Luke sensed, rather than saw, Jen shaking her head. Even in the dark, he could visualize each precisely cut strand of hair bouncing and falling back into place.
'I'm sorry,' she continued. 'I didn't come here to harp at you. This is dangerous, and no one should go unwillingly. I was too hard on you the other day. I just wanted to say-you've been a good friend. I'll miss you.'
'But you'll be back,' Luke said. 'Tomorrow-or the next day-after the rally. I'll be over to visit. If your rally works, I'll be walking in the front door.'
'We can hope,' Jen said softly. Her voice faded away. 'Good-bye, Luke.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Luke lay awake the rest of the night. At first light, he got up and quietly scrubbed away the mud Jen had tracked in and up the stairs. Trust her not to think about mud. He fervently hoped she'd thought of all the details about the rally.
Luke was just finishing the last of the kitchen floor when he heard the toilet flushing upstairs. He hid the muddy rags in the trash and scrambled back to his place on the stairs just in time to meet Mother coming down.
' 'Morning, early bird.' She yawned. 'Were you up during the night? I thought I heard something.'
'I had trouble sleeping,' Luke said truthfully.
Mother yawned again.
'And you're up early… feeling okay?'
'Just hungry,' Luke said.
But he picked at his food. Everything he ate stuck in his throat.
After the rest of his family left, he risked sneaking over and turning the radio on low. There were weather reports and commercials for soybean seed and lots of music.
'Come on, come on,' he muttered, keeping one eye on the side window, watching for Dad.
Finally the radio voice announced the news. Someone's cattle had gotten out and caused a minor car wreck. Nobody hurt. A Government spokesman predicted a poor planting season because of all the rain.
Nothing about the rally.
Dad came back toward the house. Luke snapped off the radio and bolted for the stairs.
At lunch, Dad forgot to turn the radio on, and Luke had to remind him. The announcer promised a big story after the commercials. His sandwich gone, Dad reached over to turn the radio off.
'No, no-wait!' Luke said. 'This might be interesting-'
Dad harrumphed, but waited.
The announcer came back. He cleared his throat and declared that new Government statistics proved last year's alfalfa harvest had set a record for the decade.
It was like that for days. Luke kept waiting, desperate to hear anything. But the few times he could get to the radio, it said nothing.
Every time Dad left the house for any length of time, Luke switched on the light by the back door, his old signal to Jen. He stared so hard, willing her answering light to go on, that he thought he would go blind. But there was nothing.
He took to watching her house as obsessively as he had when he had first discovered her existence. There was no sign of her. The rest of her family came and went as usual. Did they look sadder? Happy? Worried? At peace? From a distance, he couldn't tell.
He got so desperate, he asked Mother if she'd thought about going over to visit the new neighbors, to welcome them to the area. She looked at him as if he were deranged.
'They've been there for months. They're hardly new anymore. And they're
And what was she supposed to do, say, 'Nice to meet you. Now, tell me everything about the child you never talk about'?
After a week, Luke did feel deranged. Every time anyone spoke to him, he jumped. Mother asked him, 'Are you all right?' so many times, he took to avoiding her. But he couldn't just sit in the attic, waiting. He paced. He fidgeted. He chewed his fingernails.
He came up with a plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Finally, finally, a week and a half after the rally, a day dawned that was so clear and dry, Luke knew Dad would be in the fields all day. Without hope, Luke turned on the light by the back door. After five minutes without a response, he turned it off and quietly slipped out the door.
The cool air was a jolt, and for the briefest time, he paused. This was more dangerous than ever.
'But I have to
He had to rip the screen and break the pane of one of the Talbot's windows, which he felt bad about. But it didn't matter. If Jen was there, she could think of an excuse. And if she wasn't… if she wasn't, he'd never be back at the Talbots' again.
Once inside, he knew he had to do something about the alarm quickly. Jen had explained it to him once, told him the exact sequence of buttons to hit to disable it He ran to the hall closet, yanked open the door, and punched buttons quickly, afraid he'd forget the sequence if he hesitated even a second. 'Green-blue-yellow-green-blue- Orange-red.
The lights blinked out before he hit the last button, and that spooked him. Was that how it worked before?
'Hurry, hurry,' he urged himself. The words kept replaying in his brain.
'Jen?' he called. 'Jen?'
He went up and down stairs, looking in every room.
'Jen? You don't have to hide. It' s me. Luke.'
The house was enormous, three floors and a basement He couldn't search everywhere, but if Jen was there, why would she hide? Against reason, he kept hoping she was.
'Jen? Come on. This isn't funny.'
He found the bedrooms-huge, elegant rooms with beautifully carved beds and long, mirrored closets. He couldn't even tell which one was Jen's.
Finally, he admitted defeat and rushed down to the computer room.
He hurried over to the keyboard and typed in the same sequence of letters he'd watched Jen type so many times. His fingers were clumsy, and he kept messing up. Finally, he got to the chat room password. F-E-R-E. No. Erase. F-E- E-R. No. At last he got it F-R-E-E.
The screen went blank, with none of the friendly banter that had magically appeared every time he'd watched Jen. Had he done something wrong? Frantically, he exited and entered the chat room again, his hands shaking. Still nothing. Timidly, using only his right index finger, he typed, 'Where's Jen?' He had to hold one hand with the other to steady his finger enough to hit the Enter button.
Almost instantaneously, his words vanished and reappeared at the top of the screen. He waited. Nothing. The screen stayed blank below his question.
Because nothing was worse than doing nothing, he typed again, 'Hello? Is anybody there?'
Still nothing. He slammed his fist down on the computer desk so hard, it hurt.
'I have to know!' he shouted. 'Tell me! I can't go home until I know!'
He heard the door too late to react. And suddenly a voice boomed behind him: 'Turn around slowly. I have a gun. Who are you and why are you here?'
