Jonah supposed he really should be impressed, that Katherine could have been so methodical only moments after seeing what she thought was a ghost. But he certainly wasn’t going to tell her that.
Katherine’s angles were a little off, so she’d gotten only two shots with complete names and addresses and phone numbers, and two other witness names that could be pieced together from multiple shots.
Jonah felt a wave of disappointment.
“What good does this do?” he asked. “These people could be witnesses to anything. They probably don’t have any connection to me, except that some strange guy in a bathroom wanted to mess with my mind.”
“No,” Chip said. “Take a look at this.”
Chip had sat down at the computer and was manipulating the images, piecing several photos together like a jigsaw puzzle.
The second sheet of paper in the folder hadn’t been titled Witnesses. It’d been titled Survivors. And the last two names on the list were very familiar:
J ONAH S KIDMORE
C HIP W INSTON
THIRTEEN
“Close it down,” Jonah said.
“Wha-why?” Chip asked.
Jonah stepped back from the computer, far enough away that the words were just indistinct squiggles.
“I don’t want to know anything else,” he said.
He felt overwhelmed suddenly, everything catching up with him at once: the strange letters, Mr. Reardon implying he could lose his citizenship and be deported, Katherine claiming she’d seen a ghost, and now these lists of witnesses and survivors—with Jonah’s name right there in black and white. It made everything else seem like it might be real.
“Can’t we go back to, ‘Hey, Jonah, you gonna try out for the basketball team?’” Jonah pleaded. “Like that’s the most important thing?”
Chip and Katherine were staring at him like he’d completely lost it.
“Can’t we pretend none of this ever happened?” Jonah asked.
“My parents spent thirteen years pretending nothing ever happened,” Chip said in a hard voice.
Jonah appealed to Katherine.
“You’re the one who said I shouldn’t do this whole identity-search thing,” he said. “You wanted me to just act normal.”
Katherine looked from Jonah to Chip and back again.
“That was before I saw the ghost,” she said quietly. “Or whatever it was.”
“Aren’t you curious?” Chip asked.
Jonah shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Not at all.” He felt like he was still too close to the computer screen. His mind kept trying to turn the vague squiggles back into words and words into ideas. Survivors. I’m on the survivors list. What does that mean? He reminded himself that he didn’t care. He bent over and picked up his jacket. “Come on, Katherine. Let’s go home.”
Katherine didn’t move.
“I used to want to be you,” she said.
“Excuse me?” Jonah asked, almost dropping his jacket in surprise.
“Er—not really you,” Katherine said. “I wanted to be the one who was adopted. I thought it was so boring to have Mom and Dad as my real parents and birth parents. I used to pretend that I was adopted, and that my other parents were a king and a queen, or actors or singers, or—something exciting like that.”
“Very nice,” Jonah said sarcastically. “I’m sure that little fantasy made you very happy.” His hands shook as he pulled on his jacket. He stuffed them into his pockets. “My other parents are probably drug dealers,” he said. “Smugglers. Wanted by the FBI.”
Katherine shook her head.
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“Mr. Reardon does.” No matter how hard he tried, Jonah couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“No.” Katherine was staring at him. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “Didn’t you see how Mr. Reardon was looking at you? It was like…like he was trying to figure you out. Like he doesn’t really know who you are either.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jonah said. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Katherine put her hand dramatically on Jonah’s arm.
“Wait,” she said. “I think I just figured something out.”
Jonah waited. How stupid am I, he thought, that I’m obeying Katherine?
“Okay, okay, I really think I’m right about this,” Katherine said excitedly. “See, part of my deal with Mom and Dad, to get to go to the FBI with you, was that I wasn’t allowed to say anything while we were there.”
“They actually thought you could go three seconds without talking?” Jonah asked.
“I didn’t talk,” Katherine said indignantly.
Jonah considered this. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember Katherine saying anything in Mr. Reardon’s office. Just gasping.
“And, it’s kind of funny,” Katherine went on, “but when you’re not talking, sometimes you notice things more. And I kept thinking that Mr. Reardon was acting weird.”
“No, duh,” Jonah said.
Katherine ignored him.
“I kept thinking, why’d he agree to meet with us just to tell us he couldn’t tell us anything? And I think”—she dropped her voice low, conspiratorially—“I think it was because he wanted to find out what Mom and Dad already knew.”
“You mean, he thought your family knew something that the FBI didn’t?” Chip asked. He’d spun around from the computer screen and was staring up at Katherine as if she had all the answers.
“Maybe,” Katherine said, back to her normal voice. “Or he was afraid that we already knew some of that top-secret information he didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t you notice how it was almost like he was trying to get Mom and Dad mad? You know how, when people are mad, sometimes they say things they don’t mean to—they reveal too much? That’s what Mr. Reardon wanted Mom and Dad to do.”
Chip was squinting at Katherine.
“How does that explain the ghost?” he asked.