Finding Hannah Read Free Page A

about half the number of volunteers. No one said it, but I knew they were all asking themselves if she would ever be found. By the middle of the second week, only a few dozen thought it was possible.
    One of the volunteers who showed up every day was a girl my age. I’d overheard someone call her Molly. I noticed she arrived at the park on her bicycle. The sun was setting when Dad and I returned home. I saw Molly riding toward our house, and then she turned down a gravel road. I figured she couldn’t live very far away since she rode her bike. I thought it was strange because anyone who lived near me would have been in my school, and I’d never seen her before.
    Every day Hannah was gone brought new pain. It showed up in my joints, behind my forehead, and in my lungs. When I looked at my face in the mirror, it was as if my eye sockets were retreating inward. I looked like someone who’d given up on sleeping and eating. Even my black hair seemed to be losing its color. The invisible metal band around my head continued to tighten, and my swollen throat made it hard to breathe. My wrists and knees creaked like rusty hinges. I felt as if all of my organs were slowly shutting down.
    We’d been searching every day for two weeks when Dad and I arrived home early for what should have been Hannah’s sixteenth birthday party. My three aunts had gathered at the house to spend the day with my mom. My uncles arrived the same time we did because they’d been out searching too.
    I quickly retreated to my room, but the smell of the feast made my stomach growl. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I went upstairs and found the dining room table covered with food and the house full of people. It looked like a church potluck dinner. My uncle Harold and a man I didn’t know were talking near a table with a birthday cake. They glanced at me and kept talking as I loaded up a plate with chicken and mashed potatoes.
    “Where was Amy when she saw him?” the man I didn’t know asked.
    “She was in bed when she heard someone outside her door and thought it was her parents coming home,” Uncle Harold said. “Her door was open just a crack and she saw the man standing in Hannah’s room holding a gun. She watched him pull Hannah out of bed. Amy said she saw his face. She didn’t recognize him.”
    “The description of him is terrible.”
    “I know. That’s all they could get out of her.”
    “Did he see Amy?”
    “She didn’t know. All she said was he held Hannah by the arm as they left.”
    “How did he get in?” the man asked.
    “The door was unlocked,” Uncle Harold said.
    “You’re kidding me.”
    “Nope.”
    I moved into the kitchen to get something to drink. As I opened the fridge, I could hear Aunt Jackie talking with one of our neighbors in the hallway.
    “They don’t know,” Aunt Jackie said. “The man knew where Hannah slept. If it was a stranger abduction, he did his homework. I can’t imagine anyone, friend or family, who would have taken her.”
    “But they’re not ruling it out?” my neighbor asked.
    “No, not yet.”
    “How is Amy doing?”
    “Not good. She’s been sleeping in her parents’ room and hiding under her bed. Yesterday, her mom found her sleeping under Hannah’s bed. She rarely talks to anyone.”
    I walked back toward the stairs down to the basement. I could feel them all look at me. I thought I heard someone whisper my name and then, “. . . asleep on the couch.” I had to get away from these people.
    My cousin Shawn came down to my room. He was nineteen and had finished his freshman year at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. I had looked up to him my whole life, but now I didn’t feel like talking to him.
    “I’ve always thought of you three as my little brother and sisters.” He talked about letting Hannah get behind the wheel of his car just a few months ago when he’d come home for Easter. “Never give up hope,” he said. “You ever want to come and see me in Boston,