She pauses. “Why?”
Our feet squeaking softly on the blue-gray tile floor, I’m already tugging her down the hallway so we’re not standing in front of the elevator like a pair of morons waiting to be found. It’s not like I don’t trust her with my secrets. Okay, it is exactly like that, but who do I trust? I mean, there are girls who invite me to their pool parties (which I sometimes attend, though Dad usually helps me brainstorm excuses; some useful, like dentist appointments, some unhelpful, like hair transplants. We’re on the same page as far as parties go. Too much to worry about, too many uncontrolled variables). There are girls I sit with in the cafeteria, and I call them all my friends. We talk about our crushes, and when we run out of crushes we make up new ones on the spot. We have petty fights in homeroom so we can feel the warm thrill of making up in history via passed notes. We do the things friends do.
But I have better friends, who I know all about—Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie, Caroline B. Cooney, Graham Greene. Is it really so weird to feel closer to them than anyone else? I can count on them, in the end. And of course, I always have my dad.
But now I don’t have a choice. We round the corner and I shoulder open the first door, a big closet of cleaning supplies and those yellow mop buckets on wheels. I take a deep breath and go for it. “I’m looking for my mom’s old medical records.”
Jessa’s crystal-blue eyes soften. The Prices never knew my mother—she left before they moved to Massachusetts and to the neighborhood—but of course they know the story. Jessa’s known since we were seven and playing kitchen on the plastic stove in her bedroom. It’s one of my first memories: rattling plastic eggs around the tiny pink skillets that came with the set. The sun was painting her hair a bright rose gold, much nicer than my uncombed brown mop, and her white dress I was always so jealous of was like a cloud. Jessa’s nanny dressed her like a mini pageant queen, while my dad brought me into Walmart and set me free, at which point I learned for myself that a girl could not make her way through kindergarten with fifteen pairs of glitter tights and one bulldog sweater. Anyway, Jessa turned to me in her perfect dress and asked why I only had a dad. I told her very sincerely that my mom was a beautiful astronaut who sometimes had to go to Texas for training. That lasted until Jessa told Dr. Van Tassel my mother was in space . . . or Texas . . . and Dr. Van Tassel had a talk with Dad.
That night, Dad told me my bedtime story for the very first time.
Twelve years later, Jessa stares at me in the janitor’s closet and tugs on her hair. “Im, why? Is this because of your mom, or because your dad’s missing?”
I figured her mom would’ve told her, but still, I feel my cheeks go cold, my fingers, and suck in a breath. “He’s not missing.”
“So where is he?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. But I need . . . I need . . .” I grab her hand, feeling a weird and unexpected rush of our old play-kitchen love.
“Your mom’s records,” she finishes. “Want to tell me why?”
I chew my lip.
“No, of course not,” she huffs.
“It’s just . . . a theory I’m working on.”
“Then why don’t you just tell the cops, and they can look up the records? We can’t get to them without the keys, anyway.”
“But you know where the keys are. And I have you.”
She sighs. “Fine. Fine! But this is a dumb idea and we’re gonna get caught and my phone’s gonna get taken away again, and just wait in the closet, all right? Security checks down here.”
“Please come back before someone pukes.”
“This place is just storage. Be quiet and you’ll be okay.” She eases out of the closet, and with a dramatic look left and right, darts away. The door swings shut behind her.