Found (7 page)

“You have to admit I’m a genius,” Katherine said.

“Shh,” Jonah hissed.

Mom and Dad were right in front of them, talking in low grim voices, their shoulders hunched over in defeat and dismay.

“No, really,” Katherine persisted. “After what I saw, the fact that my brain worked at all is amazing. And then, to think of something like this—”

“Can it, will you?” Jonah interrupted the self-congratulations. “We’ll have to talk later. Right now…”

Already, Dad was turning around, putting his arm around Jonah’s shoulders.

“Jonah, I am so sorry about all of this,” he said. “This is not how the government is supposed to work. That man has evidently forgotten that he’s supposed to be a servant of the people, that the government is supposed to benefit
us
—”

“Dad, I don’t need a civics lesson, okay?” Jonah shrugged away his father’s arm.

“That Mr. Reardon needs one,” Mom said. “Ooh—I can’t remember the last time somebody made me so mad. The nerve! Threatening us…” Her voice shook, and she turned quickly away to dab at her eyes.

Jonah slipped into the car. He felt so strange already—the last thing he needed was to watch his parents having emotional breakdowns.

Mom and Dad were getting into the front seat.

Good
, Jonah thought.
Just drive away—you’ll have to face forward for that….

But Dad wasn’t pushing the key into the ignition. He turned around in his seat and peered earnestly back at Jonah.

“I promise you, Jonah,” he said in a husky voice. “If you want us to pursue this, we will. That man had no right to imply that we would be punished for asking questions. You
are
an American citizen. He can’t take that away from you.”

“Just forget it!” Jonah said harshly. He glanced over at Katherine, on the seat beside him. She was holding out the cell phone.

Names
, Jonah thought.
Maybe there’s the name of a country. Maybe there’re the names of a man and a woman. My birth parents.

“You’re scared,” Dad said. “I understand. You shouldn’t make any final decisions right now. Think about it.”

“And, Jonah,” Mom began, sniffling a little, “if you ever want to just talk things out, we—”

“Can we just do that some other time?” Jonah snapped.

“Sure,” Mom said quietly.

A silence enveloped the car. Jonah saw Dad take one hand off the steering wheel and slip it into Mom’s hand. But they didn’t try to say anything else to Jonah. Dad pulled out of the parking lot and was quickly out on the highway. The streetlights and the lights of passing trucks and cars flashed intermittently into the car.

Jonah reached for the phone in Katherine’s hand.

When they’d first gotten the phone, he’d spent about an hour taking pictures of wacky things—his big toe peeking out of his holey sneakers, the dust bunnies under his bed, a close-up of his guinea pig’s eye. But he hadn’t played with the camera much since then. It seemed to take him forever to navigate from
Menu
to
Camera
to
Saved Pix
.

The first picture he clicked on was just a blur.

“Couldn’t you have held it steady?” he whispered to Katherine.

She took the phone away from him. “There!” she said, and handed it back.

The phone’s screen was so tiny, it was hard to read anything. But Jonah could make out one line, a title at the top of an infinitesimally small list.

The title wasn’t
Birth Parents
or
Country of Origin
.

It was
Witnesses.

“Download it all,” Jonah said. “Hurry.”

He and Katherine were at Chip’s house, because Chip’s computer was in the basement, not right smack in the middle of the kitchen, where anyone could see. (Mom and Dad believed all those warnings about how kids shouldn’t have privacy online.) Jonah and Katherine had brought the cell phone and a cable with them, and Katherine was convinced that as soon as they got the pictures on the computer screen, everything would be big and clear and easy to read.

They were still trying to explain to Chip what they were about to show him.

“Didn’t this Reardon dude have a copier?” Chip asked. “Or a printer? Couldn’t he have printed you an extra copy, instead of making you take pictures?”

“No, no,” Jonah said. “Mr. Reardon didn’t give this to us.”

“He wouldn’t tell us squat,” Katherine agreed. “The file of papers came from a ghost.”

“What?” Jonah and Chip both said, almost exactly at the same time. Jonah glared at his sister, and added, “So help me, Katherine, this is all weird enough. If you think it’s funny to just make stuff up—to, to make fun of me—”

“I’m not making anything up!” Katherine said, her eyes wide and innocent. “Honest! That’s what I was trying to tell you before, why I was so scared. Didn’t you wonder how the file ended up on Mr. Reardon’s desk in the first place?”

Jonah hadn’t thought to wonder that. There hadn’t been time.

“Wasn’t it one of the janitors—?” he began.

“Only if the janitors there have supernatural powers.”

“Katherine!” Jonah complained.

“Really!” Katherine said. “When you went off to throw up—”

“You threw up?” Chip asked, intrigued.

“Too much Mountain Dew,” Jonah said quickly, to make it clear that it hadn’t been from nerves or anything like that.

“Anyhow,” Katherine continued, “I looked away from the hallway because I didn’t want to see anything gross. And then, right before you came back, this man just…appeared. He was right beside Mr. Reardon’s filing cabinet. He took out the file, put it on Mr. Reardon’s desk, and then he just…vanished.”

“Maybe you blinked,” Jonah said. “Twice.” There was a cruel edge to his voice. He didn’t need this. Not when he was already stressed out about what he was about to see on the computer screen.

“I didn’t blink,” Katherine said indignantly. “I know what I saw.”

“What did the ghost look like?” Chip asked. “Kind of wavery and see-through?”

Amazing. He sounded like he was taking Katherine seriously.

“Maybe a little bit,” Katherine said, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. “I mean, I didn’t have time to look at him closely. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans but he didn’t look scruffy at all.” She giggled a little. “Really, he was kind of cute.”

“Brown hair?” Jonah asked. “Cut short? And greenish eyes, with kind of crinkles around them?”

Katherine nodded.

“That was the guy from the bathroom, then, the one who told me about the file,” Jonah said. “You just, I don’t know, missed seeing him walk into and out of the room.”

Katherine narrowed her eyes.

“Did Mom and Dad see him?” she challenged.

Jonah hadn’t thought of that.

“Give me that phone,” he said, reaching for the cell.

“It’s still downloading—here.” Chip handed Jonah the cordless phone he’d used before, to call Mr. Reardon.

Jonah began carefully dialing their home number. Mom answered.

“You and Katherine will be home soon, won’t you?” she asked anxiously. “It’s getting late.”

“Sure,” Jonah said. “Soon. We’re just working on a…project.” He swallowed hard. “Hey, Mom, you know, this afternoon when I was, um, throwing up? Did you see anyone walk out of the bathroom and into Mr. Reardon’s office?”

“No,” Mom said. “Except for you. Why?”

“Katherine thought that—”

Katherine glared at him. Jonah decided to try another approach.

“I thought I heard, um, footsteps,” Jonah said. “Like there was somebody else in the bathroom with me. But then when I came out of the stall, there wasn’t anybody else there.”

Incredibly, that was almost entirely the truth.

“Was there maybe another door into and out of the bathroom?” Mom asked.

“No.”

“Well, then, you must have been imagining those footsteps, because I was standing out in the hall the whole time,” Mom said. “And I didn’t see anyone come out of that bathroom besides you.”

Jonah thought about this. It didn’t make any sense.

“Did Dad see anyone?” he asked.

“Jonah, if I didn’t see anyone, how could Dad have seen anyone? There wasn’t anybody there!” Mom didn’t usually get so impatient. Jonah could tell by her tense tone of voice that she was still upset from the meeting with Mr. Reardon. “Why does it even matter?”

“Never mind,” Jonah said.

He hung up. Chip and Katherine were staring at him.

“There must have been a secret passageway or something,” he said stubbornly. “Like, underground.”

“Oh, and you think I would have missed noticing if this guy came up out of a secret underground passage?” Katherine asked sarcastically.

Jonah shrugged. He didn’t think he could have missed noticing a secret passageway in the bathroom either. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Katherine.

“The pictures are ready on the computer,” Chip announced.

Jonah was glad of the distraction.

The first photo that came up was lips.

“Oops—that’s from Rachel’s sleepover,” Katherine apologized. “Molly kissed the phone. She wanted to see what her lip print looked like.”

“Girls really do stuff like that?” Chip asked, looking stunned.

Jonah thought Chip needed a sister of his own, so he’d know how stupid and disgusting it all was.

Katherine skipped ahead through the pictures. She stopped on the first shot full of words.

“
Witnesses
,” it said at the top. Then, below, “
Angela DuPre, 812 Stonehenge Court, (513) 555-0184
…”

“You only got one of the names?” Jonah complained.

“The rest is in the next shot,” Katherine said. “I was trying to follow a pattern, six shots per page, right side, then left side, then down….”

Jonah supposed he really should be impressed, that Katherine could have been so methodical only moments after seeing what she thought was a ghost. But he certainly wasn’t going to tell her that.

Katherine’s angles were a little off, so she’d gotten only two shots with complete names and addresses and phone numbers, and two other witness names that could be pieced together from multiple shots.

Jonah felt a wave of disappointment.

“What good does this do?” he asked. “These people could be witnesses to
anything
. They probably don’t have any connection to me, except that some strange guy in a bathroom wanted to mess with my mind.”

“No,” Chip said. “Take a look at this.”

Chip had sat down at the computer and was manipulating the images, piecing several photos together like a jigsaw puzzle.

The second sheet of paper in the folder hadn’t been titled
Witnesses
. It’d been titled
Survivors
. And the last two names on the list were very familiar:

J
ONAH
S
KIDMORE

C
HIP
W
INSTON

“Close it down,” Jonah said.

“Wha-why?” Chip asked.

Jonah stepped back from the computer, far enough away that the words were just indistinct squiggles.

“I don’t want to know anything else,” he said.

He felt overwhelmed suddenly, everything catching up with him at once: the strange letters, Mr. Reardon implying he could lose his citizenship and be deported, Katherine claiming she’d seen a ghost, and now these lists of witnesses and survivors—with Jonah’s name right there in black and white. It made everything else seem like it might be real.

“Can’t we go back to, ‘Hey, Jonah, you gonna try out for the basketball team?’” Jonah pleaded. “Like that’s the most important thing?”

Chip and Katherine were staring at him like he’d completely lost it.

“Can’t we pretend none of this ever happened?” Jonah asked.

“My parents spent thirteen years pretending nothing ever happened,” Chip said in a hard voice.

Jonah appealed to Katherine.

“You’re the one who said I shouldn’t do this whole identity-search thing,” he said. “You wanted me to just act normal.”

Katherine looked from Jonah to Chip and back again.

“That was before I saw the ghost,” she said quietly. “Or whatever it was.”

“Aren’t you curious?” Chip asked.

Jonah shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not at all.” He felt like he was still too close to the computer screen. His mind kept trying to turn the vague squiggles back into words and words into ideas.
Survivors. I’m on the survivors list. What does that mean?
He reminded himself that he didn’t care. He bent over and picked up his jacket. “Come on, Katherine. Let’s go home.”

Katherine didn’t move.

“I used to want to be you,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Jonah asked, almost dropping his jacket in surprise.

“Er—not really
you
,” Katherine said. “I wanted to be the one who was adopted. I thought it was so boring to have Mom and Dad as my real parents
and
birth parents. I used to pretend that I was adopted, and that my other parents were a king and a queen, or actors or singers, or—something exciting like that.”

“Very nice,” Jonah said sarcastically. “I’m sure that little fantasy made you very happy.” His hands shook as he pulled on his jacket. He stuffed them into his pockets. “My other parents are probably drug dealers,” he said. “Smugglers. Wanted by the FBI.”

Katherine shook her head.

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“Mr. Reardon does.” No matter how hard he tried, Jonah couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“No.” Katherine was staring at him. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “Didn’t you see how Mr. Reardon was looking at you? It was like…like he was trying to figure you out. Like he doesn’t really know who you are either.”

“Thanks a lot,” Jonah said. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Katherine put her hand dramatically on Jonah’s arm.

“Wait,” she said. “I think I just figured something out.”

Jonah waited.
How stupid am I
, he thought,
that I’m obeying Katherine
?

“Okay, okay, I really think I’m right about this,” Katherine said excitedly. “See, part of my deal with Mom and Dad, to get to go to the FBI with you, was that I wasn’t allowed to say anything while we were there.”

“They actually thought you could go three seconds without talking?” Jonah asked.

“I
didn’t
talk,” Katherine said indignantly.

Jonah considered this. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember Katherine saying anything in Mr. Reardon’s office. Just gasping.

“And, it’s kind of funny,” Katherine went on, “but when you’re not talking, sometimes you notice things more. And I kept thinking that Mr. Reardon was acting weird.”

“No, duh,” Jonah said.

Katherine ignored him.

“I kept thinking, why’d he agree to meet with us just to tell us he couldn’t tell us anything? And I think”—she dropped her voice low, conspiratorially—“I think it was because he wanted to find out what Mom and Dad already knew.”

“You mean, he thought your family knew something that the FBI didn’t?” Chip asked. He’d spun around from the computer screen and was staring up at Katherine as if she had all the answers.

“Maybe,” Katherine said, back to her normal voice. “Or he was afraid that we already knew some of that top-secret information he didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t you notice how it was almost like he was
trying
to get Mom and Dad mad? You know how, when people are mad, sometimes they say things they don’t mean to—they reveal too much? That’s what Mr. Reardon wanted Mom and Dad to do.”

Chip was squinting at Katherine.

“How does that explain the ghost?” he asked.

“
That
I haven’t figured out yet,” Katherine said with a little laugh. “But I will.”

She made this whole mess sound as if it was just a challenging math problem, or as if she was working on a scheme to get Mom and Dad to let her stay up late on a school night or have nothing but ice cream for dinner. This was just an intriguing puzzle to her. It wasn’t
her
life.

“Whatever,” Jonah said, jerking his arm away from Katherine’s grasp. “You can stay here until you figure everything out. I’m going home.”

He half-expected Katherine to follow him out—she was
his
sister, after all, not Chip’s friend—but when he glanced back, they’d both turned around to huddle over the computer together.

Fine
, Jonah thought.
See if I care.

When he’d climbed up the stairs to the first level of Chip’s house, he could hear a TV siren blaring from the family room. A woman—presumably Chip’s mom—said unhappily, “You always have to watch the blood-and-guts shows.” Jonah thought about walking back toward the family room, poking his head in, and informing Chip’s parents, “You really ought to know what’s going on, down in your basement. Chip’s looking for a whole other identity that doesn’t involve you.” Instead he turned through the dark dining room and slipped out the front door.

Outside, a new thought occurred to him. Chip had pretty much admitted that he had a crush on Katherine—what if Katherine had a crush on Chip, too? What if
that’s
what this was all about?

Unaccountably, Jonah suddenly felt very lonely. He was walking down a dark street, all by himself, the trees casting eerie shadows across the sidewalk.
Hey, kidnappers,
he thought,
you want to get me back? This would be a great time to snatch me away!

He shivered, even though it wasn’t the least bit cold for October.

I should have told Mom and Dad
, he thought.
About that second letter, if nothing else.

But he knew why he hadn’t. They would have made a federal case out of it, getting upset, calling the cops…Jonah didn’t want that. Like Katherine, he wanted Mom and Dad to stay normal. And now he really couldn’t tell them, not when they were already so freaked out by the meeting with Mr. Reardon. It would be cruel to spring this on them too.

The street curved slightly, and there was a break in the trees, so he had a full view of his own house. Mom had chrysanthemums planted along the sidewalk and along the front fence—which was actually white picket. Mom and Dad were such believers in all those cliches. The living room bay window curved out invitingly, the lights blazed…home looked like such a safe place. Jonah just wanted to walk in, crawl into bed, pull the covers over his face, and sleep until all the scary things in his life disappeared.

He glanced longingly up at the two second-story windows that looked into his room. The lights weren’t on in his room, but light was spilling in from the hallway, so he could make out dim shapes: his dresser, his desk, the posts of his bed….

One of the shapes in his room moved.

While Jonah watched, a dark shape—no, a
person
—eased the door of Jonah’s room shut, blocking out the light, plunging the windows into complete darkness. But then a smaller light—a flashlight? a penlight?—clicked on, hovering over Jonah’s desk.

Jonah took off running.