Free When Lightning Strikes by Meg Cabot Page B

as fast as you want. Unfortunately, Mike—and your friends at the Department of Motor Vehicles, who keep refusing to give me a license—disagree.
    At the grocery store, I picked out a milk carton that had some kids on it I hadn't seen already, just as a kind of experiment. It was slotted to expire in two days, but the way Douglas chows, I knew we'd need more by tomorrow, anyway. Douglas can eat an entire family-size box of Cheerios in one sitting. It's a wonder he isn't fat. But he's always had a very high metabolism, like Mr. Goodhart.
    Also at the grocery store, we ran into Claire Lippman. She was standing by the magazine rack, reading
Cosmo
, while her mom was rooting through the corn in the vegetable section. Mike stared at her longingly for a while. Finally I got sick of it, and poked him and said, "Just go
talk
to her, for God's sake."
    Mike went, "Oh, right. About what?"
    "Tell her you can't wait to see her in
Endgame
."
    "What's that?"
    "It's a play. She's in it. She plays Nell. She has to sit in a plastic trash can all during the show."
    Mike looked at me. "How do you know? Since when are you in the drama club?"
    I realized I had made a mistake. I said, "God, never mind. Come on, let's go."
    Only Mike wouldn't go. He just kept staring at Claire. "I mean," he said, "it's not like she'd go with me. If I asked her. Why would she go with me? I don't even have a car."
    "You could have bought a car," I said, "with all the money you earned working at the restaurant. But, no. You had to buy that stupid scanner."
    "And a printer," Mike said. "And a Zip drive. And—"
    "Oh, my God," I said. "Whatever. You can always borrow Dad's car."
    "Yeah," Mike said. "A Volvo station wagon. Right. Come on. Let's go."
    God. I can't believe boys. It's a wonder anybody gets married at all.
    Nothing else much happened on Sunday, except that that night, while I was practicing, I thought I heard a motorcycle going down our street again. And this time, when I looked out my window, the one I can see the whole street on, I saw one set of tail lights, way down Lumley Lane, making the turn off onto Hunter.
    Hey, it could have been Rob. You never know.
    I went to bed all happy, thinking maybe a boy liked me. It's stupid that that's all it takes, sometimes, to make you happy. Thinking that someone likes you, I mean. It's especially stupid in light of what happened the next day. I had way bigger problems, it turned out, than whether or not a boy liked me.
    Way
bigger.

C H A P T E R
9
    W hat happened was, the next day, Ruth drove me to school as usual. All during the drive, I couldn't get those kids out of my head. The kids on the side of the milk carton I'd bought the night before, I mean. Once again, I'd wakened with this feeling that I knew exactly where they were, down to the street address. It was getting creepy, let me tell you.
    But just like on Friday and Saturday, I couldn't stop thinking about them. So, as soon as we got to school, and I managed to ditch Ruth, I gave old 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU a call. This time Rosemary answered.
    "Hey, Rosemary," I said. "It's me, Jess. From Friday, remember?"
    Rosemary sucked in her breath. "Jess!" she said. Actually, she practically screamed it in my ear. "Honey, where are you?"
    I thought it was kind of funny that somebody who worked for 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU would be asking where
I
was. I went, "Well, right now I'm at school."
    "People are looking for you, hon," Rosemary said. "Did you call here on Saturday?"
    "Yeah," I said. "Why?"
    "Hold on," Rosemary said. "I have to get my supervisor. I promised I would if you called back."
    The late bell rang. I went, "Wait, Rosemary. I don't have time. I have to tell you about Jennie Lee Peters and Samantha Travers—"
    "Jess," Rosemary said. "Honey, I don't think you understand. Haven't you looked at a newspaper? They found them. They found Sean and Olivia, exactly where you said they'd be. And the children you called about on Saturday—they found them, too. People here