“When was that?” I asked.
“Last month,” she said. “Hence my wild popularity. I probably could have scored a seat at one of the lower-tier tables by now, but I’d rather let the people come to me.”
“How’s that working out so far?”
“Not bad. I mean, I did just reel in the school’s biggest celebrity.” I grimaced, and she smiled. “Sorry, maybe that wasn’t funny.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was kind of funny.”
She leaned toward me. “Seriously, how surreal is your life right now?”
There was warmth and sympathy in the question but not the least bit of hesitation. I’d picked well; she might be the one person at Calabasas who didn’t have any previous connection to Danny and didn’t seem fazed by my notoriety.
But, at the same time, she was completely focused on me. I had the sudden strange feeling that she was seeing me and not the cloud of Danny Tate around me. Her gaze was so direct that the feel of her felty brown eyes on mine was almost disconcerting.
“I . . . uh.” I cleared my throat. “It’s pretty surreal. I’m like this thing now—”
“Instead of a real person?”
I blinked. “Yeah.”
She saw my surprise and explained, “The way people talk about you. It’s like you’re a character on TV or something to them. It’s freaky.”
“What do they say about me?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You don’t want to know that.”
“Actually, I kind of do,” I said. It had become clear to me since I’d gotten here just how many of these kids had known Danny. This might not be the tiny community I came from where everyone went to school together their entire lives, but it was almost as insular. If they weren’t buying my act, I needed to know it.
“Well, okay, but it’s not very nice,” she said. I nodded at her to continue. “The general conversation is that you were kidnapped as a little kid and, like, brainwashed and sold into slavery or something until you staged a daring, Jason Bourne–esque escape. And now you’re this delicate creature who might snap at any moment and either kill us all or turn feral and start living in a hut in the woods somewhere like the Unabomber. Just bullshit like that.”
But no mention of me being an impostor. I had to believe that a girl who would compare me to the Unabomber ten seconds after meeting me wouldn’t be too tactful to leave that part out if people were saying it.
“That’s actually pretty accurate,” I said. “Except for the hut in the woods part.”
“Oh. Well.” She made this face that was part horrified, part comical. “Shit.”
I laughed, and it surprised me. I wasn’t often surprised.
“I was ten when it happened,” I said. I told myself I needed to test run this story on someone low risk as part of my effort to get ready for my police interview, but I think I just wanted to keep talking to her. Keep trying to home in on what made her tick. “It was right around this time of year, and I was out riding my bike. My mom told me not to because it looked like it was going to rain, but I did anyway.”
The faintest lines of a frown started to form between her eyebrows.
“I was walking beside my bike, because the chain had come off, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I was taking it home to my big brother, because he would know. I was worried that it would start raining before he could get the chain back on, and then my mom wouldn’t let me ride over to my friend Andrew’s house like I was supposed to.” The lies tumbled from my lips, gaining life and detail as the story unfurled in my mind. Like a real memory. A couple of kids at the next table over were looking now. But instead of making me shrink, their gazes sent a strange shiver through me. It wasn’t me they were looking at, I realized. It was Danny Tate. They could stare all they wanted, and as long as I was him on the outside, I would be safe and invisible on the inside.
“I was jogging up this steep hill near my house, and it took everything I had just to keep my legs moving. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice the van pulling up beside me,” I continued. “Plus, what little kid around here worries about strange vans?”
Ren had noticed the eavesdropping table too.
“This is a bad idea,” she said.
But I couldn’t stop the momentum of the story. The next table was openly listening now, and it gave me this feeling I couldn’t identify but wanted more of.
“I vaguely remember the van stopping beside me and hearing the door slide open,” I said. “And then there were arms around me, hauling me inside. I tried to scream but they covered my mouth. It was dark in the back of the van, so all I really knew was that there were three other men back there with me. I could only make out the shapes of them, not what they looked like. They spoke to each other in a language I didn’t recognize. They barely even looked at me after they had me tied up and gagged. Like I wasn’t even there.”
The group gathering around me had started to draw attention, and my audience was growing. A dozen students, then twenty, and then twenty-five hung on my every word as I spun the story of Danny Tate’s abduction. The race to the border along with another boy who was taken the day after I was, the two of us smuggled into Canada in the hidden compartment of an eighteen-wheeler along with three other children. Ren’s frown grew deeper and deeper, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the increasing darkness of the story or the growing crowd of listeners.
Then I realized what was happening.
All my life I’d tried to be invisible, and that gave the power to everyone else. To notice me stripped away my one protection. But they couldn’t take anything from me if I was giving it away willingly. The power had shifted into my hands. That’s what the crackle of electricity I felt along my spine was. The power to make them look and listen on my own terms.
For the first time in my life it felt good to have so many eyes on me. These kids weren’t looking for ways to tear me down. Their eyes were full of sympathy and fascination, and that felt almost like admiration. Or even affection. Everyone leaned in, wanting to get closer to me. That’s all they’d wanted since I’d arrived here, stealing glances and surreptitious pictures. To be close to me. I understood that now, and it made me feel invincible.
“What the hell?” The sound of Nicholas’s voice was like cold water down my back. He pushed his way through the crowd to my side. “Danny, come on.”
Nicholas grabbed my wrist and yanked me up from the table, hauling me back toward the school building. I still felt everyone watching me.
“You people are sick,” I heard Asher say behind us. “Disperse!”
“What the hell are you doing?” Nicholas asked after he’d pulled me inside the building.
“I . . . they asked me what happened,” I said. “I thought I should try to get to know some people, you know. Make friends.”