She remembered being curled into a tight, uncomfortable ball underneath her bedroom window, the sound of those tires ricocheting through her skull until she couldn’t take it anymore. Every muscle in her body was tense and exhausted from hours on high alert. After the picture on the computer screen and the realization that someone might have been watching her, Riley waited, unmoving, for the lights to come back on in the house. She waited for her parents to come home. Somewhere between those two, she must have pulled herself into bed and fallen into an achingly deep sleep.
She dreamed of Jane Elizabeth O’Leary—a naked, chubby-faced baby girl with Riley’s features and Riley’s grin. In her dream, she was at the beach and baby Jane was sitting in the sand in front of her, the tide coming in and washing over her fat baby thighs. Baby Jane squealed and slapped at the shallow water, looking up at Riley as it receded. Riley felt herself grin until she saw the next wave coming in. It crashed a little later than the first one did, and the tide swallowed Jane’s thighs and came up to her chest, receding much more slowly this time. Another wave smacked the shore, and Riley knew that it would lift the baby from the sand and suck her backward out to sea. She couldn’t let that happen. Riley ran toward Jane as the water made its way in, but the sand was wet and heavy underneath her feet. She tried to warn Jane, but it was as if the sand had moved into her throat, snatching her breath, her voice. She sank deeper and deeper into the wet sand as the water snaked around Jane, narrow fingers snatching at her. Riley clawed at the ground, trying to move as the water whooshed over Jane’s head, slapping against the sand, teasing the tips of Riley’s fingers. When the water receded, Jane was gone.
Riley couldn’t get the dream out of her mind. Who was Jane? Was Jane missing, out in the world, alone somewhere? Or was Riley really Jane? Could there be some truth to Shelby’s crazy stories?
Stolen. Riley could have been stolen; she could have been kidnapped.
“No,” she said to herself as she stepped into the shower. “I was not kidnapped. My parents aren’t criminals.”
Adopted?
The word shot through Riley’s mind, and she fought to press it down.
“You’re being ridiculous. Your parents are your parents. I was not kidnapped.” She repeated the words so many times they lost meaning, and the niggling feeling was back at the fringe of her mind, tapping: but what if?
She dressed quickly, finding herself validating her every move: the blue shirt. Her favorite color. Was it her favorite color? Her mother bought it for her. She remembered the wry grin as she handed it over and Riley—na?ve, innocent Riley—held it to her chest.
“It’s blue—your favorite. I couldn’t resist.”
Riley narrowed her eyes. “Why? Are you trying to butter me up or something?”
“Can’t a mother pick up a shirt for her daughter?”
Her mother grinned then, a smile Riley once thought was a larger version of her own. But it wasn’t really. Her mother’s lips were pouty and full with a constant deep pink hue. Riley’s were pin thin and she was eternally painting them with Cool Coral lip gloss just so they would show up.
“Ry? Are you coming down? You’re going to be late!”
Riley stepped carefully down the stairs as if each one was a minefield—was she a missing child, stolen, or wasn’t she? She paused to study the few family pictures on the wall—her smiling as a toothless second grader, the family at the beach the year they lived near Carmel. Why had they moved again?
“Riley Allen Spencer, I’m not going to ask you again.”
“Sorry!” Riley said, entering the kitchen as she had done a thousand mornings before. Her parents were looking at her, and heat shot up the back of her neck. Did they know what she found? Did they know what she suspected?
“What’s up, guys?” she asked, doing her best to act nonchalant.
“We could ask you the same thing,” her father said, eyes dropping back to his paper.
Riley snapped bolt upright. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” her mother said as she pulled out Riley’s chair, “that we don’t usually have to send in the brigade to get you out of bed.”
Riley felt her cheeks redden. “I guess I just overslept.”
“Well, eat up. You’re not going to school on an empty stomach. And you have the carnival tonight too, right?”
Her father looked up, eyes bright. “A carnival?”
“It’s a dumb school thing. Fundraiser.”
“Eat.”
Riley reached for the cereal box and looked down at her bowl before she poured. It was the china she had remembered since—when? The napkin, the spoon, the juice glass—and the little white pill.
Every morning, Riley’s mother set the breakfast table, and every morning it looked this same way: cereal bowl, napkin, spoon, juice glass, little white pill. It was Klonopin, an antianxiety medication that the therapist back in Riley’s old neighborhood—where she lived next door to Shelby—had prescribed. It helped Riley focus, staved off her fears, and was supposed to keep the nightmares at bay. Every day, her mother set out the pill, and every day, Riley swallowed it. Every month, her mother refilled her prescription, and every month, Riley never questioned the white plastic bottle that her mother stashed in the medicine cabinet.