The Taking (7 page)

I left Tyler’s house—it was still strange to think of it like that, Tyler’s house and not Austin’s—and felt lost for a minute. I figured I might as well go home, but suddenly I wasn’t sure where
home
was exactly.

The word felt foreign, even in the space of my own thoughts. Home should be the place you were most at ease. Most comfortable. Most secure.

I felt none of those things in my mother’s house, at least not anymore. I was a stranger, sleeping in a strange room, in a home she’d made with a new family.

Instead of crossing the street, a straight shot to the home-that-wasn’t-home, I wandered down the sidewalk, heading nowhere in particular. There was a breeze, and I was again aware of how exposed my ankles were as the wind whorled around them, tickling my skin. Despite the supersweet high waters I was sporting, it had been really nice to wear something that didn’t reek of softball diamond or day-old sweat.

I’d expected to have to shave through five years’ worth of leg hair with my mom’s Lady Bic, maybe go through one or two of her disposable shavers in the process, but when I’d run my hands over my legs, I’d realized they were still smooth. As if I’d just shaved them the day before, right before the championship game.

The idea that someone might have shaved them for me while I was out cold gave me the heebie-jeebies. If that were the case, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted my memory back.

After showering, I’d tentatively reached out to touch the steamed mirror, whisking away the condensation so I could see better, looking at that other me through the damp halo. The me staring back was the same me I’d seen every day for as long as I could remember. There’d never been anything remarkable about me, unless you counted my eyes, which I’d always thought were crazy big for my face, and the freckles that splashed across my nose, making me look younger than I was. Something no teen ever wanted.

I’d never been like Cat, with her shockingly blond hair that grew that way straight from her head rather than coming from a bottle, and her exotic-shaped eyes that she accented with jet-black eyeliner, and a pointed chin that she always held high, giving her a badass vibe. The kind of vibe I’d always wanted but could never pull off because grandmothers wanted to pinch my cheeks and give me a quarter for being
so adorable
.

I’d spent forever staring in the mirror, studying myself for evidence of changes or nonchanges. It was harder than I’d expected, to dissect myself like that, and that same woozy sense of déjà vu hovered over me, like I was having some sort of freaky out-of-body experience.

I stopped walking when I found myself in front of our neighborhood park. Like me, it looked the same as it always had. Standard-issue park stuff, really: slides, swings, sandbox, grass.

The lights all around me were off for the night since it was way past curfew, yet I could see everything I needed to see. I knew this place like the back of my hand. It was the perfect place to be alone, and I hopped the short fence, wondering who it was possibly meant to keep out since I was practically tall enough to
step
over it, and then realized it probably wasn’t meant to keep anyone
out
at all. It was designed to keep small children inside. It was like a kid corral.

The swings were near the tree line, and beneath them there was sand so that if you fell, you’d land in the soft powder instead of scrape a knee, or crush a skull.

Mostly, I think neighborhood cats liked to pee in it, though.

Austin and I used to swing as high, and as fast, as we could and then jump, measuring to see which of us had landed the farthest. That was, of course, before all the kissing had started.

From that point on the park had become an after-dark hideaway where we’d curled up among the turrets of the jungle gym or in the tunnels as we’d practiced and practiced and practiced on each other. Making sure we got that whole kissing thing just right.

I sat in one of the swings, suffocated by memories as I wrapped my fingers around the chain and kicked my legs. Maybe the park hadn’t been such a great idea after all.

Moving back and forth, I tried to let my mind go blank. I pushed higher and higher in the air, leaning my head back and watching as the stars blurred together.

“You’re a supernova, Kyra. Someday you’ll burn so bright none of us will even be able to look at you.” My dad always used to say things like that with a chuckle, right before he said something like “No pain, no gain” while reminding me to keep practicing or telling me that I needed to straighten out my pitch. Or sometimes he’d just reach over and brush away a stray hair and tell me how beautiful I was.

Dads say things like that sometimes.

Said,
I thought, squeezing my eyes shut and sitting upright once more.
Sometimes they
said
things like that
. I wasn’t sure what kinds of things
my
dad said anymore.

Behind me, I heard a sound, a shifting or rustling in the trees that bordered the park. The place where Cat and I always imagined creepy pervs hung out in their raincoats, watching the little kiddies play on the teeter-totters.

I turned sharply in the swing, the chains twisting together as I strained to see into the craggy shadows that filled the space between the trunks and shrubs and thick layer of ferns that choked the ground.

I waited, holding my breath as I listened. The back of my neck prickled as I scanned, unable to stop searching, unable to let go of that strange feeling of being watched.

I should leave, I finally decided when my heart refused to slow, even when I couldn’t pinpoint anything to be afraid of, other than my overactive imagination. Five years hadn’t changed the fact that I could still freak myself out in the dark.

As I got up, the swing jerked against the backs of my legs, rotating first one way and then the other as the chains worked to right themselves once more. Suddenly I didn’t feel safe out here, in the park in the middle of the night, all by myself, and I wondered what I’d been thinking coming here.

I was just about to go, pivoting in the soft sand beneath my feet, when I saw him standing there, near the entrance to the park.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sorry,” Tyler offered, taking an uncertain step back. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I saw you take off this way and thought that maybe you shouldn’t be out here alone. I don’t want to intrude or anything, but . . .” He cocked his head to the side as a slow smile slid over his face. “I can’t in good conscience leave you out here by yourself.”

I glanced around at the deserted playground. “You afraid some bully might push me down or something?” I grinned, and it felt like the first time I’d really smiled since I’d been back. I sat down again on the swing, keeping my eyes on Tyler, disappointed that he’d decided to wear a shirt this time.

He came closer, his feet sinking in the soft sand. “Or something.” He took the swing next to mine.

We stayed like that, moving back and forth on the swings, not in a hurry, not racing or trying to swing higher or matching each other’s rhythm, just swaying as I tried not to look at him too much or too often. It was hard, though. My gaze kept shifting in his direction, and I didn’t want to stare, but I did want to at the same time.

He was of course older now than I remembered, but different too. More so than anyone else.

“What do you remember? About me, I mean?”

I grinned again when he asked the question, because it was so close to what I’d just been thinking. “I remember you liked chalk. That you always did these cool chalk drawings all over the sidewalks,” I said, twisting in my swing to face him.

He made a face. “Ouch. Really? That’s what you think of when you think of me? Chalk?”

“That’s not bad, is it?” I laughed at his reaction, pushing off again and letting the swing drift. “Why? What do you remember about me?”

He stopped moving, stopped swinging as he inhaled, his eyes—those green eyes—following mine. “I remember thinking Austin was the luckiest guy I knew.”

My breath caught in the back of my throat, and my feet hit the ground, stopping me.

“What?”
Tyler insisted, swinging sideways until his shoulder nudged me. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know I had the hugest crush on you, Kyra. It wasn’t my fault I was only in the seventh grade and you barely noticed me.”

He was right; I’d barely noticed him back then. Most of my memories of Tyler were fragments, held together by Austin.

“See how you went and made things all awkward?” I accused, getting up from my swing and dusting off the back of my borrowed yoga pants.

Undeterred, Tyler fell into step beside me as we made our way toward the park entrance. “Awkward or not, you should know I’m glad you’re back.” He flashed me a sheepish smile as he added, “And now that I’m older, I’ll try to be a little more memorable.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Day Two

I BARELY SLEPT, IF AT ALL; MY BRAIN JUST KEPT
tripping over facts and nonfacts, memories and illusions, trying to sort through what was and wasn’t and might have been. Considering I didn’t remember sleeping, I felt fine by the time the sun started coming up and the smell of coffee brewing found its way down the hall to my fake-bedroom.

I’d almost forgotten about The Husband—which is what I’d silently dubbed Grant, since it made me physically ill to even
think
his name—but he was the one I stumbled into in the kitchen. He was already dressed in a suit and on his way out the door, thank God, because, like I’d mentioned, that whole stomach-wrenching, physically ill thing.

I checked the clock over the microwave—it was 7:42.

The Husband poked his head back inside a minute later—I knew because my eyes automatically flicked to check. “You might want to see this.”

I was still in my mom’s clothes from the night before, and I grudgingly trailed after him, keeping enough distance so he didn’t get the wrong impression or anything. No matter what he had to show me, there was no way this was a truce.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what it was he’d come back in to share with me. And then I smiled, because how could I not?

The illustrations were detailed and elaborate. And even though they were created with chalk, they were vibrant and lifelike.

Tyler had drawn a cobblestone pathway that stretched all the way from one side of our street to the other, bridging our two houses, practically from my front door to his. And running across the top of the pathway was a saying, written in beautiful, scrawling script. It said:

I’ll remember you always.

It took my breath away. I couldn’t believe he’d gone to all this trouble for me. He must’ve stayed up half the night to finish it.

I glanced over to his house, but he was probably already at school.

The Husband made a whistling sound. “Pretty impressive.”

I’d almost forgotten he was there, and I wiped the smile from my face, not wanting him to get the tiniest glimpse into what I might be thinking, and then I stalked back inside. Once I’d locked the door and leaned against it and was sure The Husband could no longer see me, the grin slipped back to my lips.

My mom was at the coffeemaker, pouring herself a cup just as my dad shuffled into the kitchen.

“Yes, please,” he told her, nodding at the pot in her hand as he sat down at the table, taking the same spot he’d always sat in when we’d all lived there together.

She rolled her eyes at him but reached for another mug anyway. She didn’t ask if he wanted cream or sugar, even though he always did; she just handed his coffee to him black.

He grumbled, but he got up and went to the fridge. After a minute he peered around the door at my mom. “Don’t you have anything that
isn’t
soy? Something that comes from, oh, I don’t know, a cow? I’ll even take goat.”

“Sorry.” She shrugged, not at all apologetically, plucking the carton of soy milk from his hands and settling down at the table.

I sat down, too, taking my old seat. The familiarity of it should have been comfortable, but it so wasn’t. My dad sitting across from me, my mom between us, like we were still a family.

But we weren’t.

“Pretty cool, what that Tyler kid did,” my dad said, breaking the tense silence.

I cringed. “You . . . saw that?”

“Saw him do it. Right after you snuck back in.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at me, folding his arms across the belly he’d never had before.

“You
snuck out
?” my mom demanded, glowering at me and then turning her glare on my dad, probably for not cluing her in sooner. “How could you . . . do you have any idea . . .” She stammered, unable to come up with the right argument. And then seemed to deflate all at once. “Kyra, you can’t do that. We . . . just got you back.”

And that was it. That was the right one, and even though I was technically an adult, her words were like a knife through my heart.

“Sorry,” my sixteen-year-old self mumbled, feeling properly scolded.

“She was fine.” My dad assured, reaching over and patting my hand, maybe because he couldn’t pat hers anymore. “They went to the park and came right back. They were gone less than half an hour.”

My eyes widened. “You knew? The whole time?”

He lifted his still-black coffee to his lips, and his mouth turned downward evasively. “I might’a followed you, might’a didn’t.” He winked then, and I shook my head, thinking of the way I’d heard something in the trees. Had he seriously been spying on us?

“That’s weird.
You’re weird
.” But it felt better, joking with him like that, like nothing had changed. Well, not as much at least.

My mom cut in. “I think we should get you some clothes today.” She eyed my outfit skeptically, and I was tempted to remind her it was hers. “And maybe a new cell phone.”

A loud wail erupted from down the hall, and I felt myself blanch as she jumped up from the table. I’d practically erased the kid from my memory, almost as effectively as I’d forgotten the past five years. If only.