The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,144

he probably doesn’t care.

“A missing person story, I see.” He grins at me and looks back at the notebook.

“Yeah, I love them.”

“So you just woke up one day and decided this was what you wanted to read and write?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I just… I don’t know… I just like it.” I don’t add the rest because I know it sounds crazy. I really used to think my mother stole me from my real parents. Parents who looked like me, who spent time with me, who didn’t look at me and wonder where in the world I came from.

I believed it so strongly, that when I was eight, I started searching library archives for newspaper clippings about children who went missing around the time I was born. I’d sit for hours and scroll, hoping that I’d find proof that this woman who cared more about men and parties than she seemed to care about me was just an imposter.

I never found that proof. Instead, I found all these other stories about people who had just gone missing. From grocery stores, from shopping malls, their homes—never been heard from again.

As soon as I was old enough, I used the Internet at the library to really research them.

“Which one’s your favorite?”

“Amelia Earhart. She was my first. And she’s my muse.”

“Amelia Earhart?” he asks as he scans the first page.

“Her story is the most fascinating, I think. I read everything I could find about her. And they all ended the same way—her plane malfunctioned and plunged out of the sky, sending her into a watery grave somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. I just couldn’t believe such an amazing, brave woman, meeting such an ordinary, end.”

“How did you imagine it ending?”

“You really want to know?” I ask.

“No. I’m only asking you to tell me because I don’t want to know,” he says sarcastically and I can’t help my grin.

“Okay.” I flip open my notebook and skim the story.

I peek over the top of the book; he’s watching me closely now, his eyes scanning my face.

I flush. “She was my first. Now, I have notebooks full of happy endings for people I’ll never know, but who I’ll never forget.”

“What’s your name?” His left turn from his questions about my book surprises me, and I offer my name without thinking twice about it.

“Uh, it’s Kal.”

“I’m Remi.” He sticks a hand out for me to shake. I stare at it for a second before I reach for it. Our palms glide together before he wraps his finger around my hand and butterfly wings tickle the inside of my chest. My breaths shorten, and I look up from our joined hands to find him looking at them, too. His eyes snap up to mine, and before I can save myself, I drown in their dark depths. I pull my hand away and he smiles.

“So, have you written a happy ending for yourself?”

It’s just eight words. Just one question.

Yet, somehow, it feels like the key to something. Then, my heart does the strangest thing—it thuds hard against my chest, but not in fear.

In excitement.

“No… I’ve never thought of that.” I admit.

“You should. Maybe write one for me, too. It could be like a roadmap, in case one of us gets lost, and we can find our way back,” he says like it’s actually going to happen.

“You act like we’re going to be friends or something,” I say, even though, that flutter in my chest has spread to my belly at the idea of being friends with him.

“Aren’t we already?” he asks.

“I don’t know… I’m not really a people person. I’ve always preferred books.”

“I have a sister like that… so I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that you don’t have to be a people person, just a Remi person,” he volleys back, and for some reason, the butterfly wings flap and flutter deep inside me.

A Remi person…

The tingle his words cause is muted by the increasingly loud voices behind the door. A sense of doom takes over. I look over his shoulder, my eyes trained on the door handle. “Are you sure your mother’s not going to come looking for you again?”

“Don’t be so nervous, my mother yells a lot, but she wouldn’t really—”

The door bursts open and slams against the wall behind it.

“Lee,” my mother’s shout ricochets off the walls of the library. I jump out of my skin and scramble out from behind the curtain. She’s racing across the room like a bat out of hell.

She’s