There were the usual x’s and o’s, and her mom’s flowery signature on the bottom.
Riley put her unused bowl and spoon away, her stomach turning in on itself, anxiety and uncertainty turning her saliva sour.
She nearly dropped her juice glass when her cell phone started blaring.
“Hey, Shelbs. You totally made me jump.”
“That’s because you’re living in the neighborhood that technology forgot. I’m picking you up. I need a Cinnabon and a new backpack. One of the twins barfed in mine.”
“Gross. But my parents aren’t here. I can’t leave.”
Shelby groaned into the phone. “Call them. Tell them I’ll pick you up and make you wear a seat belt and take your Flintstone vitamins. Seriously. It’s a matter of puke or death.”
Riley sucked in a breath, one that bolstered the nagging suspicion in her gut. “You know what? Head over. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”
Riley shimmied into her jacket and hiked up her purse before settling on the porch steps. The sky was a bright, crisp blue, all evidence of last night’s pounding rain gone. The sunshine bounced off the windows, giving the impression that the half-empty Blackwood Hills Estates was a cheery, bustling neighborhood.
Riley shivered. Her cell phone chirped.
TWIN BARFERS R TWIN BARFING. C U IN 20.
She looked at the locked door behind her then speed-walked to the empty house across the street. If someone was peering into her window, or even just staring her down the night she left for the school trip, she wanted to know who they were.
She knocked and waited, pressing her ear against the door. Silence. She found the doorbell and mashed that too, the same chimes as her house had making a muffled ring inside. Riley was peering into the first-floor windows, her eyes scanning the empty foyer, the desolate living room, when she heard a twig crack behind her.
She stiffened immediately.
“Are you moving in or something?”
Riley whirled. A girl was standing on the stretch of dirt that should have been landscaping, her hands on her hips. She looked to be about Riley’s age.
“Uh, no. I just thought that maybe someone lived here.”
The girl swung her head. “Not likely. My parents just looked at the place. There’s a big gaping hole in one of the windows. Someone was squatting there. The real estate lady was super embarrassed.” The girl grinned. “She ran in front of us and dumped all his shit in the trash.”
Riley’s skin started tingling. Someone had been watching her. It was true.
“Hey, Bryn!”
Riley looked over the girl’s shoulder to see a couple standing outside of a car, waving.
“That’s my parents,” Bryn said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
Riley stared after the girl as her stomach started to roil. Someone was squatting there. Someone was watching her. She edged around the front and tugged at the garbage bag on the curb, yanking until it tore open. A tattered blanket fell out, a crunched up sweatshirt that looked like it had been used for a pillow. A couple of Big Gulp cups and Snicker’s bar wrappers and, shoved way in the back, a cheap pair of binoculars. Riley reached for them, her entire body feeling slimy when her hand closed over them. She pulled them out and the case came with them, a Big Mac wrapper stuck to the side.
“Gross.”
Something rattled as she went to toss the binoculars back. There was something in the case. Riley rooted around until her fingers closed around the tiny metal charm. It looked like a silver angel—or it would have, if its wing and head hadn’t been broken off. She studied it until Shelby’s beast-mobile coughed up the street. Then she jammed it in her pocket.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or your parents having sex,” Shelby said when Riley belted herself into her seat.
“I think someone has been watching me,” Riley said, turning down the radio. She jabbed a finger toward the house. “From there.”
“Like a new neighbor? Is he hot? Please say he’s hot.”
Riley shook her head. “I’m not even completely sure it’s a guy. I couldn’t see anything. This is getting creepy. I think a guy was following me in Granite Cay too.”
“You think, or you know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Shelby flipped on her blinker, gunning the old car onto the highway. “It means you tend to lean toward the paranoid.”
“I do? You’re the one who’s sure I’ve been kidnapped.”
“And that turned out to be nothing, right? What did your parents say?”
Riley bit her thumbnail. “I didn’t ask them about Jane.”
“Let me get this straight: you jump on a train with a total delinquent to go searching for a girl on a birth certificate, and when that turns up zilch, you don’t even bother to ask your parents. James Bond you are not.”
Riley stared out the windshield, pressing her feet firmly against the floor. She needed something solid; she needed something to connect to.
“They wouldn’t let me see my birth certificate.”