Want to Go Private? (16 page)

The margins of Abby’s notebook gradually did become filled with doodles and they were all of the same thing — a name that I’d never heard her mention, ever. Luke. She’d drawn
Abby and Luke
entwined with elaborate flowers and, yuck, she’d signed her name Abby Redmond like she was daydreaming about
marrying
the guy.
Abby
? Quickly, I paged through her other notebooks and found the same thing — pages of margin doodles devoted to this Luke Redmond guy.

“Mom? I don’t know … but … I think maybe Abby might have met someone.”

“What makes you think that?” she said, coming over.

I showed her the notebook.

“Who is this Luke Redmond person?” Mom asked. “Has Abby ever mentioned him to you?”

“Are you
kidding
?
Abby
talk to
me
about anything?”

Mom grabbed another of Abby’s notebooks and started flipping through the pages, all frantic.

“His name’s all over this one, too. Who
is
this guy? Why haven’t we ever heard about him?”

“Ask Faith. Maybe she knows.”

“I will. Right now.”

Mom grabbed the notebooks and we headed back to the kitchen. She showed Dad the doodles.

“Kate, do you think she … she wouldn’t …”

“Dammit, Rick, I don’t know! I don’t know anything right now!”

Now it was Mom who sounded like she was about to lose it.

“Give me the phone. I need to call the Wilsons again.”

When she got Faith on the phone, it turned out Faith had never heard of Luke, either. But apparently, Abby had been talking about some mystery guy she met at the church retreat she went to last summer in the Berkshires, and said maybe someday she and Faith could double-date.

“Do you think this church retreat person could be Luke Redmond?” Mom asked. “And, Faith … Abby didn’t take her books to school today. Do you think she might have … she didn’t say anything to you about … going to meet him, did she? You aren’t covering for her, are you? This is really serious.”

I think Mom would have been happy if Faith had just said, “Okay, yeah, I’m sorry, I was covering for her and this is where they went,” as long as it meant she knew where Abby was. But she didn’t. From what I could hear, Faith just started crying and said she wasn’t covering for Abby. She said she had no idea where Abby was, honest, and she wished like anything that she did. Mom’s face went as pale as death. I started crying, too.

“I’m sorry, Faith, you’re Abby’s best friend and I had to ask,” Mom said, a tremor in her voice. “Thanks for all your help. Tell your mom I’ll keep you posted.”

She hung up the phone and covered her face with her hands.

“That’s it,” Dad said. “I’m calling the police again.”

Mom didn’t argue with him this time, and that made me cry harder.

Dad called the number Mom had written down on the yellow pad by the phone.

“Is this Officer Carozza? My wife spoke to you earlier about our daughter, Abby. Abigail Johnston. She’s still missing and you need to get on it. I … What? … Yes, we’ve tried calling her friends. Nobody knows anything, other than she took the bus to school in the morning but wasn’t there for gym halfway through the day. No, she’s not answering her cell phone. Yes … I … You’ll come out now? Okay, we’re here…. Yes, of course, we’ll call right away if we hear from her. See you shortly.”

Dad gave him the address and hung up. He slumped into the nearest chair.

“He says he’ll be here in fifteen minutes. He’s going to need to ask us background questions about Abby.”

“Maybe I should make dinner,” Mom said, but she didn’t move and none of us were hungry anyway. We all just sat there, listening to the clock tick every never-ending second and watching the phone that didn’t ring with Abby’s call.

When the doorbell rang, it made me jump.

“I’ll get it,” I said, but Dad stopped me.

“You stay here, Lily,” he said. “Let me get this.”

I sank back into the chair, frustrated. I was sick of sitting around doing nothing. Mom was sitting there like a freaking zombie, staring at the phone as if she could will it to ring by using some mad psychic skills she’d never told us about. But the phone just hung there on the wall. No ringing. No Abby.

“Kate, this is Officer Carozza,” Dad said, coming into the kitchen with the police officer, who was complete with handcuffs and a gun on his belt. I’d never seen a real gun so close up before. It freaked me out.

“Good evening, ma’am,” Officer Carozza said.

Mom went from zombie to Martha Stewart mode in the blink of an eye.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she said.

“No, thank you. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Oh … Okay,” Mom said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Officer Carozza sat at the table and took out a notebook and pen.

He asked a bunch of stuff Mom and Dad had already said on the phone, like Abby’s full name and address and date of birth and stuff. I could tell that Dad was getting annoyed. I was wondering when the officer was going to get to the finding-Abby part myself.

“So Abigail normally comes home on time?” Officer Carozza asked.

“Always,” Mom said. “She’s very responsible. And if she were going to be late, she would call. She has a cell phone.”

“What’s her number?”

Mom gave him the number.

“You’ve tried calling it?”

“I’ve been trying constantly. It keeps going straight to voice mail, so it’s either turned off or the battery’s dead.”

“That’s too bad,” Officer Carozza said. “If it’s turned on, we can get the cell company to ping the phone to see which cell towers it’s responding to and get some idea of the child’s general location.”

“There’s no way to do it if the phone is off?” Dad asked. Knowing Dad, he probably thought there had to be some technological fix for everything.

“No, I’m afraid not. And you’ve called all her friends? Any likely place where she might be hanging out?”

“Yes, Officer,” Dad said. He was losing his struggle to remain patient. “I told you that on the phone.”

Mom gave Dad a
Shut up and don’t make the policeman mad
look, which Dad ignored.

“When did you realize Abigail was missing?”

I spoke up.

“Abby’s usually here when I get home from school,” I told him. “But when I got home —”

“What time was that?” Officer Carozza asked.

“About twenty past three,” I said. “Well, she wasn’t here. I didn’t freak out at first — I thought maybe she’d stayed after school and no one told me, because, like no one ever tells me anything, but when Mom called me at five to say she was on the way home, she didn’t know about Abby either.”

“To be honest, Officer, I was angry with her at first, because she’s supposed to be grounded,” Mom said.

“Grounded? So Abby was in trouble? Did you fight with her?”

“She got a D on her math test,” Mom said. “Math is one of her best subjects. It’s not like her to do so badly.”

“Abby is an honor student,” Dad bragged. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk about how smart Abby is, even when she might be off with some crazy person.

“So you’ve noticed some slippage in her grades recently?” Officer Carozza asked.

“I guess you could say that. Even more than we’d realized, Rick,” Mom said. “I just found a science test from eight weeks ago where she’d gotten a C-minus, hidden in the back of her closet.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dad said. He sounded really mad. If Abby were to walk in the door then, I’m not sure if he would
have been more relieved to see her home or mad about the science test.

“We thought it was because she was spending too much time chatting with her friends on her computer while she was supposed to be doing homework,” Mom explained. “So last night we took her laptop away.”

It was like suddenly someone turned on a switch inside Officer Carozza as he looked up from his notes.

“Does Abby spend a lot of time online?”

“Quite a bit, yes,” Mom said. “Enough that I think it was starting to affect her grades, at least.”

“Do you know what sites she was on? Did she have a MySpace or Facebook profile?”

“She definitely has a Facebook,” I said. “Not MySpace, I don’t think. But, Mom, tell him about the notebooks.”

“When Abby went to school this morning she left what looks like most of her schoolbooks on her desk,” Mom said. “But Lily says her backpack looked full, so … maybe … could she have been
planning
to go?”

“Kate, you can’t possibly believe that Abby would be stupid and irresponsible enough to run away —”

“Mr. Johnston, if she’s been engaging with an Internet predator, then nothing would surprise me,” Officer Carozza said. “I’m not saying that’s the case here, but whenever a kid has been active online we have to consider the possibility.”

“
Internet predator?
” Dad said, his face turning gray. “Abby? No …”

“She wrote some guy’s name in all her notebooks,” I blurted out, since no one else seemed to be telling Officer Carozza this and it seemed kinda like something he should know. “Look here.”

I opened her science notebook to the first of the Luke Redmond doodles, then turned a few pages for him so he could see that she had been carried away enough about the guy to experiment with “Abby Redmond” signatures.
Yuck
.

“It’s like this in her other notebooks, too.”

Officer Carozza stood up.

“I’m going to place a call to our Youth Division, and get one of our detectives out here as soon as possible. Did you say you had Abby’s computer?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “I’ve got it hidden up in my closet.”

“We’ll want to take that down to headquarters and get our forensic guys on it to see what sites Abby’s been on and who she’s been talking to. Do you know her passwords?”

“I … no. We don’t,” Mom said. “Is that a problem?”

“It depends on the site,” Officer Carozza said. “Let’s just go one step at a time.”

Mom ran upstairs to get Abby’s laptop. Dad looked at me across the table and said, “Lily, I want you to write down the password to every single Internet account you have right now.”

It was so unfair.

“What? Just because there’s some remote possibility that Abby might have been stupid enough to run off with some freak, you’re going to start snooping through my e-mails?”

“We recommend that all parents have their kids’ passwords. Just in case,” said Officer Carozza. “It’s a wild world out there.”

“Yeah, I know, we’ve been having the Internet Safety talk at school every year since, like, fourth grade or something. But I’m not like Abby. I only talk to my
friends
.”

He just gave me this
Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before
look, as Mom came into the kitchen with Abby’s laptop. She
turned it on, but as soon as it booted up, instead of the usual emo band picture, there was a password screen.

“Since when has Abby had a password to get into her computer?” Mom asked. “I’m sure she never used to have one — did she, Rick?”

Dad stared at the screen helplessly, shaking his head.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Johnston. The forensic team won’t have any trouble getting what we need off here, password or no password. That’s what they do.”

He took out a plastic bag and put Abby’s laptop in it, and got my dad to sign something.

“I’ll get this down to the computer forensic guys. I’m not sure what their caseload’s like at the moment. It might take them a little while to get to it. But it’ll definitely give us some clues about what we’re dealing with here. In the meantime, let us know if you hear anything. I also want to get a list from you, Mrs. Johnston, of the names and phone numbers of Abby’s close friends. I’ll have the officers on the next shift set up appointments for them to be interviewed at their homes first thing in the morning before they go to school. And you’ll probably get a call from one of our Youth Division detectives later tonight.”

“Officer, what are the chances …” Dad started to ask but then he covered his face with his hands.

My heart felt like it was playing hopscotch while I waited to hear the policeman’s answer.

“Mr. Johnston, we’ll do everything we can to bring Abby back home safely,” he said.

Which told us absolutely zip about her chances.

CHAPTER 14
FAITH
DECEMBER 7 11:30 P.M.

OMG, Abby, where are you?

I was just finishing my homework after getting home from stage crew when Mom called up to me saying that Mrs. Johnston was on the phone asking about Abby. I’d wondered where she was during gym, because she was on the bus this morning. She even sat next to me, which has been a touch-and-go thing lately. Some days she just smiles at me and then goes to sit by herself in an empty seat, like sitting by herself is better than sitting next to me, which really hurts, if you want to know the truth. I don’t know what’s going on with her. Well,
obviously
, I don’t know what’s going on with her, if she’s disappeared without saying a word to me about it. There was a time when we didn’t do anything without telling each other. And this … this is so … so
major
. It’s like I don’t know Abby anymore. How could she be so thoughtless?

It’s almost midnight now and I can’t sleep. I’m trying to remember everything and anything I can think of that might help them find Abby. Mrs. Johnston called about eleven p.m. and said a policeman is coming tomorrow morning to interview me. I’m nervous because I’ve never, ever in my whole life been
interviewed by the police before. I mean it’s not like I’ve done anything wrong, but still. It’s the
police
.

Instead of lying here tossing and turning, looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (Abby always loved those), I get out of bed and find a notebook and a pen. I’m going to make a list.

I think back to this morning when Abby got on the bus. I close my eyes and visualize her. What was she wearing? I remember thinking that she looked really pretty, like she’d made an effort. She’d put makeup on and everything, just like the first day of school. And she was wearing a cute sweater — green, I think, because it brought out that color in her eyes. Abby has those cool hazel eyes that change color depending on what she’s wearing.

What else? Okay, she sat next to me, which has been iffy recently, but I don’t think the police want to hear about all the ups and downs of our friendship. They’d probably get all “typical adolescent girl stuff” on me. But then I think of something else:

Because she did. Abby’s been such a … well, I hate to say it about my best friend, but I have to be honest here …
downer
since we started high school. But this morning she was, like, all bubbly and talkative and, oh, there’s another thing:

She said that things were going “really well” and maybe sometime Teddy and I could double-date with them. I got all excited because she’s been so secretive about the guy. I said, “Oh, Abs, that would be so cool. I’m dying to meet him!”

I wonder if she’s run away to meet him somewhere. But that would be so unlike Abby. It’s so dangerous and stupid. She’s
way
too smart for that. And she would have told me. I can’t believe she would do something that major without telling me.

But she
has
done something without telling me. She’s disappeared, without telling anyone, not even me, where she’s gone.
Why, Abby? Why? Couldn’t you have trusted me?

Then I remember how angry Abby was when I told Dad about her fainting at the auditions. How even though she said she forgave me, things weren’t quite the same between us after that.

I only did it because I was worried about you, Abby. Because you’re my best friend. Because I care
.

What else did we talk about? I’m trying to remember every word in case there is a hidden clue, but it was
morning
and I’m not fully functional till halfway through first period. Oh, yes —

I only noticed because when she sat down next to me she accidentally half put it on my leg and I made a joke about her having rocks in it. She said she had both her math and science books in it because she was studying for tests. I’m such an
idiot
! I should have realized she was lying about the math test because we both have Mr. Evans and we just
had
a test. There isn’t another one till right before Christmas break. I mean, Abby’s
a good student and all, but even she doesn’t start studying
this
far out. If only I’d realized.

But then what would I have done? Said, “Abs, you’re full of it? There’s no math test? What’s
really
in there?”

Would she have told me the truth? Would I have been able to stop her? If I’d been a better friend, could I have kept her safe?

Probably not. She probably would have just given me a dirty look and moved to another seat. Like I said, things have been kind of awkward between us recently. But I can’t help thinking that there must have been something I could have said or done or noticed that would have stopped her.

I fall asleep with the light on and my face planted on the notepad, the thought running on a constant loop in my head that, somehow, I might have been able to keep my friend safe.