Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online Page A

mailbox was one of the fancier ones on the block. Instead of being on a wooden post, it was on a brick column; at the top, the bricks encircled the entire box in a graceful arc. Dimly, Jonah wondered how the builder had done that, how the flimsy metal mailbox wasn’t crushed by the heavy bricks and mortar.
    Chip reached into the mailbox and pulled out a thick stack of letters and flyers.
    “Bill, bill, ad…,” Chip flipped through the stack, sounding more relieved with each letter that wasn’t a plain envelope addressed to him, without a return address. Jonah noticed that some of the Winstons’ letters had those yellow forwarding stickers the post office used when people moved, covering an old address with the new one.
    “Wait a minute,” Jonah said. “When you got that letter on Saturday, was it forwarded from your old address, or was it this address?”
    “I don’t know.” Chip looked up from his sorting for a moment. “This address, I guess. Why?”
    “Oh, good,” Jonah said. “That means it could just be kids from school, fooling around. They wouldn’t know your old address.”
    Maybe most of the seventh grade had gotten weird letters like his and Chip’s. He should have surveyed everyone he knew, instead of wandering around in a daze.
    “But how did they know I was adopted—when I didn’t even know?” Chip asked, his voice breaking. He bent his head down over the mail again.
    “ Missing doesn’t necessarily mean ‘adopted,’” Jonah argued. “Or, maybe there’s some list in the school office of which kids are adopted, and somebody hacked into the computer system, and they think it’s really funny to…”
    He stopped because Chip didn’t seem to be listening anymore. Chip’s face had suddenly gone deathly pale. Slowly, he held up three letters, all of them plain envelopes without return addresses. All of them were addressed to Chip; two of the letters had yellow forwarding labels. One of the labels was peeled back a little, and Jonah could see the words, “Winnetka, Illinois” below.
    Winnetka was where Chip used to live.
    “You open them,” Chip said. “I can’t.”
    Jonah took a deep breath and took the letters from Chip. He ripped them open quickly, the same way he took off Band-Aids.
    “ You are one of the missing, ” he read from the first letter. Then, “ Beware! They’re coming back to get you. ” And the next one, again, “ Beware! They’re coming back to get you. ”
    Someone had sent Chip two copies of each letter, one to his old address and one to his new.
    “Wow,” Jonah said. “Whoever sent these letters really wanted to make sure you got them.”
    Chip opened his mouth, but it didn’t seem like he had anything to say—it was more like he’d lost the power to control his jaw.
    “JO-NAH!” someone shouted far down the block, from the direction of Jonah’s house. It was Katherine.
    “What?” Jonah shouted back.
    “There’s a message on the answering machine,” Katherine hollered. “Dad wants you to call him right away.”
    Jonah didn’t care about Katherine’s big identity crisis—cheerleader versus basketball player?—but, he reflected, she certainly had the lungs of a cheerleader.
    And it was such a relief to think that, to think about something ordinary and pointless and annoying, like Katherine.
    “Okay!” he yelled back, sounding completely normal.
    Chip grabbed Jonah’s arm.
    “You can use my cell,” he said. “Dad just doubled the number of minutes I’m allowed to use. It’s a bribe, I guess. Like that’s going to make up for keeping a secret for thirteen years? Like it even matters? Like minutes can make up for years? I’m going to go over the limit anyhow. If you don’t use my cell phone, I’m just going to have to call some recorded message, leave the phone on for hours….”
    Jonah wondered if Chip was going into shock. It seemed a little irresponsible to leave him alone, babbling like that, so he took the cell phone Chip