Chapter 2

I looked at the girl in the photo again.

She was smiling.

Her smile was so pretty that it made a person want to smile back.

Next to it was a smaller photo of a baby in somebody's arms.

The grown-up holding her had nice clothes on.

The baby had a dark mark on her arm.

It was a birthmark.

I knew what a birthmark was.

Linda had said something about mine before. "That ugly thing on your arm looks like a scab on a dog."

I pushed my sleeve up and looked at my arm.

In the same spot, I had a bruise, dark purple and tender.

David had been drinking three nights before, and he had hit me.

I couldn't tell whether there was a birthmark underneath it.

I dug a piece of broken mirror out of the bottom of the trash can.

I held it up in that little bit of light and looked at my own face.

My face was dirty and thin, and my skin had gone yellow.

But my eyes and my nose and my mouth were the same as hers.

I tried to smile the way the girl in the photo smiled.

My eyes crinkled up.

They looked exactly like hers.

I turned the poster over.

At the very bottom, there was a line of words with a big red box drawn around it.

[Contact: 555-0138.]

Another line ran under it.

I worked through it one word at a time.

[Reward. 200 thousand dollars.]

It was 200 thousand dollars.

I didn't know how much that was.

But it had to be a whole lot.

It was more than the stack of bills Linda locked in her cabinet every Christmas.

Her mom and dad must have wanted her back more than anything.

I looked at my hands.

There was black dirt under my nails, and the backs of my hands were cracked open from the cold.

I thought about it for a long time.

Her mom and dad couldn't find her.

My mom and dad didn't want me.

What if I told them I was her?

Maybe it would work.

Maybe they would want me.

Even a few days as somebody's daughter would have been enough.

All I wanted was for somebody to want me.

I climbed out of the trash can.

The snow was coming down even harder.

There was a payphone at the end of the alley.

I had two quarters in my pocket.

I had found them on the road months before, and I had kept them hidden and never told anybody.

I squeezed the coins in my fist and walked over through the snow.

The phone was high up.

I stood on my toes and still couldn't reach it.

There was half a brick lying next to it.

I dragged it over and stood on it. My fingers were so cold I could barely feel them, and I pushed the numbers one at a time.

After three rings, somebody picked up. "Hello?"

It was a man's voice.

It came out low and tired.

I opened my mouth, and my voice froze in my throat.

He asked, "Hello? Who is this?"

I swallowed.

I said, "I saw the missing person poster."

The other end went quiet.

One second passed.

Two seconds passed.

Three seconds passed.

I heard something hit the floor on his end.

Then his voice changed.

It started to shake.

He asked, "What did you say? Where are you? Where are you right now?"

He was shouting.

It scared me so bad I almost dropped the phone.

He asked, "Did you see my daughter? Where is she?"

I held on to the phone, and my voice came out small. "I'm next to a trash can."

"Which town? What street?"

I didn't know the street.

All I knew was that the doughnut shop was out of the alley and to the right.

I said, "I'm by the doughnut shop."

Then he asked, "What town? Do you know what town you're in?"

I knew that much.

It was written on the front of the school.

I answered, "Maple County. Next to Maple Elementary School."

On the other end, I heard him call out to somebody else in a different voice.

It came fast and hard.

He said, "Alex, find Maple Elementary School right now and pull every person we can get."

Then he came back to me.

His voice was shaking, and he was holding it down with everything he had.

"Honey, don't go anywhere. Stay right there and don't move. I'm coming to get you.

"It's cold out there. Find somewhere out of the wind.

"I'll be there soon.

"What's your name?"

He wanted my name.

I froze.

I almost said Emily Reed.

I didn't say it.

I looked at the poster crushed in my hand.

I said it so quietly it was barely there. "My name is Emma Perry."

The other end went completely silent.

I thought he had hung up.

The quiet stretched on and on.

It went on long enough that I had to feed my other quarter in.

He said, "Say that again."

His voice had gone hoarse.

I whispered, "My name is Emma Perry."

I heard a grown man crying on the other end of the line.