The Disappearance Read online

  Jones raised an eyebrow, and I frowned. It was strange to hear Harper—such a vibrant, fun, independent person—turning all quiet and apologetic. This Matt guy didn’t sound like a catch at all.

  Harper walked to the doorway of the bedroom. Her eyes were downcast, and she looked about a thousand miles away.

  “Um,” I said. “I was saying . . . we should get going.”

  I kind of expected Harper to argue with me, like she had when I’d suggested that we leave the first time. But now she met my eyes—hers were serious and dark—and nodded.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we should all probably get some sleep. I have to get an early start tomorrow back to Pennsylvania.”

  We hastily packed up our stuff and made our way to the door. I opened it, and we all piled out onto the walkway. I couldn’t help noticing that the windows in the apartment next door were dark now.

  Guess we quieted down enough for you to get to sleep. . . .

  When I turned back to my friends, Jones had put her hand on Harper’s shoulder.

  “It was so awesome to finally meet you in person,” she said.

  Harper’s lips lifted in a small smile—a real smile. “It was great to meet you, too. I had fun today.”

  “Most perfect day ever!” I added, but somehow all our previous excitement had ebbed. Harper looked at me almost sadly. Were those tears in her eyes?

  “Maybe we can hang out again sometime,” Jones said, patting Harper’s shoulder.

  “I would really like that,” Harper said, and wiped at the corner of her eye. “Anyway, I’m sorry, guys, I just got so tired all of a sudden. Have a safe drive back!” She waved, then slipped back inside and closed the door.

  • • •

  It was a quiet drive back to Bayport. Partly because we were all a little confused by Harper’s behavior right before we left, and partly because Joe and Jones immediately passed out, Joe snoring loudly enough to nearly drown out the radio. I didn’t mind, though. We’d had a nearly perfect day. And even though I hadn’t been sure Joe would enjoy himself, I was glad he’d come.

  I’d pulled off the Garden State Parkway and was following the long path of secondary roads to Jones’s house, when suddenly she sat up in the passenger seat, wide awake. “Oh, no!”

  She startled me enough that the car swerved a little, but I was able to correct it quickly. “What’s up?” I asked, glancing at her with concern.

  She groaned. “My phone,” she said, holding up a smartphone in a Wonder Woman case. “We were in such a hurry to leave, I grabbed Harper’s phone instead of mine. And I think she left mine in the bedroom.”

  “Oh, ugh,” I murmured.

  Joe suddenly sat straight up in the backseat, like the Ghost of Road Trips Past. “Whasshappening?”

  “Jones accidentally took Harper’s phone and left her own,” I explained.

  Joe moaned, but I couldn’t tell whether it was in response to what I’d said.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Don’t worry. Grab my phone and send a text to yours to tell Harper we have her phone, and we’ll be back at eight a.m. tomorrow to switch them.”

  “She said she was leaving early,” Jones reminded me, but she picked up my phone and began typing.

  “If she wants to leave earlier than that, she can text me back,” I pointed out.

  Then Jones groaned again—louder this time. “Oh, shoot. I have a band rehearsal tomorrow morning.” She looked at me and sighed. “I can’t miss it. We’re starting to work on some new material.”

  Jones bit her lip. She always does that when she’s worried.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “Joe and I will go. You’ll have your phone back before the rehearsal ends.”

  “Oh, Frank,” she said, a huge smile on her face. “You’re such a prince.”

  “And you’re my kick-butt superhero girlfriend,” I said, reaching over to take her hand.

  “And I guess I’m just the dumb schlub who gets to wake up at six a.m. to go with you,” said a creaky voice from the backseat. Joe. Right. I’d forgotten about him for a minute. “Also? Barf!”

  3

  SURPRISE!

  JOE

  THE THINGS I DO FOR my brother.

  Here it is, seven thirty a.m. on a Sunday, and am I facedown in my pillow, enjoying my favorite recurring dream of growing giant antennae that allow me to control thoughts and also receive free HBO?

  No, I am not.

  Am I hunkered over my desk, poring over SAT prep book #428 in search of the best strategy for eliminating wrong multiple-choice answers?

  Noooooooooo.

  I am in a car. Our car. The car. Frank is driving (least he can do) and we are halfway through the hour-long drive back to Margate, the town where Harper’s UrMotel is, to intercept her and exchange phones.

  “Did she send anything yet?” Frank asked, gesturing to his phone, which lay between us in the cup holder, charging. In the next holder over was Harper’s phone in its matching Wonder Woman case.

  I lifted Frank’s phone and looked at the screen. “Still nothing,” I said.

  Frank sighed. “Well, I guess we just have to hope we get there before she leaves.”

  We were quiet for a minute. Thinking of Harper still left a funny taste in my mouth—like there was something there that I hadn’t quite figured out.

  “Did you think she was weird about the comic dealer guy?” I asked.

  “Von,” Frank supplied. “ComiczVon.”

  “Whoever,” I said. “Just—she ran off to avoid him, right? That’s the most logical explanation. That’s why she didn’t come back and find us, even though we hung out in that aisle for a long time, waiting.”

  Frank took a minute to reply. “The thought did occur to me,” he admitted finally.

  “And the boyfriend,” I added. “Remember? That’s the excuse she gave when she ran off before Von came up to us—she had to call her boyfriend back. Maybe she saw him and got out of there before he could catch up with her.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “You could be right.”

  “Seems like a messed-up relationship,” I added, looking at Frank for confirmation. But he was focused on the road. “She was so nervous about calling him back right away. Remember? And then she calls, and she gets all down, and she’s suddenly promising to be back right away and apologizing for things that don’t need apologizing for.”

  I paused, hoping Frank would add something. But he was silent, driving, staring out at the highway.

  “That’s not a relationship built on trust,” I pointed out.

  Frank just nodded again.

  “Hey, plug in her phone for a few minutes,” he suggested. “Mine is probably fully charged now. That way, she’ll be able to use it on her way home if she needs to.”

  “She said she has a charger,” I reminded him, but I unplugged Frank’s phone and plugged in Harper’s anyway.

  Within thirty seconds or so, the phone began beeping—first once, then several times in a row. I picked it up and looked at the screen. “A bunch of texts are coming in.”

  “See?” said Frank. “Harper was right—her phone must have been nearly dead. Didn’t even have enough juice to receive a text.”

  But I was still staring at the screen—watching text after text pop up. “Um, Frank . . .”

  “What?” My brother glanced at me.

  “These are all from her boyfriend,” I said. “Matt. And . . . they’re kind of creepy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I read the texts to Frank, in order. They ranged from HEY, CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU to WHERE R U? to WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE? to CALL ME NOW!!!!

  Frank shook his head. “Wow. I get why Harper totally changed after talking to him last night.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the screen. “Dude, maybe we should write back.”

  “We don’t have her password, though,” Frank pointed out.

  I touched the phone to wake it up. The texts had just appeared on the home screen, b
ut sure enough, when I wanted to go into MESSAGES to reply, it prompted me to enter the password. “Yeah, it’s locked.”

  Frank sighed. “How many letters does it need?”

  I looked up at him. “We’re breaking into her phone now?”

  Frank groaned. “We don’t have a way to get in touch with her! She isn’t responding to the text Jones sent from my phone last night,” he said, a little defensively. “And honestly, this Matt sounds like a creep. I’m worried that if we don’t write back and explain, she could be headed back into a dangerous situation.”

  I swallowed. “You don’t think . . .”

  As sleuths and human beings, Frank and I were well aware that not all guys were nice to their significant others. But some guys could go pretty far in the other direction from “nice.”

  “We don’t know,” Frank said. “But I don’t want to regret anything.”

  “True. There are nine spaces.”

  “Try ‘Wonder Wom,’ like Wonder Woman for short? It is her phone case, after all,” Frank suggested.

  I typed it in. “No . . . maybe another comic character?”

  Frank started listing some off some that might work. But nothing did.

  “Call Jones,” Frank said finally. “She’ll know what to do.”

  “But Harper has her phone,” I replied.

  “Yeah,” said Frank after a moment, “but there should be a listing in my phone for her parents’ landline. Sometimes I call her there if her phone is dead. She’s supposed to be rehearsing with her band in the garage.”

  I called, and got to meet (via phone, anyway) Jones’s charming dad, who was very excited about this article he’d read in the New York Times about traveling to Costa Rica. (Landline plus hard-copy newspaper subscription. Yup, Jones’s parents were parents, all right.) Finally he put Jones on, and I explained what we were up to as quickly as I could.

  “How scary are the messages?” Jones asked, her voice tight. “Like . . . he’s not threatening to hurt her, is he?”

  “No, no,” I said. “But he seems angry, so we wanted to explain.”

  Jones let out a breath. “Okay. Well, I hope you can type fast, Joe. Here are some ideas. . . .”

  My fingers flew as I tried each of Jones’s comic book character suggestions in turn. We tried two, then five, then ten, then fifteen. . . .

  “How are there still more characters?” I whined, my fingers shaking.

  “Dude,” Jones replied, “the world of comics is rich and varied. That’s like saying, why are there still so many fictional detectives, or why are there so many Shakespeare characters?”

  “Wait!” I cried. I’d just finished typing Jones’s last suggestion—Poison Ivy—into the keypad, and amazingly, the screen didn’t bounce back to the INCORRECT PASSWORD, TRY AGAIN screen. Instead . . .

  It led me to the home screen. The phone was unlocked. “Success!” I yelled.

  “Really?” Jones asked. “Huh.”

  “What?” I asked, clicking on MESSAGES.

  “It’s just interesting,” Jones said. “She sees herself as a Poison Ivy type. That’s cool. I’m not judging.”

  I typed out a quick message—HEY MAN HARPER LEFT HER PHONE WITH US BY ACCIDENT SO SHE HASN’T GOTTEN YOUR TEXTS BUT SHE’S FINE WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO RETURN HER PHONE!—and hit send. Immediately, a little DELIVERED showed up under the message. Then, within seconds, READ 7:43 A.M.

  Then the little dots showed up that told me Matt was writing back.

  Then the message popped up.

  WHAT?? WHO THE ARE YOU??

  “Uh-oh. He seems angry,” I murmured.

  “What?” asked Frank.

  “What?” asked Jones, who was still on the line.

  I read them the message as I typed a reply: I’M JUST JOE HARDY A FRIEND OF HARPER’S NO BIG WHOOP!

  Dots. Immediately. And within seconds:

  WHAT IS HARPER DOINMG WITH ANOTHETR GUY.

  And then, before I could respond,

  IF I FIDND YOU THERE YOU WILL BE SORRY.

  “Oh, no,” I muttered. Jones and Frank looked concerned, so I filled them in.

  “You gave him your full name?” Jones asked, incredulous.

  “Yes, I like to be honest,” I told her. “And I figured if he wanted to, he could look me up and see I’m a stand-up guy.”

  “Or he could look up your street address and show up with a machete,” Jones pointed out. “Seriously, you’re a detective?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to go so badly, okay?!” I huffed, shaking my head.

  “Text him back,” Frank said sharply. “Tell him to calm down. You’re just Harper’s friend, and she’ll text him when she has her phone back.”

  I did. But now there was no answer. And the DELIVERED message wasn’t turning to READ.

  “He’s not checking his phone,” I guessed.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean he’s on his way somewhere,” said Jones.

  I was about to say something defensive about giving him my name, when I realized that probably wasn’t what Jones meant.

  Matt probably knew where Harper was staying. Which meant he could be on his way there. Or maybe even on his way to intercept her when she got back to Pennsylvania.

  “Jones,” I said, having a sudden brainstorm, “do you have a way to check the messages on your phone remotely?”

  “Um, I think so,” she said. I could hear her opening a laptop, then typing. “Do you think he might try to contact her on my phone?”

  “He would have the number,” Frank said in a low voice. “From when she called him last night.”

  “But wait, I think she told him she was calling from a landline,” I reminded them. “Maybe check your voice mail?”

  There was silence for a few seconds as we all thought that over, and Jones kept typing on her computer. Then, what seemed like hours later but was probably only a minute or so, she said, “I’m in . . . ohhh.”

  “What is it?” Frank asked.

  Jones responded by playing the voice mail so we could hear it.

  “Seriously,” a ragged male voice said, “what are you trying to do to me? I don’t know where you are. I don’t know why you’re not answering your phone. You’re calling me from strange numbers. What am I supposed to think?” And then a second later, louder, nearly screaming: “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK, HARPER?!”

  “Oh, man,” Frank whispered.

  “Where are you?” Jones asked urgently.

  “Only about ten minutes away,” Frank said. “We’re not far now.”

  “Good,” Jones replied. “Call me the minute you get there, okay? I’ll tell my dad to grab me. I hope he didn’t talk your ear off about Costa Rica.”

  “No,” I said. “It was all kind of interesting.”

  “Good. Talk soon.”

  Jones hung up, and I looked at Frank. He looked as freaked out as I felt.

  “I hope Harper’s okay,” I said quietly, stating the obvious.

  Frank nodded. “Me too,” he said. “This is going to be a really long ten minutes.”

  • • •

  When we pulled into the apartment complex, everything looked normal from the outside. Lots of people looked like they were in the process of leaving, rolling suitcases to their cars and loading them in.

  “There’s Harper’s car,” Frank said, his voice thick with relief.

  “Oh, thank God,” I murmured, noting the little blue sports car. “She’s still here.”

  “Let’s just hope she’s alone,” Frank added, pulling the car into a space.

  We hopped out of the car and ran to the gate, where I suddenly remembered: we didn’t know the security code. I took a quick glance through Harper’s phone but couldn’t find anything obvious in her messages or e-mails. . . .

  “Let’s just buzz her,” Frank said. “Hopefully she’ll answer.”

  So we did—we buzzed apartment 2F once, then twice, then just over and over and over.

  Frank met my seriously frea
ked-out look. “She’s not answering. This isn’t good,” he said.

  “Maybe she’s indisposed,” I said, and Frank looked confused. “Maybe she’s in the shower or trapped under a heavy piece of furniture or something,” I explained.

  Frank sighed. “That seems . . . unlikely.”

  I glanced past the gate at the complex. Most of the people who’d been loading their cars when we pulled in had left already. “Maybe we just have to explain our situation to the next person to come out,” I suggested. “When they see how worried we are, they’ll let us in. . . .”

  “You think?” asked Frank, nodding to a person coming through the lobby.

  Oh, man. It was the guy. The same guy who’d been in the apartment next to Harper’s, who’d threatened to call the cops on our “party.”

  “Oh, no,” I muttered.

  As he got closer, he didn’t exactly look thrilled to see us, either. “You again?” he sneered.

  “Listen,” said Frank, putting on his “no-nonsense” tone. “I know we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances, but you have to help us. We’re worried about our friend Harper. We accidentally switched phones with her, so we came to bring this one back, but meanwhile she’s not answering the buzz or responding to any of our messages. We want to make sure she’s okay. Could you let us in?”

  The guy looked from Frank to me, still sneering, but then shook his head. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you in, but just for a minute or so to check on her. And I’m certainly going to mention all of this in my review. I thought these were family-friendly apartments, but people should know about the undesirable tenants. . . .”

  By this time, he’d swung the gate open, so we ignored the rest of his rant and bolted by him. In seconds we’d run through the lobby and out to the patio, then up the stairs. We thundered down the walkway and squealed to a stop outside apartment 2F.

  The door was ajar.

  I was beginning to feel an icy sensation creep up my spine. With the lack of response from her; all her strange, scared behavior the day before; this psycho boyfriend; and now, an open door to her apartment, it was getting harder and harder to believe that Harper was fine.