I see a police car coming along the road, and it pulls into a parking spot farther down the street. Does this have something to do with last night? At first I think they want to ask me more questions, but the officer walks quickly up to the door of number 48. I watch eagerly and see the front door open. The officer talks to a woman, and I can see her shaking her head.
Once the door closes, the officer knocks on the doors of the houses on either side, but no one is home. Then he crosses the street. He’s coming here! The doorbell rings. I wish I could run down and answer it, but I have to wait for Mom to do it. I hear her talking to the officer, and I wonder if she’ll bring him upstairs, but she says goodbye after only a minute and then comes up.
“What did he say?” I ask eagerly.
“They haven’t found out anything about an abduction, Kasia,” Mom tells me. “No one has been reported missing, and no one else contacted them about it. He said the people at forty-eight saw nothing. They were both downstairs watching television.”
“I thought someone was there, watching,” I say, “upstairs—in the room across from mine. I saw the curtain move, like someone was peeking out.”
Mom shrugs. “The police are looking into it. If there’s anything to discover, I’m sure they’ll find it.”
Mom goes back down, and I’m still waiting for Ellie. Where is she? I’m suddenly worried she won’t turn up. I’m dying to tell her what I saw. Maybe I should have texted her, so she’d know I had something to talk about for once.
Just when I think she’s really not coming, I finally spot her, hurrying along the sidewalk, her ponytail bobbing up and down. I can see she’s trying to be quick, but it feels like a hundred years before she turns into our gate and rings the doorbell. I hear Mom’s footsteps on the hall floor as she goes to let Ellie in, and then more, lighter steps as Ellie pads up the stairs. She comes into my bedroom with a beaming smile and two plates of Mom’s apple cake. I take a deep sniff of the delicious cinnamon smell that has been drifting through the house, making my mouth water.
“Sorry I’m a little late—it’s all been happening today!” she says, plonking herself on the edge of my bed and handing me a plate.
“Tell me!” I say. I like hearing what’s going on at school. It makes me feel more part of it, although it also sometimes makes me sad.
“At lunchtime Serene got into a fight with Bethany,” Ellie tells me. “A real fistfight—Bethany pulled Serene’s hair and a whole clump came out! I saw it in her hand! It was over some boy. I don’t even know who.”
I feel a pang. I hope it wasn’t Josh. He’s a boy I like who’s a year older—a boy with ocean-blue eyes and a husky voice. I can’t imagine him with Bethany or Serene, though.
“Then,” Ellie continues, “Dimitri and Rafi were messing around in math class, and Mr. Treaker completely lost it and slammed a ruler on the desk so hard it flipped in the air and hit Serene in the face! She had to go to the nurse’s office and now she’s got a huge black eye, too!”
“Poor Serene!” I exclaim, though I can’t help laughing.
“We shouldn’t laugh,” says Ellie, who is giggling, too, “but she’s always so obsessed with how she looks—and I’m sure she started that fight!”
“Anyway, listen,” she says, when we’ve both finally stopped laughing. “I have news you’re going to want to hear!”
I want to say, “So do I!” but she’s made me curious. Her eyes are shining, her smile even broader. It must be something good, really good.
“What?” I ask. I take a bite of cake and lean forward. “What is it?”
“Guess,” she says. “It’s about you…”
I hesitate. For one moment I wonder if it’s something to do with Josh. Maybe he asked about me…
“I can see your dreamy eyes!” she teases. “No, it isn’t about Josh, Kasia!”
“Okay.” I feel myself blushing. Ellie knows me too well. “I can’t guess—you’ll have to tell me.”
“You’re going to love this!” she insists, stuffing too much cake into her mouth. “Oh, your mom makes the best cake!”
“Tell,” I demand, rolling my eyes because now she can’t speak.
She swallows and grins at me.
“Remember that story you wrote—that one that was like a mash-up of Hunger Games and Titanic?”
“Sort of. That was long ago—before I was sick. What about it?”
“It was sooooo good—Miss Giles said she might enter it in a competition. Do you remember?”
It’s weird thinking back. I first became sick in June, so it must have been May when I wrote that story. I remember the noise in our English class and the way the room fell silent as I started to read my story out loud. I remember even Rafi and Dimitri had their eyes fixed on me as I read. They clapped at the end, along with everyone else. Miss Giles was full of praise, saying I could be an author one day.
But that was months ago, when we were all in ninth grade. Now my classmates have moved up—they are sophomores, with a different English teacher. I don’t even know which classroom they are in or what time the lesson is. I’m taking tenth-grade classes, but I don’t feel like I’m in the same year as them.
“Kasia?”
I realize I haven’t answered her. “Yes,” I tell Ellie. “I remember.”
“Well, listen to this… She did enter it—and you won! First place!”
“What? You’re joking!”
“Look—here’s the proof.”
Ellie scrabbles in her backpack and pulls out an envelope that has already been opened. It’s addressed to Miss Giles at our school. She slips the letter out, unfolds it, and hands it to me, pointing.
“See—First Prize awarded to Kasia Novak.”
“Wow!” I say. I’ve never won anything before in my life—except a tiny rubber duck at a festival when I was five. It used to glow in the dark.
“Miss Giles is so excited,” says Ellie. “She came running up to me in the corridor.”
“What did I win?” I ask, scanning the text. I’m hoping it’s money, though I know it’s unlikely to be much. With Mom not working, every little bit helps.
“You get to go to an award ceremony in a theater,” she tells me. “Oh…”
Her voice falters and she looks at me, her hand covering her mouth.
“When and where?” I demand.