The Girl in the Wall by Jacquelyn Mitchard, Daphne Benedis-Grab Page A

grate closest to his offices, seething, the stupid sign useless next to me. And with way too much time to think about the thing I most don’t want to think about: Sera. What happened in the living room is like a fish hook in my mind. She has to know where I am. We spent hours in these tunnels, practically lived in them the year we were ten. Yes, she forgot a lot but there’s no forgetting something like that. She knows where I am and she didn’t say. Which is a new thing for her—she’s not got a good track record for keeping her mouth shut.
    For about the billionth time I feel the surge of hot rage at the center of my belly for what she did, like a furnace blast roasting my insides. My so-called best friend essentially got me put in the loony bin, on the lock-down ward, stripped of my belt and shoelaces for forty-eight hours, until I finally managed to reach John Avery and get out.
    But much worse than being in the mental ward was that people found out. The one way I had managed to keep it together was to pretend Mexico had never happened. But thanks to Sera I had to talk about it. It took everything in me not to become a pathetic mound of quivering emotional jelly on the floor of New Canaan Country Day every day.
    Hating Sera helped keep me solid, as did my disdain for anyone who tried to sympathize. People learned fast. They also learned not to talk to Sera, though social death felt like much too soft a price for her to pay. If she’d just let it go, the way I asked her, I know I’d be past it now. It’s her fault I still wake up in a cold sweat almost every night, my body clammy, my heart slamming around in my chest, the metallic taste of fear coating my tongue.
    But even that wasn’t the worst part.
    I hear voices that shake me out of the past, back to the hard floor of the tunnel, but they are too far away to make out actual words. I look at my watch, the dial lit up and telling me it’s 8:58. Uncle Marc’s helicopter is closing in and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to warn him or to get him to help Abby. I want to scream in frustration.
    I hear footsteps and I stand up, lean closer to the grate, and peer out. Two agents have John trapped between them. They speak in low voices, the words “still make it work” come through in a whisper but I can’t see their faces, only the backs of their heads so I don’t know who is speaking. I think it might be better that I can’t hear everything they say because it would probably make me feel worse than I already do, sitting here useless.
    Their voices fade as they move farther away and I suddenly remember my twelfth birthday. That one was a sleepover with all the girls in my class. At the last minute my dad couldn’t make it home from a meeting in Chicago so John stepped in to chaperone.
    He made sure the pizza came on time and he even joined us for dessert, make-your-own sundaes. He didn’t stop me when I poured on a gallon of caramel sauce, or tell me “I told you so” when I got a stomachache later. He also didn’t tell my dad when a game of Truth or Dare got out of hand and Julia Smith hit her head diving into the pool. We got her out fast and she was fine but my dad would have flipped out over liability. John just made sure everyone was okay and suggested we take the game inside. He’s always been cool like that.
    I hear the sound of a door shutting, steps, and voices, and I lean my face against the grate again. In a great rush a knot of agents swoops past. At the center, I see a Yankees cap set unevenly over a head of very red hair: Uncle Marc.
    The last time I saw him was last month when he came over after my dad’s lawyer’s funeral. Mr. Black was killed in a car accident and my dad was really upset about it. He sat alone in the living room doing shots of whiskey in the dark until Marc got him reminiscing about Steelers games they went to when they were kids, sometimes sneaking in. That cheered my dad up, at least enough that he didn’t drink