The Taking (8 page)

With my mom gone, my dad leaned in, and I could smell his breath. I wondered if he wasn’t still a little drunk from the day before. “I’m not much of a shopper. I think I’ll leave you all to it. I should probably get home and see how Nancy’s holding up.”

Nancy
. I let this new name sink in, even as my world tilted sideways once more. Suddenly there was a Nancy too. What was that all about? Now I had two new parents to deal with?

I no longer had a bedroom, or parents who could stand each other, or even a real home of my own.

My vision blurred, and when I couldn’t stand to look at him for another second, I let my eyes slip to the digital clock on the microwave. It was 8:31.

After a moment he got up from the table, his chair scraping along the tile floor. He kissed me on the top my head, his beard catching strands of my hair as he did. “I’ll come back later, kiddo. We can talk more then.” My mom came back into the kitchen carrying her new kid, and my dad smiled, but it never really reached his eyes. “Maybe I’ll even bring Nancy so you can meet her.”

Shopping with my mom and the new kid was less like shopping and more like wrangling an errant steer. The kid had to be herded and restrained at every turn. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to hear my mom call him “my brother” again.

She kept saying that. “
Your brother
holds a spoon just fine, Kyra. He’s only two.” “Can you hold
your brother
’s hand while we cross the street?” “
Your brother
has a name; it’s Logan.”

It was as though, if she said it enough, she’d somehow force some nonexistent bond between us. Make me feel something for him.

Fine, whatever. He might be my brother by blood, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a virtual stranger.

Worse, he was the brat who’d stolen my mom.

By the time we reached Target, which was only our second stop after the cell phone store, my mom managed to secure the mangy little beast into a shopping cart with a strap that was surely meant to contain monkeys. She got him to shut up for five whole minutes with a bag of popcorn that he threw around like it was confetti and the New Year’s Eve ball was dropping in Times Square. He was the most embarrassing thing ever, and I couldn’t believe she thought I’d ever lay claim to him.

He didn’t start screaming until he realized he couldn’t wiggle out of the shoulder harness he was strapped into.

After about fifteen minutes of that I covered my ears. “Forget it.” I glanced at what was in the cart: a couple of T-shirts and one pair of jeans I’d already picked out. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” I glanced meaningfully at the kid writhing in the seat and held out my hand for the keys. “I’m going to the car. Pay for this stuff, or don’t. I could care less.”

I stayed in my fake bedroom the rest of the afternoon; at least there it was quiet. And away from the kid.

My mom tried to come talk to me, but everything was so different now—even with her. It was like chatting with a stranger.

When The Husband came home, which was earlier than I expected, she asked if I wanted to try again with the whole shopping thing. I refused, deciding I’d rather have my fingernails ripped off one by one than suffer through more of her painful attempts at small talk. I worried that letting her go by herself to “bring me back some things” would mean my closet would soon be overflowing with mom jeans and cardigans in every color of the rainbow. I’d be the youngest forty-year-old on the block. But it was worth it since all I wanted to do was scream at her for not being my old mom, the one who could talk to me about anything, and everything, and nothing at all.

I remembered one time, when I was thirteen and I’d first gotten my period, that my mom and I had stayed up well after midnight watching chick flicks and eating ice cream straight out of the carton while she’d explained to me all the important girl-stuff, like tampons and condoms, and boys and kissing.

She told me about her first date with my dad, when he’d forgotten his wallet and she’d had to pay for everything. And their second date, when he forgot it again and how he’d had to beg her to give him a third chance, promising that he’d show her his cash when he picked her up, because he didn’t want her to think he was a total loser and was just trying to get free meals out of her.

She’d wrapped her arms around me then and told me all about the night I was born, and the way my dad cried harder than anyone in the room, including me.

And here we were, strangers in a strange house with nothing to say to each other.

The knocking at my window startled me, and I practically leaped off my bed. I looked at my open curtains and saw Tyler glancing at me from over the edge of my windowsill.

Smiling and shaking my head, I loped toward the window, my socks whispering across the floor as I came to a skidding stop. I slid my window open and leaned out a little, looking toward the front, and then the back, of the house to see if anyone else was around. “Why didn’t you come to the door like a normal person?”

Tyler grinned back at me. “I thought this was our thing.” When I stared at him blankly, he raised his eyebrows. “You know, you came to my window; I come to yours.” He shrugged and pushed his hands into the pockets of his zip-up hoodie.

Letting out a small laugh, I balanced against my elbows. “I’m not sure we have a thing, but okay.” I didn’t tell him that using the windows had been mine and Austin’s thing, because it didn’t matter anymore. Austin and Cat had new things now. Things that had nothing at all to do with me.

“So, how was it? Your first day back and all?”

The fact that he was here, standing outside my window and asking me how my day was, almost made me cry. No one else had bothered to ask how I was. He was the first person who wasn’t pulling me at both ends, like I was a rope in a tug-of-war. “You really don’t want to know,” I answered. “This whole returning thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Yeah? What was it supposed to be like?”

I considered that for a moment, leaning forward against the windowsill as I chewed the side of my lip. “Good question. I feel like people should be showering me with gifts and cakes and shooting confetti cannons in my honor. And maybe someone should carry me on their shoulders. A little less with the crazy dads and the bickering parents and . . .” I stopped short of saying how boyfriends should still be boyfriends and not be hooking up with my best friend the first chance they get.

Ex
-best friend
, I corrected silently.

“Or making chalk masterpieces for you?” Tyler asked, grinning mischievously as he bit his bottom lip.

“Yeah.” My voice dropped, and I shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal even though it was a huge deal. I leaned farther out the window so I could get a glimpse of his handiwork. “Like that.”

Tyler was studying me, his green eyes, just a shade darker than Austin’s, never leaving mine. I could’ve sworn his cheeks flushed just a little, but he managed to change the subject effortlessly. “People are talking about you. At school.”

“Talking good or talking bad?” Not that I cared, really, but I couldn’t help being curious about the kind of gossip my reappearance had stirred up. I guess towns like Burlington were that way; news always spread fast.

“Wrong, mostly. A lot of stupid speculation about where you’ve been all this time. Abducted, runaway, sold into white slavery, that kind of shit.” He smiled, and his teeth flashed white and straight, and I wondered if he’d had braces when I was gone or if they were always that perfect. I tore my eyes away from them.

“Hey, check it out.” I left the window and came back with a shiny new phone. Before showing him, I pressed the button to check the time on it. “Look what my mom got me today.”

He leaned back on his heels, that flawless grin lighting up his entire face. A groove etched its way into his cheek, producing a dimple, something I had no business noticing. “Told you she’d get you a new one. Here.” He held out his hand, and I let him take it from me. His fingers moved expertly over the phone’s slick, flat screen, waking it up and pulling up the Contacts list. I knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t mention the fact that his would be the only name in the list, and I didn’t mention the tiny flutter that erupted in the base of my stomach that I was now in possession of his number.

I watched as he dialed himself then, and the phone in his pocket vibrated. “Now I have your number too.” He handed it back to me and we stood there for a moment, our eyes locked. It was too long, and we both knew it, but neither of us looked away, and then it was way,
way
too long. I’m not sure if it meant something, or nothing, and I hated how badly I wished I could see inside his head, to read his thoughts. But eventually my cheeks got hot, and I blinked first.

“So, I have this thing . . .” he started, pointing in a general way toward his house or his car but making it clear he had to go.

“Oh yeah. Sure. Go ahead.” I was stammering, and I hated that he was making me stammer at all. “I’ll see you lat—”

“You wanna come?” Our words overlapped, and I stopped talking so I could process what he’d said, to make sure I’d heard him correctly. He stood there rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly and waiting for me to answer.

I lifted my shoulders. “I mean, sure. I guess. It’s not like I have a whole lot goin’ on around here.” I glanced behind me at a room that was sterile and practically begging me to make a break for it. When I turned back, I wrinkled my nose. “Do I have to change?”

He stood on his toes so he could check me out. I was wearing the jeans and one of the T-shirts my mom had gone ahead and paid for during our shopping trip from hell. “Nah. You look good in clothes that fit,” he told me, his eyes sparkling.

“What?” I gasped, feigning surprise. “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I nailed it with my mom’s high-water yoga pants. Are you saying they’re
not
in style, because they totally were five years ago?”

His expression became a little too serious, making me catch my breath. “I’m pretty sure you could pull off just about any look you wanted to.”

“Good.” I laughed, hoping he couldn’t hear the shakiness in my voice. “’Cause I seriously don’t have anything else, and I really don’t want to put my softball uniform back on again, like ever.”

I checked the time again, and it was still just before six o’clock, same as it had been a couple of minutes ago. I lifted my foot to the window ledge and held out my hand to him. I thought about leaving a note or something for my mom to let her know where I’d be, but then I figured she had my number—because she was the only one, aside from Tyler, who did—and she could call if she was worried.

Tyler’s fingers closed around mine, and it was the first really obvious difference I noticed between him and his brother. Austin’s hands had always been dry, sometimes cracked even. He’d spent years applying special creams and moisturizers to protect against all the chlorine and sun damage, but they always had this rough quality about them, like fine-grit sandpaper. He’d spent half his life in the pool, the other half in every available lake, river, and stream. He was one of those people who probably wouldn’t have minded if he’d been born with webbed toes.

Tyler’s hands were soft. Not like a girl’s or anything, but not calloused like mine—which still made absolutely no sense since, according to
everyone
, I hadn’t picked up a bat in five years.

But now that I stopped to think about it, there were
so many
things about Tyler that were different from his brother, it was hard to imagine I’d ever mistaken the two of them in the first place. His hands, and his eyes, which were green but were mossier colored than Austin’s. And the dimple that appeared once more when I bumped against him as I hopped down, making him look somewhere between gorgeous and stunning.

I blinked hard, trying to snap some sense into myself.
Where the holy hell did that come from?
I balked at the idea of Tyler as anything but Austin’s younger brother, because no matter what, that’s what he was—
Austin’s brother
—and I struck a silent deal with myself to never,
ever
think about him as anything other than a friend, because that is all he could ever be.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“
OKAAAY
, I GIVE UP. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
” I asked, surveying the less-than-savory alley where Tyler had parked. “Shouldn’t we be someplace a little less . . .” I raised my eyebrows. “Stabby?”

Tyler shoved open his car door in a way that made it clear his car door was the kind that needed a good shove in order to open. “Relax,” he assured me. “It’s perfectly safe.”

He smiled, and that made me feel a little happier, if not at all safer, as he got out and came around to my side, opening my door and waiting for me. No one had ever opened my car door like that, not even Austin.

I blushed and ducked my head as I eased past him, trying not to notice how tall he was or the way he smelled, which wasn’t at all like back-alley garbage. He locked the car and went to a door that was dented and painted black. He didn’t knock or anything but let himself inside. He held the door long enough for me to realize I was supposed to follow, so I trailed after him and found myself in a storage room of some sort crowded with metal shelves and stacks of cardboard boxes and plastic crates that filled every possible space. There seemed to be no order to the chaos. Mostly, it looked like books and catalogs, but there were also stacks of rolled posters and piles of photographs, and magazines and comic books.

Tyler didn’t stop, though. He slipped right past the hoarder’s haven not giving it a second glance, leading me without a single word into an even more cluttered bookstore beyond.

This wasn’t one of those chain bookstores, though, the ones where everything is perfectly aligned and tidy, and where there were tables strategically positioned to highlight this week’s hottest sellers. There was no soft jazz playing in the background or a café with easy chairs so patrons could kick back with a pastry and hang out to browse their selections. This was more like a thrift store for books, which made sense, I supposed, when I spied the bold neon sign on the other side of the plate glass window that read USED BOOKS.