’t really avoid him forever; I wasn’t capable of that kind of cold-hearted detachment. No matter how far off the deep end he’d jumped, he was still my dad. I couldn’t stop myself from loving him.
I needed more time before I’d be ready to jump aboard his crazy train again.
When I checked my phone, though, it was a new number, one I hadn’t programmed and definitely didn’t recognize.
Gooseflesh prickled my arms when I saw the out-of-state area code—area code 310. It wasn’t the nu
mber from the back of the receipt, but I was sure I’d seen it before.
Jumping off my bed, I scrambled for the top drawer of my dresser and began digging through the stacks of straight-out-of-the-package underwear and socks.
“Kyra?” My mom’s knocking on the other side of my bedroom door distracted me, and I stopped what I was doing long enough to shout back, “I’m not hungry. Go ahead and eat without me.”
I glanced at the digital numbers on my nightstand while my phone—set to vibrate—buzzed once more. It was 7:26.
Outside my room it was quiet, but I knew she was still there. I could hear “my brother’s” unmistakable footsteps—his short, staccato stride and the way he ran, rather than walked, everywhere he went. He whimpered briefly, and I could picture him straining with his chubby arms raised high above his head, begging to be picked up. Then there was a brief shuffling, and my mother murmured something soft and reassuring, followed by her quieter, and more measured, footsteps leading toward the kitchen.
I shouldn’t feel bad for not wanting to spend time with them, I told myself. This wasn’t my fault. None of it. I hadn’t asked for a new family.
When my fingers closed around Agent Truman’s business card—the second one he’d left me—I inhaled. I’d chucked it in my drawer when I thought I’d never need it again.
I picked up my phone and cross-checked the number on the card with the one that had just called me.
The two were a match.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. How had Agent Truman gotten my cell phone number?
Just as I pressed the button on my phone to check the time, a message popped up on the screen.
A text.
From Agent Truman’s number.
I want to show you something.
For a long time that was it. I waited for more. For another message, something along the lines of Call me back or Let’s schedule an appointment or Meet me at . . .
I wasn’t sure how that last one was supposed to end since I didn’t think there was a local NSA office in a town the size of Burlington, but it didn’t matter. If Agent Truman was trying to freak me out with his ominous message, he was doing a bang-up job. I was freaked, all right.
And if he thought I would message him back, he was out of his ever-loving mind. I had nothing to say to him. I’d already told him everything I knew: that my dad had nothing to do with my disappearance that night. I wasn’t sure what more I could say to convince him.
And then a second text popped up. A picture, followed by a single question:
Do you recognize this man?
I covered my mouth because I did recognize him, but I had no idea why Agent Truman was asking me, or why it even mattered.
Giving in to the urge to defend myself, even if my response was a total lie, I typed in two letters: No, and threw my phone on the bed.
I got up and paced my room, suddenly edgy and itchy and more than a little agitated. My eyes fell on the ball Cat had left me. The one from our championship game. The ball I’d hurled from the pitcher’s mound, striking out batter after batter.
The ball responsible for making the other team cry.
I picked it up and ran my thumb over the stitching as I looked at all the names scrawled on it in various shades of blue, black, purple, and red pen. My teammates who’d signed their names in hopes I’d be home soon and they could give me the ball as a gift. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I wondered where they all were now. I wondered if they knew I was back.
I tossed the ball up in the air and caught it. I did it again, and again, and again.
And then I grabbed my hoodie and my phone, closing out of the picture of the lab tech who’d been found dead the night before in his apartment, and texted my mom, who was just down the hall, in the kitchen with her replacement family.
I’m going out. Back soon.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER TEN
I’D ONLY WALKED BETWEEN MY HOUSE AND THE high school a handful of times, and only when it had been a last-resort situation. Like the time I’d overslept when Austin had been at an out-of-town swim meet and I’d missed the bus. Or when Cat and I had gotten into a yelling match in the middle of practice over whether the pitch I’d thrown had hit her on purpose or not. The argument had gotten heated—to the point that the coach had had to intervene—and I’d insisted on walking home, refusing to speak to Cat for two days afterward.
That had been one of the downsides of having an August birthday. I was always younger than everyone else in my class, which meant that, during our sophomore year, while everyone around me had been turning sixteen and getting their driver’s licenses, I’d been relegated to hitching rides and counting down the days till my Sweet Sixteen.
It wasn’t that big a deal since Austin’s birthday was in October and Cat’s was in February, and I could go everywhere they went. What was a big deal was that when August finally rolled around, I chickened out.
Maybe too much time had passed and I’d built up the whole driver’s-license thing too much in my head.
Or maybe, just maybe, I’d failed the driving test twice already—a secret I swore I’d take to my grave.
I’d been too embarrassed to try a third time, so instead I made up some lame excuse about not wanting my license anyway, which was total bull because every kid in the universe wanted one. Your license meant freedom and independence. It meant joining an elite club where people could drive cars and wave at one another on their way to car washes and drive-through espresso stands and parking lots, where they would hang out and compare shitty DMV photos.
And here I was, all these years later, still walking.
And still sixteen . . . or so I’d been told.
By the time I reached the field, I was sweating and I’d stripped out off my jacket and tied the sleeves around my waist. I was still clutching the ball, and it felt good. Right.
Being at the field again was a whole other story. It skeeved me out that they’d named it after me. I didn’t see a sign or anything, which would have felt like a gravestone of sorts, but it was still strange knowing what I knew.
I was relieved that the fields were deserted, since it was still softball and baseball season and there could have been a game or late practice. I stepped out onto the empty field, walking straight to the pitching mound, facing my ghosts head-on.
It was unsettling to stand there again. It was the same place I’d stood dozens, hundreds, thousands of times before. I pressed my fingers alongside the stitching on the ball and closed my eyes, letting memory and reality collide.
When I reopened them, I zeroed in on home plate and envisioned the ball’s trajectory, the point at which I wanted it to leave my hand, the way it should arc—just so—and where it would cross the plate. I rolled my neck and my shoulders, loosening my muscles. And then, taking a breath, I drove off the mound, swinging my arm and rotating my shoulder, all the way around, and released my pitch.
It was so natural, the rhythm so familiar, that it was utterly impossible to believe that five years had passed since the last time I’d thrown a ball. And when I saw it—that very same championship ball—hurtling across its mark, faster maybe than I thought it should have gone, I knew . . . I believed at last what Dr. Dunn had told my parents: I was still sixteen years old. Because there was no way, no possible way on earth I was any older than I had been just six days ago. My body, my muscle memory, hadn’t changed a single iota. My body remembered the same way I did.
“Holy shit.” The voice behind me whispered in awe. “I knew you could play, I mean, I’d heard stories, but damn, that was impressive.”
I whirled around to find Tyler standing right there, and I wondered how he’d managed to sneak up on me. I grinned in response because I knew what I’d just done was impressive, more so even than using words like metropolis or having a
killer dimple. “You ever play?” I inquired over my shoulder as I left him standing there while I went to retrieve my ball.
I knew he was trailing after me when he spoke, his voice low and playful. “Softball? Nah. I tried out once, but they said the other girls felt uncomfortable with me in the locker room, so I didn’t make the cut.”
Bending at the waist, I reached for the ball where it had landed near the backstop. Gingerly, I brushed away the dirt as I stood again. “I meant baseball, or just sports in general, smart-ass. Aren’t you ever serious?”
His hand shot out, covering the ball as if he meant to take it from me, but he didn’t, and his hand curled over mine. I inhaled sharply. “I’m serious about plenty of things,” he told me solemnly, his gaze intense. He took a step closer, and without thinking or meaning to, and because I suddenly couldn’t breathe with him standing in my space like that, I took one tiny step back. I let go of the ball, and it dropped back to the ground with a solid thud. It was so much quieter than the pounding of my heart. He took another step. I tried to hold my ground, but my throat grew thick, and my body temperature had risen at least twenty degrees. “There are more important things in life than games, Kyra.” His eyebrow lifted, and his mischievous gaze raked over me.
I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me, or toying with me, or whatever this was that he was doing. I hated even more that it was his fault I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt suddenly unsteady.
I shoved his chest, trying to give myself some space. “Yeah, well, I’m sure you and your books will be very happy together.” It didn’t escape my notice, the way his muscles felt beneath my fingers, and the solidness of him made me out-and-out feverish.
He caught my hand again, but this time I wasn’t holding the ball, so I couldn’t kid myself that he had some other motivation for his actions. When his thumb moved over my palm, heat burst in the pit of my belly and spread outward, curling the tips of my toes. “I’m serious about other things too.”