Claudia and the Great Search

  “Chewy? I thought he was outside,” said Stacey. (Chewy, short for Chewbacca, is the Perkinses’ black Labrador retriever. He’s the friendliest dog in the world. He’s also the most mischievous.)

  “He was outside,” said Myriah, “but we sort of let him in while you were putting Laura to bed.”

  “He was crying at the door,” added Gabbie. “He sounded so sad.”

  Stacey and the girls rushed downstairs. Stacey’s heart was in her mouth. What on earth were they going to find? What had Chewy broken?

  They ran through the living room. It looked fine.

  They ran through the dining room. It looked fine.

  Then they reached the kitchen.

  One tray of chocolate-chip cookies had been knocked to the floor. The tray lay upside down under the table, and cookies were scattered everywhere. Chewy was standing on his hind legs, about to go after the second tray.

  “Chewy! No!” cried Stacey.

  Chewy looked around as if to say, “Oh, hi guys. I was just about to, um, … well, I wasn’t going to eat these cookies, if that’s what you think.”

  “Don’t let him get to the cookies!” said Myriah frantically. “Chocolate is bad for him.”

  Stacey grabbed Chewy by the collar and led him out to the garage. “Sorry,” she told him as she left him there, “but this is for your own good.” She returned to the kitchen, helped the girls clean up and throw away the batch of cookies that had landed on the floor, and then let them each eat one from the other batch.

  “Yummy!” exclaimed Myriah.

  “Green!” said Gabbie.

  Stacey read Green Eggs and Ham to the girls (Gabbie’s request), and put them to bed. Then she went downstairs. In the playroom, she looked through the girls’ bookshelf. The Perkinses have a friend who’s an editor at a company that publishes children’s books, and the friend sends them books all the time: everything from cloth books for Laura, to books that are too long even for Myriah.

  Stacey browsed through some of the longer books and came across one with an interesting title: Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye. It was by an author named Lois Lowry — and it was the story of an adopted girl, Natalie Armstrong, and her search for her birth mother!

  Stacey couldn’t believe it. She skimmed the book. Then she called me.

  “Claud!” she exclaimed. “You’ll never guess what I’ve found. I’m sitting for the Perkinses and they have this book….”

  Stacey told me what she’d read, and I nearly fainted. I just had to get a copy of the book for myself.

  When Stacey called, I wrote down the title and the author of the book she’d found. I even made her spell out the author’s name so I was sure I had the correct information. I make a lot of mistakes, but I didn’t want to make any with the book.

  “Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye,” Stacey repeated.

  “Find a stranger,” I said slowly as I wrote it down, “say good-bye. I wonder what that means. It sounds sort of sad, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Stacey.

  “And the author is?”

  “Lois Lowry.”

  “Just a sec. Lois?”

  “Right. L-O-I-S. And her last name is L-O-W-R-Y.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Stace. This is going to be important. I just know it is.”

  * * *

  The next day I arrived at school early so I could get to our library before homeroom began. The librarian was surprised to see me, and no wonder. Needless to say, I don’t spend a lot of time in the library.

  I was hoping desperately to find the book there — and not just because I wanted to get my hands on it fast. See, I was hoping not to have to look for it at the public library. There was too good a chance of running into my mother there. Or of one of her librarian friends saying to her, “You know, Claudia was in today and she checked out Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye.” No, I couldn’t let that happen.

  Luckily, it didn’t. Our school library carries two copies of the book, so I checked one out. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday reading it secretly — during study hall, during a boring social studies class (I hid the book inside our text), after school, and even in bed with a flashlight when I was supposed to be asleep.

  This wasn’t easy. I am not a fast reader (unless I’m rereading a Nancy Drew mystery), but I made my way through the entire book by 11:30 Wednesday night. As I read the last word, I said, “Whew,” and closed the book. Done. I needed to do a lot of thinking — but not until the next day. I was too tired just then. I fell asleep immediately.

  * * *

  But on Thursday, I woke up thinking, thinking, thinking. The story had given me lots of ideas. It had made me feel a little sad, though, too. See, in this book, Natalie Armstrong’s adoptive family is very open with her. And when she says she wants to find her birth mother, her parents give her all the information they have about her adoption, which had been privately arranged — and then let her search. They even lease a car for her to use. (Obviously, she was older than I am.)

  Why couldn’t my parents be so open with me? Why couldn’t they be like Natalie’s family? Or like the Brewers? I bet my parents wouldn’t admit I was adopted even if I found my birth mother, brought her home, and introduced her to everyone.

  Oh, well. At least I had some ideas for continuing my search. Unfortunately, I had to wait until Friday to take the next step. That was because the next step involved going to the public library (this time I couldn’t avoid it), and I had to wait until my mother would be tied up so she wouldn’t see me. Every Friday afternoon, Mom conducts a staff meeting in the conference room on the second floor of the library. I needed to use one of the microfiche machines on the first floor. So I timed my library trip to coincide with the staff meeting.

  The meetings always begin at three-thirty. At 3:35, I was parking my bicycle outside the library. At 3:36, I was walking up the stone steps and through the double front doors. The first thing I did was check to see who was at the circulation desk. Good. It was just a student volunteer. I hoped I’d find another student volunteer helping out with the microfiche machines. The students don’t come in often enough to know that I’m Mrs. Kishi’s daughter.

  I wound my way past the information desk, through the stacks, and around the periodical section to where I wanted to be. And a student was on duty! Great luck. I’d never even seen him before. Maybe this was a sign that I’d discover something important.

  It was. I did discover something important — but completely unexpected.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the student.

  He looked up from a book he was reading and peered at me through thick glasses. “Yes?” he said. “May I help you?”

  “I hope so,” I replied. “I need to see some old birth announcements in the Stoneybrook News. And — and I need you to show me how to use a microfiche machine. I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. That’s what I’m here for. What issues of the paper do you want to look at?”

  I decided to look at the announcements for the week in which I’d been born as well as the next two weeks — just in case it had taken awhile for the announcement to appear.

  The boy set me up at a machine and showed me how to scan the material in the newspaper. Then he left me on my own.

  I quickly found the birth announcements for the week in which I’d been born. There were quite a few. I knew several of the names. They were kids I go to school with. But none of the names was mine.

  I looked through the next two weeks’ announcements. No Claudia Kishi. Or Claudia Anything. Puzzled, I returned to the boy at the desk. I asked to see the next month, and then, on a hunch, asked to see the month before I’d been born. Was it possible that my birthday wasn’t really my birthday? That I’d been born a few weeks earlier, but because of some mess with the adoption papers I’d been listed as being born on another date?

  At that point, anything seemed possible. So I looked over two more months of announcements.

  No Clau
dia.

  I sighed. This meant that one of several things was true. I’d been adopted through an agency. I’d been privately adopted — but not born in Stoneybrook. Or I’d been adopted and born in Stoneybrook, but my birth mother had given me another name. Then Mom and Dad had legally changed it to Claudia. Either way … I was adopted. All birth announcements automatically go to the local paper. And no Claudia Kishi was listed.

  I let the news sink in.

  Then I drew in a deep breath and went back to the list of babies who’d been born the week in which I thought I’d been born. I would have to track those babies down. It was a good starting place, anyway. I couldn’t go looking for every baby born that entire year.

  Ten babies had been born that week — six boys and four girls. I eliminated the boys right away. That left the girls. One of them was named Francie Ledbetter. I eliminated her, too. She goes to SMS with me. I was down to three girls. Was I one of them? Had my parents adopted Kara Ferguison or Daphne Selsam or Resa Ho? None of those babies had a Japanese last name (and I couldn’t ignore the fact that I am Asian), but I decided that didn’t matter much. Not every Japanese person has a Japanese last name. Or maybe my birth mother was Japanese and my birth father was American, and I had my mother’s features and my father’s last name. Who knew?

  I took a pencil and paper out of my purse. Very carefully, I copied down the names of the three baby girls and their parents:

  Kara Ferguison, born to Mr. and Mrs. Jim Ferguison of Rosedale Road.

  Daphne Selsam, born to Mr. and Mrs. Terrance Selsam of High Street.

  Resa Ho, born to Mr. and Mrs. George Ho, visiting from Cuchara, Wyoming.

  That third baby, Resa Ho, intrigued me. First of all, Ho is an interesting last name. Isn’t there a Hawaiian singer named Don Ho? Could I be Hawaiian or Polynesian, not Japanese? Maybe. Second, the paper said Resa’s parents were “visiting from Wyoming.” Were they really just visiting? Or had they come to Stoneybrook to have the baby because they already knew they couldn’t keep her, and my parents had arranged to adopt her? I didn’t know if private adoptions worked that way, but it seemed possible. And were the Hos really from Wyoming? Or were they from Hawaii or California or some place where there are a lot of Asians or Polynesians? Not that there aren’t Asians in Wyoming, but the Hos might have been protecting their identity. In fact, maybe their last name wasn’t Ho at all. Maybe it was Hoshikawa or Hoshino, or even Yamaguchi or something.

  Now I was getting somewhere.

  I was also getting scared.

  So I called Stacey as soon as I returned from the library.

  “Stace?” I said. “Would you like to stay after the meeting tonight? You could have dinner with us, and then we could talk. Really talk. We haven’t done that in awhile.”

  “Claud,” Stace replied, “what’s up? I know something’s up.”

  “Just talk to me tonight. That’s all.”

  And so, because Stacey is my best friend, she agreed to without asking again about what was going on. She knew she’d find out when I felt like telling her.

  Stacey stayed for dinner. No one in my family thought that was unusual. Nor that Stacey continued to stay afterward for a gabfest in my bedroom. We do both of those things pretty often.

  At first we just talked about school and boys and stuff. For nearly half an hour we talked about this one boy, Trevor Sandbourne, whom I used to like a lot. And all the while, I could almost see Stacey wondering what I really wanted to talk about, because she knew it wasn’t Trevor.

  So at last I drew in a deep breath and said, “Well, I read Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye. The whole thing.”

  “You did?” asked Stacey, being careful not to push.

  I nodded. “From beginning to end. And after I read it, I had some more ideas for my search. You know how, in the book, Natalie Armstrong is privately adopted? I mean, through a lawyer, not through an agency like Emily Michelle was?”

  “Yeah,” replied Stacey.

  “Well, maybe I was privately adopted, too. I might even have been born right here in Stoneybrook to a couple — say, a really young couple — who knew they weren’t ready to raise a child. So they planned, before I was born, to have me adopted by a family who wanted a baby. Maybe Mom and Dad found out they couldn’t have any more children after they had Janine or something.”

  “Like my parents,” said Stacey.

  “Right,” I agreed. “So you know what I did today?”

  “What?” Stacey leaned forward eagerly.

  “I went to the public library and looked up old birth announcements.”

  I told Stacey everything that had happened and what I’d learned.

  “It sounds kind of farfetched,” Stacey said, when I’d finished my story. She was frowning slightly. “I mean, what if you were adopted through an agency? Or what if you were adopted privately, but not here in Stoneybrook? You could have been born anywhere.”

  “I know,” I answered. “But it proves one thing. I was adopted. If I’d been born to Mom and Dad, the announcement would have been in the paper. That’s just the way it goes. All births are listed. And mine wasn’t.”

  “True,” said Stace slowly.

  “And there’s a chance I was born in Stoneybrook. It certainly would have been easy to adopt me that way. Then my parents wouldn’t have had to travel here with a newborn baby.”

  “That’s true, too,” said Stacey.

  “So you know what?” I went on. “I think I’m going to look up those three couples. That would be a starting point, anyway. I just don’t know how to do it.”

  “The parents’ addresses were in the paper, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “But that was thirteen years ago.”

  “So? Your family has lived in this house for more than thirteen years. And the Pikes have lived in theirs for a long time, too. And up until recently, Kristy and Mary Anne lived in the houses they’d been born in.”

  “Right….”

  “So get out the Stoneybrook phone directory,” said Stacey excitedly.

  “I’m nervous!” I cried, but I found the book anyway. I was as excited as Stacey was.

  I closed my door, and Stacey and I huddled together on the bed.

  I looked up the Ferguisons first. Mr. and Mrs. James Ferguison of Rosedale Road were listed — right there on the page in front of us.

  “I don’t believe it!” I cried. I jotted down their phone number.

  Next I looked up the Selsams. They were not listed.

  “Oh,” I said dispiritedly.

  “Don’t give up yet,” said Stacey brightly. “You’ve still got their address. Maybe they just have an unlisted phone number.”

  “Oh, right!” I said, feeling hopeful again.

  Then, although it seemed completely unnecessary, I looked up the Hos. Of course, they were not listed.

  “Well, you’ve got two leads,” said Stacey. “You can phone the Ferguisons, and you can go to the Selsams’. You can ride your bike to their house. It isn’t too far away.”

  “True.” I reached for the phone. Then I looked at my clock. “Darn,” I said. “It’s after ten. I better wait till tomorrow to call the Ferguisons.”

  “And I better go home!” exclaimed Stacey, jumping up.

  “My mom will drive you,” I told her. “Come on.”

  So I saw Stacey to the door, and then I went back to my room.

  Tomorrow I would contact the Ferguisons and the Selsams. I was so nervous I knew I would hardly be able to sleep that night.

  * * *

  I was right. I barely slept a wink Friday night. When I woke up on Saturday, my eyes felt as if they were made of sandpaper — all scratchy. But I was ready for action, and I was wound up as tightly as a spring.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. By ten-thirty that morning, Dad had gone downtown to run errands, and both Mom and Janine had left for the library — Mom to work on a fund-raising project, Janine to research something scientific and complicated. br />
  As soon as they had left, I made a dash for the phone in my room. I wouldn’t even have to close my door or keep my voice down. Once again, luck was on my side.

  Still, the phone call was not going to be easy to make. I had a story all dreamed up — I’d thought of a good one while I’d been lying awake the night before — but I had butterflies in my stomach like you wouldn’t believe. This was worse than stage fright. My whole past was at stake here.

  But putting off the call wouldn’t make it any easier, so I picked up the phone and dialed. A man answered.

  “Hello, Ferguison residence,” he said. I assumed it was Mr. Ferguison.

  “Um, hello,” I said. “My name is Claudia. I live here in Stoneybrook. And, um, I’m really sorry to bother you, but in school we’re supposed to be doing research papers — on names. I was given the name Ferguison because of its unusual spelling. I decided to do something with a family tree.” (I knew this sounded vague, but I was hoping the man would humor me in order to get off the phone.)

  “Yes?” said Mr. Ferguison.

  “Well, I was wondering if you have any kids. I mean, so I can include them in the tree. I just need to know their names and their birth dates. Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Mr. Ferguison. “Kara, Marcie, and Joseph.” He told me when they’d been born. Kara had been born in the week I’d been born.

  I pretended that this was a great coincidence. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “What do you know? I’m thirteen, just like Kara. I wonder why I don’t know her. We must be in the same grade.” (I wanted to be sure of Kara Ferguison’s existence.)

  “Do you go to Stoneybrook Day School?” asked Kara’s father.

  “Oh, no,” I replied. “I go to the middle school. I guess that explains things. Well, listen. Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it. I need a good grade on this project.”

  Mr. Ferguison laughed. Then we said goodbye and hung up.

  One down, two to go. It was time to head for the Selsams’. Again, thanks to my sleepless night, I had a story ready as to why I was appearing on their doorstep.

  When I reached their house, I realized I wasn’t quite so nervous as when I’d called Love Bundles or the Ferguisons’. Maybe I was getting used to being an undercover detective.