The Taking (12 page)

To be fair, my exact words were something along the lines of a suggestion that they put him into physical therapy.

Considering that The Husband had given my mom a terse look, I decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort to bring up her son’s nutritional deficiencies too.

As if reading my mind, the kid looked up and grinned at me, his teeth all pulped out with mushy bits of newsprint.
Disgusting.

“Kyra.” A woman in faded pink scrubs read my name from the file in her hands, as if the waiting room was teeming with patients all clamoring to get in to see the dentist on this busy Wednesday morning. I made a point of glancing at all the empty seats. Nope, still just me.

I got up and followed her. Behind me, I heard the door from the parking lot open and a voice I recognized said, “Sorry I’m late. I—uh—I overslept.”

I turned to see my dad standing in the doorway. He had the same unshowered look he’d had the first day I saw him, like he’d just rolled out of bed.

“I told you, you didn’t have to come. It’s just a dentist appointment. I can handle this.” My mom’s voice was pinched and high-pitched, the same way it had been when she’d reminded me that “my brother” had a name. I just kept walking and ignored all of them.

I couldn’t remember Dr. Dunn not being my dentist, but now, like everyone else—well, everyone but me, it seemed—he looked older. Fatter, too, like my dad, but cleaner, something I only just now realized that I appreciated in a dentist.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He was whistling off-key to the music that played overhead. I remembered that about him, the way he whistled and sang beneath his breath like no one could hear him.

“So your mom says you chipped your tooth.” He straddled the small swivel stool next to the examination chair I was reclined on, and he ducked in close. He nodded once, my signal to open wide. I did, and he asked, “What happened?”

His fingers were already in my mouth, probing over my molars, so I tried to talk around them. “A hee o’ hang-ee” were the sounds that came out of me, nothing like “A piece of candy” should have sounded. I might as well have been a two-year-old with a mouthful of mashed-up magazine.

“Candy, huh? That’ll do it,” he answered cheerfully, his latex glove finding the broken spot on my tooth. His glasses had special magnified lenses on them that made him look like he was wearing miniature binoculars. He sat back and told the lady in the pink scrubs, “Let’s get a quick set of X-rays to make sure everything’s A-OK.” He turned to me and winked with one of his giant eyes. “Then we’ll get you all fixed up. Sound good?”

I shrugged.
Okay
.

She took her X-rays, and he came back in to check them, holding them up to the wall-mounted white box. I watched him disinterestedly as he scrutinized them and then asked his assistant to get my old X-rays, the ones I’d had done just last week. Or, rather, the last week I remembered.

He looked at those, too, and now I was more interested in what he was doing because
he
was more interested. I could tell because it wasn’t a casual glance; it was a long, drawn-out perusal, the kind that you give to something curious or strange, something requiring a second or third look. He kept his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined him squinting behind those giant-eyed lenses. Squinting and biting his lip and concentrating.

Then he left the room, both sets of X-rays in hand.

I waited a long time in the reclining chair before he finally came back.

“What was it?” I asked.

He dismissed my concern away with a wave. A flourish, really. “Nothing,” he answered, glazing over my question and moving on with the adept skill of someone used to dodging the prying questions of children. “Good news. Tooth is chipped but not cracked, so we don’t need to do a filling or a crown. I can smooth the edge down so it doesn’t bother your tongue.”

He was lying, of course. All that
concentrating
over a chip that needed polishing? But I could tell he wasn’t planning to give me any more than that, so I opened my mouth wide when he told me to and let him buff the chip into submission.

And on my way out, like I was still seven, he let me choose a prize from the treasure box the receptionist kept hidden behind the counter. It was overflowing with plastic rings and beads and spinning tops and toy soldiers with flimsy parachutes stuck to their backs.

I reached for a paddle with a rubble ball attached to a string, and when I did, I saw the way “my brother’s” eyes lit up with desperate longing. He wanted my third-rate paddleball; I
knew
he wanted it.

I pretended not to notice, but inside I was grinning a pretty self-satisfied grin at my not-too-dignified jab at the toddler as I tucked it into my pocket, thinking I’d rather throw the stupid piece of junk in the trash than give it to him. And then I turned to my mom, who was looking at me like she knew exactly what had just transpired, and I told her, “I’m riding with Dad.”

“So what was all that about? With Dr. Dunn? I know he saw something on my X-rays.” I had to say it fast so I could get the words out in one breath, doing my best not to breathe inside my dad’s pigpen of a van. The smell of stale fast food alone was enough to make me gag, but, like yesterday, it was the other smell, the faint odor of something . . . mildewy . . . or musty—I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was disgusting.

“Nothing, really.” But he didn’t gloss over things as well as Dr. Dunn had, and his “nothing” sounded more like an admission of guilt.

I kicked a crumpled paper bag at my feet and wondered just how often he got his meals at greasy drive-throughs. From the state of his van, I’d guess every one. “You can tell me. Actually,” I said, sitting up taller, “I think you
have
to tell me. I’m an adult now. I have a right to know.” It was so strange to say that out loud, especially since I didn’t feel any older.

My dad reached up and rubbed his jaw, his fingers distorting the skin of his face. “Really, I can’t tell you. Your mom—”

“She doesn’t have to know you told me. What’s the point in keeping secrets? It’s just the friggin’ dentist. How bad could it be? I have gum disease? I need a root canal? Come on.”

My dad veered suddenly to the right, the van lurching along as he maneuvered us toward the side of the road. My stomach dropped. It reminded me too much of the night he pulled his car over, when I’d insisted I was getting out to walk.

“What are you doing?” My voice sounded hollow, weak.

He pulled out his phone. A flip phone that had been outdated even five years ago, and he dialed while I waited. “I’m taking her to my place,” he said into the low-tech receiver. He flashed a knowing grin at me. “Yeah, she wants to meet Nancy.”

The first thing Nancy did was lick me. It was the grossest greeting I’d ever gotten, but I forgave her right away because, after licking me, her tail was wagging so hard she could hardly stand still. It was as if someone had wound up her butt, and she no longer had control over her own actions.

Nancy was a mutt. And not just any mutt, but the muttiest-looking mutt I’d ever laid eyes on. She had to be at least part sheepdog, and maybe part wolf, but there was definitely part something else in there too. Something mangy. She was bushy to the point that she was in danger of being considered some kind of mongrel prehistoric ram or a mutant woolly mammoth rather than just a regular old dog.

But when she stared at me with her enormous, liquid-brown eyes, I could see why my dad had fallen in love with her in the first place. And also why he put up with her unholy stink. It was exactly that smell that I’d noticed in his van: the Nancy smell.

“So, what’d’ya think of my fancy Nancy?”

She had her chin perched on my knee and was staring at me all longingly and doe-eyed, as if she had no intention of letting me out of her sight. Ever. “Not that fancy, I gotta say.” I reached out and ruffled the top of her head, her ears flopping in two different directions when I did. “But she’s not so bad.”

I glanced around uneasily, less comfortable with my next question. “Dad, what are you doing here? What
is
this place?”

My dad followed my gaze. “I know it’s probably not what you expected, but it’s my home. This is where I live now. Ever since . . . well, since . . .” He lowered his head, rubbing his whiskery chin again. He went to the small kitchen, not really a separate space in the cramped trailer, and he turned on one of the gas burners. He kept his back to me as he filled a kettle. “It’s not so bad,” he finally finished, using the same words I’d used about his dog before facing me once more.

I winced.
Not so bad.
I didn’t really agree. It was worse.

There were stacks of newspapers and magazines and bills and notebooks on every surface that wasn’t covered with dirty dishes or laundry or bags filled with who knew what. There wasn’t a TV that I could see, but there was a giant telescope standing in the center of what I assumed was supposed to be the living room but was really more of a glorified walkway, complete with a two-seater couch that was also littered with clothes and newspapers. I didn’t see the booze bottles or empty beer cans, but that didn’t mean they weren’t here somewhere.

My dad, who had once been the epitome of neatfreakness, brushed aside a place for my mug at his wobbly kitchen table, where I was sitting with Nancy’s head in my lap. “Really? ’Cause it looks that bad to me. I’m not staying here, just so you know.”

He shrugged again. “You can if you want, but I won’t make you. Besides, I’m not sure your mom would let you anyway.”

I bristled at his words, and almost decided to stay just because he’d said that. I wondered if that was
why
he’d said it, because he knew how much I hated to be told what I could, and couldn’t, do. “She doesn’t have any say in the matter. I’m an adult, remember?”

At the stove, my dad cleared his throat nervously, and the gesture made me hyperaware that he, that all of them—my mom, my dad, and the dentist—were keeping something from me.

“What? Why are you acting so weird? I mean, besides rooming with a dog and looking all”—I waved my hand at him, indicating his disheveled appearance—“hobo chic?”

He pulled the whistling kettle off the burner and filled my mug, handing me a tea bag. I’d never really liked tea, never really had it before, so it seemed strange that my dad was offering it to me. I unpeeled the worn paper wrapper and plopped the tea bag into the steaming water. Before I could ask if he had any sugar, he was handing me a bowl of clumpy-looking sugar crystals.

Everything
in this place was sketchy, right down to the sugar.

He cleared his own spot at the table, shoving a stack of papers and news clippings out of his way so he could set his own tea down in front of him. “The reason I’m acting weird
er
than usual . . .” His emphasis on the
er
almost made me smile, like even he realized he wasn’t exactly the dad I’d known. He raised an eyebrow at me as he scooped several spoonfuls of the sugar into his mug and concentrated on stirring. “Is something the dentist—Dr. Dunn—noticed on your X-rays.”

I raised my eyebrows back at him.
Got that,
I relayed with my impatient look.

“So he showed us the ones he took the week before you disappeared, when you’d been in to see him for your checkup, and he compared them to the ones he took today.” He spoke slowly, deliberately. It was painful the way he drew out each syllable and emphasized words like
before you disappeared
and
compared
and
today
, as if there was some significance to them that I should understand. I didn’t, and I just wanted him to get to the point already.

And then he did. “They’re the same. Five years later, they’re exactly the same.”

I didn’t understand. He was looking at me as if this was a big deal, something monumental, but I didn’t know why.
“O-kaaaay . . .”

“Five years,” he repeated, still doing that drawing-out thing that was driving me crazy. “Five years is a long time, Kyr. Five years and not a thing, not one single thing, has changed on your X-rays.”

I lifted my shoulders. What was I supposed to say to that?

“It’s not possible,” he finally said, making his big, bombshell statement.

I still didn’t get it. “What do you mean, ‘not possible’? Of course it’s possible. You just said that’s what he saw.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean, it’s not
possible
.” He said it differently now, the word
possible
, like he was saying something magical. “He explained it to your mom and me in the waiting room. In five years, things change, especially in a teenager. Teeth erode from wear, nerves shift, cavities change—you had a cavity, did you know that? You had a little bit of decay between two of your teeth that your mom and him had decided to wait and watch, to see if the next time you came in it had changed, grown, and would need to be filled. Well, guess what? Five years later, and it’s exactly the same as it was.
Exactly.
Not bigger, not smaller. Just . . . the same.”

I stopped scratching Nancy’s scruffy woolen head, and she yawned against my knees but stayed where she was.

“So . . . I’m just different than most people. . . .” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or me, or if I was asking a question or making a statement.

My dad just shook his head and repeated, “Not possible.”

“But it is. . . .”

He scowled at me like
I
was the one who wasn’t making sense. And then he glanced toward the telescope, and I swore I finally understood what he was getting at.

I shot up from the table. Tea spilled, and Nancy yelped as her chin banged on the wooden chair I’d been sitting in. “Uh-uh. No way.
That’s
what’s not possible. Dad, please, stop it. You’re scaring me. You don’t really believe . . .” I couldn’t say it; it was so hard because it meant I was admitting just how crazy he was. “There are no such things as aliens.”

“Kyra . . .” He sounded so reasonable when he said my name that I almost didn’t notice the crazy mountain-man beard or the stains on his flannel shirt—the same shirt he’d been wearing when he’d come to see me that first day. “You don’t know what I do. You haven’t been living with this, gathering information for the past five years, trying to find out what happened to you. If you’d just stop to think about it, it makes perfect sense, really. And it explains what the dentist told us today, if you’ll only listen to me. Please, just . . . just try to have an open mind.” He stood now, too, and my chest constricted as his hand reached toward mine. His fingers, though . . . his touch when his fingers closed over mine was so comfortingly familiar that my legs nearly buckled. “For me,” he whispered as his eyes locked on mine.