Melissa Chapman notices it for the first time on the first day of tenth grade. They've all been seated alphabetically because the homeroom teacher couldn't be bothered to make a real seating chart, and so she's glancing over her shoulder and to the right at her friend Lizzie Fauquier who's trying to show her some kind of note she was passed by a boy, when it occurs to Melissa that there should be someone else there, and there isn't. She spends all of chemistry trying to figure out who it is, while listening to the teacher go over their syllabus for the first marking period and barely refraining from rolling her eyes at the not-so-subtle glances that Mrs. Edwards gives to the assistant principal's daughter.
By the time the bell rings she's got it, and she asks Lizzie on the way out of the classroom. "What happened to Tobias?"
Lizzie gives her a funny look. "Tobias? Who's that?"
"He used to sit a seat or two in front of you, didn't he? Alphabetically? I don't remember exactly what his last name was, but...you know, he was kind of blond, kind of tall - "
"Vague much?" says Lizzie. "That could be like, half the freaking school."
"...And he was always staring out the window. That kid."
"Oh. That kid. 'Cause that like, totally clears it up." But Melissa isn't impressed, and so she adds, "Look, maybe he moved away or something. It's not such a big deal, right?"
"Yeah, you're right. I just thought it was weird." Melissa tries not to think about it, and goes on to her second class of the day, which is English.
She thinks she has simply shrugged it off until a month or two later when the yearbook club meets for the first time because the company taking the class pictures has come through and they are trying to sort out who they have and who they don't. Melissa is in the club because she thinks she might like to be a journalist. They've got almost all the photos, but out of the list they don't have she recognizes a name.
She turns to Dan O'Leary, a junior, to ask him about it. "This guy, Tobias. Did he move away or something?"
"He probably just didn't show up for the photos," says Dan. "Some kids never do. Or maybe he just didn't have the money for it."
"But you still get your picture taken without the money, right? Just for the yearbook? You just don't order a 'package' thing, with wallet-sized ones or whatever."
"Maybe he got braces and he doesn't want to be in the yearbook with them, crap, I don't know, Melissa!" She jumps a bit, because she's always sort of liked Dan, and she's never seen him get so irritated. "I don't even recognize the guy. I don't know a lot about the underclassmen. Maybe he did move away, whatever. Why are you so interested?"
"I just wondered, is all. I just...I almost feel bad, you know? Like, I barely even noticed him when he was here, and now that he isn't here, I actually care. I can't explain it."
They drop the subject and she goes back to sorting through the Fs and Gs, but now it's really starting to bug her, and she can't even explain it.
At Rachel Berenson's sixteenth birthday party someone gets the bright idea to dig around through last year's yearbook and make fun of people's bad hair and clothes, themselves included. Melissa thinks it may have started as a friendly joke between Rachel and Cassie that Cassie never bothers to get new clothes and has been wearing the same outfit for the past four years. They sit on Rachel's bed, huddled over her tall shoulders to look at the book, and they pass Rachel ("my bangs, my bangs," she groans), Melissa ("If I haven't thrown that sweater out already I'm doing it when I get home!"), and then when they stop to look at Lizzie Melissa notices it. The empty spot and the flowing script No Picture.
"Look, he's not in last year's either!"
"Ohmigod, I can't believe you're still on this whole thing," says Lizzie.
"What whole thing?" asks Rachel.
"That kid, Tobias. He wasn't there last year or this year! I can't believe he just completely vanished and I never even noticed. Do you guys know what happened to him?"
There is a split-second beat of silence, and it is just long enough that when Rachel and Cassie speak again, Melissa doesn't believe them.
"Gosh, I remember him now that you mention it," says Cassie.
"Yeah, I think Jake saved him from a swirlie once. He was always getting picked on. Maybe he switched schools, or started getting homeschooled."
"Yeah, to get away from the bullies."
"Yeah."
Melissa waits a small moment before speaking, too. "Bullies," she says. "I guess that would make sense."
"Maybe you should like, ask your dad about it?" says Lizzie. "He would know, right? If a kid stopped going here?"
"No!" say Rachel and Cassie at once. Lizzie looks at them, and so does Melissa, but with a very different expression.
"I mean, uh," continues Rachel. "I don't think he's allowed to tell you that kind of stuff, right? Even if he is your dad. It's like, classified school stuff. Yeah?"
"Yeah," says Melissa, hesitantly. She does not press the issue - or rather, she thinks about pressing the issue, but then there is a knock on the door to Rachel's bedroom.
"Ra-chel," yells her sister Jordan from the other side. "The Chinese food is here!"
"Thanks, Jordan!" Rachel calls back, and they scramble up from her bed and race downstairs to the smell of szechuan shrimp.
Rachel has been sixteen for two weeks and three days on the afternoon when Melissa Chapman follows her home from gymnastics.
She isn't quite sure what she's doing, but for the past two weeks and three days she hasn't been able to shake the feeling that Rachel - and maybe Cassie, too, but definitely Rachel - knows something about what happened to Tobias. The fact that she has been so secretive about it since the ninth grade or even earlier makes Melissa all the more suspicious. She feels a bit foolish, walking on the other side of the street and quickly turning her face or stopping when Rachel glances in her direction, but Melissa thinks she would like to be a journalist, and journalists need to be intrepid, don't they? And this is all very curious, isn't it?
Why would Rachel even know about Tobias in the first place? Melissa has remembered him a little more by now; he was kind of dweeby, and wore the same clothes a lot, like he didn't have much. He stared out the window all the time and when he got called on in class he would start, as if he'd been in a whole other world, and have to backtrack mentally for a few minutes before giving an answer (though the answer was usually right, or at least close). He didn't have many friends, and he was always getting picked on. Melissa didn't think she'd ever seen him even speak to Rachel. But Rachel knew - and she was hiding it. Why? Had Tobias been stricken with some sort of illness that they weren't supposed to tell anyone about? Did he have to go into some kind of therapy - maybe because of the bullies, or because of the limited details Melissa had discovered about his family?
Had Tobias died?
Rachel slows in her walking suddenly, and Melissa has to slow down, too, to stay far enough away that Rachel won't recognize her. She can see Rachel turning her head skyward, looking for something, and Melissa looks up, too, and sees a big hawk or something flying across the sky. Rachel waves ever so slightly to the bird, and then keeps walking.
That seems even more curious, and so Melissa keeps following Rachel, even when she gets on the bus and heads out to Cassie's house instead of her own.
Rachel walks straight into the barn, and Melissa waits outside of it. She can faintly hear voices - Cassie and Rachel, and Rachel's cousin Jake, and Jake's friend Marco, that kind of annoying guy from her gym class. There's a fifth voice, too, one that Melissa recognizes but can't quite place. She's still puzzling over it, because she can hear the voices but not quite the words so she's missing the conversation, when Jake and Rachel run out of the barn door, grab her by the arms, and toss her into a chair. As soon as she's sat down a gorilla - a gorilla - wraps its arms around her from behind and secures her there.
"Help!" she screams. "What the heck are you guys doing? Jake? Rachel? Oh my god, help!"
Rachel's hand clamps down over her mouth and to silence her, and Melissa is confined to glancing around frantically. She sees the fifth guy - was his name Eric, or something? He'd switched schools - and Rachel is talking to him.
"This was convenient," she says.
"Are you sure you can do this?" Jake asks him.
He nods. "It won't actually be harming her, so it won't go against my programming." He reaches out his hand and places it on Melissa's forehead, and behind Rachel's hand she screams.
"Wait!" says Cassie.
-What now?- asks a voice - Marco's voice, but where is Marco? And was that voice really in her ears, or somehow in her head -
"I think before we do it we should at least let her know. She deserves to."
"Cassie," says Jake, "in two seconds she's not going to remember any of this, whether we tell her or not."
"Right! So what difference does it make if we do tell her?"
-Let her know,- says one more voice. -I'll tell her.-
"Tobias?" she tries to say, but Rachel's grip is firm.
A hawk - the hawk from before - flutters down from the rafters of the barn and lands on Rachel's other arm, outstretched. Its golden raptor eyes bore into Melissa's, and she's hypnotized by them, and can't look away.
-Melissa,- says the hawk, with the voice-in-her-head. -It's me. I'm Tobias.-
Then Eric Whoever has put his hand back on her forehead, and then she collapses.
Friday at school, Rachel stops by Melissa's locker as Melissa is going from English to gym.
"Whatever happened to that guy you were after?" Rachel asks.
Melissa stands up to look at her. "What guy?"
Rachel breathes a sigh - almost of relief, which Melissa finds very confusing - and then smiles broadly. "You know, that junior guy from yearbook. Dan whoever? He's pretty cute."
"Oh, I think he has a girlfriend," says Melissa. "Besides, I quit yearbook like two days ago. I've decided I don't really want to be a journalist."