The Strangers: Chapters 11–20

She also had on high heels, dramatically flared black pants, and a frilly blouse with swoopy sleeves.

Emma found herself deeply curious about what Natalie would do next. Would she:
a) Grunt again, and maybe even make it audible this time?
b) Keep typing on her own cell phone and totally ignore her mom?

And Natalie and three other Lip Gloss Girls had walked over to him, and one of them had said, “You know, you’re kind of cute.”
And then Natalie had added in a scornful voice, “For a fifth grader, anyway.”

Would “Thanks!” have sounded conceited? Would “You’re really pretty, too” have sounded like he was a jerk?

He was a little afraid Finn would suggest, Let’s race like we always do! And then probably Natalie would laugh at the way Chess ran. But even Finn seemed weighted down, his steps sluggish.

“Mom doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Emma said.
“Are you sure?” Natalie asked, and it was almost like she was taunting Emma and apologizing, all at once.

Natalie squinted at the texting symbol at the top.
“Your mom uses an encrypted texting service?” Natalie said.

“I’m going to go find it,” Finn announced, and Chess knew without looking that Finn would have his lip stuck out and his face set, a vision of obstinacy.

But then Chess did glance down at his brother, thinking it would help his own resolve.

His whole face trembled.
Finn looked like he wanted to act stubborn, but he’d gotten stuck on forlorn.

Of course Mom’s coming back. That will happen regardless. Whether we find her spare computer or not. Whether we do anything or not.

She remembered Finn’s friend Tyrell asking once, “Isn’t this your family room? Where’s the TV?”
And Finn had said indignantly, “It’s our rec room. Don’t you think we’d wreck a TV if it was down here?”

That was when Mom explained that, really, rec room stood for “recreation room,” and that a TV would distract her when she was working in the Boring Room, Mom’s little closed-off office at the far side of the basement.

She felt around the couch’s middle leg. From the front, that leg looked like a solid block of wood. But it had a notch carved into the back of it. Emma pulled a little metal key out of the notch.

Just that thought made Emma want to start reciting reliable things to herself again: Fibonacci numbers. Multiplication tables. The Pythagorean theorem.

She pulled out the drawer, and the paper got stuck, smashed into accordion-style pleats. Emma gently eased the paper out, flipped it over, and smoothed it out.

It wasn’t exactly foolproof logic, but Emma was pretty sure she could make a deduction: Mom wasn’t on a business trip at all.

Evidently she’d taken the key from Chess while he wasn’t paying attention. Evidently now she was slipping the key back into his hand.
Chess felt like there could be all sorts of things happening that he might have missed.

But now they looked up at him, their faces shrouded in shadows, and he could tell that tonight neither of them found anything amusing.

“Okay,” Natalie agreed. “On the side, Mom’s a private investigator. That’s what she calls it. I call it a professional snoop. My grandmother called it being a busybody. Mom spies on men who are—” She glanced at Finn

And she never used such a surly tone with clients. She was always nice to them.

“Then I can’t see anything,” Finn said dejectedly. His shoulders slumped, and he looked like he might start crying again.

He’s eight, not three! Chess wanted to yell at her. Stop being so...so…
“Patronizing” was the word he was looking for.

He shut down the laptop from the Boring Room and maneuvered Finn between him and Emma.

Though, actually, the image of all three kids was largely hidden, because they had so many files and games and shortcut links strewn about the desktop. It would be hard to find anything in that mess.

Eagerly Chess moved on to the next paragraph. But it was all gibberish.
He raked his finger down the touchpad, scrolling through the rest of the letter—page after page of more gibberish.

“Is it...code?” Emma finally asked. “Or a cipher? I forget which is which—one is where each individual letter or number or symbol stands for a different letter, and one is where the whole word is replaced by a different word, which you can only figure out if you have the key to the code. Or the cipher. Whichever.”

“She likes butterflies because...because...what’s the reason, Emma?”
“Rebirth,” Emma said absently. She didn’t take her eyes off her own computer screen. “Metamorphosis. Second chances.”

The dots on the butterflies’ wings weren’t just in different places on each logo. They also contained patterns of their own, intricately drawn lines and angles.

She looked at the array of butterflies Finn had lined up on his computer screen.