Douglas popped in, too, for a few minutes, on his way to the kitchen to dump off some cereal bowls that had been in his room for a few weeks. He watched the movie for a little while, but then my mom caught him, and started asking if he felt all right. So he had to run back upstairs and hide.

Around eleven o'clock, I could have sworn I heard the purr of Rob Wilkins's Indian outside our house. But when I looked out the window, there was no one there. Wishful thinking, I guess. He was probably totally freaked-out by what an inexperienced kisser I am, and would never ask me out again.

Oh, well. His loss.

Sunday, after church, my dad dumped us off at Mastriani's to help with the brunch crowd. Well, me and Mike, anyway. Douglas doesn't have to go to church anymore. Instead, he stays home and reads comic books. I know Douglas is sick and all, but I wouldn't mind staying home on Sunday morning and reading comic books. Or watching TV, even. But I never tried to kill myself, so I have to go to church. And I have to go in a dress that matches my mother's.

It's enough to make a girl think there might not actually be a God.

The only thing that happened on Sunday was that we ran out of milk, and my mom sent me and Mike to the store to buy some. Mike let me drive on the way there, but then, on the way back, he totally wouldn't let me near the wheel. But you know, I think speed limits are really just suggestions. If there's nobody else on the road, you should be able to go as fast as you want. Unfortunately, Mike—and your friends at the Department of Motor Vehicles, who keep refusing to give me a license—disagree.

At the grocery store, I picked out a milk carton that had some kids on it I hadn't seen already, just as a kind of experiment. It was slotted to expire in two days, but the way Douglas chows, I knew we'd need more by tomorrow, anyway. Douglas can eat an entire family-size box of Cheerios in one sitting. It's a wonder he isn't fat. But he's always had a very high metabolism, like Mr. Goodhart.

Also at the grocery store, we ran into Claire Lippman. She was standing by the magazine rack, reading Cosmo, while her mom was rooting through the corn in the vegetable section. Mike stared at her longingly for a while. Finally I got sick of it, and poked him and said, "Just go talk to her, for God's sake."

Mike went, "Oh, right. About what?"

"Tell her you can't wait to see her in Endgame."

"What's that?"

"It's a play. She's in it. She plays Nell. She has to sit in a plastic trash can all during the show."

Mike looked at me. "How do you know? Since when are you in the drama club?"

I realized I had made a mistake. I said, "God, never mind. Come on, let's go."

Only Mike wouldn't go. He just kept staring at Claire. "I mean," he said, "it's not like she'd go with me. If I asked her. Why would she go with me? I don't even have a car."

"You could have bought a car," I said, "with all the money you earned working at the restaurant. But, no. You had to buy that stupid scanner."

"And a printer," Mike said. "And a Zip drive. And—"

"Oh, my God," I said. "Whatever. You can always borrow Dad's car."

"Yeah," Mike said. "A Volvo station wagon. Right. Come on. Let's go."

God. I can't believe boys. It's a wonder anybody gets married at all.

Nothing else much happened on Sunday, except that that night, while I was practicing, I thought I heard a motorcycle going down our street again. And this time, when I looked out my window, the one I can see the whole street on, I saw one set of tail lights, way down Lumley Lane, making the turn off onto Hunter.

Hey, it could have been Rob. You never know.

I went to bed all happy, thinking maybe a boy liked me. It's stupid that that's all it takes, sometimes, to make you happy. Thinking that someone likes you, I mean. It's especially stupid in light of what happened the next day. I had way bigger problems, it turned out, than whether or not a boy liked me.

Way bigger.



C H A P T E R

9

What happened was, the next day, Ruth drove me to school as usual. All during the drive, I couldn't get those kids out of my head. The kids on the side of the milk carton I'd bought the night before, I mean. Once again, I'd wakened with this feeling that I knew exactly where they were, down to the street address. It was getting creepy, let me tell you.

But just like on Friday and Saturday, I couldn't stop thinking about them. So, as soon as we got to school, and I managed to ditch Ruth, I gave old 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU a call. This time Rosemary answered.

"Hey, Rosemary," I said. "It's me, Jess. From Friday, remember?"

Rosemary sucked in her breath. "Jess!" she said. Actually, she practically screamed it in my ear. "Honey, where are you?"

I thought it was kind of funny that somebody who worked for 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU would be asking where I was. I went, "Well, right now I'm at school."

"People are looking for you, hon," Rosemary said. "Did you call here on Saturday?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"Hold on," Rosemary said. "I have to get my supervisor. I promised I would if you called back."

The late bell rang. I went, "Wait, Rosemary. I don't have time. I have to tell you about Jennie Lee Peters and Samantha Travers—"

"Jess," Rosemary said. "Honey, I don't think you understand. Haven't you looked at a newspaper? They found them. They found Sean and Olivia, exactly where you said they'd be. And the children you called about on Saturday—they found them, too. People here want to talk to you, honey. They want to know how you knew—"

So it had been Sean. It had been Sean, after all. Why had he told me his name was Sam? Why had he looked so scared when it was clear I was there to try to help him?

I said, in reply to Rosemary's question, "I don't know how I knew. Look, Rosemary, I'm gonna be late. Just let me tell you—"

"Here's my supervisor, Larry Barnes," Rosemary said. "Larry, it's her. It's Jess."

This man's voice came on over the phone. "Jess?" he said. "Is this Jess?"

"Look," I said. I was getting kind of scared. I mean, I just wanted to help out some missing kids. I didn't want to have to talk to Larry the supervisor. "Jennie Lee Peters is in Escondido, California." I rattled off the address really fast. "And Samantha Travers, it's kind of weird about her, but if you go down Rural Route 4, just outside of Wilmington, Alabama, you'll find her by this tree, this tree with a big rock next to it—"

"Jess," Larry said. "It's Jessica, isn't it? May I have your last name, Jess? And where you're calling from?"

I saw Mrs. Pitt, the Home EC teacher, waddling toward me. Mrs. Pitt totally hates me because of the time I poured a souffle over another kid's head in her class, even though he deserved it for asking me how it felt to have a retard for a brother. Mrs. Pitt would not hesitate to write me up.

"Gotta go," I said, and hung up.

But it didn't matter. Mrs. Pitt was like, "Jessica Mastriani, what are you doing out of class?" And then she wrote me up.

Thanks a lot, Mrs. Pitt. I'd like to record my gratitude for your caring and understanding right here in my statement, which, I understand, will be made public someday, so that everyone in the whole world will know just how fine a teacher you are.

At lunch, I went to see Mr. Goodhart about being written up. He said all the usual stuff about how I need to start applying myself more, and how I'm never going to get into college at this rate, etc. After he gave me another week's detention for my own good, I asked him if he had any newspapers, because I had to do a current event for U.S. History.

This was a total lie, of course. I just wanted to see if Rosemary was right.

Mr. Goodhart gave me a copy of USA Today. I sat down in the waiting area and looked all through it. There were many entertaining stories about celebrities doing foolish things that distracted me, but finally I found it, this story in the "Nation" section, about an anonymous caller who had contacted 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU and told them the exact location of four children, one of whom had been missing from his home for seven years.

Sean.

I stared at the article. Me, I kept thinking. I was the anonymous caller. I was in the newspaper. A national newspaper.

The National Organization for Missing Children wanted to know who I was, so they could extend their thanks.

There was also, it turned out, a substantial reward for finding Olivia Marie D'Amato. Ten thousand bucks, to be exact.

Ten thousand bucks. You could get a heck of a motorcycle for ten thousand bucks.

But then, on the heels of that thought came another: I can't take money for doing what I'd done. I mean, I never paid much attention in church, but one thing that had managed to sink in was the fact that you're supposed to do nice things for people. You don't do them because you expect to get paid for them. You do it because it's the right thing to do. Like punching Jeff Day, for instance. That had been the right thing to do. Accepting reward money for doing the right thing … well, that just seemed wrong to me.

Since I didn't want any lousy reward—and since I didn't want my picture in USA Today—I decided not to call NOMC. I mean, it wasn't as if I really wanted anyone to know about this thing I could do. I was enough of a reject at school already. If people found out about this, I'd end up like Carrie, or something, with pig blood all over me. Who needed the hassle?

Besides, the last thing my family could survive was another crisis. My mother hadn't even begun to get over what had happened to Douglas. Although I suspect finding out your kid is psychic is better than finding out he's schizophrenic, it still adds up to one thing: Not Normal. All my mother has ever wanted was to have a normal family.