See Jane Run (5 page)

“Truancy, gambling on campus, just being my charming self.”

Riley
cocked
an
eyebrow. “Oooh, you're a regular James Dean rebel.”

JD
looked
impressed. “You know James Dean?”

Riley
crossed
her
arms
in
front
of
her
chest. “Why is that such
a surprise?”

“I don't know. I figured your vintage would be Johnny Depp, pre-Jack Sparrow.”

Riley
feigned
confusion. “Johnny who now?”

JD
laughed, and her wall of ice was beginning to melt. “My parents and I like to watch old movies,” she said. “We pop a bunch of popcorn, grab a couple of Cokes, and watch till our eyes cross—or until my dad starts with his impressions. He does a mean Jimmy Stewart.”

“Really?”

“No, it's awful.”

Riley
and
JD
spent
the
next
week
whispering
until
the
detention
monitor
glared
or
threatened
them. She liked his wild streak, his carelessness. On the last day, he waved to her.

“See you, Spence.”

“You act like we're never going to see each other again.”

He
shrugged. “We both know how this works.”

Riley
watched
him
disappear
into
a
sea
of
black
leather
and
spiky
hair. She turned, linking arms with her own friends—preppy shirts, Hawthorne High ribbons, and straight As.

“Ugh, JD,” Shelby whispered.

“Back off, Shel. He's actually kind of cool.”

Shelby crossed her arms in front of her chest and cocked out one hip, her eyes zeroing in on JD. “They have you doing detention here on Saturdays now too?”

“Actually, I'm here for the tour,” JD replied.

“Cool,” Riley said.

Shelby gaped next to her. “Seriously?”

Riley felt color wash her cheeks. She glanced up, but JD was unaffected. “Always nice to chat with you, Shelby. Ry.” He gave her a curt nod then turned on his heel. Riley watched him go, thinking that from the back, he looked way less felon, way more runway model.

“Earth to Ry!” Shelby started snapping her fingers a millimeter from Riley's nose. “We're getting on the bus.”

Riley stumbled out of her reverie and hiked her backpack up. Shelby laced an arm through hers and dragged her toward the bus.

“So you know what? I've decided to use this opportunity to break out of my shell. I'm going to make friends. I'm going to talk to boys.”

“My little Shelby Webber? Talk to boys?”

Riley could see the fear wash over Shelby's face. “OK, maybe I should pretend to be a foreign exchange student on this trip. You know, practice as someone else before I break out the Shelby.”

Riley cocked a brow. “From what country? You've had three years of Spanish and still can only ask for two Cokes or how much that sombrero is.”

Riley glanced over her shoulder when she heard JD's low laugh. He followed them on the bus, taking a seat across from them as they got situated in the back.

“So, JD, are you taking any of the classes on the tour?” Riley asked casually.

JD's eyes flicked over Riley's. “Nah. I got in to Berkeley.”

Shelby launched herself across the bus seat and over Riley's lap. “
You're
going to Berkeley? Like the school?”

JD nodded, his eyes still on Riley. “Yeah. Early admissions.” He narrowed his eyes at her, and Riley felt herself flush.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. You just don't seem like the Hudson type.”

Riley's eyebrows rose. “The Hudson type?”

“Preppy. Boring.”

Shelby leaned over Riley a second time. “I'll have you know that Riley's dad is a preppy, boring Hudson alum.”

“Undergrad,” Riley clarified.

Shelby waggled her eyebrows as she yanked her tablet from her purse. “Your dad is borderline hot now, Ry. I bet he was smokin' in college.”

“That's disgusting on so many levels, Shelbs.”

Shelby ignored her, swiping until the Hudson University Alumni Association home page popped up.

“So, JD, if you already got into Berkeley, what are you doing on this trip?” Riley asked.

JD kicked his boots up on the empty bus seat next to him and knotted his hands behind his head. “Let's just say this bus will get me where I need to go.”

Riley snaked her arms in front of her chest. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Shelby broke away from her tablet. “He's probably planning a bank heist. Hey! Maybe he can help you with your new life of crime!”

JD's eyebrows went up, disappearing into a shock of his dark hair. “Sweet little Riley Spencer is engulfed in a life of crime? What an interesting development.”

“It's nothing,” Riley said, glaring at Shelby.

Shelby went back to her tablet, wrinkling her nose and frowning. “Did your dad take your mother's last name by any chance?”

“Of course not. So, JD—”

Shelby nudged her. “I'm serious, Ry.”

Riley straightened. “What are you talking about?”

Shelby sucked in a deep breath and turned the tablet to face Riley. “Because according to the alumni association, the student registry, and the yearbook, Glen Spencer never existed at Hudson.”

“You probably spelled his name wrong. Or got the dates wrong. His class probably isn't even online anyway.”

“It goes all the way back to class of 1980.”

Riley took the tablet and began a new search. “Why would my dad lie about being an undergrad at a stupid university?”

“Right,” JD laughed from his seat. “If I was going to lie about school, I'd tell everyone I went to Harvard or Oxford.”

Shelby cocked an eyebrow. “Or Berkeley?”

“What's your problem, Shelby?”

Riley heard JD snapping and Shelby quipping back, but she couldn't concentrate on the words. Her fingers were moving, constantly typing and retyping her father's name until the string of letters looked like gobbledygook before her eyes. But the search result was always the same:
Your
search
for
Glen Morgan Spencer
yielded
0 results.

She handed Shelby the tablet, unease settling in her gut. Shelby's eyes were soft, questioning, and Riley shrugged, feeling the need to explain.

“It's nothing,” she said. “Probably just a mix-up at the registrar's office or something.”

“Yeah, totally.” Shelby nodded emphatically and slid the tablet into her bag, popping in her ear buds instead.

Riley glanced around the dimly lit bus as her classmates' voices started to fade. Kids started to settle in, the rhythmic whir of the engine lulling most to sleep, but Riley's eyes were wide open, her thoughts buzzing like hornets in her mind.

My
dad
wasn't at Hudson?

“Hey,” JD said, pulling Riley out of her thoughts. “So you're planning on going to Hudson, then?”

Riley paused, biting the inside of her cheek. “Where is the bus taking you?”

“Um, OK.” JD leaned forward and dropped his voice. “I'm going to take the train to Rosemont.” He flipped his iPad around so the screen faced Riley. “Going to see my favorite band.”

“Oh my God! That's right! You love Death to Sea Monkeys too! How far is Rosemont?”

“It's a forty-minute train ride from Boone.”

Out of nowhere, a thought popped into Riley's head. Rosemont was a forty-minute ride from Boone. Boone was a two-hour ride to the California-Oregon border.

And Granite Cay, Jane Elizabeth O'Leary's birth town, was just across that border.

Suddenly, Riley's palms itched. The birth certificate burned in her bag where she—on a whim—had stashed it.

That morning, Riley piled her bag with vintage tees and her usual cache of jeans, a Mom-approved stash of in-case-of-hospital clean underwear and bras, and, for some reason, the birth certificate. She had sat at her desk and rubbed her finger over the onionskin sheet, over the names typed in more than a decade ago.
Who
was
baby
Jane
Elizabeth
and
where
was
she
now?
The question pulled at her. She had traced her tiny footprints and handprints and felt a weird sense of longing, of connection to the baby—and the baby's parents—who had come into her world, floating around like balloons without strings.

Riley looked from Shelby—who had her ear buds in and was bopping in her seat—to JD.
Sometimes
I
feel
like
I
have
no
connection, no root, nothing tying me to my life, to my brand-new bedroom in our brand-new tract home—to anything,
Riley thought. She felt as disconnected and as forgotten as baby Jane, tucked away in a baby book somewhere, dumped in a box, forgotten until unearthed by accident. Tears stung at the back of her eyes.

“So what do you do? You can't just walk out.” She jutted her head toward the front of the bus where Ms. Carter sat, her profile lit by the greyish light of her iPad. “Carter counts.”

“Or miscounts.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“If you're not here for the first head count, she's not going to be missing you for the one later. She doesn't look like a teacher who's lost students, and we get a couple of extra hours to really explore. Why? You gonna come with me?”

Riley glanced out the bus window, her mother's admonitions ringing through her head. She could get lost or murdered or kidnapped—

Her stomach turned to liquid.

What if she already
had
been kidnapped?

Riley turned back to JD. “So how do you make Carter mess up her count?”

• • •

Riley's heart sped up as the bus slowed down. Shelby's head was lolled to the side, her temple against Riley's shoulder, her lips slightly parted as she snored. Riley glanced down at her then gave her a small shake.

“Shelby!”

“What?”

Riley bit her bottom lip. She never lied to Shelby, never kept anything from her. “I'm not going to go on the tour.”

Shelby gaped. “What are you talking about?”

“Jane.”

Shelby rolled her eyes. “What about her?”

Riley didn't know what to say. “I'm going to find her.”

“You looked online. What else is there?”

She pressed her sweaty palms against her jeans. “There was a missing poster on my computer last night.”

Shelby's mouth dropped open, but she didn't say anything.

“I have to find out about Jane, Shelby. I have to know—if she's me.”

“So go home and ask your parents. Ask to see your birth certificate—
after
we get home. What can you do about it now anyway? It's not like you're going to find Jane O'Leary in the university library or something.”

Riley felt butterflies flapping in her stomach. “We're going to be near the train station. I can take the train to Oregon. To Granite Cay.”

Shelby's eyes narrowed. “That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

Riley felt suddenly deflated. Then baby Jane, smiling, slapping the water in her dream, flashed in her mind. “Will you at least cover for me?”

Shelby blew out a long sigh. “Do you even have a plan?”

Riley held up the folded birth certificate and even without opening it, she knew that Shelby knew exactly what it was.

“And if it's true? If you're really Jane and your parents stole you, what then?”

Riley's stomach turned over, the bile itching the back of her throat. She didn't want to consider what happened after; she just wanted to find Jane Elizabeth.

• • •

Riley clutched her backpack on her lap, waiting for the bus to lurch to a stop. Mrs. Carter clutched the bus seats as she walked, silently counting. Riley got up the second the teacher turned and started talking to someone.

“Where are you going?” Shelby hissed, one hand on the hem of Riley's sweatshirt.

Riley shook her off. “So Carter doesn't count me. Tell her my mom drove me in, but I'll be riding the bus back.”

Generally, the security at Hawthorne High—and for all school events—was top notch. But Mrs. Carter had recently been divorced, lost seventy pounds, and dyed her hair an awful shade of burnt sienna that completely clashed with her too-small eyes. Everyone knew she had her sights set on blowing off Hawthorne and would have, had a teacher not been killed last year. Things were shuffled, teachers were moved, and Mrs. Carter stayed on, greeting her students every morning with unmasked disdain. On Mondays, she made an effort, and Riley and her class were weighed down with SAT vocab lists and reading assignments. By Friday, she was racking up points on her Words with Friends game, and as long as her students shuffled their papers to the front of the room and kept decently quiet, they were pretty much on their own.

If
Mrs. Carter didn't want us in her classroom,
Riley reasoned,
she
sure
as
hell
didn't want us on this bus trip.