13

That Face

Jake wasn’t at school the next morning, or the day after that.

The first day, he texted Tillie that he had stayed home to investigate, though Tillie imagined he mostly needed to recover from their awful night. The second day, he didn’t text at all. And Tillie started to worry.

Abby told Tillie he’d texted her that morning to tell her he was still sick. After stopping Tillie on her way to Ms. Martinez’s room and insisting that she eat lunch with “their group” instead, Abby told Tillie all kinds of things. She told her she’d had a crush on the eighth grader Malik Granger for two years, that it annoyed her that he was probably in love with Diana Farr just like everyone else, that she was looking to start a band and if Tillie played any instruments she should join, and all kinds of theories about the characters on a TV show Tillie had never watched but Abby insisted “she had to.” Abby didn’t even walk ahead of Tillie, she just strolled slowly alongside her, even as her words moved a million miles a minute.

“Jake was right,” Abby said as they walked into the cafeteria. “You’re a really good listener.”

It felt weird to sit at Jake’s table without him, but Abby acted like Tillie was entirely welcome. She talked to Tillie, but also to everyone else.

“Hey, if my band works out do you think you could take publicity shots for us or something?” Abby asked her at one point, initiating a whole discussion at the table of all the things people needed pictures for. Sean wanted a headshot for a community theater production he planned on auditioning for, and Emma wanted to make sure someone took a good photo of the girls’ basketball team for yearbook because the year before they’d all hated it.

Tillie, shocking herself, said yes to all of it. She relaxed into her spot at the table without Jake by her side.

Then, at one point, Abby put her hand to her mouth and said, “Oh, I totally forgot. I should be collecting Jake’s homework for the classes I have with him. He asked me to … Oops.”

Tillie felt guilty that for a moment, while chatting with Abby, she’d forgotten Jake. She’d forgotten his heaving breaths, and how he’d clenched his hands so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Yeah, I hope he’s okay,” Tillie said, meaning something else entirely.

Tillie wished Jake would just talk to his mom. Was his mom still maintaining that his dad was on a business trip? How long did she expect that obvious lie to work? Tillie could imagine, though, that Jake had convinced her of his blissful ignorance. He was probably all smiles and jokes.

Tillie texted him. Hey, when can we discuss Monday night’s evidence?

She tried not to let it bother her that he’d texted Abby and not her.

By her next class, he hadn’t texted back. She saw Abby in the halls. Well, really, she put herself near Abby’s locker to make sure she’d run into her.

“Hey, you heard from Jake?” Tillie asked her.

“Not since this morning. He’s probably busy playing some role-playing game on the computer or something equally nerdy.” Abby rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Huh,” Tillie said.

“Why?”

Tillie didn’t know what to say.

After that night, there was no way that Cubicle Man didn’t know Jake was onto him—about whatever it was Cubicle Man had done. And it was obvious that Cubicle Man didn’t just know something about where Jake’s dad was, but he had something to do with his disappearance. Maybe he’d hurt him for some reason. Maybe he was threatening Jake’s mom. And if he knew Jake knew … then was Jake in any kind of danger? Was Cubicle Man that menacing? Was the action movie Jake had imagined actually coming true?

And why was his mom still lying? Tillie wondered. Was she really just protecting Jake? That part made no sense to her.

Tillie pictured Jake’s red, tearstained face two nights before. This couldn’t go on. She couldn’t bear for him to feel like that any longer.

“Hey, Abby, do you know Jake’s address by any chance?”

“Yeah, totally. Hand me your phone, I’ll put it in. Why?”

“Thanks,” Tillie mumbled. “Just … stopping by.” Tillie handed Abby the phone. She had to convince Jake to tell his mom what he knew. They needed help with all of this before Cubicle Man had the chance to do any more damage.

“Hey, if you’re going over there, I’ll come along!” Abby announced. “It’ll be fun! Oooh, let’s get him some soup first or something. A care package! His mom won’t care, she hardly pays attention to what he does, anyway. And his dad will just, like, join in the fun.”

It hit Tillie in a new way that Jake hadn’t told any of his friends about his dad. Of course, she’d known that all along. That was why he was always whispering with her while laughing loudly about other stuff with them. But she suddenly understood that, for some reason, Jake really trusted her.

Tillie became aware she was just standing there, staring at Abby, thinking, and she scolded herself inside for being so weird.

“Um…” Tillie couldn’t let her join. Abby couldn’t get involved in all this, especially considering how frightening it seemed to be getting. “Sorry, I—”

“Oh. No, no, it’s totally okay. No worries, I get it.” Abby pasted on a smile.

“Sorry,” Tillie repeated.

“Hey…” Abby’s smile faded as she lowered her voice. “Something’s obviously going on with Jake. And I’ve seen you guys whispering. You clearly know about it. Look, I get it if you can’t say anything. But…” She paused as if waiting for Tillie to jump in, but Tillie didn’t. She couldn’t. “Just let me know if I can help. Or if you need someone to talk to.” Abby lingered for a second, and then waved and headed off. “Okay, have a good one, Tillie!”

Abby was so nice, Tillie thought, and she herself was so, so awkward.

Cursing herself, she texted her mom on her way to her last class.

Might be running late tonight. I have a group project for Art Club and we’re working in the library after school today.

Tillie winced. Art Club stuff every day all of a sudden? Not persuasive. Jake was much better at this sort of thing.

After school, she took the bus to Jake’s house.

She didn’t want to ambush him, so as she got off the bus she texted again:

I have some thoughts. Might come by? See you soon 

He lived by a soccer field where she used to have Rec and Ed soccer games, she realized as she walked from the bus stop to his street. She wondered if Jake ever played. He didn’t seem too sporty …

The sidewalks were fairly empty, with only a couple of kids returning to their homes after school or running outside to jump on their bikes. A few women walked by with their dogs, spotted Tillie and her legs, and quickly looked the other way. The typical reaction. Tillie kept her eyes on the sidewalk straight ahead.

As Tillie neared Jake’s house, she halted.

Three houses down from where she’d frozen, she saw a bald man in a suit, wearing glasses, knocking fiercely on Jake’s door.

It couldn’t be …

He put his hands on his hips, looked up in the air, shook his head in great annoyance, and knocked again. It was Cubicle Man.

What if he saw her?

Tillie dipped into the front yard she was closest to and headed for one of the bushes. Praying that no one in the house noticed, Tillie used one hand to move a branch out of the way and the other to hold her camera, but her arm began to shake, so she gave up. She couldn’t get a shot. But spying on her parents had been great practice, and Tillie found her own peephole through the bush branches.

The door opened.

Jake’s mom came out onto the porch holding a large duffel bag with a Cubs logo on it. She set it down in front of Cubicle Man. The bag was stuffed to the brim and something started to fall out of it—a baseball cap, maybe, Tillie couldn’t be sure—and Jake’s mom leaned down quickly to push it back in.

Jake’s mom appeared to have no fear at all. She edged herself closer to Cubicle Man. Her arms gesticulated wildly. The two of them stood nearly nose to nose. Cubicle Man hunched over for a moment, like a caught child getting into trouble, but then he sprang up, shouting. Jake’s mom stepped back. Tillie could hear Cubicle Man yelling, but the only words she could make out were “Fine, fine,” and then she thought she might have heard him say, “What’s done is done.”

And then Tillie, who trusted her eyes so profoundly, couldn’t believe what she saw: Cubicle Man and Jake’s mom hugged. It only lasted a brief moment, but it happened.

Afterward, Cubicle Man took the duffel bag and walked away with it. He disappeared around the corner. Jake’s mom watched him go for a moment, and then went back inside the house.

Could Tillie follow him? Maybe … No, she couldn’t walk that fast.

She had more questions than ever. What was in the bag? Was it money? Was this what the bank statements had been about after all, paying a large sum? But why would there be a baseball cap on top of money? And why would they have hugged if Jake’s mom didn’t want to give him her money, or whatever was in the bag? Was Jake’s mom involved in all this? Was she on Cubicle Man’s side?

Tillie’s body seemed to know what to do before she did. She found herself walking toward the house.

She walked up the steps of Jake’s house to his door and knocked.

Within seconds Jake’s mom opened the door.

His mom had a stern face. She had olive skin, but it clearly hadn’t seen much sun lately. Her collarbone jutted out like a mannequin’s. There was no pink to her cheeks. Her hair, wisps of faded brown dye, clung to her forehead, and navy-blue circles nestled under her eyes. She looked as if all the tears had been twisted out of her like a dried-out dishrag. This was not the woman Tillie had imagined. Jake had said she seemed fine.

“Can I help you?” his mom said without a trace of the warmth that Jake always had.

“Oh, um,” Tillie said. “Yes?” she asked as a question. “I’m Jake’s friend?” A question again. The word “friend” came out of her mouth as if she were looking it up in a foreign-language dictionary and trying to see if the native speaker understood it.

“He’s not here.”

Tillie paused. “He’s—” She didn’t want to say she had been told he was sick because maybe he’d lied to his mom as well. Maybe he was doing something else. She couldn’t let his mom know. “Oh, I didn’t bump into him at school today. And … we have a project together. I thought we could work on it now?”

“He’s at Art Club,” his mom said. “He was sick, but started to feel better around last period.”

“Oh, yeah, okay. Art Club. Yeah, he’s a great artist.” Tillie hid a snicker.

“Okay,” his mom said as she began to close the door. “I can tell him you stopped by.”

But she hadn’t even asked for Tillie’s name.

As Tillie left Jake’s doorstep, she texted him.

Jake, where are you???

She didn’t want to give him any of this information in a text. She had to talk to him. She had to explain what she’d seen. But she didn’t even know what she had seen.

She couldn’t go home. What would she do, go home and wait and see if Cubicle Man happened to hurt Jake? Wait and see if his mom was behind all of this somehow? None of these questions could wait another day. But she had nowhere to go.

Tillie walked back to the bus, still unsure of her next move. Her leg and hip were starting to tingle, perhaps from the overuse but maybe from the stress.

She’d go downtown. Since there was no Art Club, there was no way he was at school. Maybe he’d met up with his friends on Main Street. She cursed herself for not getting Abby’s number. After she checked Main Street, she’d go to his dad’s office, see if he’d gone there. But what if Cubicle Man was there? What if he’d returned to work, pretending to have just been out on one of those “on-site visits” Jake told her about? She couldn’t be seen there. Neither could Jake! She had to find him.

When she stepped off the bus onto Main Street, she peered into the café where she knew kids hung out after school. Inside, she saw several groups of her classmates, including Diana Farr. Instinctively, Tillie took a picture. Cara Dale, a new recruit into Diana Farr’s clique, saw her and giggled. Tillie wasn’t positive the giggling was about her, but she thought it probably was. Pushing it out of her head, she went to the front of the store to get a hot chocolate.

Now all she could do was sit there and wait for a while to see if maybe Jake showed up. Tillie pulled out her camera and absentmindedly clicked through some of her favorite shots. The images drowned out the chatter in the café. Tillie came upon the portrait of Ms. Martinez. It wasn’t a great picture, but she’d kept it on her camera because it brought her back to that day in the car, to Ms. Martinez telling her that her pictures were beautiful.

Ms. Martinez lived only a few blocks away, actually, Tillie remembered, clicking back to the previous picture of Ms. Martinez’s house. Clareview Street.

What if, instead of getting Jake to tell his mom, she just told Ms. Martinez everything? She would know what to do. She wouldn’t let anything happen to them. Jake might be mad at Tillie for it at first, but he would forgive her. He’d forgive her when he learned about the duffel bag and understood how real things were getting, and how it wasn’t just a theory anymore. Now there was a bag full of … something, and a scary guy, and too many secrets, and she had to do something right then and there.

Tillie left her still-full hot chocolate, and headed out of the café toward Ms. Martinez’s street.

Tillie texted her mom: Running super late! Feeling fine, took some meds, pain not bad.

Her mom texted back: Hurry home, honey.

A couple of blocks before Clareview, Tillie saw Ms. Martinez’s Main Street deli and made a detour to go in. If she could grab Ms. Martinez’s glasses, she figured, it could only help. It would give Tillie an opening, and since Ms. Martinez would be happy to get them, maybe she’d be more likely to listen to Tillie as she told her this outrageous-sounding story of the missing dad.

The deli was fairly empty. It had a handful of small tables to sit at, but no one was there. Black marks from customers’ shoes covered the tile floor, and in the corner Tillie noticed some spilled ketchup. The place smelled like pickles. The man behind the register didn’t seem to notice her come in, or perhaps he just didn’t care. He leaned against the counter on his elbows, sighing every now and then, flipping the pages of a magazine. The boy behind the sandwich counter sat on a chair against the wall, asleep. A fly buzzed under his nose and Tillie took a picture of him sniffing in his sleep as it circled him.

Tillie hobbled toward the man behind the register. Her leg was starting to really bother her. Her lower back, too.

“Help you?” he said, looking up from his magazine.

“I—” Tillie started to answer.

“Oh, hey, what happened to your leg?” he asked.

People asked this a lot, as if it were their business. Usually she answered, “Oh, nothing, just recovering from a broken foot,” which was a lie that made people comfortable. She’d long fantasized about making up something exciting, like “I was attacked by a mountain lion,” or “I’m part pirate—there’s an old-fashioned peg leg under my pants.”

“Broken foot,” she answered.

“Ah, I’m sorry. I broke my foot once.” He leaned toward her and proceeded to tell her all the details of his baseball injury.

“So, um,” she interrupted him, “I’m sorry, but I’m looking for some glasses?” She felt herself blush like she usually did when she asked someone for something.

“Everyone’s losing their glasses, huh?” he asked, and shook his head.

“Huh?” Tillie said. “They’re brown? With polka dots.”

As she said “dots,” the man spoke over her. “Ah, same pair. Some guy got those already.”

A part of Tillie felt a little pleasure that she had been right—the glasses had been at the deli, just as she’d deduced from her photos. But this information also confused her. Some guy?

“Yeah,” the man continued, “wrapped ’em up in some of our napkins here and stuffed ’em in a bag. Didn’t say ‘thank you’ to me when I handed them over, but whatever. He was a Cubs fan, so I guess that’s to be expected.” The guy laughed. “Go Sox, right, kid?”

“Wait,” Tillie said. “How’d you know he was a Cubs fan?”

“Cubs bag. Smug face.”

Tillie took a breath. Just because it was a Cubs bag didn’t mean it was the same guy. Maybe Ms. Martinez just had a boyfriend with a Cubs bag.

But maybe, for some reason, Cubicle Man was a step ahead of her. Maybe he was sending her a message. Maybe he knew she’d seen him at the house and wanted to remind her not to “ask questions.” Maybe he was watching her right then.

Her stomach tightened and her bad leg began to quake. “Um,” Tillie squeaked. “Did this guy have glasses, by any chance? Beady little eyes? Wearing a suit?”

“Ha! Descriptive.” He smiled at her. “Glasses, yeah. Didn’t exactly gaze into his eyes.”

Tillie swallowed. “Was he bald?”

“Couldn’t tell. He was wearing a baseball cap. Wait, are you the real live Nancy Drew? Right here in this deli?” The man cackled. “What’s the mystery? The Case of the Missing Glasses? The Secret of the Empty Suit?”

Tillie felt the world swirling around her. “Thank you!”

She hurried out.

“Good luck, Nancy!” the man yelled, still belly-laughing, and she could hear his howls even as the door dinged and closed behind her.

*   *   *

Jake, Tillie texted, Cubicle Man is up to something. Sure of it. Seriously, where are you???

Should she be even more worried about him than she already was? Cubicle Man might know all about them. He might have been following them around this whole time. He must have been the one driving the blue Chevy—he’d followed Jake to school and tailed them to the bus stop; who was to say he hadn’t tracked them everywhere? Maybe he knew Ms. Martinez was their favorite teacher, that Tillie was the Lost and Found, that she was supposed to find the glasses. Was he watching her right then? Would he hurt Ms. Martinez to send some kind of awful message to stay away?

Tillie tried to move quickly, her backpack and camera clunking against her back and chest, her hair flying around her face in a whirlwind with each step. It wasn’t far, she could make it, she told herself. Tillie tried to ignore that her leg hurt more than usual. It remained tender from the karaoke fall two nights before, and from the tension her body felt as it pushed itself faster than normal.

She passed a few kids from her school at one point and kept her head down. If they had any requests for the Lost and Found she just didn’t have the time to spare.

When Tillie arrived at the corner of Main Street and Ms. Martinez’s block, where she could see the little house, a man bounded out from behind her, nearly knocking into her with his shoulder, and walked right on ahead of her.

“’Scuse me,” the voice said cheerily, but the kindness in his tone didn’t stop Tillie from feeling like she’d been punched in the gut.

Tillie stopped in her tracks for a moment. She could see from the back side of him that he wore a baseball cap. Over his shoulder he carried an overstuffed duffel bag with the Cubs logo on it.

It was him. She hadn’t seen his face, but it had to be him.

Had he recognized her? Maybe he hadn’t really looked at her. He’d already moved several yards ahead.

Tillie kept going, but slowed down. If he turned around, if it was really him, she couldn’t let him see her. She went into her incognito mode—a method she’d perfected by the end of elementary school—head down, hands on her backpack straps, turtle-like movements. She stayed far enough behind him that she had plausible deniability if he accused her of following him, but if he turned around and recognized her it was all over, anyway. She hid her face with her hair.

Tillie was a ways behind him when she saw him slow down right in front of what she recognized as Ms. Martinez’s house.

She could hardly breathe. The man stopped at Ms. Martinez’s mailbox and began to open it.

Was Ms. Martinez in danger? Tillie wondered if she should give her a warning of some kind. Should she yell out? But then he might come for her. Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. With his back still toward Tillie, he opened the mailbox and took out some envelopes. Wasn’t it a federal crime to open someone else’s mail? Her mom had told her that once, when she’d opened up something meant for her dad. He’d better not open Ms. Martinez’s mail, Tillie thought. She’d report him.

… And then what?

Tillie felt helpless. Entirely and utterly helpless. There was only one thing she could do. Tillie lifted up her camera and began to document all of it. Keeping her distance, she took two shots and readied herself to drop her camera at a moment’s notice if he saw her. But he was still looking down at the mail. He flipped through it as if he had all the time in the world, which helped Tillie, because she was stuck either standing there, or eventually moving forward and having to confront him, or hiding behind a tree or a car.

As he began to turn and head toward the house, Tillie chose the car. She took three steps to hide behind the vehicle parked in front of Ms. Martinez’s neighbor’s house, and she crouched down, perching her camera’s lens above the hood. For the second time that day, she hid like a spy.

Ducking down low, Tillie came face-to-face with the car window. And when she saw a bar-coded sticker, she felt all the breath go out of her. Tillie was hiding behind a rented blue Chevy, parked mere yards from Ms. Martinez’s home. She held on tight to her camera and told herself to focus.

Tillie took some shots of the man’s back as he walked up the little concrete path that led to the house’s front door. The man pulled some keys from his pocket and began to put them in the lock. He fumbled a bit.

Why did he have her keys?

Tillie had to do something. She had to scream.

Then the door opened. Ms. Martinez, out of her work clothes and in sweatpants and a hoodie, stood there smiling. She said something to the man and they both laughed. The man leaned down, opened the duffel bag, and pulled something out: the glasses, wrapped in deli napkins. Ms. Martinez laughed in delight. She gazed at him adoringly as he slid the glasses onto her face.

Tillie felt so stupid. This was all a coincidence. It wasn’t Cubicle Man. No one was after Tillie or Ms. Martinez. It was just a boyfriend. The obvious answer. He happened to have a Cubs bag and a baseball cap because this was Templeton, Illinois, and everyone loved the Cubs and that was that. Ms. Martinez simply had a doting boyfriend running errands for her, because of course she did.

Ms. Martinez took a step out of the doorway and fell into the man’s arms. He held her, and they kissed. A long, lingering kiss. And then she put her head on his shoulder, and the man, taller than her, rested his head on top of hers, with his face tilted so that Tillie made out his smiling profile.

And she knew that face.

It was the face of the happy man, the hilarious man, the man who put his loving arms around his wife and son in front of a lovely white house made for a perfect family.

It was Jake’s dad.