Chapter 1
I was five the night I took one piece of meat off the dinner table, and they put me out of the house for it.
Snow was coming down hard, so I climbed into a trash can and curled up to stay warm.
A missing person poster was buried in the trash with me.
The girl in the color photo had on a thick red coat, and her hair was pulled into two little braids.
She had been born the same year I was.
She had been missing for four years.
I picked a piece of broken mirror out of the garbage and held it up to my filthy face.
I had her eyes, her nose, and her mouth.
When I smiled, I got the same goofy look she had.
She had a birthmark on her arm.
In the same spot on my arm, I had a bruise that somebody had put there.
Her parents couldn't find her.
My parents didn't want me.
So I decided I would go be their daughter instead.
I closed my fist around the last two quarters I had, got up on my toes, and dialed the payphone.
On the other end, a man went quiet for three seconds.
Then every police car in the county lit up.
*****
My name was Emily Reed.
It wasn't a name anybody had put much thought into.
Linda Reed liked to say I was a weed growing by the road, and if somebody stepped on me it didn't matter, because a life like mine was worth nothing.
That night, there was meat on the table.
It was pork, shiny with grease, heaped in a white bowl.
I swallowed hard and speared the smallest piece with my fork, and it never made it to my mouth.
There was a loud smack.
Linda had knocked the fork right out of my hand.
The meat landed on the table and rolled onto the floor.
She snapped, "Who said you could touch that?"
Her face twisted up, and her voice came out so shrill it went right through my head.
She said, "Since when do you get to eat? Tommy hasn't even picked up his fork yet."
Tommy Reed sat across from me with his mouth full, grinning at me.
David Reed kept drinking and never once looked up.
Linda grabbed me by the collar and hauled me up off the stool. "You've got some nerve."
I didn't cry.
Crying only made the beating worse.
I had learned that rule early on.
She dragged me to the door.
The door swung open, and the wind blew in with the snow.
Linda said, "Get out. Freeze out there for all I care!"
She shoved me out.
I went down at the bottom of the steps and cracked both knees on the ice.
The door slammed behind me.
Inside, I could hear Tommy laughing and forks scraping on bowls.
They had gone right back to eating.
The snow had gotten heavier.
I had no coat, only an old jacket of Tommy's from two years back, big enough to hang down to my knees.
The sleeves were torn open, and the wind poured right up them.
I wrapped my arms around myself and walked away from the house, down into the alley.
I didn't know where to go.
There was nowhere for a five-year-old to go.
At the end of the alley, there were a few big metal trash cans with lids on them.
I had dug through them for leftovers before.
That night, I lifted one of the lids and climbed in.
It was a little warmer inside than out.
It didn't smell too bad.
In winter, everything froze solid, even the smell.
I curled up tight with my knees pushed against my chin.
My hand came down on a piece of paper.
There were a lot of them down there.
I pulled one out.
It was printed in color.
A little light from the streetlamp came in through the crack.
I could see a photo of a girl on it.
She was wearing a thick red coat.
Her hair was in two little braids, and her eyes crinkled when she smiled.
There were words on it.
I knew some of them, and the rest I couldn't read.
The big word across the top said: [MISSING.]
I sounded it out one letter at a time.
It was a word I already knew.
Under it, there was a row of numbers and then line after line of smaller writing.
[Emma Perry, female, born March 12, 2019.]
The year was 2019.
I had been born in 2019, too.
[Went missing in Springvale in July 2020 and hasn't been found.]
Missing meant lost.
It meant somebody was gone and nobody could find her.
She had been gone for four years.