Meg Cabot - Missing You

“It would just be so cool,” Douglas said, “if we could turn this place back into a school—the right kind of school, I mean. The kind of school you wouldn’t have hated, Jess.”

I laughed—not very easily—and then moved away as people came up to congratulate Douglas on his speech and strategize as to what the next step ought to be in their plan.

And I found myself standing not five feet away from Randy Whitehead, who was putting his dad’s model into a big white box.

Before I even thought about what I was doing, I strolled over to him, leaned down, and said, “Nice model.”

Randy glanced at me and gave me a big, capped-tooth smile.

“Thanks,” he said. “You new around here? I’ve never seen you at one of these community board meetings before.”

“You might say I’m new around here.” I smiled back at him. “You?”

“Just moved here from Indy,” he said. “Last year.”

“That must be quite a change,” I said. “Small town living, after life in the big city.”

“It’s surprisingly the same,” he said. “I mean, mostly work, very little play.”

I smiled even harder at him. “Come on,” I said. “A guy as good-looking as you? You must get LOTS of play.”

He ducked his head modestly, allowing some of his hundred-dollar haircut to fall over his eyes. “Well,” he said. “Now and then, I suppose. How about you?”

I tried to look surprised. “Me? Oh, I don’t have much time for playing.”

“Really?” He’d successfully wrestled the model into the box. “Why not?”

“I’m too busy finding people, usually,” I said.

“Finding people?” He regarded me with eyes that were the same color as Rob’s. But somehow I suspected Randy’s misty gray irises were the result of contacts. “What are you? A truant officer?”

“No,” I said. “I’m Jess Mastriani. Maybe you haven’t heard of me. I’m the girl who was struck by lightning a few years ago and developed the psychic power to find missing people.”

He stared at me for a full beat. Then recognition dawned.

“No kidding?” He looked delighted. “Hey, I watch that show about you, sometimes. The one on cable.”

“Huh,” I said, in a small-world kind of way.

“Wow,” Randy said. “It’s really cool meeting you. I had no idea you were so young. In real life, I mean.”

“Huh,” I said again, this time in a gee-whillikers way.

“It is a real honor to meet you,” Randy said, reaching out his right hand to shake mine. “I’m Randall Whitehead Junior.”

“I know,” I said, pumping his hand with vigor.

“You do?” He looked psyched to hear it. “Oh, right. Well, I mean, of course you do. You’re psychic!”

“Not that kind of psychic,” I said. “Actually, I know you through a friend of yours. Hannah Snyder.”

Randy was a smooth one, all right. He didn’t quit pumping my hand. But I felt it grow a little cooler in mine. And he blinked, twice, hard, at the name.

Then he said, “Snyder? I don’t believe I know the name.”

“Oh, sure, you do, Randy,” I said in the same warm voice. “She’s the underage runaway you were stashing in Apartment Two-T over at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex by the hospital. I found her there myself earlier today.”

Randy dropped my hand. Like it was hot.

“I…I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, you do, Randy,” I said. And wondered what I was doing. My job was done. Why wasn’t I riding off into the sunset?

But something in me just wouldn’t let go. It was the only part of me, I suspected, that hadn’t come back broken.

“Tell me something, Randy,” I said. “Just between you and me. How many girls have you got living rent-free there, anyway? Two? Three? Or are there more? And how do you keep them all from finding out about each other?”

“I really—” Randy was shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m afraid you do, Randy,” I said. “See, I know all about—”

“Hannah Snyder is a very disturbed girl,” Randy interrupted. “I’ll just say she lied to me about her age, if you try going to the cops. And that she came on to me.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Randy,” I said. “If a person eighteen years of age or older engages in sexual intercourse with a person sixteen years of age or younger, it’s a crime punishable in the state of Indiana by a fixed term of ten years with up to ten years added or four subtracted for aggravating and mitigating circumstances.”

Randy blinked at me. “Th-there’s no proof, though,” he stammered. “Th-that it’s me in the videos. You can’t p-prove it’s me.”

Wait. What?

I smiled at him. “Oh,” I said. “I think we can prove it’s you, all right.”

What was hetalking about?

“I—I have to go now,” Randy stammered. He’d gone as white as his dad’s model of Pine Heights Condos. Then he practically fell over himself in his haste to get away from me.

A few minutes later, Douglas and Tasha found me sitting by myself on one of the folding chairs, trying to remember my lines fromThe Lion and the Mouse and failing.

“Ready to go?” Douglas asked me. “Tash and I usually go out for a cup of decaf after meetings. Want to tag along?”

“No,” I said, standing up. “I thought I might go for a ride.”

“Oh,” Douglas said. But he was smiling. “Of course. You must really miss that, back in New York.”

“You have no idea,” I said. I wasn’t talking about the bike.

“Well, thanks for coming along,” Douglas said. “It was probably pretty boring for you, but, you know. I think it might have impressed a few people, seeing Lightning Girl sitting on our side.”

“Yeah,” Tasha said. “Randy Junior looked like he was about to barf after he got done talking to you.”

“Well, you know,” I said. “That’s what I bring to the table.”

“Shut up,” Douglas said.

But he was laughing.

It felt good, I was discovering, to hear Douglas laugh. It was a sound I could get used to.

Not that I intended to, though. I had done, I felt, enough damage for one evening. I headed back to the house…and to my bike.

Eleven

I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I just wasn’t. Thinking, I mean.

My bike just seemed to sort of drive itself to the Fountain Bleu Apartments. There was no conscious decision on my part to go to that part of town. It was as if I looked up, and I was there, pulling back into the same parking lot I’d vacated several hours earlier.

Only this time, there was something there that hadn’t been there before. And I don’t just mean a lot more cars, since most of the residents of the complex appeared to have gotten home from work, and were currently enjoying their evening repast and/or a situation comedy on a major network (some of them, possibly, might even have been enjoying the show purportedly about me. If they had cable, that is).

No, I was talking about one car in particular. And that was a newish black pickup parked well to the back of the lot, where it wouldn’t be noticeable, even though it happened to be in the exact spot I would have chosen, had I decided to perform any sort of recon on the place.

And since that’s exactly how I’d decided to spend my evening, this put something of a crimp in my plans.

Until I saw just who it was behind the pickup’s steering wheel.

That’s when I decided to tap on the driver’s-side window, having stashed my bike in the lot next door in an effort to remain unobtrusive.

Rob, startled, rolled down his window.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in some surprise.