“It was on his desk,” Jonah said.
“But JB put it there,” Katherine said. “Not Mr. Reardon. Maybe he was just worried about us seeing the witnesses list.”
Jonah jerked his toothbrush back and forth across his teeth with unusual force. He spit again.
“Katherine, it’s all a big mystery, okay?” he said. “Maybe we’ll never find out all the answers.”
“Or maybe we should figure out as much as we can now, so all the final pieces will fall into place at the conference,” Katherine retorted.
Jonah frowned at Katherine’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. The concentration in her gaze made her look like Sherlock Holmes about to solve his biggest case.
Meanwhile, the toothpaste on his lips made it look like he was foaming at the mouth.
Who’s the crazy one? Jonah wondered. Her or me?
For his part, Chip kept finding excuses to ride past 1873 Robin’s Egg Lane. The house there stayed closed-up and empty.
Chip also tried talking his parents into attending the conference. Embarrassingly, Jonah heard one of his attempts, because Jonah had just stepped onto the Winstons’ front porch, ready to ring the doorbell and ask Chip over to play basketball.
“For the last time, no!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the house. “I’ve got a golf date that morning, and your mother’s got a spa appointment. We don’t have six hours to waste on some namby-pamby, touchy-feely types, who are just going to try to make us feel guilty for not being the perfect parents! Subject closed!”
Jonah stabbed the doorbell.
“You can go with us,” he told Chip, as soon as he opened the door. “I’ll make my parents take you.”
Chip just nodded.
October 28 dawned clear and crisp, the perfect autumn day. Jonah woke up earlier than he usually did on a Saturday, probably because Katherine was already up and banging around in the bathroom. He heard her turning the water on and off, switching the fan from low to high, jerking her towel off the towel rack in a way that rattled the rack against the tile of the wall. He stumbled out into the hall.
“Today’s the day!” Katherine announced brightly, as she dodged him to head back to her room, her hair wrapped in a towel.
“Let’s go, team,” Jonah muttered under his breath, because the tone of Katherine’s words made them sound like they should be accompanied by cartwheels and splits and arms thrown victoriously up in the air.
“Ah, jeez,” he whispered, leaning against the bathroom sink. “She really is a cheerleader.” And it seemed suddenly that this was true—not because she was an airhead or a hottie or a nonjock, but because she could throw herself so wholeheartedly into someone else’s cause, because she could care so much and try so hard from the sidelines.
How could he understand so much about his sister’s identity and so little about his own?
Three hours later the whole family—plus Chip—were all loaded into their minivan, headed toward Clarksville Valley High School.
“The weather’s so nice, it looks like they’ll be able to do some of your sessions outdoors,” Mom said, turning around to talk to Katherine, in the middle seat, and Jonah and Chip, in the far back.
“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the hike and outdoor confidence-building exercises,” Katherine said.
A baffled look spread over Mom’s face once again.
“Katherine, those teen sessions really aren’t intended for siblings of adoptees,” she said. “It’s not too late to turn around and drop you off at home, or at a friend’s house, so you’re not a…a distraction for Jonah and Chip.”
Katherine turned around and raised her eyebrow at Jonah, as if to say, You have to deal with this one.
“She won’t be a distraction, Mom,” Jonah said. “Chip and I want her along. Right, Chip?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Skidmore,” Chip said.
Mom still looked skeptical, as if she knew something was going on. But she turned around and began reading Dad the directions for getting to the school.
Jonah had never been to Clarksville Valley High School. It was a huge new building backing up to a nature preserve, on the very edge of the city. The street leading up to the school was lined with new subdivisions, with houses in various states of completion.
Dad whistled.
“These neighborhoods are so new, you can almost smell the paint drying, can’t you?” he said. “Nice houses, huh?”
“We’re not moving!” Jonah shouted up from the backseat.
Both his parents stared back at him.
“Who said anything about moving?” Mom asked.
“Never mind,” Jonah muttered.
Act normal, he reminded himself.
They parked close to the front door of the school and joined a line of parents and kids waiting to register at a table in the lobby.
“What did you do, adopt triplets?” the woman in front of them asked when she glanced back.
Katherine glowed at the suggestion that she might be the same age as Jonah and Chip.
“No,” Mom said, sounding a little reluctant to explain. “This is our son, Jonah, and his friend Chip, whose parents couldn’t come today; and our daughter, Katherine, who’s not adopted but wanted to be here to, uh, support her brother.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” the woman said.
“Mom, can we go sit down while you’re registering?” Jonah asked, because he didn’t want to hear any more of this conversation. And he could see people already filing into an auditorium. If they could just scout out some of the other kids, see if any of them were the ones named on the survivors list, then they’d have an advantage when they broke up into groups later.
“Okay,” Mom said.
“Wait—you should get your name tags first,” the woman in front of them said. “Here.”