The Taking (9 page)

It had that smell too. That musty, old-book smell. The smell you notice when you got your assigned reading in English class. The smell that wafted up from the pages of a book that’s been passed down year after year, the one with the dog-eared pages and highlighted passages, and rips and a tattered cover. And if you were really, really lucky, some kid with nothing better to do, because he for sure wasn’t going to
read
the book, drew pictures of ladies’ boobs at the front of each chapter.

That was how I’d forever remember
Of Mice and Men
—as amateur pencil porn.

The guy behind the counter was wearing a checkered shirt and black, horn-rimmed glasses, and was hunched forward on his elbow as he worked on a crossword puzzle from the newspaper. He lifted his eyes disinterestedly as we approached—a halfhearted attempt at customer service—but when he caught sight of Tyler, he dropped his pencil and hopped up from his stool.

“Hey! I was waitin’ for ya.” His grin spread wide and made his scruffy, unshaved face look more welcoming than his what-the-hell-do-you-want glance had. It was clear that when he chose to, like now, he had an infectious quality about him, as his eyes crinkled with enthusiasm.

“Okay . . .” The guy went behind the desk excitedly and reached beneath the counter. “This came in, and I immediately thought of you.”

Tyler took a step closer, and I tried to see around him. Whatever it was—and from where I stood it looked like a magazine, a really old magazine—it had Tyler’s full attention now.

Tyler leaned forward, pursing his lips. “Can you take it out?” Tyler asked, his voice low and filled with what was unmistakably awe.

“Dude, of course I can take it out. But trust me, I’ve already checked it from cover to cover. It’s practically mint. It’s exactly what you’ve been looking for.” The clerk slipped it from the plastic sleeve that protected it, and Tyler’s eyes went wide as his fingers cautiously, gingerly, reached down.

When he brushed the cover, I saw him suck in his breath and hold it.

This thing was seriously important to him.

All I could see was faded print and creased pages, and a chunk missing from the bottom-right edge of the cover.

There was clearly a discrepancy in our interpretations of “practically mint.”

But after inspecting it, neither of them even haggled over the price; Tyler just laid down several bills, way more than I thought anyone should ever pay for a relic like that.

Tyler put his
prize
back in its plastic covering, and the guy behind the counter double-bagged it for him, making it more than obvious that you should never be too careful when it comes to protecting your secondhand junk.

I cleared my throat, and Tyler glanced my way self-consciously, as if he’d only just remembered I’d been standing there the whole time. “Oh yeah. Hey. This is Kyra,” he told the clerk, who had also suddenly noticed me now that their transaction was coming to a close. At first he gave me a quick once-over, like he wasn’t all that interested. And then he did a double take, and his gray eyes scoured me with laser intensity. I squirmed beneath his examination.

The guy frowned then. “I know you,” he told me as if it were irrefutable. “From somewhere . . .” I could see the cogs in his head turning as he tried to nail it down. “Did you go to Emerson?”

Did?
he’d asked, and I shook my head, studying him right back and wondering if I’d ever seen him at the rival high school. “No. I went to Burlington.”

He nodded as if that made sense, but he was still scowling, still trying to decipher where he knew me from. I was sure he didn’t look familiar to me, so I couldn’t help him out. I was almost positive we’d never crossed paths before.

And then he snapped his fingers. “I got it!
I got it!
You’re that girl! The one who went missing. I knew I recognized you. Man, your face was everywhere. Everyone knew who you were.” He grinned his infectious grin, only this time I couldn’t return his smile. “Heard you were back. What the hell happened to you anyway? Where you been all this time?”

Suddenly my legs felt wobbly, and my stomach rolled uneasily. I hadn’t considered that people might actually
recognize
me after all the efforts that had been made to find me five years ago. And that when they did they might ask questions I wasn’t prepared to answer—
couldn’t possibly
answer. I turned to Tyler. “I—I think I’ll wait outside.” I staggered away from the counter, suddenly anxious to get out from between the disordered stacks of decaying books and magazines that felt like they were closing in on me. I didn’t wait to see if Tyler was coming or not because I didn’t care.

In my rush, I crashed into someone before I could make it to the back room. I murmured an apologetic “I’m sorry.” I glanced up only briefly as I went to brush past him.

“No worries,” the dark-skinned boy mumbled as I shoved past him. I hesitated briefly as I caught his eyes, which were unusually copper colored, but then I kept going, through the storeroom and out into the alley behind the shop. That was when I realized I didn’t have the keys, and I was locked out of the car. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t mind the garbagey stench of the alley, because it was better than the suffocating scrutiny of too many one-sided questions.

The back door of the bookstore opened, and I glanced up to find Tyler standing in the doorway, watching me with a concerned expression contorting his features.

“I’m okay,” I said before he had the chance to ask.

“I’m sorry,” he told me, his voice low and rumbly near my ear as he leaned over my shoulder to unlock the passenger side door. My heart rate tripled at having him there, at my back, so close I could smell the crisp scent of his soap.

But I didn’t want him to apologize, because none of this was his fault.

“Please. Don’t worry about it,” I begged. “It is what it is, right?” When the door opened, I collapsed into the seat. Melted into it, more like. My bones felt like liquid butter, and even shrugging was a major undertaking. “I better get used to people asking me things like that, or I’m gonna be spending
a lot
of time holed up in my bedroom. It just took me off guard is all. No big.” I flashed a quick smile up at him, the kind meant to reassure him, because I really wanted him to believe what I’d said. I wanted to believe it too. And then I changed the subject. “I don’t get it.” I nodded toward the Fort Knox of all bags he clutched in his hands. “All that fuss over, what, a comic book?” I bit back a teasing smile.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, one, this is
so
not a comic book,” he began tolerantly, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d had to explain his hobby.

“Looks like a comic book to me.”

“This,”
he said, plucking his plastic-encased treasure from the safety of its double bags. He held it up delicately so I could get a better look. On the cover was an old-fashioned red airplane with several other, smaller planes in the background. I couldn’t tell if they were chasing the red one or if it was one big, happy airplane family. The title on the cover read:
Bill Barnes Air Adventurer. 10 cents.
“
This
is a pulp magazine. A July 1934
Air Adventurer
with a Frank Tinsley cover, to be exact.” He was grinning so proudly that he nearly convinced me that was something to be proud of.

“So, it’s a . . .
magazine
?” I prodded, intentionally needling him because I could see he was serious about this.

“Yeah. I mean, no. Not really.” Scowling over his inability to make his point, he sighed and closed the door before stomping around to the driver’s side. Inwardly I was grinning, because I’d gotten exactly the reaction I was hoping for. When he got in the car, he tried again. “It’s a pulp novel. They’re books. Some of them used to be published in serialized form, like this. A lot of the best writers wrote pulp novels in their time: Isaac Asimov, H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Jack London. Even Mark Twain. I’ve been looking for this one for a long time. That’s why Jackson called me when it came in.” He frowned, and then shrugged as if it wasn’t worth explaining.

He was right; I’d probably never understand his level of intensity. I wasn’t a huge reader, and I don’t remember ever seeing Austin read any of the required books for school. But it was downright adorable that Tyler was so passionate about this crappy, moldering old magazine that he treated like a rare and delicate treasure.

It made me wonder how he’d treat a girl. You know, if he cherished her the way he cherished that book.

I twisted in my seat so I could get a better look at him. “So, what you’re telling me is that you’re a total nerd. Is that it?”

The dimple reappeared again, digging so deep into his cheek I thought it might make a permanent groove. My heart nearly stopped.

Austin had outgrown his dimples when he hit puberty. I thought I’d been glad because he looked older without them. But now . . .

Tyler started the car and pretended he was ignoring me, concentrating instead on backing out of the alley, but I caught his sideways glances, and the dimple never really disappeared entirely. “That’s
exactly
what I’m saying.”

Before long I turned to stare at the town I’d lived in my entire life as we drove. I was surprised how many changes there were, but since I hadn’t been here, the new shops, and the closed ones, were glaring and out of place. If I’d been here the whole time, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed them. The evolution of industry.

Just then we passed the high school, and a boulder settled over my chest.

But it wasn’t the school that caught my eye; it was the fields, with their big box lights shining down on them. Even from the car I could make out the chalked outlines of the infield.

The boulder threatened to crush me.

“Hey.” My hand shot out to Tyler, and I gripped his arm. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the grass and the dirt, the stands and dugouts. “Pull over, will ya?”

Without asking why or making a big deal about it, Tyler pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine. I stumbled out of the car, and I didn’t look back to see if he was behind me.

I was captivated. Enthralled. Terrified.

My vision tunneled as I approached, so that all I could see were the fields where I’d spent so much of my life.

When I reached the chain-link fencing, I curled my fingers through it, feeling light-headed and unsteady.

I would’ve been a senior if I hadn’t vanished. I should’ve had one more year—one more season—on these very fields with the rest of my team.

I hadn’t heard Tyler get out of his car, but I knew he was right behind me when I heard his voice. “It has a name now.” His breath tickled my neck. And then, before I could say anything, or breathe even, his hand was covering mine where my fingers curled through the fence. My stomach plunged.

Oh my god, what is wrong with me?
Didn’t I have enough to worry about without letting myself get all gooey over a boy who was far too young for me?

And Austin’s brother no less? All at once I realized Tyler was saying something to me, and I hadn’t heard a single word of it. I felt like an idiot. I wondered what it was about him that turned me into such a girl—the kind of girl who daydreamed about things like dimples. I spun around to face him. But he was too close—
we
were too close. I realized that fact too late as I found myself lodged between him and the fence. I swallowed. “Wait, what did you say?”

He shook his head, and his lips were so beautiful, so full and tempting, that I swore my eyes were glued to them, and I found myself tracking them like a cat following a play toy. I blinked, hard, when I realized what I was doing, and I prayed to God he had no idea why I was so distracted.

“I was saying that the field has a name now.” He reached out and brushed a piece of hair from my forehead. “Agnew Field. They named it after you.”

I jerked back, away from his touch, and away from his words.

Suddenly I knew—
knew
—it was wrong.

This.

All of it. Me and Tyler. Being here at the school. The fact that they’d named the field I’d once played on after me. In memorium . . . like I was dead.

And I had been dead in a way. For five long years everyone had mourned me. They’d let me go and “moved on,” and everything had changed.

And now I was back. A corpse with a second chance.

I slipped out from beneath his arm, from where I suddenly felt trapped, cornered by his presence. “I have to go,” I insisted, pulling out my phone and checking the time. “I need you to take me home. Now.”

There were four messages waiting for me on my bed when I got back, all written on multicolored sticky notes that were stuck together so precisely they formed a perfect neon-rainbow fan. I assumed they were also in chronological order.

Flipping through them, I noted my mom’s handwriting and was grateful she’d decided to take phone messages rather than to give out my new cell number. It wasn’t even nine o’clock when Tyler dropped me off, but my mom and her new family were already tucked away in their bedrooms for the night, so I had the house to myself.

In the kitchen there was a plate covered with plastic wrap. Through the film I could see she’d made me my favorite: spaghetti with Grandma Thelma’s homemade meatballs. I felt a stab of guilt for not being there for dinner, but the very idea of sitting through a meal with them and pretending we were an actual family made me nauseous.

Maybe if I tried harder, though, maybe if
I
made more of an effort to talk to my mom, she would finally say something real to me.

Taking the calendar off the wall, I carried it, along with the plate of spaghetti, to the table. I looked at the time on my phone and double-checked it against the time on the microwave. It bothered me that the two weren’t exactly in sync—they were a minute apart—and I watched until the microwave’s clock caught up to the time on my phone before turning to the calendar.

I flipped to May and put my finger on today’s date, and the moment I did, the panic in my chest subsided. I knew why. It had become like an obsession with me, keeping tabs on the time. The constant reassurance that I hadn’t lost another day. Or another hour or minute or second. That I was still here, and time was moving at the exact right speed it should.