CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The rain beat on the windshield as Z turned in to the subdivision where Gabby lived, trying to avoid skidding. Since they’d left the cabin, it had begun to storm and now it was pouring so hard that Gabby could barely see a few feet ahead.

“It’s the one at the end of the block,” Gabby said, pointing to a split-level house almost identical to all the others on the street.

Z pulled her Range Rover into the driveway.

“I guess I’ll … see you soon?” Gabby said tentatively. After what they had all just gone through together, Gabby couldn’t help feeling a connection to Z, but it had been a long time since she’d really had a friend.

“Yup,” Z answered, then gave Gabby a serious look. “And you’re right. You definitely got us the biggest lead of the day.”

“I didn’t say —”

“I eavesdropped on your brain.” She gave Gabby an expectant look.

Gabby had had that thought in the car, but it didn’t sound nearly as conceited in her head as it sounded coming out of Z’s mouth. Gabby had just been proud of herself that she found something useful for the case.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Z backtracked, seeing the look on Gabby’s face. “I just can’t really control this thing yet. But seriously, it was a great lead. Whatever you like to do to celebrate, you should go do it tonight.”

“Homework?” Gabby said, half smiling.

Z groaned. “Me, too. The FBI should give us a ‘get out of school free’ pass for this. How are we supposed to concentrate on homework when we’re doing something a million times more important?”

Gabby was thinking the same thing. Patricia said they needed to sit tight for at least the next twenty-four hours while the FBI lab tested the bracelet to see if there was any physical evidence on it. But Gabby couldn’t turn off her thoughts for the next twenty-four hours about what had happened at the Cytology office and the cabin.

“Maybe you can get a vision of all the homework answers,” Z quipped.

Gabby laughed and got out of the car. She zipped up her jacket, the image of the bracelet so etched in her mind that she barely felt the torrent of rain pouring down on her.

She slipped her key into the lock and immediately heard her father call out. “Who’s there?” There was a surprising edge to his voice.

“Just me,” Gabby said.

Her parents looked up at her in shock. They were at the dining room table with her younger sister, Nadia, surrounded by flyers, markers and poster board.

“You’re just getting home now?” Her dad glanced at her mother for an explanation.

“I didn’t realize she wasn’t here,” her mom said. “When I got back from gymnastics with Nadia, I just assumed she was in her room.”

Not that Gabby could blame them. Usually she did come home at precisely 3:47 each day, retreating to the sanctuary of her bedroom where she could perform her rituals without Nadia’s prying eyes or the disheartened stares of her parents. After more than a year of attempting to “cure” her with possible solutions from fruitless drug regimens to hypnotherapists, they’d ultimately given up.

Now, they were expecting an explanation.

“I … uh,” Gabby faltered. Thankfully, her eight-year-old sister piped up.

“We’re making posters for Twinkie,” Nadia announced, dressed in her leotard and track pants. She pulled out a red permanent marker and meticulously outlined the photo of a cat in the middle of the poster.

Nadia’s beloved mackerel tabby had gone missing two days earlier, sending her parents into a level of stress they normally reserved for Nadia’s gymnastics meets. The same kind of stress they used to have over Gabby’s ice-skating competitions.

“So where were you?” her mother prodded.

“Just … doing homework at the library.” Gabby was surprised at how easily the lie rolled off her tongue.

Both her parents were stunned into silence. She braced herself for the additional questions and wished she had planned some kind of explanation for her sudden change in behavior.

“I think we’re going to find Twinkie tomorrow,” her little sister said, immediately drawing her parents’ attention back.

“Sweetie, even if we don’t find Twinkie right away, it’s important you don’t let it ruin your mental preparation for the meet on Friday,” her mother said.

Gabby’s father nodded seriously. “We need those scores to be in the top fifteen percent.”

“Do you think it’s worth it to do a session with Frank?” her mother wondered. Because every fourth-grader needed a sports psychologist.

It was the first time in almost two years that she’d come home at a time other than exactly 3:47, and her parents had already moved on. The lack of interest was a new low, even for them.

Gabby walked to the staircase. She’d always thought if she could just get better, if she could shake off the tentacles of her OCD, her parents would begin to care about her again. That things would go back to the way they used to be. But now she was realizing that they didn’t forgive weakness. She should have remembered that from her figure- skating days. The competitions where Gabby did well, placing somewhere in the top three, meant she could look out at the crowds and see her mom beaming proudly. When she’d emerge after the medals were handed out, her parents would wrap her into tight hugs, and her father would always suggest stopping for ice cream on the way home.

All the fawning made it that much worse when she didn’t place.

Her mom and dad weren’t monsters. They didn’t yell at her from the stands or scream on the way to the car like some of the other ice-skating parents. But the gaping absence of affection was almost worse. As if she had ceased to be their daughter. In fact, once her mother had even said as much. After a meet where Gabby had fallen right in the middle of her first combination, a rookie mistake to say the least, her mother had looked at her through the rearview mirror in the car and insisted, “That wasn’t my daughter out there today. Gabby Dahl has known how to stick a single axel since she was six.”

Gabby knew her mother was trying to make her feel better. Acting as though some alien had momentarily inhabited Gabby’s body was supposed to give her confidence for the next time. She wasn’t the one who had fallen. It was an impostor’s fault. Instead, all Gabby had heard was that she wasn’t their daughter. She hadn’t performed well enough to earn that connection. A few weeks later, the OCD had started, with small compulsions at first, building slowly and steadily, until it had finally overtaken her life.

And now, even though she’d made such an obvious stride by deviating from her routine, her parents still wanted nothing to do with her. Now that her veneer of perfection had been shattered by years of odd behavior, her parents would always see Gabby as damaged goods, irredeemable, not worth the number of gym meets and billable hours it would take away from them to try again. The realization stung more than she thought it would. She imagined telling her parents that she was working with the FBI. They wouldn’t believe her — that much was for sure. But would they even care?

Gabby shut the door to her small pink-and-white room filled with old skating trophies and the novels she ingested like candy. For the last few years, reading had been her only escape, the only time she felt free from OCD.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she was rereading for the third time, beckoned from her nightstand, but after the long afternoon at Cytology and the cabin, Gabby still had hours of homework to do. She flipped open her chemistry textbook to the page on acid-based reactions. Now that she didn’t have to focus on highlighting sentences in multiples of three, studying was going to take half the time. She tried to focus on her chemistry book. Acid-based reactions. Acid-based reactions. She read the three words over and over until she came to a definitive conclusion.

Who cared about acid-based reactions?

An unfamiliar sound jolted Gabby away from chemistry: her cell phone. She’d barely used it before the past few days. She pulled it from the side pocket of her backpack to find the caller ID read JUSTIN.

“Hello,” she answered, hoping her voice didn’t sound as nervous as she felt. Back in junior high, she’d spent hours on the phone with her friends, giggling about boys they liked and whatever happened at school that day. But now the only person she could really count as a “friend” at school was Ali Hanuman, whose parents didn’t allow her to socialize after school hours lest she stray from her path to becoming valedictorian.

“Uh, Gabby … hey …” Justin said.

“Hey.”

Justin cleared his throat. “I think I might have dialed you by accident.”

Gabby was surprised to feel a burst of disappointment. “Oh, okay, then.”

“But, uh … since I have you on the phone, how are you? With everything that happened this afternoon. Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine.” The vision she’d had was haunting her, but otherwise … yeah. “I’m still kind of in shock with everything else, though. It’s hard for me to believe this is really happening.”

“Me, too,” Justin admitted. “It’s kind of cool, but kind of …”

“Crazy,” Gabby supplied.

“Gotta go, bye,” Justin abruptly announced. As the phone beeped in Gabby’s ear, indicating the call had ended, she wondered if she’d somehow said the wrong thing.

She was starting to think she would never finish her chemistry when her phone beeped.

Sorry. My mom just got home. Had to deal.

Was she supposed to text something back? She didn’t want him to think she was ignoring him.

After a few false starts, Gabby settled on OK.

It was probably the lamest text message in the history of texts, but at least it was a reply.

Her phone beeped almost instantaneously. I’ll see you tomorrow.

A full smile spread across her face. Sounds good.