Харлан Кобен - Found

That stopped her. Ema kept her face down. “So you think, what, it’s a prank?”

“Maybe,” I said. “That’s all. Maybe it’s just a joke.”

She looked up at me. “A joke?”

“A cruel one, but yeah, maybe.”

“Well, ha-ha.” Ema shook her head. “Mickey, think about it. Let’s say it was a prank. Let’s say it was the mean kids in school. Like Troy or Buck, right? Let’s say they set this whole thing up.”

I waited.

Ema spread her arms. “Where’s the payoff?”

I had no answer to that.

“They would have let me know, right? They would have mocked me. They would have rubbed it in my face or put the intimate conversations online. They’d let the world know what a fool I was, wouldn’t they?”

A tear slid down her cheek.

“Why would Jared the prankster just vanish without having the last word?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Mickey?”

“What?”

“It is easy to make fun of these relationships. I used to do it too. But think about it. When it is just in writing like this, when it is just texts or e-mails, just your words and nothing else, it is actually more real. It doesn’t matter what you look like or what table you sit at during lunch. It doesn’t matter if you play quarterback or head up the chess club. All of that becomes irrelevant. It is just the two of you and your intelligence and your feelings. Do you see?”

“I guess,” I admitted.

“Listen to me, Mickey. Look at my eyes and really listen.”

I did. I looked into those eyes, and for a moment, I felt happily lost. I trusted those eyes. I believed in them.

“I know,” Ema said. “Don’t ask me how. But I know. We have to do this — even if you think I’m crazy.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not up to us,” Ema said.

“Huh? Of course it is.”

Ema shook her head. “These things come to us, Mickey. It’s bigger than we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“What, you think this is Abeona?”

She moved closer to me so we could share the laptop. I smelled her perfume. It was something new, something different. I had smelled it before, but couldn’t place it. She pulled up Jared’s page again. “There has only been one new photograph added since Jared disappeared...”

When I saw the screen, I nearly gasped out loud.

There, on Jared Lowell’s page, was a photograph of a butterfly.

Again, to be more specific, the Tisiphone Abeona.

“We have no choice,” Ema said. “We need to find him.”

We sat there for another moment, staring at that butterfly. I smelled her perfume again and felt a small rush. I looked at her. She looked at me. Our eyes met. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said.

And then my cell phone rang.

Our eye contact broke as though it were a dry twig. Ema looked away. I looked toward the caller ID on my phone. The number was blocked.

“Hello?”

An adult male said, “Is this Mickey Bolitar?”

The voice was grave and serious and maybe there was a small quake of fear in it.

“Yes, this is he,” I said.

“This is Mr. Spindel, Arthur’s father.”

It took me a second to place the name, but when I did, I felt my pulse quicken. I always called Arthur Spindel “Spoon.” His father, the man on the phone, was the head custodian at Kasselton High School — and Spoon’s father.

“Is Spoon okay?” I said quickly.

Mr. Spindel didn’t answer that directly. “Do you know where Emma Beaumont is?”

Emma was Ema. “She’s right next to me.”

“Could you please both come to the hospital?”

“Of course. When?”

“As soon as possible,” Mr. Spindel said, and then he hung up.

Niles drove us to Saint Barnabas Medical Center. He dropped us off at the front door. We sprinted to the reception desk in the lobby.

“Fifth floor,” the receptionist said to us. “The elevator is on your right. Look for the signs for the ICU.”

ICU. Spoon was still in the Intensive Care Unit. I felt my eyes well up, but I forced the tears back down.

We hurried to the elevator. I pressed the button repeatedly, as if that would somehow tell the elevator that we were in a rush. It took too long to arrive. We leapt in and of course three other people did too, all pushing for floors lower than ours. I wanted to yell at them to cut it out.

When we finally reached the fifth floor, Mr. Spindel was waiting for us. He was wearing the beige janitor uniform he wore at school, the words MR. SPINDEL stenciled on the right chest pocket. He was a wiry man with big hands and usually an easygoing way about him. There was no smile now.

“This way,” Mr. Spindel said.

As we followed him, Ema asked, “How is Spoo — I mean, Arthur?”

“No change.”

No change. The words hushed the corridor. When we last saw him, Spoon had no feeling in his legs. He was paralyzed below the waist.

No change.

Down the corridor I saw Mrs. Spindel sitting in a chair. I flashed to the first time I had seen her when I dropped Spoon off at his house a few weeks ago. She had greeted her son at the door with such pure joy. Her entire face had lit up as she hugged him. Now it was like someone had extinguished that light. Her cheeks were sunken. Her hair seemed grayer.

Mrs. Spindel gave me a baleful look. The last time I was here, she had told me in no uncertain terms that what happened to her beloved son was my fault. Clearly her opinion had not changed.

“My wife doesn’t think this is a good idea,” Mr. Spindel explained.

There was no need to comment on that.

We approached a big door.

“I’ll wait out here,” Mr. Spindel said. “You two go in.”

I pushed the heavy door open slowly. Spoon was sitting up in bed. There were tubes and machines and beeping noises. He looked tiny in that big hospital bed, this little skinny kid with the big glasses lost among all this horror.

When Spoon saw us, his face broke into a huge smile. For a second everything else in the room disappeared. There was just that big smile on the face of that tiny, doofy kid.

“Did you know,” Spoon began, “that Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap?”

Ema and I just stood there.

“For real,” Spoon went on. “He’d wet it on hot days and it kept him cool. He changed it every two innings.”

I couldn’t help it. I lost it. I ran over to him and tried so hard not to cry. I’m not a crier by nature. But as I rushed over to Spoon, as I swept him as gently as I could into my arms, I could feel the tears push through my eyelids.

“Mickey?” Spoon said tentatively. “What the...”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to hold it. I needed to be strong right now. I needed to be strong for Spoon. I was his big, tough friend. I remembered on the very first day we met how he’d said that I was Shrek to his Donkey. I was his protector.

And I had failed him.

It was no use. I started sobbing.

Spoon said, “Mickey?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said through the sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

I just shook my head and held on to him.

“For what?” Spoon asked again. “You didn’t shoot me, did you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. So what are you sorry about?”

I let him go. I checked his face to see if he was just playing with me, but he looked genuinely baffled.

“It’s still my fault,” I said.

Spoon frowned. “How on earth do you figure that?”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Spoon said. He started laughing. “Man, I always wanted to use that line. Serious as a heart attack, except it really isn’t funny, I mean, not in here. Mr. Costo down the hall, he had a heart attack. That’s why he’s in the hospital. I met his wife. Nice lady. She went to elementary school with Tippi Hedren. You know, the old actress? From The Birds ? Isn’t that something?”