I start to reach for the door handle and glance over at him one last time. Our eyes meet and there’s that flash again.
Sean takes a deep breath.
“I had a brother once,” he says. His hair flops over one eye and he pushes it away. “But he died.”
My breath catches in my throat. The rain starts pounding harder now, and there is thunder in the distance.
“What?” I blink.
I watch his mouth.
“My brother died,” he says again. “So that’s how I know about that stuff I said.”
I raise my hand up to my mouth. “Oh God.”
He smiles this sad half smile. “It was a long time ago.” He looks down, looks back up, his face is flushed. “If there was even the slightest chance that I could see him again, that there was something I could do to make that possible, I would never stop trying. Ever. This is fate, Ellie, me meeting you, I think. Because I don’t have a chance to get my brother back. Nothing I do can change the fact that he’s gone. But maybe what I’m supposed to do now is help you.” Sean pauses. “Do you think that sounds crazy?”
I shake my head. I feel something inside me warming up.
“So should I come in, then?” he says. “Maybe see the drawing?”
I hesitate for only the tiniest shred of a second, enough time for me to look through all that rain at the front windows of our building and remember that my mother is working the night shift tonight, which means she is gone now and won’t be home until early in the morning.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That would be great.”
Ten
I realize, as we walk into my room, that this is the first time a guy has ever been up here.
I try and imagine how it must look to Sean, messy unmade bed, a dresser, a nightstand, a desk, a few items of clothing tossed around on the floor. It probably looks like no one spends much time in here, which is true since I’m almost always at Amanda’s.
I sit on my bed and Sean sits in my desk chair and I continue explaining Nina’s drawing. “So then I called the number on there but the guy didn’t know anything, didn’t even remember her. And the guy at the Mothership says he just found the book in the basement and it was practically empty when I was down there, and even if there were any more clues there, they’re all burned up now.”
Sean reaches out his hand and I give him the drawing. My fingertips brush against his, just for a moment. I am very aware of it. Sean holds the drawing close to his face and stares. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t blink, it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. And I’m wondering if he’s beginning to regret offering to help me since he is probably quickly realizing how futile this is.
“No pressure,” I say. “I mean, or…” And then I stop because Sean’s mouth has just dropped open, and then this huge grin spreads over his face. “Ellie,” he says slowly. His eyes are shining. “Did you notice this?” He jumps off the chair and lands next to me on the bed. He flips the drawing over so I can see the fake credit card printed on the back.
“What about it?” My heart is pounding.
“This is a cardboard credit card.” He taps it with his finger.
I nod, blinking. “Right.”
“And do you know where people get these? With credit card offers in the mail…” Sean is nodding at me, trying to lead me to his conclusion. “So…”
I shake my head slowly. “So…”
“So, your sister turned eighteen only a couple months before she left, right? Credit card companies have this list, of all the people in America who are about to turn eighteen. So they can start sending them credit card offers right around their birthday and sucker them in.”
“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“Chances are your sister got a ton of credit card offers in the mail before she disappeared, right? So what if she actually applied for one?” He turns the card over and points to the bank’s name on the back. “Say from Bank of the USA? I bet we could sign into her account no problem since you’re her sister. All we’d need is her Social Security number, and then we’d probably just have to answer a bunch of random security questions and the answers would be things like your mom’s maiden name and other stuff you’d already know.”
“Oh,” I say. I try and force a smile.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a nice idea! And thanks for thinking of it!” I frown.
“You’re frowning,” he says.
“I just don’t think it’ll work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too easy.”
“But that,” Sean looks me straight in the eye, his mouth curled into a mischievous little smile, “is exactly why it’s going to.”
Three minutes later we’re in the spare bedroom, which I think of as Nina’s room even though Mom uses it for storage and we moved here after Nina was already gone. One of the only jokes I can remember my mother making in the last few years is one she made right after we moved in. She said, “Ellie, you know you’ve really made it when you’re so rich you have an entire room for just your shoes,” and then she opened the door and tossed in a pair of discount black flats that she said pinched her feet but the store wouldn’t take back because she’d already worn them. She meant this, of course, ironically. So now this is just where we keep all the stuff that has nowhere else to go—old tax returns and report cards and a lamp that was my grandmother’s that’s too nice to throw out but too depressing to display.
“So apparently I was a top-notch user of scissors in first grade,” I say, holding up a report card. I’m crouched down on the floor behind a big, green plastic box. “But occasionally I ate the paste.” I put the card back in the box, and keep digging. Sean is crouched down next to me looking over my shoulder.
“And you’ve had all your immunizations,” he says, nodding, “which is important.” He reaches down into the box. He picks up what looks like a small blue notebook. A passport. He opens it.
I look over his shoulder. It’s Nina’s. In the photo Nina’s about the same age that I am now. Her hair is pale pink hanging just above her jawline. She’s smirking, like she has a secret. I’ve never seen this picture before.
“I guess my mom must have tossed that in there when we moved from our old house,” I say. “Nina was already gone then.”
Sean is staring at it, then looks up at me and then back down at it. He’s shaking his head slowly, his face is flushed. “You look so much alike it’s insane. You could be twins.”
I look at the picture again. “You think?”
I don’t believe him, but I’m flattered, anyway.
“You ever think about dyeing your hair like that?” He taps Nina’s picture.
“Not really,” I say.
“It’d look good I bet.” Sean shrugs and hands me the passport. “You should keep this with you.” I slip it in my back pocket. “You never know when you’ll need to make a last-minute international getaway.”
I laugh and then look back down into the box I was searching through. A little dog is staring up at me, with a curly mustache under his nose and a giant beret on top of his head. “Bijou!” I say, and I feel myself start to smile at the memory. I pick up Nina’s drawing. I haven’t thought about Bijou in a very long time.
“What’s that?”
“A picture of our old dog,” I say. “Bijou.”
Sean is looking over my shoulder, grinning. “Bijou must have had incredible balance to keep such a big hat situated so perfectly on top of his head. Most dogs can’t do that.”
“Yes,” I say. “Well, most real dogs can’t, but a few imaginary ones can.”
Sean cocks his head to the side.
“We didn’t have an actual dog,” I say. “We were never allowed to get one. But we got the very best imaginary dog ever one summer.” I pause. “Nina got him for us.”
And Sean nods as though of course this makes perfect sense. He glances back down at the stack of papers in his hands and then before I can c
ontinue he’s shouting “Yes!” and holding out a piece of paper so I can see. “Ellie, look!”
It’s a photocopy of an insurance claim form. Sean begins to read it out loud. “On October twenty-third, two thousand-four, Nina Wrigley had a regular cleaning at the dentist, a check-up, and a set of X-rays…” Sean flips the form over and points to a spot right near the top where her Social Security number is written out neatly in my mother’s serious-looking handwriting. “There it is,” he says.
I stand up, suddenly breathless. “The computer’s downstairs.”
A minute later Sean and I are sitting side by side on the couch in my living room, waiting for my mother’s ancient 45-pound laptop to boot up.
“Looking at porn on this thing must be a bitch,” Sean says.
“Hello, Ellie.”
I turn around. My mother is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, in her bathrobe, drinking juice.
Oh shit.
“Mom,” I say. I can feel the blood rushing to my face.
She rubs her eyes, half smiles at me. I can’t tell if she’s smiling because she didn’t hear Sean’s porn comment, or because she did. My mom is a mystery sometimes. “I haven’t seen you in days.” She glances at Sean and raises one eyebrow. Sometimes she’s not a mystery at all.
“I’ve been sleeping at Amanda’s,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re sure they don’t mind you over there all the time?”
“They don’t.”
“Okay.” She nods, as though we haven’t had this conversation dozens of times before.
And then my mom just stands there, not even acknowledging the fact that there is another person beside me on the couch. She’s not being intentionally rude, she just doesn’t understand things like this sometimes. Like how people act. How people are supposed to act.
Sean stands up finally. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Sean.” He sticks out his hand.
My mother just stares at it. She looks him up and down. Then over to me on the couch. Then back to Sean. “Hello,” she says, awkwardly. “I’m Ellie’s mother.”
I put my hand in my pocket and touch the drawing, but I know I can’t show it to her. I wish I could.
“I thought you were working tonight,” I say.
“My schedule changed. I did an overnight last night instead. Got home an hour ago.”
“How were the babies?” I ask. I turn toward Sean. “My mom works at the neonatal ICU at the hospital.”
“Wow,” Sean says. “That must be crazy.”
“Preemie twins tonight,” she says. “Sixteen weeks early. They’re stable for now. But it’s hard to say what might happen later.” My mother shakes her head. There is a special kind of exhaustion my mother always carries around. It radiates off her. When I haven’t seen her for a few days, it’s all the more obvious. Being around it, I catch it, like a flu. It makes me feel like someone is sitting on my chest. It makes me want to go outside, somewhere light and loud with lots of other people.
“That’s awful,” I say.
“That’s life, I guess,” my mom says. And she shrugs and lets out a sigh.
When I was younger I would always beg her to take me to work, imagining all the cute little babies I’d get to play with, but she would never let me come with her. Once, when I was nine years old, Nina showed me a picture on the Internet of a tiny preemie, seventeen weeks early. “Mom worked with this baby,” Nina had told me. Its head reminded me of an apricot—small and covered in downy little hairs, and soft looking. Its tiny arms and legs as thick as my pointer finger. The baby’s skin was so translucent I could see each vein swirling underneath. According to the article that the picture was attached to, the baby only survived for three hours. Looking at this picture and knowing this filled me with an almost unbearable sadness that I didn’t understand at the time. I was sad not just for the baby, but for everyone in the entire world. This baby reminded me of something that we are all born knowing, but that if we’re lucky, we forget—the world doesn’t make sense, things just happen, often without any reason, and life isn’t fair, it was never supposed to be. I understood my mom in a different way after that.
“I guess I’m going to go back upstairs now,” she says. I watch her walk away in her bathrobe, clutching her mug.
“Hey, Mom?” I call out. For a second, one brief second, even though I know better, I consider telling her what’s really going on.
“Yeah, Ellie?” My mom turns back. Her shoulders are sagging slightly.
But I can’t tell her. I’m not going to. And I’m not sure if it’s for her sake, or for my own.
“Good night, Mom,” I say.
“Good night, Ellie,” my mom says. And then she’s gone.
“Your mom’s pretty cool,” Sean says. “Didn’t even mind that you have some random dude sitting here on the couch?”
“I’m not sure if ‘cool’ is the word I’d use exactly,” I say. “But thanks.”
“Better than my mom,” Sean says. He’s smirking. “Who is insane.”
I look down. The laptop’s finally booted up. Only when I hear the door to my mom’s room creak shut upstairs do I start typing.
I do a search and go to the bank’s website. It loads slowly, a picture of a man and a woman, sitting at a computer, each with a cup of coffee, smiling. My heart is pounding.
I click on customer login. There’s a tiny link under it.
Having trouble logging in? Forgot your username or password?
I click and am taken to another screen. Please answer these questions to access your account:
Account Holder’s Name? I type in N-I-N-A W-R-I-G-L-E-Y and press return. And then I suck in my breath, my heart pounding as the webpage reloads.
“If she doesn’t have an account, it’ll tell us, right?” I ask. But Sean doesn’t answer; we’re both staring at the screen.
A new screen has appeared, Primary Cardholder’s SSN?
“Does this mean she has an account? I think this must, right?” My voice sounds higher than normal, which is what happens when I’m freaking the fuck out.
“I think so,” Sean whispers.
I type in the number.
Date of birth? My hands are literally shaking.
Please answer the following four security questions.
“Almost in,” Sean whispers.
Mother’s maiden name?
R-A-I-N-E-R.
Name of first pet? When Nina was six, she got a hamster. I was too young to remember, but I remember hearing the story about how my dad took it back to the pet shop because it wouldn’t stop squeaking. His name was Squeekers spelled with two e’s and no a because she didn’t know how to spell squeak. I type in S-Q-U-E-E-K-E-R-S.
I hit return again. I feel like I’m about to vomit.
Name of elementary school?
E-A-S-T O-R-C-H-A-R-D E-L-E-M-E-N-T-A-R-Y.
The last question pops up.
Favorite song?
I start to smile. Nina’s favorite song is Happy Birthday.
I type it in. Hit return.
The screen goes white and a tiny globe spins in the upper right corner of the screen, and then a new message appears.
Welcome, Nina Wrigley.
“Holy fuck,” Sean says.
I click on billing history archive. There are only two charges.
One for $855 at Edge Sports in Edgebridge, Illinois, three weeks before she disappeared. And one for $11.90 at a place called Sweetie’s Diner in Pointview, Nebraska, a week after she was gone.
“Nebraska,” I say. “What the hell was she doing there?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe we should go and find out.”
I turn toward Sean.
Is he serious? He cocks his head toward the door.
I raise my eyebrows.
He grins.
Holy shit, I think he’s actually serious.
But can I really do this?
I stare down at the computer. Sean is
almost a complete stranger. But somehow I feel like I already know him. And he really seems to want to help me. And right now he’s the only person in my life who does. And I need to find Nina. And this might be my only chance…
I look at Sean again. He’s staring at me, smiling, nodding slightly.
I take a deep breath.
I nod back.
And that’s how it’s decided.
Eleven
The summer I was twelve my mother sent Nina and me to stay with our Great-aunt Cynthia at her beach house. Our mother had insisted it would be good for us to have a change of scenery, to get out in the sea air, and spend time with our aunt. “But what she really means,” Nina had told me, the night before we left, as she stuffed her old blue duffel bag with handfuls of tank tops, “is that it will be good for her to have us gone.”
“Seriously,” I had said, and rolled my eyes in agreement.
But secretly, I was thrilled about the trip. I loved my aunt’s weird house and the warm Dr. Peppers she kept in the pantry and the lemony soap in the bathroom and the fact that her house was so close to the beach that sand blew in under the door and one time we found a sand crab walking around the living room like he owned the place. But what I was most excited about was the promise of an entire summer of just me and Nina.
Nina complained a lot leading up to the trip, but everything changed after we boarded the train for our aunt’s house. We walked through the train car until we found two empty seats. Without speaking, Nina stopped, stood on her tiptoes, and pushed both our bags up into the racks. Then she turned toward me, gave me her crazy-looking Nina-grin and said, “Looks like it’s just you and me now, buddy,” and flopped down into her seat.
Suddenly she was back to her regular self. And when the ticket taker came by and said “tickets, please,” Nina turned toward me and winked like “check this out” and said to the ticket taker, in a flawless French accent, “Oh, but ov course, here arr our teeckets.” And the ticket taker, a nice-looking older gentleman, took the tickets and smiled, not the humoring smile of an adult who was on to her joke, but the smile of a man who thinks it’s charming that two French sisters were traveling together on his train.