2:15 P.M.
Josie waited impatiently all day, but at two o’clock Teresa went out to run errands. Finally. Josie needed to spend some time perving around the house, and she much preferred to do it unobserved.
She’d spent most of the day making a list of things to look for, things that had gone missing or at least seemed odd or out of place in her house since the day at the railroad crossing. The vase, her shoes, and Mr. Fugly Bear were obvious—they were objects Josie had actively missed—but as she thought back on the last week, she realized that the leapfrogging of items between the two worlds went deeper. Incidents that seemed a mere annoyance at the time suddenly had more meaning.
Like the Tinkerbell magnet on the fridge. Josie had come home from school last week and found several pizza-delivery coupons scattered on the kitchen floor. They’d been pinned to the refrigerator door by a large Tinkerbell magnet Josie had bought on a family vacation to Disney World. She’d gathered up the coupons and found another magnet to hold them in place without really thinking about what had happened to poor Tink.
Now she knew.
And those were just the things she’d noticed. Maybe there were more objects zapped into Jo’s world and vice versa? And if they could be, why couldn’t Josie?
She’d already done a full sweep of Jo’s room and bathroom, but other than the vase, she hadn’t found any of the missing objects. She decided to start downstairs in the kitchen, the most logical place to find a refrigerator magnet.
The sleek stainless steel refrigerator was devoid of decoration: no magnets or family photos or pizza-delivery coupons in sight. Similarly, the kitchen counters were empty, just squeaky-clean granite countertops polished to within an inch of their lives. Teresa took her job very seriously.
Josie checked the pantry as a matter of course. Its contents were similar to the one in her own kitchen—it even had the same black canister set, all uniform and lined up in rows three deep on a shelf—but no kitchen magnets or anything else that reminded her specifically of home.
Josie was starting to despair when the living room, laundry room, and formal dining room all turned up empty. Was she wrong? Was the vase just a fluke?
There were three bedrooms upstairs. Jo’s room she’d already gone over with a fine-tooth comb, so she tackled Jo’s parents’ room next. Large and luxuriously decorated, it looked more like a hotel suite than a master bedroom. The enormous king-size bed sat on a raised step on the far side of the room, flanked on either side by floor-to-ceiling windows. There was not one but two walk-in closets—his and hers—which were each about as large as Josie’s bedroom back home. Not to mention the bathroom complete with sauna, whirlpool bathtub, and a glass-enclosed shower that could accommodate an entire basketball team. If Josie had a bathroom like that, she might never leave.
Searching a room that size was no easy task. But surely one of the objects on Josie’s list must be there. In one of the closets, in a drawer, in the ridiculously large bathroom? Yeah, no. After an hour, Josie gave up in defeat.
One more place to check. The guest room.
Situated on the same side of the house as Jo’s room, the guest bedroom was oddly sparse. Bed, nightstand. That was it. Not even a dresser, just a small closet on the far wall. Oh well, at least it would be easy to search.
The nightstand was empty, as was the space under the bed. But when Josie yanked open the closet door, she gasped.
On the floor in the middle of the closet was a box filled with a variety of miscellaneous objects. Sitting right on top was Mr. Fugly Bear.
Josie crouched down and lifted Mr. Fugly out of the box. Yep, definitely him. Missing an ear and a thumb. Her favorite childhood toy, here in a closet in Jo’s house.
Creak.
Josie froze. What was that? She waited, crouched in the closet, and held her breath. After what felt like forever, Josie slowly exhaled. Just the house settling. If Teresa or Mr. Byrne were home, she’d have heard them come in. She was being paranoid.
Shaking off her fears, Josie hauled the box out of the closet. In the bright lights of the unused room, she could see another familiar object: a pair of pink tweed Converse. Then another and another. A bottle of her mom’s favorite perfume. A Christmas card from Josie’s cousins in Ireland. A book of tapas recipes from her mom’s international-cooking phase. And a magnet shaped like the pixie from Peter Pan.
All of them here. All of them gathered and put in a box and shoved in this closet out of sight. They’d been put here deliberately. Josie shook her head. It must have been Jo. The vase might have gone unnoticed since it was so similar to the one that appeared in Josie’s room, but a pair of pink Converse sneakers would have been a shock for Jo to find in her closet. Had Jo realized what they were and what they meant? Had she hidden them?