Part 3 (2/2)

Yes, by all human measure it should have been exciting. It was the kind of thing that high school artists dreamed about. The kind of thing I had dreamed about, once.

But now, as I looked up at my paintings, I wondered if I could bring myself to sell one of them to a stranger. If you poured your soul into a painting and then gave that painting away, would that part of your soul be lost forever?

Then the second bell rang, and I sprinted down the hallway, existential questions driven out of my brain by the looming abomination called Trigonometry.

I had the door dream again that night. Only this time all the doors were locked, and try as I might I couldn't open any of them. I knew there was a key that I was supposed to have, but I couldn't find it. Had I owned it once, but lost it? Or never possessed it in the first place? The question seemed to matter, but I had no way to answer it.

I wandered the black plain for a long time before the dream finally faded.

Noise. In the distance. Subtle sound, barely above the threshold of hearing. Enough to wake you up only if your nerves were already stretched to the breaking point.

I sat up in bed and focused all my senses on the noise. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. The subtle rustling of fabric in motion. The creak of a wary footstep on wooden floors. Someone was moving around as carefully as possible, not wanting to be heard.

Heart pounding, I eased myself out of bed. Part of me wanted to hide from the unseen threat, or perhaps call for help, while the other part of me wanted to investigate, so that I would know what was going on before I woke up the whole family. Because if it turned out there wasn't really anything wrong, I would look pretty stupid shouting an alarm.

The latter instinct won out by just a hair, and so I eased my bedroom door open and slipped into the hallway, my bare feet silent on the carpeted floor.

Now I could see that there was a light on downstairs, somewhere at the far end of the house. A burglar would use a flashlight, I told myself, not turn on the light like that. It was mildly rea.s.suring.

I worked my way slowly down the stairs, trying to avoid the spots that I knew would creak the loudest. Once I got to the first floor I could see that the light was coming from the office. The door was half closed so I couldn't see who was inside, but I a.s.sumed it was someone who belonged here. Like I said: flashlight.

I walked to the door and pushed it open slightly. Just enough to see inside, not enough to draw attention.

It was Mom.

She was sitting at the desk with her back to the door, staring at a piece of paper. One of the file cabinet drawers was open, and I could see where a manila folder had been removed. A lump formed in my throat as I realized what folder it was.

I came up behind her, no longer trying to hide my presence. If she heard me, she gave no sign of it.

In her hand was the hospital doc.u.ment with my footprint on it. She was just staring at it. Not moving, hardly even breathing. Just staring. And I knew what she was thinking, as if I were inside her head. I could compare Jesse's footprint to this one. We'd know the truth, then. But what if she thinks I'm doing that because I don't really believe she's my daughter? That could hurt her in ways no DNA test would ever fix.

”Hey,” I whispered.

”Hey,” she whispered back.

I put my hand on her shoulder. ”It's okay, Mom.”

She nodded. ”I know.”

”No. Seriously. I mean, it's okay.”

Leaning on her for balance, I lifted up my right foot so she would look at it. And okay, call me an idiot for grabbing the bottle of indelible ink last night, when I was reaching for the washable stuff. What can I say? It was dark, and I was upset, and the labels were really small. But maybe G.o.d does have a purpose in everything, because when she looked down at the blue stain on the sole of my foot I could feel some of the tension go out of her body, and that wouldn't have happened if I'd been able to clean all the ink off.

”I take it you're my real kid,” she said.

”Yeah.” No need to share all my paranoid fantasies at this point; it wasn't that kind of moment. ”Looks like it.”

The corner of her mouth twitched as she shook her head: almost a smile. ”And here I thought I could get rid of you at last.”

I shook my head. ”Not gonna be that easy, Mom.”

We laughed a little, in a strange way that was almost like crying, and then she hugged me and said I should go back to sleep, because I had school in the morning. So I headed back up the stairs as she closed up the office, and as I entered my room I could see the light downstairs go out, leaving the house in darkness.

I was halfway to my bed before I realized someone was sitting on it. I jumped backward, startled, and felt a scream well up in my throat. But the figure was too small to be a burglar, and after a second my brain s.h.i.+fted into the proper gear, and I realized who it was.

”So,” Tommy said, ”You gonna tell me what's going on? Or do I have to keep spying on you and figure it out for myself?”

4.

MANa.s.sAS.

VIRGINIA.

I WOUND UP TELLING Tommy everything. Not just because I hungered to talk to someone who wouldn't think my fears were totally crazy-though there was that-but because I'd seen him go into spying mode before, and I didn't want to have to sweep my room for hidden cameras every night before I went to bed.

Try the internet, he suggested. As if every mystery in the universe could be reduced to a single web page, and all you had to do to gain spiritual enlightenment was plug the right search term into Google.

I tried the internet.

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