The Taking (2 page)

Another hard thing pegged me in the side of the head again, and I flinched, lifting my hand to try to shield myself from the assault.

This time I heard a sound. A giggle, maybe?

I squeezed my eyes, blinking harder, willing them to focus.

It was daylight that blinded me, which seemed wrong for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But it wasn’t just that—this whole situation seemed wrong. And now it wasn’t just my head that was pounding; it was my heart too. My brain felt scrambled as I grappled to make sense of where I was and why I was waking up here, outside, instead of at home in my bed.

The silhouette of a little boy stood above me, shadowed by the glare of the sun behind him. I blinked harder, still trying to sort it all out, and I could see his expression then, a look of delight. He held one hand behind his back.

Spread out like marbles in front of my face, I saw an array of brightly colored candies that looked suspiciously like gum balls or mini jawbreakers.

“What are you doing here?” the boy asked, the hint of a slight frown shifting the planes of his freckled face.

I searched for an answer, and when I couldn’t find a suitable one, I asked one of my own, “What are
you
doing here?”

The boy looked back over his shoulder. “Waiting for my mom.” Past him, I saw the gas pumps and a small convenience store behind them. I squinted against the sunlight and read the sign:
GAS ’N’ SIP
. A woman was at one of the stands, filling the tank of her red minivan.

What the
—
the Gas ’n’ Sip, really?
How the heck had that happened?
When
had that happened? I shoved the base of my palms into my throbbing eyes, trying to crush the pain away. Eyeing me curiously, the boy absently popped a piece of the candy or gum into his mouth from the hand behind his back as I struggled to sit upright.

It wasn’t easy. Apparently, I’d slept outside all night. And behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip no less. That panicky feeling shook me, and I glanced around uneasily, wincing as I realized that the rotting smell had been garbage.

“Robby!” The woman yelled, and the boy’s head whipped around.

“Gotta go,” he whisper-told me as if we’d developed some sort of bond and I required an explanation for his departure. “You want these?” He held out his hand, palm open to reveal his remaining candies: three red ones, a green, and four yellows.

I thought about turning him down. They looked sticky. But my mouth tasted like I’d just licked home plate, so I nodded instead.

He held them toward me, and I accepted his gummy offering as they peeled, rather than dropped, from his skin. “Thanks,” I said before he skipped away.

I popped the candies into my mouth, letting the sour jolt of them awaken my saliva glands and wash away the tang of dirt that seemed to cling to my tongue.

As always, I got impatient and bit down on one of the candies. Despite their gooey outer shell, inside they were rock hard, something I discovered the moment I felt a chunk of my right-side molar chip away.

Cursing, I spit the rest of the candies in a messy wad onto the ground and ran my tongue over the new, rough edge of my tooth. I’d just been to the dentist last week, something I hated doing, and now this would mean I’d be forced to see him again.

Fishing my cell phone from the front pocket of my uniform pants, I decided it was time to call for backup. I still couldn’t believe I’d ended up behind the Dumpster of a gas station last night. My parents were probably freaking the hell out.
I
was freaking the hell out.

Not to mention Austin . . .

I dialed him first, not caring that my decision was sure to set off another round of arguments when I got home.

I held the phone to my ear and waited. After a moment I pulled the phone away and inspected it.

NO SERVICE
, the screen read.

No service—how was that even possible? I knew exactly where I was. I’d been at this gas station a hundred times; it was maybe a mile from my house—well within our coverage map.

Whatever,
I thought, getting tentatively to my feet and waiting till my legs felt steady. I did my best to ignore the headache that continued to pulse behind my eyes. The walk would probably do me good.

I wasn’t sure how much good the walk had done me, but at least my head had stopped throbbing. I still felt off and couldn’t quite pin down what, exactly, was bothering me.

I had this strange sense of déjà vu that clung to me. It was like a wet second skin, all itchy and maddening, making me glance, and glance again, at everything I passed. It all seemed familiar yet
not
at once. Like I’d been here before but was seeing it all for the very first time.

Considering I’d been born and raised in Burlington, Washington, a town that barely rated a dot on most maps and definitely not worthy of a mention by name, I was chalking it up to the fact that I’d spent the night outside and still had no memory of anything after the fight with my dad.

Why I’d decided to camp out behind a Dumpster was beyond me—I was claiming temporary insanity, because there was no other feasible explanation.

Going home was sure to play out one of two ways, the way I figured it. My dad was either gonna be super sorry about our argument, and the fact that I’d gotten out of the car in the middle of the road and just . . . disappeared.

Or he was going to be massively pissed at me for being so dramatic that I’d decided to stay out all night, even though I had zero recollection of making that decision at all.

Either way, I was still trying to decide how to explain the part about having no memory of getting from there to here. That’s why I’d been hoping to talk to Austin first. He was good at those kinds of things. Good at talking me off the ledge and trying to see my parents’ side of things. He was reasonable and even-tempered in a way that I didn’t seem to be capable of when it came to them.

When I saw my house, on the same block I’d lived on my whole life—right across the street from Austin’s house—that sense of déjà vu returned full force, nearly buckling my knees. For a moment I just stood in front of it, running my tongue over the sharp edge of my chipped tooth. I studied the gray-blue paint that my mom and dad had agonized over when they’d had to repaint the house last summer; and the azalea bushes out front, which suddenly seemed bigger and bushier than I’d remembered them; and the place in the sidewalk where I’d pressed my hands in the wet concrete when I was four and my mom had written my initials with the end of a stick: KA. Kyra Agnew.

I turned to glance at the house across the street. If Austin’s car had been parked out front, I would’ve gone there first. I was suddenly nervous about going inside my own home.

But his car was gone, so I was on my own.

Walking up to the front steps, I tried the door, but it was locked. I reached up to the top of the doorjamb, stretching because I wasn’t really tall enough unless I stood on my toes, and felt for the spare key we kept there. My fingers fumbled along, slipping over the grit, and all the while my pulse felt like it was choking me, it was beating so fast, so hard. But no matter how many times I checked, and double-checked, there was no key.

I searched around my feet, thinking it must have fallen, but it wasn’t there either. Maybe my parents had decided to teach me a lesson for my tantrum. Maybe they’d locked me out to force me to face them at the door before letting me back inside, which of course they would. To show me that they’re still in charge.

Finally, when I couldn’t think of anything else to do and when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I knocked. My throat felt suddenly too tight, which seemed silly. Of course they’d be mad, but they’d forgive me too.

It was an accident, me staying out all night. Somehow I’d have to find a way to explain that to them. To make them believe that I didn’t know exactly what had happened the night before.

I shifted nervously back and forth as I waited, thinking of a million ways to say I’m sorry. The seconds seemed to stretch and bend and last an eternity, and just when I was about to give up, when I was sure that neither one of them was home, I saw the curtain on the other side of the door—the one above the couch in the living room—part.

A face appeared.

A child’s face.

I was confused, startled by the appearance of the toddler.

I was an only child—the product of parents who’d spent my entire life doting on me, and only me. I was the center of their universe.
Their sun and their moon and their stars,
as my dad liked to say when I was little.

The little boy lifted his hand in a motionless wave, pressing his chubby fingers to the window and leaving a steamy impression around them. I thought of my mom, and the way she’d always told me not to touch the windows because it left fingerprints.

But when the man appeared behind him, I physically jolted. I looked at the door again; a sense of dread filled every crevice of my being, like I’d made some terrible mistake and gone to the wrong house. Like there was some other blue-gray house with my handprints forever imprinted in the walkway.

My panic subsided somewhat when I saw the worn gold numbers running alongside the front door: 9-6-1-2.

My address.

My house.

My home.

I was definitely in the right place. So who were these people? These strangers staring at me from the other side of
my
window?

I glanced back, but they were gone, the curtains fallen back in place. The only reminder that they’d been there at all was the outline of the boy’s hand. I felt sick, still dizzy, when I heard the door.

I glanced up just as it opened, and I found myself staring into the man’s intense brown eyes. He didn’t say anything, just gave me that look that people give you when they answer their doors. The look that says,
Can I help you?

Suddenly indignant, I took a step forward, reaching for a door handle I’d turned a million times before. “Are my parents here?” I’d meant to sound forceful, but my voice had a wavering quality that made me sound nervous instead.

I’m not sure it would have mattered, though. He’d stopped me anyway. “Who are your parents?” he asked, and that uneasy feeling settled deeper.

I looked once more at the numbers, double-checking, triple-checking them. “This is my house.”

The little boy appeared between the man’s knees. He had messy blond hair and round cheeks covered in what I could only imagine was jelly. He reminded me of a smaller version of the boy from the gas station, except that this boy didn’t have freckles. Or pants. His chubby legs were white, and his bare feet were wide, looking vaguely like flippers.

The man moved, pushing the boy back inside and positioning himself between me and the toddler. Like I was a danger, a threat. “Who are your parents?” he asked, his voice slower now.

His patronizing tone rubbed me wrong. I pursed my lips. “What are you doing here?” I asked, unwilling to give him too much information, and suddenly worried that there was a strange man in my home.
Where were my parents anyway?

The man’s eyes narrowed, and I couldn’t decide if he was studying me, or suspicious, or both. I saw him reaching for his pocket, and my stomach tightened. Behind him, the boy was clamoring to get around his legs. “Me see . . . me see . . . me see . . . ,” he kept repeating.

When the man’s hand emerged, he was holding a cell phone. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”

This time when I reached for the handle, I was faster than he was. “No!” I was nearly hysterical now as I managed to push my way past him. The little boy jumped out of the way of the swinging door. “I need you to tell me what you’re doing here!” I searched the entry frantically. “Mom!” I shouted. “Dad!”

I’d only made it one step before the man had ahold of my arms and was dragging me back out the door. I heard his phone fall, clattering on the tile floor. He wasn’t gentle, and my heart was racing, slamming against my ribs, bruising them. I didn’t know what he planned to do to me. The little boy was crying, but the man didn’t release me as he hauled me down the steps. I tripped over my own feet as he pulled me along the walkway until we were standing on the sidewalk out in front.

“I don’t know what you’re problem is,” he hissed, trying to keep his voice low, his eyes shifting back and forth from me to the screaming boy with no pants at the front door. “But this is my house, and you’re scaring my son. If you need help, then call 9-1-1. I can’t do anything for you.” He released my arm but didn’t leave right away. He just stood there looking at me, waiting for some sort of acknowledgment that I’d heard what he’d said.

I had. I’d heard him. I just couldn’t make sense of it.

His
house?

Is that what he’d said? His house?

But that wasn’t right. This was my house.

My
house.

I tried to find something in all of it to cling to, something that would clear things up. I replayed the last few minutes, when I’d burst through the front door, and tried to recall what I’d seen.

It was the same house I remembered. The same, but different.

How could that be?

Tears burned my eyes as I looked, too, not at the boy, but at the house in front of us. The house I’d grown up in.

The man gave me one last piteous look before shaking his head and going back to his son. The boy raised his arms to his father, who scooped him up and carried him back inside, closing the door without looking back at me.

I wanted to explain what I was going through, to tell him who I was and who my parents were, but all I could manage was “But I . . . I live here.”

The house across the street was almost as familiar to me as my own, which right now wasn’t entirely reassuring. The pounding in my head was back, starting behind my eyes and radiating down the back of my neck. FML.

Despite the past few minutes, I wasn’t hesitant as I neared the perfectly edged grass and tidy flower beds, because it was all so familiar. All so comforting.

Everything was exactly as it should be.

Even the car in the driveway—Austin’s mother’s—the same as always.