Riley looked from Shelby—who had her ear buds in and was bopping in her seat—to JD. Sometimes I feel like I have no connection, no root, nothing tying me to my life, to my brand-new bedroom in our brand-new tract home—to anything, Riley thought. She felt as disconnected and as forgotten as baby Jane, tucked away in a baby book somewhere, dumped in a box, forgotten until unearthed by accident. Tears stung at the back of her eyes.
“So what do you do? You can’t just walk out.” She jutted her head toward the front of the bus where Ms. Carter sat, her profile lit by the greyish light of her iPad. “Carter counts.”
“Or miscounts.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“If you’re not here for the first head count, she’s not going to be missing you for the one later. She doesn’t look like a teacher who’s lost students, and we get a couple of extra hours to really explore. Why? You gonna come with me?”
Riley glanced out the bus window, her mother’s admonitions ringing through her head. She could get lost or murdered or kidnapped—
Her stomach turned to liquid.
What if she already had been kidnapped?
Riley turned back to JD. “So how do you make Carter mess up her count?”
? ? ?
Riley’s heart sped up as the bus slowed down. Shelby’s head was lolled to the side, her temple against Riley’s shoulder, her lips slightly parted as she snored. Riley glanced down at her then gave her a small shake.
“Shelby!”
“What?”
Riley bit her bottom lip. She never lied to Shelby, never kept anything from her. “I’m not going to go on the tour.”
Shelby gaped. “What are you talking about?”
“Jane.”
Shelby rolled her eyes. “What about her?”
Riley didn’t know what to say. “I’m going to find her.”
“You looked online. What else is there?”
She pressed her sweaty palms against her jeans. “There was a missing poster on my computer last night.”
Shelby’s mouth dropped open, but she didn’t say anything.
“I have to find out about Jane, Shelby. I have to know—if she’s me.”
“So go home and ask your parents. Ask to see your birth certificate—after we get home. What can you do about it now anyway? It’s not like you’re going to find Jane O’Leary in the university library or something.”
Riley felt butterflies flapping in her stomach. “We’re going to be near the train station. I can take the train to Oregon. To Granite Cay.”
Shelby’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Riley felt suddenly deflated. Then baby Jane, smiling, slapping the water in her dream, flashed in her mind. “Will you at least cover for me?”
Shelby blew out a long sigh. “Do you even have a plan?”
Riley held up the folded birth certificate and even without opening it, she knew that Shelby knew exactly what it was.
“And if it’s true? If you’re really Jane and your parents stole you, what then?”
Riley’s stomach turned over, the bile itching the back of her throat. She didn’t want to consider what happened after; she just wanted to find Jane Elizabeth.
? ? ?
Riley clutched her backpack on her lap, waiting for the bus to lurch to a stop. Mrs. Carter clutched the bus seats as she walked, silently counting. Riley got up the second the teacher turned and started talking to someone.
“Where are you going?” Shelby hissed, one hand on the hem of Riley’s sweatshirt.
Riley shook her off. “So Carter doesn’t count me. Tell her my mom drove me in, but I’ll be riding the bus back.”
Generally, the security at Hawthorne High—and for all school events—was top notch. But Mrs. Carter had recently been divorced, lost seventy pounds, and dyed her hair an awful shade of burnt sienna that completely clashed with her too-small eyes. Everyone knew she had her sights set on blowing off Hawthorne and would have, had a teacher not been killed last year. Things were shuffled, teachers were moved, and Mrs. Carter stayed on, greeting her students every morning with unmasked disdain. On Mondays, she made an effort, and Riley and her class were weighed down with SAT vocab lists and reading assignments. By Friday, she was racking up points on her Words with Friends game, and as long as her students shuffled their papers to the front of the room and kept decently quiet, they were pretty much on their own.
If Mrs. Carter didn’t want us in her classroom, Riley reasoned, she sure as hell didn’t want us on this bus trip.
“Let me guess,” Shelby whispered before letting Riley go. “Wise words from JD?”
Riley didn’t answer—she was trying to remember the exact strategy JD had whispered in her ear twenty minutes ago—and Shelby groaned. “Just don’t come to me for bail money.”
Riley shouldered her backpack and shimmied to the back of the bus, grabbing for the restroom door.
OCCUPIED.
Damn it.