“The thing is, I need to bring my birth certificate to register.” Riley cut her eyes to her father, working hard to track his every movement.
“You know, we’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do. I’m not even sure I know where your mother has your birth certificate, turnip. Maybe you’d better wait on the driving stuff until we’re all settled.”
Tears pricked at the back of Riley’s eyes.
“No, I want to take it next semester. And wouldn’t Mom have all our important records in a safe deposit box or something? Since we lost all our pictures and stuff at the other house.”
Riley thought she saw a look of relief skitter over her father’s face. “That old place! Do you remember that house? We had the most beautiful hydrangeas.”
“I kind of remember. Why were all my baby pictures ruined again?”
“The roof leaked.”
Riley worried her bottom lip. “But my birth certificate was fine. I’ll bet Mom knows exactly where it is.”
Riley watched her father nod slowly and swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Sure. But you know that you won’t be able to drive much next semester. Your mother and I both need our cars. She’ll be off for summer when you are, so then you would be able to get a lot of practice time in. Take driver’s education then and concentrate on school in between.”
“But I can get my birth certificate, right? So I can be prepared?”
“No need to jump the gun, turnip. Mom and I can take care of it.”
He turned and grinned at her, but Riley felt like she had been punched in the stomach.
? ? ?
Riley lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The glint from the streetlight outside cut a yellow diagonal stripe from end to end that shifted with every howling screech of the wind.
She wasn’t going to fall asleep.
Her mind was a constant churn of the past days’ events, but tonight it always came back to the same thing: the postcards. She knew how Trevor had gotten the first one in her purse—it must have fallen in when Shelby grabbed the bag—but what about the next one?
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
He hadn’t been on the college tour and the two didn’t have any classes together this year. They were just casual friends—so casual Riley didn’t even have his phone number or email address. Why send someone you hardly know postcards with weird, creepy messages?
Riley kicked off her covers and sat on the floor, pulling her purse into her lap. She yanked out everything—whatever she needed always seemed to migrate to the bottom—and pulled the postcards out of the depths. Only now, there was something wedged in between them.
Riley shook out a tiny envelope, her heart thundering in her throat. Another weird message? A note from Trevor explaining the cards?
Her name was written on the front of the envelope in blue ballpoint pen and underlined twice. She popped the envelope open and a gift card to Sweet Retreat fell out.
“Riley Spencer” was written in the “TO” portion; “FROM” was “The ASB.”
She read:
Thank you for volunteering for the HHS Winter Carnival. Enjoy a free ice cream cone courtesy of Sweet Retreat Ice Cream. The Associated Student Body.
Riley started to breathe hard. That’s the card that Trevor was talking about when he asked if she had “gotten hers.” He didn’t know anything about the postcards.
He wasn’t the one who dropped them into her purse.
SOMETHING LOST HAS NOW BEEN FOUND.
Riley felt a tightening in her chest as sweat pricked at her hairline. She felt the familiar pins and needles feeling in her hands and feet. She was starting to panic.
Outside, the wind cut a wild path, and within seconds, the rain started like a snare drum, an insistent rhythm against the window. Her curtains caught and fluttered up, and Riley went to the window, slamming the one-inch open section closed.
A good gust of wind…
The hairs on the back of Riley’s neck stood up, pricking electricity into her skin. Someone had come into her house. Someone had pulled the webpage of a missing child up on her computer and walked out of the house, leaving the front door open.
Someone who knew who she was.
? ? ?
The house was deathly quiet when Riley woke up the next morning. When she padded down the stairs, hers was the only place setting on the table—the usual bowl-plate-spoon, a glass of juice, and the little white pill. She hadn’t had any reaction since she stopped taking it. She hadn’t felt better or worse. She didn’t want to believe that maybe her parents were drugging her, shoving pills down her throat that might make her forget things or make her more compliant, or whatever they did. She rolled the pill between her forefinger and thumb before dropping it into the sink and flipping on the garbage disposal. The gurgling, chopping sound of the blades felt like they were eating their way through Riley’s life, her normalcy. Everything was a chopped-up mess.
There was a note propped against her juice glass:
We’re at the farmers’ market. Eat breakfast!