Kristy and the Missing Child

  “That sounds great,” said Stacey. “How do we let everyone know?” I told her about my idea for setting up a sign-up table at lunchtime, and she nodded. “Perfect. And we can divide up your list of kids so we’ll each have to make only a few phone calls after school.”

  “I have study hall third period,” said Claud. “I’ll make a sign for the sign-up table then.”

  “I have to study for a stupid recipe test during my study hall,” said Mary Anne. “But I can help organize the kids after school.”

  “I’ll fill Jessi in on what’s going on,” said Mallory. “I don’t think she has a dance class this afternoon. I’m sure she’ll want to help.”

  “I think Jeff left his walkie-talkies in his room the last time he visited,” said Dawn. “I’ll bring them this afternoon. They might be useful.”

  We agreed that the search party would meet at the Stoneybrook Elementary playground right after school. I could tell that everyone was as happy as I was to be doing something.

  As soon as I walked into homeroom, I asked my teacher for a pass to the principal’s office. He gave it to me right away, when I’d explained why I needed it. And when I got to Mr. Taylor’s office, he was great, too. Not only did he give me permission to set up a sign-up desk, he offered to let me make an announcement over the P.A. system during second period.

  I spent the rest of homeroom feeling a little nervous about making the announcement, and also about the wheels I’d set in motion. All of a sudden the idea I’d had less than two hours ago at breakfast had sprung into life — and it was going to involve a lot of kids.

  “What should I say?” I asked Mary Anne while we were running from homeroom to our first class. “Do you think I’m going to sound all static-y? I hate that!”

  “Just tell everyone what’s going on,” she said, “and tell them about your idea. Don’t worry about sounding perfect.” She smiled. “And yes, of course you’re going to sound static-y. Why shouldn’t you? Everyone else does. You’d just better hope in the middle of your speech that you don’t get one of those noises that sounds like a jet landing.”

  “Mary Anne!” I wailed. “How could you say that? Oh, I hope that doesn’t happen.”

  “It won’t,” she said. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. I know you’re nervous. I’m not thinking straight right now. I’m trying to remember whether Jell-O is supposed to chill overnight or just for three hours. And when am I supposed to add the fruit?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I know this home-ec stuff is nothing compared to Jake being lost. But if I don’t pass this course …”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “It’s all right. I’m sure my announcement will go okay. I’ll just cross my fingers and hope I don’t get that jet-engine sound.” We said good-bye, and I headed for my first class, shaking my head. Mary Anne is usually so sensitive! Normally she’d never say anything that might upset me. I couldn’t believe how seriously she was taking her home-ec class.

  Of course, the announcement went fine. Dawn told me later that she could hear every word, even though the static nearly drowned me out when I was explaining how the search parties would be organized.

  At lunchtime, my friends and I took turns staffing the sign-up table. Claudia had made a great-looking sign. MISING SINSE LAST NIGHT!! it said, in giant purple letters. (Claud’s not the world’s greatest speller, but who cares? Her signs are always beautiful.) She’d drawn a sketch of Jake, and underneath it she’d written, Help Us Finde Him!

  Lots of kids signed up. We told them to bring friends, too — and to tell their brothers and sisters. “We’ll meet right after school,” I said, over and over again. “At the playground.”

  The rest of the day crawled by. I could hardly sit still in math class, and social studies seemed more boring than ever. I couldn’t wait to be outside, looking for Jake.

  When school finally ended, Claudia and I practically ran over to her house. We went to her room and got busy on the phone. First I called Mrs. Kuhn to check in and let her know what we were planning. She had no news for me, and was beginning to sound kind of weepy. But I could tell she was holding herself together for Patsy and Laurel’s sake. They’d spent the day with her, and she said she’d been trying to keep them busy with one activity after another.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have kept them home from school,” she said. “But I wanted them near me today.” Before we hung up, we arranged for the girls to spend the night at my house that night. “If Jake isn’t found by then, I know I’ll be up all night again,” she said. “And the police will be here, too. I think the girls need to get a good night’s sleep.”

  Then Claud and I took turns calling a whole bunch of the parents we sit for, checking to make sure it was all right for their kids to join the search. And then, since it was almost time to meet everyone, we ran over to the elementary school.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how many kids were at the playground. I hadn’t been prepared for such a crowd. But Claudia and Mary Anne helped me divide the kids into teams, with at least one BSC member or older kid on each team. Then we figured out which part of the neighborhood each team should cover. It didn’t take long. In a few minutes, teams set off in different directions and the playground was nearly empty again.

  I was on a team with Stacey, David Michael, Matt and Haley Braddock, and Charlotte Johanssen. We started walking, following the route Jake would have taken home from the playground. We called for Jake every few steps.

  “How were Laurel and Patsy this morning?” I asked Stacey.

  “Hanging in there,” she said. “I think they’re scared, though. And Patsy keeps insisting she saw her dad last week. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Wow,” I said. “She said the same thing to me before Jake even disappeared. I wonder if we should tell the police about that.”

  “I already did,” said Stacey. “Or, anyway, I told Mrs. Kuhn. She was going to tell the police. But she didn’t seem to think it meant much. She thinks Patsy’s making it up because she misses her dad.”

  “She’s probably right,” I said. And then we dropped the subject and concentrated on looking for Jake.

  “JA-AKE!” I called.

  “Hey, Jake!” yelled David Michael.

  “Where are you, Jake?” shouted Stacey.

  We walked along, stopping to call in different directions. Everyone was yelling for Jake — everyone, that is, but Matt Braddock. He couldn’t call because he can’t really speak; he’s deaf, as I mentioned before. But I could see that he was looking as hard as he could. He peered into every backyard, searched the shadows beneath every bush, and checked out every garage we passed. He saw me watching him and he grinned at me. He signed a long sentence, and his sister Haley translated for me.

  “He says that since he can’t use his ears or his voice to help find Jake, he’s trying his best to use his eyes and his brain.”

  “You’re doing a great job,” I replied, and when Haley translated for him, he looked at me, shrugged, and signed again.

  “Not good enough until we find Jake,” Haley interpreted. I sighed and nodded.

  We kept on walking and looking and calling, but I was beginning to feel that the search-party idea had been ridiculous. After all, Jake could be anywhere. Anywhere in Stoneybrook or even anywhere in the world! How could a bunch of kids and their baby-sitters hope to locate one little boy who could be anywhere?

  “Don’t worry, Kristy,” said Stacey. She’d been walking beside me, and she must have seen my frown. “I know Jake will turn up soon.”

  “Yeah,” said Charlotte, who was, as usual, sticking close to Stacey. Those two have a really special relationship — it’s not just that Stacey is Charlotte’s favorite sitter, or that Charlotte is Stacey’s favorite kid — it’s almost like they’re sisters. “I know you’d find me if I were lost,” she went on, looking up at Stacey. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Stacey, who knows that Charlotte sometimes needs a lot of reas
surance. “I’d find you in a minute. I mean, in a nanosecond.”

  “A what?” I asked. Charlotte looked confused, too.

  “A nanosecond,” said Stacey. “It’s a really, really small amount of time. A billionth of a second. We learned about it in math class the other day.” She was smiling happily. Stacey just loves math. I don’t hate it, but I can’t relate to loving it.

  “A nanosecond,” I said. “Well, you learn something new every day.”

  “Very profound, Kristy,” said Stacey, giggling. Then she slapped her hand over her mouth. “What am I doing?” she said. “How can I be laughing when Jake is missing?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, I know it’s terrible that he’s missing, but it doesn’t mean the whole world has to come to a stop. We have to keep on doing our normal stuff — talking, and laughing, and going to school.”

  “Now you’re really getting profound,” said Stacey. “But you’re right. I just wish we could do our normal stuff and find Jake.”

  Charlotte had been looking back and forth from me to Stacey as we talked. “I want to be profound,” she said suddenly. “What is profound, anyway?”

  Stacey and I cracked up, and then stopped laughing when we saw that Charlotte looked hurt. “We’re not laughing at you, Char,” said Stacey. “I just think you might want to wait a few years before you get profound. It’s not important for eight-year-old kids to have really deep, heavy thoughts all the time.”

  “That’s what it means?” asked Charlotte. “I’ll wait.”

  Stacey and I were laughing again, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Matt Braddock, and as soon as I looked at him, he started to sign really fast. I tried to follow what he was saying (I know a little sign language) but there was no way I could keep up. Matt looked awfully excited. I glanced over at Haley. “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “He says he just remembered something,” she replied. “He says there’s this shortcut that Jake sometimes takes when he’s walking home from school. Jake showed it to him one day after a Krushers’ practice.”

  Matt doesn’t go to Stoneybrook Elementary, so he wouldn’t normally walk home with Jake. He goes to a special school for the deaf, in Stamford.

  “Matt says he thinks there’s a big drainage ditch — you know, with a pipe in it? — along the way,” Haley went on. “He started to wonder if maybe Jake —”

  “If Jake could be stuck in the pipe?” I asked, excited. “Oh, my lord! He could have crawled in there to get out of the rain, and then fallen asleep and not found out that he was stuck until he woke up!”

  Haley told Matt what I’d said. He nodded emphatically, and signed some more. “Or maybe the pipe leads into a sewer or something, and Jake is wandering around underground!” Haley looked terrified as she translated.

  I kind of doubted that Jake was lost in a network of underground tunnels (that sounded a little farfetched), but if there was even a chance Jake was stuck in the pipe, I wanted to check it out as soon as I could. “Let’s go!” I said. “Haley, ask Matt to lead us there.”

  We took off at a trot, following Matt. He led us through someone’s backyard, over a small fence, and behind another house. We emerged on a quiet street and ran down it until we came to a vacant lot with a sign in front of it, advertising a new house that was about to be built.

  “Where’s the ditch?” I asked Matt. Haley didn’t even have to translate. Matt understood what I was asking, and he pointed toward the back of the lot. We ran to a pipe, lying on its side in the mud. I could only see one opening, and it was just the right size for a boy to crawl into.

  “Look!” said Charlotte, pointing at the ground near the ditch.

  David Michael squatted down next to her. “Footprints!” he said.

  “And they’re not grown-up footprints, either!” said Haley, who had run over to look at them. “Maybe they’re Jake’s!”

  My heart was beating fast. I looked at the small footprints — it appeared that someone who had been wearing sneakers had been walking around near the pipe — and then I bent down and peered into the pipe’s opening. I half expected to see Jake peering back at me.

  “Jake!” I yelled into the pipe.

  “— ake … ake … ake,” came the echo. And, just as I heard the echo, I saw daylight at the other end of the pipe, way off. That’s when I knew that the pipe was empty. I stood up and looked down the length of the pipe from above. I saw it snake through the ditch until it was hidden in some undergrowth. But it wasn’t that long. And it didn’t go underground. And no little boy was hiding in it.

  I shook my head. “He isn’t in there,” I said.

  “But maybe he was in there for a while,” said David Michael.

  “Right,” said Charlotte. “And then maybe he got out and went somewhere else! Let’s follow these footprints.”

  I looked at Stacey and shrugged. “We might as well,” I said. I had decided the footprints were too small to be Jake’s, but we had nothing to lose by trying. I gave Matt a hug around the shoulders as we left the vacant lot. “It was a good idea,” I said. Once again, he didn’t need a translator to know what I had said. He signed back, and I didn’t need one either.

  “Not good enough,” he was saying.

  We followed the footprints until they disappeared when the person who made them stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the vacant lot. Then we continued along Jake’s shortcut until we came out on the Kuhns’ street. And there was Mary Anne, leading another group of searchers: the Pike triplets, Becca Ramsey, and a girl I didn’t recognize.

  “Any luck?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be.

  “None,” she said. “We’ve been calling and calling, but we haven’t seen a sign of Jake anywhere. I’m so worried about him!”

  Mary Anne looked as if she were about to cry.

  “And now I have to quit and go home,” she said. “I have to figure out what went wrong with that recipe today. Mrs. Ploof is giving me only one more chance to get it right. If I mess up again, that could be it.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Stacey and I will make sure the kids get home safely. There’s only another hour of daylight, anyway.”

  After Mary Anne left, Stacey and I decided to keep the kids busy searching the immediate neighborhood until it started to get dark. As we walked past the Kuhns’ house, I noticed two police cars parked in front of it. I thought about how Mrs. Kuhn must be feeling as she watched another day come to an end with Jake still missing. I had had such high hopes of finding him, too. It was so frustrating to look and look and still not have anything to report.

  Finally, when the streetlights started to come on, Stacey and I realized it was time to quit for the day. We walked the kids to their homes, and then I went to Stacey’s to call my house and ask for a ride. Charlie picked me up half an hour later.

  Patsy and Laurel were eating dinner with my family when I got home.

  “We decided not to wait for you,” said my mom. “But there’s a plate of food for you in the oven.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” I said. Mom looked as if she wanted to ask how the search had gone, but when she saw my face I guess she decided against it. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Patsy and Laurel, so I waited until later to talk with her.

  When the girls were tucked in bed, I sat down with my mom and told her about our unsuccessful search. Then she told me some news.

  “Caroline called. The police think Harry Kuhn may be in Mexico, believe it or not.”

  Mexico! “Is Jake with him?” I asked.

  “They don’t know,” she said. “They’re trying to track him down, but it may take a while. I guess he’s out in the country where there aren’t any phones.”

  I felt like crying. I’d been searching every nook and cranny of my own little town — and Jake might be thousands of miles away. Would we ever find him?

  “Hi, Bart? It’s me, Kristy,” I said into the phone later that evening. “Could you — I mean,
would you like to — um, why don’t you come over for a little while?” I was having a hard time issuing the invitation. But I felt I needed to be with Bart for awhile. He’d been with me when I last saw Jake. He knew how worried I was and he was worried, too. I just didn’t want him to think that I was dependent on him or something.

  “Sure, Kristy,” said Bart. “I’d love to. I was hoping that you’d call.”

  I barely heard him since I was so tangled up in my own feelings. But finally his words registered. “You would? You were?” I said. “Well, great. Come over whenever you can.” I knew we wouldn’t have much time to ourselves, since everybody in my family was home that night, including Karen and Andrew, who had arrived for the weekend. But I figured it would be good to see him, anyway.

  Bart showed up about forty-five minutes later. I was in my room, trying to concentrate on my math homework, but I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. All I could think about was Jake. Where was he? Who was he with? Was he safe?

  “Kristy!” my mom called from the bottom of the stairs. “Bart’s here.”

  I threw down my pencil, glad to give up on trying to figure out what “X” equaled. And when I got downstairs and saw Bart waiting for me in the hall, I felt great. I realized that calling him had been the right thing to do.

  “How are you?” he asked, putting his arm around my shoulders and giving me a little squeeze. It wasn’t exactly a hug, since my mother and Karen were standing right there, but it made me feel as if he cared about me.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I mean, I’m not really okay, but I’m okay, you know?” I blushed. I was babbling.

  “I know,” he said, smiling. “I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way.”

  “Let’s go into the den,” I said. “We can put on some tapes and hang out for a while.” I led the way, detouring through the kitchen to pick up some pretzels and pour us each a Coke.

  I turned on some music — nothing too loud, but nothing too mushy and romantic, either. Then I sat on the couch with Bart. “It still seems so unreal, doesn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, that Jake is missing.”