CHAPTER 1
Falling Stars
As Wendy Darling pushed through the door, all conversation died and every eye focused on her. As she stood there, files stacked in her arms, the whispers started in hushed tones. The hairs on the back of Wendy’s neck prickled. As a lowly volunteer at the only hospital in town, Wendy had spent her day in the basement copying files. That part of the job was boring, but Wendy wanted to become a nurse. It probably wasn’t the ideal way for the average teenager to spend their eighteenth birthday, but Wendy wanted to lie low and avoid attention.
And she was failing spectacularly.
The nurses’ station was packed with people in scrubs and officers in uniforms, and they all watched Wendy as she hesitated in the doorway, trying not to drop her stack of papers.
Her sweaty hands were making the plastic folders harder to hold on to, so, even though her nerves told her to get out of there, Wendy hurriedly crossed the room and dumped them behind the desk. Curious eyes and the incoherent crackling of police officers’ radios followed her.
“Lord, did you finish already?” Wendy started at the sudden appearance of Nurse Judy at her elbow.
“Uh—yeah.” Wendy took a quick step back and dragged her hands through her short, blunt haircut. Nurse Judy was a small woman with a large presence, dressed in Snoopy scrubs. She had a booming voice that was perfect for talking over the sound of busy waiting rooms and a loud, unabashed laugh that she often used while teasing doctors.
“Dang, girl! You’re making the rest of us look bad!” She took no nonsense and usually spoke her mind, which was why her tight-lipped smile and fidgeting hands made Wendy’s stomach twist.
Wendy forced a small laugh that quickly died in her throat. Standing behind Nurse Judy, on the other side of the U-shaped nursing desk, was Officer Smith. The pale fluorescent lights bounced off his bald head and he stood with his chest puffed out and his thumbs tucked into the straps of his Kevlar vest. He stared at Wendy, mouth in a straight line as his square jaw worked on a piece of gum. No matter what time of year it was, Officer Smith always had a sunglasses tan framing his sharp eyes. He had a way of looking at you that made you feel guilty, even if you hadn’t done anything wrong. It was a look that Wendy had been on the receiving end of many times over the past five years.
“Wendy.” Her name always sounded gruff coming from him, like he was annoyed at the mere mention of her.
Wendy’s head bobbed in an uncomfortable greeting. She wanted to ask what was going on, but the way everyone kept looking at her—
“There you are!” A sharp yank on Wendy’s arm had her spinning around to Jordan’s beaming face. “I was looking everywhere for you!” she said. Jordan Arroyo had been Wendy’s best friend since middle school. If Wendy did anything outside her comfort zone, it was because Jordan was there cheering—and sometimes pushing—her along. It was Jordan who had talked her into applying to big-name colleges, and rejoiced with screaming and dancing when they both got into the University of Oregon. When Wendy worried that it was too far from Astoria and her parents, Jordan promised they’d make the four-hour drive back home together whenever Wendy wanted.
Wendy felt a small bit of relief. “I—”
“Are you done for the day?” Jordan’s dark eyes cut to the stack of files. She was tall with warm brown skin that never broke out and had dark hair that usually framed her face in tight curls but was currently tied back in a ponytail.
“Yeah—”
“Great!” Before Wendy could object, Jordan snatched up their bags with one hand and pulled Wendy down the hall with the other. “Let’s go!” Wendy half expected one of the three police officers to stop her, but even though they watched the two as they left—especially Officer Smith—no one said anything.
When the door closed behind them and they were alone in the hall, Wendy sucked in a deep breath. “What was that all about?” she asked, glancing quickly over her shoulder to see if anyone was going to follow them.
“What was what?” said Jordan.
Wendy had to take quick steps to keep up with Jordan’s long, determined strides. “The cops and everyone.”
“Pft, who knows!” Jordan said with a jerky shrug as she punched the code on the door to the nurses’ break room.
Wendy frowned. Jordan never missed a chance for gossip. Any time anything interesting happened in the hospital—like a local boy shooting off his friend’s toe when they were illegally hunting in the woods or a doctor making one of the medical assistants cry—Jordan was all over it. She bounced from person to person, poking for details and prodding for information, before finding Wendy and divulging everything she found out.
She was hiding something.
“Hey, hold on,” Wendy said as tension clawed into her shoulders.
“Sit!” Jordan pushed her into a seat at the lopsided round table littered with paper plates and leftover takeout utensils. “Okay, I know you don’t like celebrating your birthday—” Jordan blew through the room, snatching a pair of plastic forks and grabbing a Tupperware container from the old fridge. “But you’re turning eighteen! So, I had to do something.”
“Jordan.”
“I made your favorite!” Jordan didn’t so much as look up as her hands fumbled to get the Tupperware lid off. “See?” The smile on Jordan’s face was shaky at best as she busied herself with placing a yellow cupcake on a small plate in front of Wendy. The dollop of chocolate frosting was melting down the side of the paper. “It didn’t come out quite right, but you know I suck at baking.”
Wendy’s heart drummed in her throat. Why wouldn’t Jordan look at her? “Jordan.”
“But my dad ate, like, three and hasn’t showed up at the emergency room,” Jordan mused as she stuck a purple candle into the cupcake and lit it with a yellow lighter. “So it can’t be that bad!”
“Jordan,” Wendy pressed insistently.
Jordan pushed the cupcake at Wendy, her wide smile looking more like a grimace. “Make a wish!”
“JORDAN!” Jordan cringed and even Wendy jumped at the loudness of her own voice. Finally, Jordan glanced up, her eyebrows tipped and lips pressed between her teeth. “What’s going on?” Wendy repeated, her words much more uneven now as she leaned forward. The heat of the candle brushed her chin. “Why are there so many cops here? What happened?”
When Jordan spoke, her voice was gentle. “Ashley Ford went missing.”
It was like a giant hand pressed all of the air from Wendy’s lungs. “Missing?” Automatically, Wendy pulled out her phone. She hadn’t received an AMBER Alert, but the file room was concrete and got no cell phone reception.
“Earlier today,” Jordan continued. She watched Wendy carefully as she spoke.
The room tilted. Wendy gripped the edge of the table with sweaty palms to steady herself. “But I just saw her this morning.”
“Apparently, she was playing in the front yard. Her mom walked inside to get something, and when she walked back out, Ashley was gone.”
Wendy knew Ashley well. When she wasn’t doing paperwork, Wendy spent most of her time at the hospital in the pediatric clinic reading to kids or leading arts and crafts. Mrs. Ford was a patient at the hospital who regularly needed dialysis treatment, and when she had appointments, she left Ashley in the children’s room with Wendy. Ashley was only eight years old, but she was smart and had an encyclopedic knowledge of trees. Just that morning, Ashley had been sitting on an oversized bean bag chair that practically swallowed up her petite form, rattling off the names of the trees she could see from the large windows.