The Taking (The Taking 1)

Shit . . . nothing else. There was nothing after that.

A tear trickled down my cheek, only this time it wasn’t like when I’d been crying with Austin, and my dad didn’t try to force his arms around me. Maybe he should have, but he didn’t. He just stared at me.

We were at the exact same standstill we had been when we’d started. He believed and I didn’t, and I was sad because of who he’d become, and sad because I almost wished I could confirm one of his whacked-out ideas—something—to make it seem a little less . . .

Sad.

I stood there, holding my breath, when his eyes found mine. After a long, long moment, he blinked hard, and a pained expression crossed his face, and I was sure I saw him there—my old dad, buried behind the beard and sad, puppy dog eyes. “You’re right,” he finally admitted with a shaky breath, and I felt my shoulders and breath loosening, because he was still there. There was still hope for him. For us.

And then he spoke again, and he ruined everything. “I knew it was too much,” he said. “I knew I should’ve waited.”

I felt my own heartbeat pulse in my ears, right before my heart stopped.

“Dad, no . . .” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me all the same. He hadn’t given up on it at all. And it was then I knew the truth; he wasn’t in there anymore, in that husk of a body, not my dad. This was some other dad. Some replacement dad.

I thought I’d stopped crying, but I tasted the tears when I opened my mouth to say, “Just take me home.”

The minute I walked through the front door, my mom started questioning me, but she was the absolute last person I wanted to confide in. She was half the problem. If she hadn’t pushed my dad away in the first place, there was no way he would’ve ended up in that crap-ass trailer overflowing with star charts and hidden booze bottles. But instead of facing her like a grown-up, I opted for the more mature choice of running to my fake bedroom and locking myself inside. And by locking I mean pushing my nightstand in front of the door.

She at least had the decency not to shove her way inside, which she totally could have since my nightstand weighed like ten pounds.

Instead, she stood out in the hallway and spoke to me through the door, which is how it felt like she’d been talking to me ever since I’d been back—through a barrier.

Listening to her attempts to coax me out was almost worse than listening to my dad tell me about his online forums and how everyone on there agreed with him, that I was certainly-surely-most-definitely a victim of alien abduction. I pinched my eyes in an effort to suppress the headache my dad had given me with all his crazy talk and did my best to stop thinking about my father and what he’d become. I wondered if he’d ever, ever come back to me the way I’d come back to him.

I stayed quiet until, eventually, my mom gave up and went away.

When my new phone buzzed in my pocket, I regretted checking it almost the moment I did.

Can we please talk? the text from my dad read.

I’d never, in my entire life, ever avoided my dad before. I mean, yeah, maybe once or twice, when I didn’t want to go to practice or that one time when I got detention for texting in class. Or the times when I didn’t want to talk about which college I should go to.

But never like this. Never when I was afraid of hurting his feelings because I was sure he’d lost his freaking mind.

Suddenly I had a glimpse into what my mom must’ve gone through, and I hated it. I hated her for giving up on him, and hated myself for being on the brink of doing the same thing.

There was a first time for everything, I thought, ignoring his message. I knew I couldn’t put him off forever, but I wasn’t yet ready for another round of Kyra Meets E.T.

The worst part was, there were parts of his story that made sense. Maybe that would explain why I still had a bruise on my shin, or the reason I’d been wearing the same clothes when I woke up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip, or how my phone was still charged.

Or maybe I was starting to sound as whacked out as he did.

Why on earth would aliens have a charger for a Motorola Razr?

Every explanation left me more confused. More lost.

And more alone.

When the text from Tyler came in, I almost didn’t notice it because I’d been ignoring messages from my dad for hours. But when I finally saw who it was, I let myself forget all about unchanged dental records and crazy dads and prying moms, and everything else that had turned my day to total crap.

After what had happened in front of his house yesterday, I’d worried he might not want to be my friend anymore. And Tyler was pretty much the only friend I had. I couldn’t bear the idea of losing him before we even got a chance to really know each other.

I left you something. To make up for this morning, his text said.

This morning? I wondered. What about this morning?

But I remembered the last time he’d texted about leaving me something, and I was already leaping from my bed to find out what it was.

When I opened my window, I leaned all the way out, thinking that maybe he’d meant another chalk drawing on the road. But even as dusk fell I could see the road was the same as before.

And then I saw the small gift bag beneath my window.

Without going outside, I lowered myself far enough that my fingers brushed the top of it and snagged it before pulling myself back inside. When I closed the window, I sank to the floor and peeked into the bag.

It wasn’t anything elaborate, the bag. There was no tissue paper or sparkly shreds or anything, just a single piece of paper, rolled up and secured by an ordinary rubber band.