“Easy,” Katherine said. She bounced the ball without looking at it. “You tell them you want me to come.”
Jonah tried to steal the ball from her, but she saw him coming and jerked it out of reach.
“Now, how am I going to get them to believe that?” Jonah asked.
“You’ll figure something out,” Katherine said. She smiled sweetly. “That librarian thought you were a good actor.”
When Jonah went back into the house, he saw that Mom had already written 9–3, adoption conference in the October 28 square on the kitchen calendar. Quickly he grabbed a pen and began inking over the words. He hadn’t thought he’d have to worry about Mom and Dad’s writing something that JB or E might see.
Mom came around the corner just as he’d managed to obliterate the last e of conference.
“Jonah—what are you doing?” she said, startled.
“I just, uh, started doodling,” Jonah said. “Guess it got a little out of hand.”
Mom looked completely bewildered.
“Even when you were a toddler, you didn’t do things like that,” she said.
“Mom, duh,” Katherine said from across the kitchen, where she was pulling a Gatorade bottle from the refrigerator. Both Jonah and Mom turned to look at her. Somehow Katherine managed to roll her eyes and gulp down Gatorade at the same time. She lowered the bottle. “Think about it. If Jonah’s suddenly all confused and worried about his identity, the last thing he needs is to have you write adoption conference in a public place like that.”
“This isn’t a public place,” Mom said. “It’s our kitchen.”
“Yeah, but Rachel and Molly are in here all the time, and Chip, and all Jonah’s other friends, and my other friends, and your friends, and Dad’s friends….” Katherine made it sound like thousands of people trooped through their kitchen every day.
“There’s nothing wrong with the word adoption,” Mom said defensively. “Or with being adopted.”
“Yeah, but Jonah doesn’t want it advertised,” Katherine said. “Show some sensitivity. Jeez.”
Mom turned her gaze from Katherine to Jonah and back again.
“I really thought Jonah was capable of speaking for himself,” Mom said, suspicion creeping into her voice.
“Oh, he is,” Katherine said sweetly. “Jonah, didn’t you have something you wanted to ask Mom about the conference?”
Jonah shot Katherine a look that very clearly said, I’m going to kill you when all this is over. To Mom, he said, “Uh, yeah. I was just thinking, since Katherine seems to be having so many issues with not being adopted, that maybe she should go to the conference too. So she can find out what horrors she avoided by getting birth parents who were crazy enough to want to keep her.”
“Oh, Jonah, that’s not the way to look at this,” Mom protested, at the same time that Katherine said, “Oh, could I go to the conference with you? That’d be great!”
Mom squinted at Jonah.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
It was really hard for Jonah to keep a straight face as he assured her, “Yep. Katherine wants to go to the conference, and I want her to go too.”
“Could I? Please?” Katherine begged.
Mom frowned.
“Some days I can’t figure out the two of you at all,” she said.
Behind Mom’s back, Katherine jerked her head at Jonah, as if to say, Your turn. Close the deal!
“So, can she come to the conference with us?” Jonah asked, trying to keep his eyes wide, his expression innocent.
“I suppose,” Mom said. “Though I really don’t understand why either of you wants this.”
Katherine threw her arms around Mom’s shoulders.
“Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Just think—next year I’ll be a teenager too, and then we’ll really confuse you!”
TWENTY-FIVE
The next few weeks seemed to crawl by. Neither Chip nor Jonah got any more mysterious letters. Neither they nor Katherine saw anyone else appear out of nowhere or disappear into thin air. In fact, if it weren’t for the butterflies that seemed to multiply in Jonah’s stomach as October 28 approached, Jonah almost could have believed that his life had gone back to normal. He took another social studies test, about Mesopotamia and Babylon this time. He attended an informational meeting to find out about seventh-grade basketball tryouts. He went on a Boy Scout camp-out where it rained all weekend and two kids came down with bronchitis and coughed all night long, until the Scout leader gave in and called their parents at 5:00 a.m.
Katherine and Chip stayed obsessed.
“I figured out why you and Chip were adopted in different states,” Katherine announced one night as Jonah was brushing his teeth.
“Why?” Jonah said, through a mouthful of Crest.
“Think about it,” Katherine said, loitering outside the bathroom. She spoke in a low voice, as if she were afraid that Mom and Dad might hear her from downstairs. “There were thirty-six babies. If Mr. Reardon had dumped you all on one adoption agency—or even several adoption agencies, all in the same city—there would have been a lot of talk. But you send one baby to Michigan, one or two to Chicago, one or two to Indianapolis…that’s not so noticeable. There could be that many abandoned babies in each city at once.”
Jonah spit into the sink, bending low so she didn’t see how the word abandoned stabbed at him.
I wasn’t abandoned, he reminded himself. I was sent. On a plane.
But was that better or worse than being abandoned?
“So do you think Mr. Reardon knows why we’re all being gathered together again?” he asked, mostly to distract himself from his own thoughts. “Is he doing the gathering? Is JB? Is E? Mr. Reardon had all the kids’ new addresses in Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson—was he the one who wanted to force poor Daniella McCarthy to live on Robin’s Egg Lane?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine asked, fiddling with a strand of her hair. “I’m not even sure Mr. Reardon knew about the survivors list.”