The Taking

I wondered what kinds of mugs I’d get him now. WORLD’S BEST ALIEN HUNTER. MY DAD’S CRAZIER THAN YOUR DAD. If only I could have the World’s Best Dad back again.

Tyler looked my way, his eyes alternating between the bruise and the road and me. “You could’ve gotten that anywhere,” he told me, his voice so much softer and less teasing than it had been just a minute ago.

I shook my head, but I’d lost some of my conviction. “But I didn’t. And this.” I tugged up the sleeves of my T-shirt. “It’s the tan I had before I left. From my uniform. How could it still be there, in that exact same place?”

When he didn’t say anything, I fell silent. It filled the air, and I let my sleeve fall back in place. In that moment I wanted to slink down and just disappear again. I stared out the side window instead.

After a few seconds Tyler’s fingers closed over mine and squeezed. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Kyra. I’m just saying, give me a minute or two to process it, okay?”

While Burlington Edison’s fields—or rather Agnew Field—had looked almost exactly the same as they had the last time I’d stood on them, Cedar Lake’s fields, where we’d played that championship game, were completely rundown. The distinction between the outfield and infield was blurred as dirt and grass bled into each other, and the chalk lines were indistinct and drawn lazily. The dirt was clumpy, and the grass was weedy.

It was like looking at the softball diamond version of my dad.

But none of that mattered, as I stood there in the last place where everything had been normal. Where I’d been Kyra Agnew, superstar pitcher, only child, teammate, and unquestionably sixteen.

“Anything?” Tyler asked, coming to join me in the dugout where Coach had given us her pregame pep talk and her postgame victory speech.

I shook my head. I tried my best to find something, anything that might trigger some small, seemingly insignificant memory, but there was nothing. Nothing new anyway.

Just Cat wrapping her arms around me and screaming victory shouts until my eardrums felt like they’d rupture. And later, near the parking lot, Austin wrapping his arms around me and whispering softer words. Promises that would never be fulfilled.

“Let’s go,” I insisted, taking his hand and dragging him away from there. “Maybe the drive back’ll shake something loose.”

The place where we stopped was way less daunting than I’d made it out to be in my head. I’d built it up to be this desolate stretch of highway straight out of a horror movie, complete with tumbleweeds and its own menacing soundtrack.

In real life it was just an ordinary two-lane road surrounded on both sides by farmland. Not a single sound effect for miles.

I wasn’t sure this was the exact right spot, but it was as close as I could recall. Tyler backed me up when he said he thought he remembered Austin and Cat dragging him here with them to drop off flowers and balloons, back when there’d still been one of those roadside shrines in my honor.

Since five years had gone by, it was hard to confirm, though. All we could find were bits of dried-up dandelions scattered throughout the gravel shoulder.

“Is it weird?” Tyler asked when I clutched my sides and stared out at the fields that went on for miles.

“No weirder than me telling you I’m still sixteen.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” He reached for my hip and drew me around to face him. Gravel crunched beneath my feet. “If you believe it, I believe it.”

My heart thudded riotously as I faced him that way, with his hand still settled easily, securely, and maybe a little possessively, on my hip. “Simple as that, huh?”

His dimple made a surprise appearance. “Simple as that,” he repeated, and I believed him.

“There’s more.”

He leaned his head back and groaned to the sky, which was turning gloomy and gray, dense clouds amassing. “You are seriously testing the boundaries of my confidence in you, you know? There are limits to what I can accept.” Yet even though his words made a mockery of my revelations, his fingers laced through my belt loops, ensuring that I was snared. When his chin dropped down again, he inhaled deeply, as if he was gathering his wits and preparing himself for whatever bombshell I had to drop next. “Fine.” He let out a breath. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stop being so dramatic.” But I giggled when I said it, ruining the whole chastising effect I was going for. “This guy came to my house yesterday,” I said earnestly. “He said he was from the National Security Agency, and he was asking me questions about the night I disappeared.”

I had Tyler’s full attention now. He was no longer joking or tugging at my belt loops. He stared down at me with eyes that looked like they’d never been anything but serious. “The NSA? What kinds of questions?”

I shook my head. “That’s the crazy thing. He asked about my dad, which makes sense, I guess. . . .” My words slowed down there, because that was where the whole thing got sticky for me, more so than the part where I told him I hadn’t aged. I grimaced as I broached the subject of my dad. “I guess you know what my dad thinks happened to me.” I had an overwhelming urge to check my phone, to confirm the time, but it was so inappropriate that I stuffed my hands into my pockets instead.

“Yeah. I know. Everyone sorta knows he went off the deep end with the outer space stuff.” He didn’t say it like I would have. Like it was a big, fat joke.