Shelby was silent for a beat then sighed dramatically. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’re not even the slightest bit curious.”
Riley shrugged. “It’s not that I’m not curious about it. I just—I don’t know.” She studied the certificate, scrutinizing it yet again. Could there be something to this? “My parents are my parents.”
Shelby snatched the certificate back and raised her eyebrows. “Are they?”
Something shifted inside of Riley as she stared Shelby down. Shelby’s brows were raised, her head cocked so that a shock of her dark hair snaked over her shoulder. Riley blinked. With her too-small, deep-set eyes, Shelby was a spitting image of her mother. They both had the same relaxed mouth, the same ski-jump nose that hooked just a smidge to the left.
“You’re lame.” Riley turned away from her friend, her eyes catching the picture she kept on her nightstand: Riley smashed between her mother and father, all three pressing their cheeks together. Riley had a big toothy grin with cheeks that were ruddy and round. Her father’s smile was easy and relaxed, his narrow face regal next to Riley’s. Her mother had high cheekbones and pale, porcelain skin, her heart-shaped lips pressed in a tight pink smile.
I don’t look anything like them.
“What if your real parents are looking for you? Or what if they’re, like, serial killers and that’s why your adoptive parents, Glen and Nadine Spencer, are so hell-bent on hiding you from the outside world?” Shelby lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “They could have spies everywhere.” She jabbed an index finger toward a construction worker leaning over the side of a cherry picker as he worked on a telephone cable outside. “He probably isn’t even a telephone guy. He’s probably sitting up there listening to everything we say.”
“So is he spying for me or on me?” Riley was joking, trying to keep the conversation light, but she crossed the room and pulled the blinds anyway.
“You know I’m right. They’ve only let you spend the night at my house one time. One time!”
“Because I came home from that sleepover with gum in my hair.”
“And how many other slumber parties have you gone to?”
Riley turned away. There was always a good excuse. Her father surprised her with a trip to Six Flags, so she had to skip Erica Fitzpatrick’s twelfth birthday. And she was going to go to Cassie O’Hara’s slumber party when she turned fourteen, but her mother got tickets to a musical in the city. She couldn’t go to Shelby’s last two slumber parties, but she couldn’t exactly remember why.
Riley pushed the thoughts out of her head. Her parents weren’t trying to hide anything…
She knew who she was. She knew who her parents were. But here was a birth certificate, hidden, buried away. Tangible proof that her parents didn’t tell her everything.
“They probably pried you right out of your birth mother’s arms.”
“What are you talking about? My parents are the most polite—”
Shelby snatched a pillow off the bed and clutched it tight to her chest, pleading in a breathy Southern accent. “No, please, sir, not my baby! She’s all I have!”
Riley wanted to say something back but couldn’t form the words. Even as Shelby went on with her ridiculous rendition, Riley couldn’t find the words to stop her.
“Oh my God. What if your dad had guns and he was all, ‘pew! pew!’ Like Wild Bill Hitchcock and stuff?”
“Hickok.”
“What?”
“I’m pretty sure it was Wild Bill Hickok. And my dad doesn’t have any guns.” Riley made a conscious effort to stop biting her lower lip and whirled to face Shelby, who was pantomiming finger guns and kicking down doors. “Well, he has one gun, but it’s like an antique or something. That’s not weird though, right?”
“Not according to the NRA.”
“Does your dad have any?”
Shelby looked over the top of the magazine she had just picked up. “Are you kidding? Eight kids? My parents are unfortunately all about the making love, not war.” She shuddered.
Riley swallowed and tried to force a smile at Shelby’s joke. But her mind was already spinning off in a thousand different directions. What if…
“No, you’re being stupid and you’re making me paranoid. This thing probably just came with the baby book, and my parents are overprotective just because they are, and my dad has a super old-fashioned gun that his dad gave him or something.”
Shelby flipped a page in her magazine. “Whatever makes you feel better, Ry.”
“That’s not weird.” Riley spoke defiantly to Shelby’s bent head and the couple on the cover of US magazine—but she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.
“Of course not, Ry. It’s like in the Constitution or the habeas corpus or whatever. Americans can have guns and parents can be paranoid. No big.”
Riley sat delicately at the end of her bed, and Shelby put down her magazine and straightened.
“Are you seriously freaked out about this?”
“No—no, it’s just, I don’t know—”