Meg Cabot - Missing You

He said, still looking perplexed, “Well, yeah. But I thought—”

“Then I need to go back to Indiana with you,” I said.

“But…” He’d loosened his hold on the comforter a little in his confusion, and I was awarded a glimpse of his naked chest. It was a relief to note that even though he was a responsible business owner now, he still had a six-pack. “But I thought you said…I mean, yesterday you told me—”

“I know what I said yesterday,” I interrupted him.

“But—”

“Don’t talk about it, okay?” I found that I was hugging myself, my arms crossed against my chest. I dropped my hands. “Let’s just go.”

He reached up to run a hand through his thick dark hair—which just made the tuft-problem worse. And also allowed the comforter to slip even more, so that I saw the waistband of his Calvins.

“Okay. But…” He stared at me. Having that blue-gray gaze on me, so searching, so penetrating, was almost more than I could take. I had to look at the floor instead of back at him. “You know where she is?”

“I seriously don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Can we just go?”

But Rob couldn’t let it rest at that.

“Honest to God, Jess,” he said. “I didn’t mean for—I mean, I just thought this whole thing with you saying you can’t find people anymore was to get out of having to work for that Cyrus guy. Like it was last time. I didn’t know it was real. I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t ready for. I don’t want to…to disrupt this new life you’ve built for yourself.”

Too late for that, isn’t it?That’s what I wanted to ask.

But what would have been the point? He obviously felt bad enough. No sense rubbing it in.

Which is not to say I wasn’t glad he felt bad. Heshould feel bad, after what he’d put me through. I wasn’t about to mention the fact that waking up an hour ago knowing where his sister was, after more than a year of not being able to find my shoes, let alone another human being, had thrilled me beyond words. I mean, that didn’t have anything to do with HIM, really. It just meant that I was finally beginning to heal, after everything I’d been through. That was all.

And that maybe Mike was right. About the fact that since I’d started working with those kids of Ruth’s, I’d started to dream again, instead of tossing around all night, lost in the throes of a never-ending nightmare.

“Look,” I said to Rob in a hard voice. Because I wasn’t about to let him know any of this. “Do you want your sister back or not?”

“I do,” he said, nodding vigorously. “Of course.”

“Then don’t question,” I said. “Just do.”

“Sure,” Rob said, reaching for the phone. “Sure, I’ll call and book you a seat on the same return flight I’ve got. We’ll go right after I’ve had a shower.”

“Great,” I said.

And watched as he dialed, asking myself (for the thousandth time that morning) what the hell I thought I was doing. Was this really something I wanted to get myself involved in? I mean, the progress I’d already made, just by being able to come up with an address for Hannah, was incredible. The shrinks back in Washington would have been throwing their hands into the air with joy if they knew, calling it a breakthrough. Why was I trying to push it, by going WITH him to find her? I mean, I could just give Rob the address and be done with it. Wash my hands of it. Go to work with Ruth, teach some more kids that there’s more to life than video games and pizza by the slice.

But for an hour last night, before I’d been able to fall asleep, I’d lain there thinking over what he’d said. The part about me being broken, I mean. What if he was right? I was pretty sure he WAS right. Part of mehad come back from overseas…different. Broken, I guess you could even call it.

And not just the part of me that knew how to find people in my sleep, either.

Maybe I HAD been a little hasty to condemn him for the Boobs-As-Big-As-My-Head girl. Clearly we had never worked as a couple, Rob and I. First the age difference, then the cultural difference, and then finally, the fact that I’m a huge biological freak had come between us.

But we could still be friends, like he’d said.

And friends help each other out. Right?

Rob didn’t, I notice, ask me any questions on the way to the airport. He was following my advice to a T: doing, not questioning. Once we got through airport security, he bought me an egg-and-sausage biscuit—breakfast of champions—and an orange juice and himself some kind of waffle thing, which we ate in silence in the crowded, noisy food court at LaGuardia.

Maybe,I thought to myself,he still isn’t quite awake. Maybe he doesn’t know what to make of my sudden change in attitude towards him and his problem.

Which wasn’t so odd, actually. I didn’t quite know what to make of it myself.

Ruth had seemed to think she did, though. She’d rolled over at six, when our alarm went off, took one look at me, lying there staring at the ceiling, as I’d been doing since I’d wakened at five, and went, “Oh, crap. It’s back, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t taken my eyes off the ceiling. There’s a crack up there that looks a lot like a rabbit, just like in those books I’d loved when I was little about a badger named Frances.

“It’s back,” I’d said quietly, so as not to wake the boys.

“Well,” Ruth said. “What are you going to do? Call Cyrus Krantz?”

“Um,” I’d said. “Trynot .”

“Oh my God.” Ruth rose up on one elbow. “You’re going home with him, aren’t you? Rob, I mean.”

I tore my gaze from the ceiling and blinked at her. “How did you know?”

“Because I know you,” she said. “And I know how you operate. You can never leave well enough alone. You can’t just save the world. You have to micromanage every aspect of its rescue. That’s why,” she added wearily, swinging her legs from the bed and sitting up, “you’d make a crappy superhero. You’d stick around after the big save to make sure everybody’s okay with what you just did, instead of just flying off into the sunset, the way you’re supposed to.”

It was good to know I had the support of my friends, I’d said sarcastically. To which Ruth had replied, with her usual early-morning cheerfulness, “Oh, shut up.”

“Will you tell the kids I’ll be back in a few days?” I asked her.

“You won’t be back,” Ruth said.

I’d stared at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I will. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“You won’t come back,” Ruth said again. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. For you, it probably isn’t. But just face it, Jess. You aren’t coming back.”

“What? You think I’m going to DIE tracking down Rob Wilkins’s runaway little sister?”

“Not die, no,” Ruth said. “But you just might let yourself get rescued after all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said darkly.

I didn’t let her negativity towards the whole thing bother me. The truth is, Ruth’s never been much of a morning person.

There are flights from New York City to Indianapolis every few hours from LaGuardia. Rob managed to get me onto the one he’d been planning on taking home. It wasn’t a big jet, like the kind they used to shuttle people from New York to LA. After 9/11, the airlines downsized, and now when you fly to Indiana from New York, it’s on one of those small planes you walk out onto the tarmac to get into. They only seat about thirty people, at most. And the quarters are cramped, to say the least. Rob had gotten us seats together—without, I’d like to point out, asking me if that was what I wanted. The flight wasn’t full, and there were plenty of empty rows behind us where I could have gone and stretched out. Well, sort of.