Want to Go Private? (20 page)

CHAPTER 24
LILY
DECEMBER 9 9:30 A.M.

I flat-out refused to go to school when I heard the FBI agents were coming this morning. Mom didn’t put up too much of a fight. It’s not like she’s going to work. Only Dad is machine enough to try to get work done while Abby is missing. He actually complained to Mom about this happening so close to the end of the tax year and all the extra pressure that puts on him. I’m thinking, like, there’s actually a
good time
for your daughter to run off with some stranger she met online?

Abby definitely takes after Dad. They’re both crazy. I’m glad everyone always tells me I’m more like Mom.

I’m watching stupid toddler cartoons when the doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it,” I yell, but Mom’s there before me. She lets in a woman in a pantsuit with her hair twisted up in a bun, and a dark-suited guy with a buzz cut. They flash their badges, and introduce themselves as special agents Saunders (the lady) and Nisco (the guy) from the FBI.

Mom does her Martha Stewart thing but they turn her down. They want to get right down to business. Dad emerges from his study looking even more cruddy than he did yesterday, if that’s
possible. His eyes are red from lack of sleep and staring at his computer screen trying to figure out other people’s tax blunders.

“We wanted to bring you up to speed with where we are in the investigation,” Agent Nisco says. “The police brought Abby’s computer to our CART guys —”

“That’s the Computer Analysis and Response Team,” explains Agent Pantsuit. “We’re big into acronyms at the FBI.”

“Right,” Agent Nisco continues. “They were able to get a list of all the sites Abby’s visited, and because we have a case of a missing minor, my boss was able to issue what we call an administrative subpoena for all but one of those sites, which allows us to get access to her accounts and see her activity.”

“So did you find out where she went?” Dad asks.

“Unfortunately, that’s where we ran into problems,” Agent Saunders explains. “This ChezTeen.com site that Abby’s been active on is relatively new — we hadn’t even heard of it.”

“Neither had I,” Mom says. “I knew about Facebook and MySpace and I knew she had an MSN account, but I didn’t know anything about this ChezTeen thing. Did you, Lily?”

“I think I set up an account on there, but my friends are on Facebook mostly, so I never used it.”

“Even though it’s an English language site, the servers are located outside of the United States, in the Ukraine,” Agent Nisco tells us. “So it’s out of our jurisdiction. Unfortunately, it doesn’t require an e-mail address to register, so we couldn’t use Abby’s Gmail account to request a password reset.”

“It’s not that we can’t get the information,” Agent Pantsuit says, seeing Dad about to blow his top. “It’s that we have to go through diplomatic channels, which takes longer, and in these cases, time is something that isn’t on our side.”

Her words stun us into silence and as if to rub it in, the only sound is the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall.

Agent Nisco breaks into my scared slide show of all the ways this guy could be hurting Abby, right at this very moment. “We were able to request a password hint and we need you to brainstorm anything you think could be Abby’s password,” he says. “Make us a list. We know her user name from the police interviews with …” He consults his notes. “Faith Wilson. But if we can get that password …”

“What’s the hint?” Mom asks.

The agents glance at each other. “It’s ‘Abby loves,’” Agent Nisco says.

“That could be anything from emo music to chocolate to this Luke Redmond guy,” I say. “It’s no help at all.”

“It’s not Luke Redmond. We’ve already tried. That’s why we need the help of the people who know Abby best,” Agent Nisco says.

“In the meantime, we’re following up another lead,” Agent Saunders tells us. “We found an e-mail in which Abby exchanged photos with the man we suspect she left with.”

Somehow, even more than the lady seeing her getting into the car at the mall, this seems to bring it home to Mom and Dad that Abby actually left home to be with an Internet Creep.

“Oh goodness, Abby, no!” Mom cries.

My father pales. “So you know who this guy is now?”

“Unfortunately, most of these predators are smarter than that,” Agent Saunders says, sighing. “They’re practiced at avoiding detection. We were able to track the IP address the e-mail was sent from to a computer in a public library in South Boston. Our agents in Massachusetts are investigating.”

Dad’s shoulders sag, and he looks a hundred years old again.

“But we did get the picture off of Abby’s computer,” Agent Nisco says, taking a photocopy from the manila folder in front of him.

I lean over Mom’s shoulder to look, and see a youngish-looking guy in a Red Sox hat that hides part of his face. He looks so … normal. Like an everyday kind of guy you might see on the street or at the mall. I guess I was expecting to see some really old guy with bad teeth and greasy hair, wearing a trench coat or something. Someone whose looks just scream out
I’m a pervert who likes underage girls
.

Suddenly, Dad’s fist crashes down on the table, right in the middle of the guy’s face, making us all jump.

“The goddamn son of a bitch! I’ll kill him! I swear if he harms one hair on Abby’s head, I will rip him to pieces!”

I’ve never seen my dad like this before and it scares me to tears. Mom pulls me onto her lap, even though she usually tells me that I’m too big for that.

She strokes my hair and says, “It’s okay, Lily. Daddy’s just upset because he’s worried about Abby.”

But her hand is shaking as it surfs the waves in my hair, which confirms the sick feeling I have in my stomach — everything is so
not
okay. And I don’t know if it ever will be again.

CHAPTER 25
BILLY
DECEMBER 9 1:30 P.M.

When I saw the thing about Abby on the news last night, I thought I was going to puke up Mom’s chili all over the family room carpet. I can’t stand the thought that some guy might be hurting her. And sometimes, I can’t help thinking the worst — that she might be … dead, and lying somewhere cold and alone, abandoned in some remote place like a piece of trash that someone forgot. That makes me want to scream and punch things and scratch my skin till it bleeds so that people will see how much it hurts.

Because no one gets it. No one understands how it killed me when I got to science and she wasn’t there. Call me a sucker, but even when she said no to that date, I was still happier knowing I’d see her again in class the next day. This morning, her empty chair was like a sore that hurt every time I looked at it.

But it’s what “they” say that’s worse. Who’s
they
? Every
fricking
body, that’s who.
Everyone’s
got an opinion about Abby, even if they never spoke to her before, and
everyone’s
opinion is bad. She’s
stupid
. She’s a
freak
. She’s
easy
. What the hell do
they
know?
They
never went on a date with her. Abby’s not like that. She’s one of the smartest, prettiest girls I know.

But …
but … BUT … then
WHY?!
Why the hell did she disappear like this?
It’s enough to make a guy crazy. It’s definitely made this one into a certifiable Grade-A Nut.

I finally catch up with Abby’s friend, Faith, in the hallway after lunch.

“Yo, Faith — uh, have you … I mean, is there any news about …”

Faith looks as crazy as I feel. Like she’s barely slept and she’s trying to hold herself together through classes that don’t make a whole lot of sense when a person you care about is missing.

“Hey, Billy. My mom just left me a voice mail. Abby’s parents asked me to come over after school to help them try to think of Abby’s ChezTeen password. Something about the FBI not being able to get into her account because the servers are overseas?”

My lunch starts doing the salsa in my stomach.

“The FBI?”

“Yeah, they’re involved now. Because some lady at the mall saw Abby getting into a car and it had out-of-state plates. And because of the computer stuff.”

Gut punch.

“Wait. She
got into a car? By choice
? With who? Was it that Luke Redmond guy?”

The thought makes me want to punch something. Hard. Multiple times. Until I don’t feel anything anymore.

“I don’t know. And it’s making me crazy.”

“I just don’t get
why
. I mean, I can understand if she didn’t want to go out with
me
, but …”

Faith’s eyes fill with tears.

“Oh, Billy, I wish she’d just gone out with you. I told her she should. I don’t understand why, either….”

She’s really crying now, and I can’t help but put my arm around her. She puts her head on my shoulder and I feel her tears making a wet patch on my sweater.

“And now everyone is saying all this horrible stuff about her, and I’m afraid she won’t
want
to come back,” Faith sobs.

“We’ll just have to make sure Abby knows we’re there for her,” I tell Faith, even though my own feelings are pretty mixed up right now. I’m still reeling from the thought that Abby willingly went in a car with some stranger. With some other guy. “If she comes back.”

I suddenly realize what I said.

“I mean,
when
Abby comes back. Because she has to come back, right? We can’t live with it any other way.”

Faith hugs me and nods.

“
When
Abs comes back,” she says, wiping the tears from her cheek with her hand.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?”

This sophomore, who I think is one of the drama geeks, is standing a few feet away with his arms crossed, looking seriously pissed. Faith jumps away from me like I’ve suddenly developed a contagious disease.

“Oh … hey, Ted. We were just talking about Abby. Billy went out with her and he’s really worried, like me.”

Ted gives us both a
Yeah, right
look.

“So worried that he’s hitting on her best friend in the meantime?”

Faith turns bright red and opens her mouth like she’s going to bawl him out. But then she just turns on her heel and stalks away.

I look at him and say, “Dude, you have got this
so
wrong. So very,
very
wrong.” Glancing at Faith’s stiff back as she marches down the hall, I add, “If she’s your girlfriend, you owe her an apology. A
really
big one. And if I were you, I’d give it to her
PDQ
.”

CHAPTER 26
FAITH
DECEMBER 9 3:45 P.M.

I told Grace to give my apologies for missing stage crew. Even though I know “the show must go on,” if there’s something I can do to help find Abby, I’ve got to do that first. People — and in “people” I’m including Ted, who I can’t
believe
was such a Grade-A jerk about Billy — will just have to understand. No matter what they think about Abby’s decision to go off with some Internet guy.

I can’t believe the difference in Mr. Johnston when I walk into their kitchen. He looks like Abby’s grandfather instead of her father. Mrs. Johnston isn’t looking so hot, either. I don’t even think she’s wearing makeup. Abby would laugh so hard at that. She always jokes about how her mom doesn’t even get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without makeup.
See, Abby? Look what you’ve done? You’ve even managed
to
make your mom forget
to
put her face on
.

Lily rushes over to hug me. Lily, who normally just thinks of me as her weird older sister’s weird friend. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight, just like I would Abby. Now I
know
the world is completely upside down and back to front.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Mrs. Johnston asks. “We’ve
got plenty of leftover Chinese. I guess we weren’t as hungry as we thought we were.”

“No, we ate,” Mom says. “In fact, I made you these cookies to keep you going.”

“Oh, Elaine, you didn’t have to,” Mrs. Johnston says. But then she hugs Mom and starts to cry.

“Kate, honey, Abby will be okay,” Mom says, hugging Mrs. Johnston and swallowing her own tears. “We’ve all been praying for her, and I just
know
that she’ll come home safe.”

Lily sits on a kitchen chair, kind of hunched over, looking so scared and miserable that I forget how normally she’s such a pain in the butt and I rub her back just the way I would Abby’s.

“You sit down, Katie,” Mom says. “Let me make you a cup of tea. Rick, do you want one? Lily?”

Mrs. Johnston sinks into the nearest chair and rests her head in her hands.

“So what can we do besides make tea?” I ask. “You need us to try and think of what Abby’s password might be?”

“We’ve been trying for what feels like
forever
and had total Password Fail,” Lily says, passing me a yellow pad covered with word and number combinations that have been crossed out.

“No offense, Lily, but seriously, Abby’s bound to pick something
you
wouldn’t be able to figure out,” I tell her.

I was afraid Lily would be upset, but she actually half smiles.

“Yeah. Too right.”

“We thought that if anyone might be able to guess, it would be you, Faith,” Mr. Johnston says. “You’re Abby’s best friend.”

Not that I’ve been such a great friend recently
.

The guilt almost crushes me, especially sitting here at Abby’s kitchen table with her parents and Lily.

“I’ll try my best.”

Mrs. Johnston explains how the ChezTeen.com servers are in the Ukraine so it’s going to take the FBI much longer to get access to the critical information that they think is in Abby’s account than it would be if everything were in the United States. Unless … unless, we can figure out her password.

I slide the pad across the table toward me and ask Lily to pass me a pen.

“So how do we do this? Do I make a list and then you give it to the FBI? Or do we try them?”

“We’ve been trying them,” Mr. Johnston says. “One of us has been writing down the password and another’s been typing it in.”

“Okay. I’ll start writing if you want.”

“Let’s do it,” he says, grabbing one of Mom’s cookies and pulling his laptop toward him.

An hour later, every single thing I’ve thought of has failed and I’m struggling to think of anything else.

“Why don’t you take a break, Faith?” Mrs. Johnston says. “You’ve had a long day and you look tired.” She looks at my mom. “I know Faith has school tomorrow, Elaine, and homework. Whenever you think she needs to go home, just say the —”

“NO!” I protest.

Mom gives me a look, like,
Who’s the Mom around here
?

“I mean,
please
, Mom, I really want to stay longer. I want to help. I
need
to help. I’m sure I’ll figure this out soon. I just … Maybe … maybe if I go look in Abby’s room, it’ll give me some ideas.”

I stand up and head for the stairs.

“We’ll stay for another hour, Faith,” Mom says. “I know you
want to help, but you do have school tomorrow. And you’ve got homework, honey. Getting behind on your own schoolwork isn’t going to help Abby.”

Would Mrs. Johnston make Abby go home in an hour if
I
were missing? Or does Mom not think I can do this? Or is she just lying to Mrs. Johnston because really she thinks this is all hopeless and Abby isn’t coming home at all?

It’s so strange to be sitting in Abby’s room. I’ve been here, like, a zillion times before; I know it almost as well as my own. But to be here without Abby, not knowing where she is or if she’s even … alive and okay … that makes me start crying again. I lie on Abby’s bed, my head on her pillow, and when I breathe in I can just catch her familiar smell.
Abs, please, where are you? Come back. I promise I’ll be a better friend if you’ll come back safely
.

This isn’t helping Abby. I’ve got to pull myself together.

I grab a tissue from the box on Abby’s bedside table and wipe my eyes. Okay, I’m going to start from the bed and walk around the room, looking at everything to see if it jogs my memory about things that Abby has said or done, anything that she might have decided to use as a password.

Her closet is so neat compared to mine. Abby always gives me a hard time about how messy I am. My mom jokes that we’re like the two guys on this old TV show,
The Odd Couple
, where Felix was a neat freak and Oscar was a slob. After that, sometimes I’d call Abby Felix and she’d call me Oscar.

I write down
Felix, Oscar
and
Odd Couple
on the yellow pad. Abby signed up for ChezTeen before everything started going weird between us. Maybe, just maybe, it was our friendship she loved. It’s a long shot, but we might as well try everything.

Abby’s desk is as neat as her closet. I open and close drawers, feeling like a snoop. Nothing strikes me. There’s a bulletin board above her desk with pictures of us pinned up from as far back as second grade. Abby and me dressed as salt and pepper shakers on Halloween in third grade. The two of us winning the three-legged race on Field Day in second grade. We practiced so hard for that, racing up and down the backyard with our legs tied together, falling over constantly at first until we got our rhythm, but giggling as we lay on the grass to catch our breath, looking for shapes in the clouds overhead.

She’s saved the ticket from the first time our parents took us to New York City to see a Broadway show,
The Lion King
, the movie ticket from when we saw
Lord of the Rings
— Abby loved Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, but I was crushing on Orlando Bloom as Legolas — and the one from when we went to see The Fray in concert. I hear their music in my head:

My heart thuds heavily in my chest. I don’t care what Mom says. I’ll stay up all night if that’s what it takes.

OMG, Abby, I just hope I know how to save your life
.

I have fifty-nine more ideas written on the pad when I go back downstairs to the kitchen.

“Here goes nothing,” I say, handing them to Mr. Johnston.

“We really should go,” Mom says. “I’ve got the other kids at home and you have school tomorrow.”

“Mom, please,” I beg. “Let me at least see if any of these work. It’s not like I’m going to be able to concentrate on homework anyway.”

She exchanges glances with Mrs. Johnston.

“Okay,” Mom sighs. “Fingers crossed, Rick.”

Mr. Johnston starts typing in passwords. As they’re rejected, he crosses them off the list on the pad.

My heart sinks as more and more words get crossed off. I start praying.
Please, let one of them work so we can find Abby. Please, please, please
…

Lily’s half asleep at the end of the table, her head resting on her arms. Mrs. Johnston stares at the light fixture. I can’t even imagine what’s going through her head.

“Holy … Faith, you did it!” Mr. Johnston shouts. “We’re in!!”

Lily wakes up and rubs her eyes. Mrs. Johnston jumps up and looks over his shoulder.

“What one was it?” I ask.

“Aragorn,” he says. His eyes are bright, suddenly, instead of tired and dull, and you can see the hope radiating from him. “Kate, get the FBI on the line.”

I want to stay. I don’t want to move from this kitchen until Abby walks back through the door. But after Mr. Johnston talks to the FBI, he explains that they have to go through the chat logs on Abby’s account and start tracking down this Luke guy she’s gone off with.

So Mom makes me go home. But I lie in bed all night thinking about Abby, until I see the dawn light through my window shade.