The Taking (The Taking 1)

Scrounging through the change jar my mom still kept in the kitchen, I took a pocketful of quarters, deciding to walk the mile to the Gas ’n’ Sip. I almost changed my mind when I came outside and found Agent Truman’s business card on my front porch, but instead, I glanced in every possible direction, and then I tore it into tiny bits and tossed it in the trash bin on my way out. There was no way I was talking to anyone from the National Security Agency about my dad.

No one could ever convince me he had anything do with my disappearance, no matter how unhinged he might be.

The Gas ’n’ Sip had always been my favorite junk food dealer. When we were finally allowed to walk there on our own, Austin and I used to pool our allowance money and trek there during the summer for ice cream bars and Mountain Dews and packages of powdered doughnuts. When Austin got his license and started driving us to school, we’d stop there in the mornings for some of the strongest-brewed coffee in town. And sometimes for powdered doughnuts too.

I’d spent almost as much time at the Gas ’n’ Sip as I had on the softball fields.

Being here now, though, I felt like a total loser. A loser with a pocketful of change.

I strolled the aisles in record time, picking up some Red Vines, a Dr Pepper, and obviously doughnuts, before dropping my mountain of change on the counter. The cashier glared at me for not paying with bills or a debit card, but I ignored her, making it her problem to count it out while I perused the trashy magazines displayed in front.

Not much had changed in the gossip magazine since I’d been gone; a lot of the same celebrities hooking up and breaking up or checking into rehab. One of the less-reputable newspapers had a headline that made me think fleetingly of my dad because of how far-fetched it was: “Bat Boy Spotted Living in Cave in Arkansas.”

I glanced away guiltily when I realized just how far my opinion of my own father had fallen.

I noticed him then, the boy standing in the same aisle I’d been in just a moment earlier, rapt in concentration over the selection of Snickers and Milky Ways.

I might not have given him a second thought, or even a second glance, if it hadn’t been for his eyes. Eyes that I’d seen before.

Eyes that were strikingly copper colored.

He was the same boy from the bookstore. Not the hipster cashier who’d sold Tyler his magazine thing, but the one I’d run into on my way out. The darker-skinned boy who’d made me pause because of his unusual eyes.

He wasn’t looking at me now, though, and I tried to study his features without him noticing me. There wasn’t much else distinguishable about him. His hair was cut short, almost to his scalp, and his skin was smooth. His mouth and nose were normal size, and he was average height.

He was just . . . normal.

“Need a bag?”

I turned back around to face the lady at the cash register. “I . . . yeah, sure.” I took my change and the receipt, and after she bagged my loot I took that too.

And when I turned back around, the boy was gone.

As if my day couldn’t get any worse, it totally did.

When I got back, my former best friend was sitting on the front porch of my mom’s house, looking as if she belonged there and had been sitting there every day for the past five years without skipping a beat. If it hadn’t been for her oversize shoulder bag, an accessory she used to insist was for women who’d given up on trying to be sexy, I might have overlooked how . . . grown-up she looked.

Except that I probably wouldn’t have. Because she did. Look grown-up, I mean.

So, so much more than I did, standing there in my Sesame Street T-shirt and Chucks.

Her expression, though, that Cat expression of unbound exuberance that no one else in the whole wide world could emulate, hadn’t changed a bit. And when she saw me wandering up the sidewalk, that liveliness that I’d always loved about her lit up her entire face.

“Kyra!” she gasped, jumping to her feet as she clutched her grown-up purse in front of her.

“Cat? What the hell?” I gripped my plastic bag in front of me as if it could somehow shield me. I wasn’t sure what I was more indignant about, being blindsided by her visit or suddenly realizing just how different she was from the last time I’d seen her, and how exactly the same I was. “Shouldn’t you be at school? Shouldn’t you have called or something?”

She frowned. “I did. I called like a million times, Kyr. I left messages with your mom. Didn’t she tell you?”

I thought of the sticky-note rainbow my mom had left on my bed.

I glanced at my feet, shoving down the deluge of feelings I couldn’t sort through. I was more than just confused or hurt. Yes, she and Austin had betrayed me, but it was different seeing her in person now than it had been seeing Austin. It was harder, somehow, to ignore the years—the lifetime—that she’d just been Cat, my BFF. “You shouldn’t be here.” It was difficult to say, but I so wasn’t ready for this.

In the fringe of my vision, I saw her take a step closer. “What did you think, that I was gonna stay away? You’re my best friend, Kyra, and you’ve been gone for five whole years. I had to come.”

“Were,” I told her, looking up to find her watching me with those perfectly lined eyes. Even her shockingly blond hair looked less high school and more college. No longer ponytailed or braided with wild strands flying loose the way it had been when we’d been on the field. Now it fell in perfect waves that made it clear she’d made a skilled effort with it. “You were my best friend.”