“Oh, no! You keep it. That’s for you. I already took the classifieds and the crossword out of the back. My husband, Huey, likes to do the crossword in the mornings. You’re going to want to keep that for your grandchildren.”
I forced another smile. “Uh… Okay. Thanks again.”
“Have a great day, sweetie!”
“You too.” I closed the door and went upstairs.
Jenna snapped me back to reality when I got back to my room. “What was that about?” I handed her the paper, and she groaned. “Great! So, now you’re famous. You’re already getting primed for rich besties, and you aren’t even there yet.” She crossed her arms and turned her back on me.
“Come on, Jen. I’m not famous. It’s just the local paper. No one even looks at it.”
“Except Mrs. Brown, apparently. This is the biggest disaster of my life.”
I started to answer when I heard the front door again, but no one knocked on it this time. It opened by itself. It shouldn’t have done that. I distinctly remembered locking it after Mrs. Brown left.
I froze to listen. “Someone’s downstairs.”
“You mean like a burglar or something? You’ve been watching too much TV.”
“I can hear their voices. It’s my parents!”
I raced out of the room and downstairs just as my dad shut the front door behind him. He and my mom were parking their loaded suitcases in the front hall.
“Mom! Dad! What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you home until the end of the week.”
On any other day, my mom would have given me a big hug and a kiss and told me how happy she was to see me. Instead, she gave me a horrified look, gasped, and grabbed both my shoulders. “Get upstairs right away, Ariana, and pack your suitcase. We have to get to the airport right away.”
“Airport!” I cried. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
“This.” My dad held out another copy of the paper. My picture looked up at me from the front page. “Your picture is plastered all over Rhode Island.”
“Yeah? So?”
“We don’t have time to argue,” my mom cut in. “You’re taking the next flight to Italy. You’ll stay with your grandmother in Tuscany until we decide it’s safe enough for you to come back.”
“No way!” I blurted out. “I’m not going to Italy now! This is my last summer of freedom before I go to Harvard. I’m not going off to stay in some dusty villa a million miles from—”
“You’ll go where we tell you to go, and you’ll be happy about it,” my dad practically bellowed. “This is a matter of life and death!”
I stared up at him. This couldn’t be happening. My parents couldn’t be ruining my last summer before I spent the next four years tied to a desk.
My dad’s reaction stopped me from yelling back at him. He never raised his voice—ever. He always kept his cool no matter what. Whatever idiot reason they had for sending me to Italy, it couldn’t really be a matter of life and death. So, why did he say it was? This wasn’t like him at all.
Jenna interrupted the argument by coming downstairs. “What’s going on? Hi, Mr. Anderson. Did you have a nice time in Switzerland, Mrs. Anderson?”
My mom turned to Jenna, and instead of hugging and kissing her the way she usually would, my mom gave her a look that would freeze water to ice. “I’m sorry, Jenna, but I have to ask you to go home. We have some very serious business to discuss with Ariana.”
Jenna’s eyes popped, and she glanced over at me. “Uh… Okay. I guess I’ll see you later.”
She hugged and kissed me like she usually did, but considering how frosty my parents were being, I couldn’t appreciate it. Jenna cast one more petrified look at my parents and made herself scarce. I wished I could do the same thing.
My dad shut the door behind Jenna and turned back to me. He spoke in a very slow, hoarse, husky whisper and pronounced every word with extra slow, dangerous emphasis.
“Now… you’re going to go upstairs and pack your suitcase like your mother told you to. You’re going to be back down here ready to go in five minutes. You’re not going to argue. You’re not going to ask questions. You’re not going to do anything that might slow you down. We’re leaving in ten minutes, and if you don’t pack your suitcase, we’ll take you to the airport with the shirt on your back. Is that clear?”
I hesitated one more second. They couldn’t be doing this to me, but his tone and the furious danger simmering just below the surface stopped me from saying anything else. What if he was telling the truth and this really was a matter of life and death?
I couldn’t think of anything that might cause that, apart from a giant tsunami striking the Eastern Seaboard or maybe a meteor about to crash into the planet. Then again, if that was the case, driving to the airport probably wouldn’t be the best strategy.