“Hello?” Shelby said, holding up the book.
Riley snapped from her headspace. She crossed the room and took the baby book from Shelby, gingerly pulling at the paper that was now sticking out from the spine end.
“Oh,” she said, relief crashing over her in waves. “It’s not broken; there’s just a little slit here in the cover. It’s kind of hidden behind the bunny. See?” She held the book up for Shelby to inspect. “This was in there.”
Shelby’s eyes went wide. “What is it? Some kind of mysterious message?”
“Oh my God, Shelby, we need to find you a guy.”
Riley pulled the paper out and unfolded it, sucking in a breath.
“What is it?”
Riley frowned. “Kind of a mysterious message. It’s a birth certificate.”
“Yours?”
Riley shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
TWO
Riley squinted at the birth certificate and turned it over and over in her hands. She had no idea why, but she studied every inch of it, certain that at some point there would be a “Made in China” or “Property of Disney” stamp. There was nothing.
“It looks authentic enough,” Riley said with a frown. “I wonder who it belongs to.”
Shelby grabbed the paper and scanned it. “It belongs to Jane Elizabeth O’Leary,” she said. “O’Leary, that’s Irish, right? Oh, me lucky charms! Maybe this kid was the leprechaun your parents stole for their pot of gold.” She looked over the paper at Riley and raised her eyebrows.
“My parents don’t have a pot of gold.”
Shelby jutted her chin toward Riley’s new attached bathroom. “Your own bathroom equals pot of gold in my book.”
“You’re so lame. So, Jane O’Leary, born May 14 to Seamus and Abigail O’ Leary.” Riley shook the paper in her hands. “Who are these people?”
“Ooh, baby Jane almost might have stolen your thunder. She was born a whole thirteen months earlier. Maybe your mother had baby rage and had to do away with her.”
Riley snorted. “We do know how violent my mother gets.” She yanked an Easter turtleneck out of one of the boxes. “I mean just look at this. Bunnies. Easter eggs. Nadine Spencer is truly a madwoman.” She tossed the turtleneck back but couldn’t bring herself to toss the certificate.
Shelby gestured to it. “Are you going to ask your parents about your phantom sister? Tread lightly; they might knock you off next.”
“I can’t ask them about it. They would murder me—for real—if they knew I was in here, going through their stuff. I mean, the baby book wasn’t exactly in plain sight.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Seriously, who is this kid?”
“Hey, if you’re that curious about ole Jane, Wiki that crap.”
Riley carefully—but quickly—shoved everything but the baby book and her dad’s sweatshirt back in the boxes and slid them back into place.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Shelby by the hand.
They crossed the hall back into Riley’s room. She yanked her laptop from under her bed and fired it up, tapping the baby’s name into the Google search engine.
“OK, background check, background check, background check—only thirty-nine ninety-five. No on that one. Jane Elisabeth—Elisabeth with an s—is an ASU alum.”
Shelby rooted through her backpack then stuck her arm into the Ruffles bag she yanked out. “She would be too old, unless our Jane is a genius. She’s supposed to be only a year older than us.”
“Then I’m assuming the obituary of eighty-nine-year old Jane Elizabeth O’Leary of Skokie, survived by her eleven adult children, is not our chick either.” Riley chewed her bottom lip while she scanned page after page. “Our kid doesn’t show up.” She typed in the name of each of the parents separately and came up blank once more; it was the same when she tried the last name plus the name of the city, plus every other combination she could think of.
“According to Google, none of these people exist.”
Shelby upturned the Ruffles bag and shook the last of the crumbs into her mouth. “Well, if you don’t exist on Google, then you don’t exist at all. Everyone knows that.”
Shelby sat up with a start. “Ohmigod,” she said, still chewing. “What if the birth certificate is actually yours? What if you’re, like, one of the Amber Alerts? Or one of those Have You Seen Me? poster kids?” Her face was upturned, grease and salt from the chip bag glinting on the finger she used to point at Riley.
Riley rolled her eyes but got a little niggle of anxiety anyway. “That’s stupid. This kid is a whole year older than I am.”
“If they snatched you off the street, or out of some Walmart dressing room or something, they may have made you a year younger to throw people off the scent.” Shelby narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Is that your real hair color?”