Found

CHAPTER 19

When I arrived at the hospital, Ema and Rachel met me by the elevator. Ema looked at me warily.

“What time did practice end?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Rachel could see the tension, but she wisely let it go. “Come on. We can all go in.”

“I thought it was only one of us at a time.”

“New nurse, new rule,” Rachel said. “Today’s said it was okay.”

Rachel led the way. I fell in behind her with Ema, who kept her eyes focused straight ahead.

“What?” I asked her.

“It’s late.”

“So?”

“So where were you?”

“Basketball.”

“That ended hours ago,” Ema said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Ema kept walking.

“I have to report in to you wherever I’m going?”

“Only when you say you’re going to meet me.”

“I lost track of time. I had practice and we went to Buck’s dad’s gym and then, I don’t know, we went to Pizzaiola.”

She stopped. “You went with them for pizza?”

“Them. They’re my teammates, Ema. Don’t you get that?”

She just shook her head.

“What now?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said.

“They’re my teammates. I don’t have to hate them.”

“I didn’t say you had to.”

“But?”

“But nothing, Mickey. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said.

We reached Spoon’s room. He sat up in bed with that wonderful, dopey smile on his face. “Hey, Mickey, did you tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

“That I’m meant for great things.”

“Wait,” I said, “you heard that?”

“I heard everything.”

“So the whole time Bat Lady was here…”

“I was awake, yep.”

Rachel gasped. “She was here? In this room?”

Ema stared daggers at me. Great. Now that I got the basketball team to stop with the stares, Ema had picked up the habit.

“Yep,” Spoon said. “She pretended to be a nurse. She said I was meant for great things.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Rachel. “Impressed?”

I looked at Ema. “I was going to tell you at lunch,” I said to her, “but then Troy came by…”

“That’s okay,” Rachel said, though I hadn’t been talking to her. I think that she knew. I think that she was trying to save me. “So what did she say?”

I filled them in on the Bat Lady’s visit. When I finished, Rachel said, “So now we know for certain. We have to find Jared Lowell.”

I nodded. Ema didn’t. She had stopped staring daggers. Now she just looked plain hurt. Part of me understood. Part of me was getting a little annoyed.

“The question is,” Rachel continued, “how?”

Spoon cleared his throat. “That’s where I come in.”

We all turned to him. He clicked a button on his laptop. “I have just sent you all my most recent file on Jared Lowell. I managed to get into his Farnsworth School files. He’s a good student, by the way. Top of his class. But more important, I got both his dorm address and course schedule. You’ll also find a campus map in the attachment.” Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. “With this information, it shouldn’t be hard to find him.”

“The campus is in Connecticut,” Rachel said.

“I know.”

“So how are we going to get up there?”

“Oh,” Spoon said, “Mickey drives.”

“Not legally,” Ema said.

“And I can’t just drive up to Connecticut,” I said. “It’s wrong to do it locally, but it would be way too risky to go that far without a license. Plus my uncle has confiscated all the car keys.”

“You could take the bus,” Spoon said. He was typing on the laptop. “Let’s see. Grab the four-four-one on Northfield Avenue and change in Newark.” He listed some morning departure times. “You could take a taxi from there.”

“So when do we go?” I asked.

“No school tomorrow,” Ema said. “Teacher conference. It’ll be our best chance.”

I would need to be back by 4:00 P.M. for basketball practice, but I didn’t feel the need to tell her that right now. A phone buzzed. It was Rachel’s. She took a look at her screen and frowned. I couldn’t help it. I wondered whether it was Troy.

“It’s my dad,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Ever since my mom died…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. We all understood.

“He wants to know where I am,” she said. “I better go.”

Rachel pocketed her phone and hoisted up her backpack. “It’ll be tough for me to get away tomorrow. Dad wants to take me out to breakfast and then maybe to visit my grandmother.”

“You don’t have to explain,” I said.

“We can handle this,” Ema added.

“Might need someone back here anyway,” I said. “Just in case.”

I had no idea what I meant by that, but it sounded good, like we were giving her something to do. But Ema was right. We didn’t need three of us going up there anyway.

We said our good-byes and Rachel walked out the door. When she was gone, Spoon looked up at me and said, “We can work on two things at the same time, Mickey.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Bat Lady talked to you about Luther.”

I said nothing.

“Luther is the guy in that photograph you gave me, right?”

“Right.”

“Your Butcher?” Ema asked.

I nodded.

“So your dad was like us,” Spoon said. “He rescued kids for Abeona.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you know?”

“No,” I said. “Or maybe I suspected, I don’t know.”

“I don’t get it,” Ema said. “If your father rescued Luther, why would he now be trying to hurt you?”

“Simple,” Spoon said.

“How’s that?”

“Luther must not have wanted to be rescued.”

I looked at Ema. She looked at me.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I yet,” Spoon said. “But Bat Lady said sometimes things go wrong. I started to think about it. I remember reading about Stockholm syndrome. You know what that is?”

I had a vague idea, but I let him tell us.

“You start liking your captives. You don’t know it’s wrong anymore. Or I was reading about kids with really bad parents-parents who hurt them-but they still want to stay with them. So maybe this Luther was like that. Maybe Luther didn’t want to be rescued.”

I glanced at Ema. “He’s making sense,” she said.

Spoon spread his arms. “I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?”

“So how does that help us find him?”

“That’s what I plan on finding out,” Spoon said. “I got that picture you gave me. I got a first name. It isn’t a lot, but maybe I’ll find something.”