See Jane Run (9 page)

“Were you planning on leaving me there all day?”

Riley snapped up when she heard JD's voice then immediately regretted it when her neck started to spasm. She rubbed the aching spot just under her ear. “Oh, I'm sorry. I guess time got away from me.”

“Well, that's understandable.” JD squinted. “What with this fascinating report of suspected score tampering at the Sixth Annual Dolphin Swim Tournament.” He feigned terror. “Where the Granite Cay Water Bonnets took second place for the third year in a row. What the hell is a water bonnet? Are they seriously named after hats?”

Riley was too exhausted—and annoyed—to be amused. She thunked her forehead on the desk in front of her. “Ugh. I'm sorry. And this was a big waste of time too. I couldn't find a single thing I was looking for.”

“Well, yeah, if you're looking for medical records in the
Gazette
.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah. Pizza.”

“How is pizza going to help me find…medical records?”

“It's not, but it'll help me from dying of starvation.” He grinned and she couldn't argue; her stomach growled at the thought of a big, greasy pie.

They found a diner a block away from the hall of records and slid into a booth. “If you're getting a roasted veggie with no cheese, I'm out,” JD said, scanning the menu.

Riley wrinkled her nose. “What is a roasted veggie with no cheese?”

“It's a pizza.”

“No, it's not. An all-meat supreme with extra cheese and double sauce is a pizza.”

JD shut his menu and grinned. “My kind of woman.”

After the waitress took their order, JD leaned back in his seat and eyed Riley. Riley immediately felt self-conscious. “What?”

“Are you ever going to tell me why we're really out here?”

Riley looked around the restaurant. “We're out here because you're starving.”

“In Granite Cay, Ry. Who's Jane and what are you looking for?”

Nerves like steel bands wound around Riley's heart. She tried to swallow but found her mouth was dry. She looked into JD's eyes and thought about their detention week. He was funny; he was nice—he was smart. She licked her lips.

“I really don't know who Jane is. I came here trying to find out.”

To her surprise, JD didn't laugh. “OK. So if you don't know who she is, where did you get the name?”

The birth certificate was burning in Riley's pocket. She took a deep breath and slid the paper across the table. She scrutinized JD as he opened the folded paper, his hazel eyes scanning it, then meeting hers.

“This is a birth certificate.”

Riley nodded. “I know.”

“For Jane. But you don't know who she is.”

“No.”

“She must be someone pretty important if you're willing to hop a train and come all the way out here for her.”

Riley swallowed. “You hopped a train and came all the way out here.”

The waitress broke in, sliding an enormous pizza in between them. She turned away and JD already had a giant bite of pizza in his mouth. He swallowed. “So you have no idea who Jane Elizabeth O'Leary is?”

Riley pulled a slice of pizza onto her plate but couldn't bring herself to eat. “I've been trying to figure that out, but I keep coming up empty.”

Recognition flashed across JD's face. “The hospital, the hall of records.”

“I couldn't find anything.” She picked at an ancient glob of cheese stuck to the Formica table. “So, I—I'm beginning to think that Jane Elizabeth O'Leary is me. I'm her.”

She waited for JD to drop his pizza or reel in stunned silence. She waited for him to grab his phone and dial 9-1-1.

Instead, he took another huge bite and asked, “So you're adopted?”

Riley's mind was blazing. “No,” she said quickly. “No, I wasn't adopted. That's not even my birth date.”

“So then you're not Jane.”

Riley was getting exasperated. “I think I
was
Jane.”

“So your parents changed your name and your birth date? That's weird. Why would they do that?”

“Exactly. Why would they?” She looked around, suddenly feeling very exposed. She dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper. “I think I may have been kidnapped.”

JD stopped chewing and put his slice on his plate. “Why do you think that?”

“I found this birth certificate hidden in a slit in my baby book. I'm almost positive it's me. I don't even look like my parents. They won't let me do anything. I had to beg for a month to get them to let me on the school trip to look at colleges.”

JD looked around the pizza parlor. “Well, in hindsight…”

“You know what I mean!”

“So all that adds up to kidnapping but not to adoption.”

Riley grabbed the slice from her plate and took a big bite. “My parents would have told me if I was adopted.”

“Because the parents who you think are kidnappers, who changed your name and your birth date, wouldn't lie to you.”

Riley chewed her pizza, considering. “I know it sounds weird, but I know them. I know I'm not adopted. We talked about adoption all the time. The family across the street from our old house adopted a kid from Vietnam. We were friends with them. I remember having a conversation with my dad, though, before Thuy came home. I asked him how I could make the little girl feel welcome and he didn't say, ‘you can tell her you were adopted too.'”

JD picked up his slice again. “Well, that seals it. You, Riley Spencer slash Jane O'Leary, were kidnapped because your father
didn't
say you were adopted.”

Riley threw down her pizza. “I knew I shouldn't have told you. You're a real ass, you know that?”

“OK, OK, I'm sorry, Ry. It's just kind of a big thing to wrap your head around, isn't it? There have to be a million other explanations for that birth certificate.”

“The bigger thing is that nothing came up at the hospital or at the hall of records. Even if baby Jane isn't me, why did this family just disappear, and how would my parents be involved?”

JD straightened. “Involved? Like, you think your parents may have made Jane's parents disappear?”

Riley put her chin in her hands, frowning. “I don't know what I think anymore.”

“Well, you said you found the birth certificate in your baby book. Don't you have pictures of yourself as a baby with your parents? My parents have them all over the house. It's ridiculously embarrassing.”

Riley warmed, thinking of JD as a smiling, round baby in the arms of his doting parents. But the thought was immediately replaced by something cold and dark. “There aren't any pictures of me as a baby. Nothing until I was about three.”

JD sipped his Coke. “Really?”

Riley started to feel clammy and panicky again. “Not a single one. My parents said that the house we used to live in flooded and we pretty much lost everything. That's why my mom started making the new baby book.”

“Do you remember anything about the old house?”

Riley tried to remember. “No, I don't think so. I mean, I kind of remember the layout, but I'm not sure if it's because that's what they told me, you know? It was in Chicago, I remember that—I think.”

The pizza sat in Riley's gut like a heavy black stone. Heat snaked up the back of her neck and suddenly everything—the pizza parlor, the booth, her clothes—felt wrong.
Who
am
I?
she thought, the panic pinballing through her.

“Do you remember anything about Chicago?” JD was asking.

Riley shook her head, everything going in super slow motion. “Only what they've told me.”

JD blew out a sigh, and Riley held his eye, tears threatening to well in hers. She didn't know why it was so important that JD believe her. She didn't know why it seemed to ache that he looked at her with a slight, disbelieving grin on his face.

“You just don't understand. I used to know who I was. Now I have no idea. I don't know what's been a lie, what's real. I feel like I've been play-acting this whole time.”

“Riley, there's nothing different about you. You're still the same person—you just found a birth certificate. And even if it is yours, it's not going to change who you are right now or any of your experiences in the past.”

“But—”

JD reached out and put his hands on Riley's. “You are who you are, period. What you or other people expect you to be doesn't figure in to the equation. Jane or Riley—it doesn't matter. You're you.”

Riley sat back, considering. She pasted on a contented smile for JD, all the while thinking,
But
who
am
I
?

Riley dumped a few bills on the end of the table, wrestling her coat and backpack from the booth. “This was a mistake. I have to get back. This was so dumb.”

“Ry! Ry!”

She heard JD's voice behind her, but it already sounded too far away.

I'm no one,
Riley thought.
Maybe I
don't exist at all.

She slipped into a coffee shop and took a seat by the window, tucking herself against the wall while she pulled her laptop out of her backpack. She started it up, her hands flying over the keyboard.

RILEY ALLEN SPENCER.

The search immediately popped up a half-dozen other Riley Spencer's before she found a tiny mention of herself tucked between a professor and a mechanic.

Spencer, Riley. Sophomore.

It was a grainy school picture reprinted in the Hawthorne High Hornet. Riley was being quoted about a student and teacher who were murdered last year. It was a brainless, stock quote—“We're all a little more aware of each other”—that she couldn't remember saying. And her picture—she recognized herself but just barely. She looked like every other teenaged girl in a school photo in a school newspaper ever.

If she had been kidnapped, did her real family wonder what she looked like? Would they remember her? Would they recognize her? What was going on?

A sob choked in the back of her throat. She snapped her laptop shut and was startled to see JD sitting across from her, holding out her cell phone.

“You forgot this.”

She reached for it, silently, but he didn't let it go. “You OK?”

Riley blew out a world-on-her-shoulders sigh. “Why would my parents be hiding a birth certificate in my baby book if it wasn't mine? And then, these people don't even exist?”

JD shook his head. “I have no idea, Ry. You should just ask them.” He reached over and brushed her cheek with his thumb. She didn't even know she was crying.

“Second time I had to do that today.”

Riley sniffed and smiled. Something about JD—maybe it was the fact that he was a loner or that he didn't seem to care what anyone else thought—made her feel comfortable.

“You could just ask,” he repeated.

“No. I wasn't supposed to be going through my mom's things when I found the baby book. And then I snooped through that. She'll be pissed at me.”

JD sat back in his chair and kicked out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “So just decide what's worse—your parents being pissed at you or you never knowing who Jane Elizabeth O'Leary is.”

Riley chewed her bottom lip. Two days ago, finding Jane seemed like a fun adventure. Now it had turned into an obsession. She
had
to know.

“Here.” JD pushed a white plate with an enormous chocolate chip cookie on it. “I find sugar is brain food.”

Riley grinned, breaking off a piece. JD did the same and she knocked her cookie hunk against his. “Cheers.”

“To solving mysteries?”

“Something like that.” She popped the cookie piece in her mouth and chewed, very aware that JD's eyes were on her, studying her.

“What?” she asked, heat burning the tops of her earlobes.

JD looked at the table, but he was still smiling. “Nothing. I just never thought that I would have spent the afternoon skipping school with someone like you.”

Riley's brows went up. “Someone like me?”

He broke off another bite of cookie. “A goody-goody.”

She rolled her eyes. “And I never thought that I would be sitting in a café, sharing a giant cookie with a juvenile delinquent.”

As soon as the words were out of Riley's mouth, she wanted to take them back. Something dark flashed in JD's eyes, but he tried to pass it off, digging into his wallet. All traces of his playful smile were gone as he dumped a few bills on the table.

“No—I didn't mean—”

JD stood. “What? It's nothing. I just feel like heading out now. I've got some things I want to do before I get back to Boone.”

No more
we
, and Riley was stung.

“I didn't mean that I think you're a criminal or—”

But JD already had his back toward her, his backpack slung over one shoulder. “Later, Ry.”

She watched, breathless, as he walked out the glass door, letting it slam shut behind him. She slapped her laptop shut and threw it into her backpack, trying her best to keep her eye on JD's retreating back as he beelined away from Riley.

“JD!” she called when she hit the sidewalk. “JD!”

He didn't turn and she was losing ground. She bolted into the street but didn't hear the screech until the grille of the car was just inches from her. Everything dropped into a paralyzing silence; everyone moved in slow motion.

She thought she heard someone say her name. She thought she felt hands on her shoulders, around her waist, people carrying her gingerly.

“Riley! Riley!” She blinked, and JD's face—eyes wide with concern—came into focus.

“I didn't hit her!” a woman was yelling, her voice high and hysterical. “She ran out into the street.”

Riley was sitting in a metal chair though she had no idea how she got there. JD was crouched in front of her, holding both of her hands. She felt another hand tapping her shoulder gently.

“She wasn't hit, but she's rattled. Is there someone I can call for you? What's your name? I can call your parents for you.”

Riley turned toward the man's voice. It was the guy from the train station, from the hospital—and now right here, on the street. He seemed to have a very faint accent, but Riley couldn't place it.

“Are you OK? I'm a doctor—”

She heard JD's voice. “She's fine, just a little stunned.”

Riley hoped she was nodding her head, but everything felt totally disconnected—even her own limbs. Finally, she was able to force her lips to move. “I'm OK,” she said, her voice small and breathy. “I'm sorry. It was my fault.”

JD looked at her, his eyebrows pressed together. “Do you want me to call your parents?” he asked once the crowd had dispersed.

“That guy. The doctor. I saw him on the train and at the hospital.”

JD nodded slowly, taking her hand and helping her up. Panic shot through the nothingness she felt a second ago. “I think he's following me.”

“Riley, he's a doctor. He rides the train.”

“But he was right here,” Riley said, leaning in.

“This town is like four square miles. Of course you're going to run into him.”

The sobs came out of nowhere.

“Ry—”

“I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“We'll just get you home and—”

The tears wracked her harder. “That's just it. What if I am Jane? What if—if my parents have been lying to me my whole life?” She shook her head, horrified at how ridiculous her fit was sounding. “Oh my God. This is so stupid. I'm just spazzing out. I should never have dragged you into this. Riley—Jane Elizabeth—both of us are unstable.”

JD shook his head but smiled. “I'll be sure to mention both your personalities on the nuthouse intake form.”