Haunted (4 page)

Mrs. Beven took another long swallow, draining her glass. “I checked, but it didn’t look like he took anything. I wish
he had. He might get cold or…”

She let her sentence trail off.

Rae believed Mrs. Beven was telling them everything she knew, but just in case. “Do you have any ideas of places
Anthony and I could check?” she asked. “We’ll go anywhere you say.”

Mrs. Beven picked up her glass again, then realized it was empty and put it down. “You two would know more than
I do,” she admitted.

Rae jumped up from her chair. “Let me get you some more water,” she volunteered. She snatched up the glass
before Mrs. Beven could protest.
oh God
his father/what if/wrong cookies/doesn’t know where/his father/what if his
father took him/ The glass slipped out of Rae’s hand, her fingers suddenly feeling limp and nerveless. Her legs, too.

Any second they were going to buckle. Rae stumbled to the counter and braced herself with both hands. /should
have gotten 7UP /Jesse wouldn’t/his father/ “Are you okay?” Anthony demanded.

“I just got a little dizzy for a second,” Rae answered. The fear that wasn’t her own slowly faded, and the strength
returned to her body. She turned around and forced herself to smile at Mrs.

Beven. “I guess I need one of your cookies. It will get my blood sugar up.”

Rae started for her chair, then paused to pick up the glass she’d dropped. At least it hadn’t broken.

“No. Let me, let me,” Mrs. Beven exclaimed. Rae obediently sat down. She could tell Anthony was going nuts
trying to figure out what had just happened. “Later,” she mouthed at him.

Rae took a cookie and choked it down, still feeling a little queasy. God, the fear she’d gotten from touching Mrs.

Beven’s fingerprints had been almost overwhelming. Rae didn’t want to do anything to make Jesse’s mom feel even
worse. But there was a question she had to ask. She waited until Mrs. Beven was sitting down again.

“Do you think that Jesse’s dad might have any idea where he could be?” she blurted out.

Mrs. Beven immediately jumped back up, grabbed a dish towel, and started wiping off the table, her motions
abrupt and clumsy. “Jesse hasn’t seen his father since we moved here. He wouldn’t know how to find Jesse even if
he wanted to, which he doesn’t.”

But she’s afraid his father took him. I know it, Rae thought.

“We should probably get going,” Anthony said.

“Yeah,” Rae agreed. It was clear that they weren’t going to get any more info from Mrs. Beven. “We’ll let you know
if we find out anything.”

“What exactly happened in there?” Anthony asked as soon as he and Rae were back in the car. He stuck the key in
the ignition but didn’t turn it. “You looked like you were about to faint or something.”

Rae shoved her curly hair away from her face with both hands. “When I touched Mrs. Beven’s glass, I got so
scared. I knew I was safe, just standing in the kitchen.

But I could hardly stand up, I was that terrified.”

“You got a thought about Jesse’s dad, right?”

Anthony asked. “That’s why you asked about him.”

“Yeah. A bunch of thoughts about him, actually,”

Rae answered. “The worst one was, ‘what if his father took him.’The emotion that came with that one. Whoa.”

A flicker of motion in the kitchen window caught Anthony’s attention. “We should leave. Jesse’s mom is probably
wondering why we’re still here. In another second she’ll be making us chocolate chip cookies or something.” He
reached for the key, then hesitated.

“Are you okay to go? I mean, are you still dizzy?” He couldn’t shake the image of her in the moment she dropped
that glass. It was like she wasn’t even Rae anymore. Like all the life got sucked out of her. And he was powerless to
do anything about it.

“I’m good. It doesn’t last that long. That one was just intense,” Rae answered.

Anthony started the car and backed out of the driveway. “I guess you don’t know the deal about Jesse’s dad,” he
said. “He beat up Jesse’s mom a lot.

Sometimes Jesse. This one time he half-killed her, and a nurse at the hospital hooked them up with one of those
women’s shelters where they help you move and change your name and stuff.”

“God,” Rae said under her breath. Anthony shot a glance at her. She was staring straight ahead, a tiny furrow
between her eyebrows. “So Jesse’s dad really doesn’t know where they are, like Mrs. Beven said?” Rae asked.

“He shouldn’t. But who knows? Jesse tracked him down on the Internet. I guess it made him feel better knowing
exactly where the guy was. He works at a bar in New Orleans.”

“Jesse’s never tried to contact him, though?”

“No friggin’ way. He only wanted to know where the guy was so he could make sure that he and his mom stay far
enough away,” Anthony answered.

“I can see why Jesse’s dad snatching Jesse is the worst thing Mrs. Beven could imagine,” Rae said.

“But it doesn’t seem that likely, does it?” She reached over and popped open the glove box. “Hey, I remember this.

We had this workbook in my fourth-grade class. Is it your little sister’s?”

Anthony’s veins caught fire. Rae’s fingers were an inch away from his English workbook. His. If she touched it,
she’d know he was a total moron.

“What the hell are you doing?” He grabbed the workbook and hurled it into the backseat, then slammed the glove
box shut, almost catching one of her fingers.

Rae’s eyes widened. “I was about to look for a piece of gum because drinking milk always leaves this icky coating
in my mouth,” she explained, looking at him like he’d grown two heads.

“It’s out of line to go rifling through someone’s stuff,” Anthony snapped, even though he knew he should be
apologizing.

“Oh, and it’s not out of line to practically chop off my hand,” Rae muttered.

They rode for a minute in charged silence.

“It’s the fingerprints thing again, right?” Rae finally asked. “You cleaned off the door handles, but you didn’t clean
inside the glove compartment.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to… to spy on you. It’s just that it’s
pretty hard to remember that I can’t touch anything.”

“It’s no biggie. I was an idiot,” Anthony said. He opened the glove box, rooted around until he found a box of his
mother’s Tic Tacs, and tossed them in her lap.

“Thanks.” Rae took one and then shook the box at him.

He held out his hand to take one, even though he didn’t really like them. “So what were you saying? Before, you
know.”

Before you almost found out how freakin’ stupid I am, he added silently. He’d told Rae once, who the hell knew
why, that he was in a slow learner class. But that wasn’t the same as her knowing that he was using the same
workbook she used in the fourth friggin’ grade.

“Um, I was saying that it didn’t seem that likely Jesse’s dad took him,” Rae answered.

“One way to find out,” Anthony answered. “You see a pay phone anywhere?”

Rae dug around in her purse. “I have my cell,” she said, pulling it out.

A cell. Of course a girl like her would have a cell phone.

“See if you can get the number for a place called Hurricanes in New Orleans.”

“Got it,” Rae said a few moments later.

“Will you dial it for me?” Anthony asked.

She punched in some numbers and gave him the phone. It felt too small in his hand, kind of like a doll thing. A
woman answered on the third ring.

“Hey,” Anthony said. He wasn’t sure how loud he needed to talk since the mouthpiece wasn’t anywhere near his
mouth, but from the look Rae was giving him, not as loud as he’d thought. He lowered his voice a little. “I’m a friend
of Luke Gilmore’s. I wanted to surprise him this weekend. Does he still work there?”

“Saturday through Thursday night,” the woman said.

“Cool. Thanks.” Anthony didn’t even attempt to hang up the phone. He just thrust it back at Rae.

“We’re going on a road trip to New Orleans this weekend,” he told her.

Rae pulled a folded pajama shirt out of her dresser, then hesitated before putting it in her gym bag.

Should she bring it? Why hadn’t she asked Anthony if they were staying over? Wouldn’t they have to stay over? It
was, like, eight hours to New Orleans, plus time in the bar. They wouldn’t try to drive back tonight, would they?

Especially because Rae didn’t have her license yet and couldn’t help with the driving.

She shoved the sleep shirt in the bag. If she needed it, she’d have it. Yeah, now you just have one other teeny, tiny
little thing to do before you go, Rae told herself. Tell Dad… something. Which she should have done Thursday night.

Or Friday morning. Or at least Friday night. But she couldn’t come up with the right lie. Maybe there was no right lie
that would get any dad to give permission for his daughter to go to New Orleans with someone he didn’t even know,
less than a month after she got out of the nuthouse.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. Here goes. Dad, I… Dad, I…” Hopeless. Totally hopeless. She opened her mouth to
try again.

The doorbell rang. “That better not be Anthony,”

Rae muttered. He wasn’t supposed to be there until eleven. She sprinted for the door. If it was Anthony, she
wanted to get to him first. She yanked open the door. “Yana. It’s you.”

“Got it on the first try,” Yana answered. “Ready to shop?”

Rae winced. “Oh God. I totally forgot. I’m losing my mind.” She and Yana both cracked up. “My brain,” Rae
corrected herself. “I’m losing parts of my brain, like the part that remembers stuff. I’m not going insane again.”

“But even though you forgot, you still want to go, right?” Yana asked.

Rae frowned. “Wrong. Sorry. The thing is-” She glanced behind her, doing a Dad check. “Remember that kid I told
you about? The one who might have run away? Well, there’s a chance his father snatched him.

Anthony and I are going to go check it out. If I can come up with a good enough story to feed my dad, that is.”

“Tell him you’re going shopping with me,” Yana suggested.

“Problem. The guy’s in New Orleans. I don’t think I’ll be back until tomorrow,” Rae said.

“Let me handle this,” Yana said. She’d been wearing her Hawaiian shirt knotted above her stomach, but she
quickly undid the knot and smoothed the shirt down over her hip-hugging pink vinyl pants, covering up the DNA-strand tattoo that circled her belly button. “Okay, now, where’s Dad?”

“He’s in his study,” Rae answered.

“Take me,” Yana instructed, giving her collar-length blond hair a little fluff with her fingers.

Rae wasn’t sure this was the best idea. But she had to do something. Anthony was going to be there in less than
an hour. She led the way to the study, gave a quick knock, then stepped inside, Yana right behind her.

“Dad, you remember Yana, right? From the hospital?”

A flicker of pain crossed her father’s face at the word hospital, then he stood up, reached across his desk, and
shook Yana’s hand. Actually shook her hand. He was such a dork sometimes. “Of course I remember,” he said. “I
really appreciate what a friend you were to Rae in there,” he told Yana.

“Now it’s me who needs a friend,” Yana said.

“See, my father has this business dinner in New Orleans tonight, and he’s dragging me along. But I don’t want to
sit in a hotel all by myself, so I came
over here to beg you to let Rae come with us. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I think that sounds wonderful. You’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Rae?” her father asked.

Rae blinked. “Um, y-yeah, of course I want to go,” she stammered. She couldn’t believe he’d given permission so
easily. Yana comes through again, she thought. What would I do without that girl? “Thanks so much, Mr. Voight. We
have to get going right away,” Yana said.

“I’ll just quickly pack some stuff,” Rae added. It wouldn’t look good if her dad knew she’d packed before Yana
asked.

“I’ll help you.” Yana pulled Rae out of the study, and they rushed down the hall to Rae’s room. Rae shut the door
behind them. “Oh my God. You were brilliant.”

Yana retied her shirt below her chest. “Of course I was.” She smiled at Rae. “Do you have any clothes I can
borrow?”

“Sure. Like what kind?” Rae asked.

“New Orleans clothes, baby,” Yana answered.

“You don’t think I’m staying home, do you?”

“Stop here!” Yana ordered, giving Anthony a whack on the shoulder from the backseat. “We need snacks for the
road.”

He couldn’t believe this girl. She shouldn’t even be on this trip, and now she was trying to boss him around. “We
don’t have time,” he told her.

“Oh, come on. It’ll take two seconds,” Yana protested. “You want snacks, don’t you, Rae?”

You better not say yes, Anthony thought. It’s your fault I have to deal with her.

“Sure,” Rae answered. “Snacks would be good.”

“Fine,” Anthony muttered. He pulled into the Quick Stop lot and snagged a space almost right in front of the door.

“You guys wait here,” Yana told them. “I’ll get the stuff.”