Page 39 of The Family Guest

My sister organized her stuff meticulously, hanging her clothes up neatly, color-coding them, and labeling shoeboxes, which were always perfectly stacked. Now, her things, along with slobbo Tanya’s, were all over the place, most of them scattered in messy piles on the closet floor. Also tossed haphazardly inside the closet were my sister’s other possessions like photos, books, and trophies. Going through all this stuff would take hours. Instead, I did a big-picture search. Just as I’d suspected, Tanya’s backpack wasn’t in the closet, but something else was. Her big shiny red suitcase. Parked in the very back. Maybe that’s where she kept all her travel documents…and her secrets?

Wasting no time, I got down on my knees and tried the zipper. Given that the bag had a combination lock, I was surprised when it began to slide smoothly. The hiss gave me goose bumps. When the bag was fully unzipped, I opened it.

Another major surprise.

Inside it were dozens of photos of my mother, father, Anabel, Will, and myself. The photos spanned a decade. I shuddered. It was so unbelievably creepy. How did she get them? The Internet? Facebook? Instagram? It was like she’d stalked us. And what was even creepier was that in all the photos I appeared, she’d X’d me out with a red marker. Like she was canceling me.

Among the photos was one other—a class photo from Indio High School. The year not specified. About five hundred casually dressed kids were lined up on bleachers, all smiling brightly for the camera except for one thin, mousy-haired girl in the third row center. Unlike her classmates, she looked sullen, like she didn’t want to be part of the group photo. Oddly, her face was circled with red marker. Who was this girl and what was her significance to Tanya? Questions burning my brain, I gathered the photos and dashed out of the closet.

“Will, stop what you’re doing! Come look at these.” My brother joined me, and I showed him the photos. “What do you think?”

He examined the photos as if they were under a microscope. Then lifted his eyes and met mine. “Maybe Mom sent them to her before she came here?”

I hadn’t thought about that. That’s something my mother would do. Scan old family photos. I made a mental note to ask her. Still, my X’d-out face was making my skin crawl. “Sherlock, why do you think she crossed me out?”

My brother rolled his eyes. “Obviously, my dear Watson, she doesn’t like you.”

I snickered. That was an understatement. I showed him the last photo—the Indio High class picture.

He knitted his brows together and studied it.

“Do you recognize the girl in the middle who’s circled?”

He squinted. “Hand me my magnifying glass.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Truth is, I wish we had the literary detective’s favorite investigative tool because the photo was grainy and it was hard to make her out. “Well, Sherlock?”

Will shook his head. “Sorry, I have no clue.”

That made two of us. “How old do you think the photo is?”

He twisted his lips. “It’s hard to tell. The kids look to be fifteen or sixteen, and most of them are wearing jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies. It could have been taken yesterday or several years ago. But I’d say it’s not older than twenty years.”

I muttered a hmm. “What should we do with these photos?”

“Take photos of the ones with you in them with your phone, but let’s make a copy of that class photo…then put them back in her suitcase.”

“Good idea. Did you get into her email account?”

“Yes. It’s under [email protected].”

“Similar to her Instagram.”

“Yes… again. And it was set up only the day before she came here.”

“Weird. Did you find any revealing emails?”

“What I didn’t find is actually more revealing. Not one email to her father, or vice versa. He’s not even in her list of contacts.”

“That’s weird too.” I wanted to ask if there were any emails to Lance, but refrained. If she did communicate with him, it would likely be via her phone. Texts. Kids of my generation rarely used email. Like Facebook, it was more for old fogies like my parents and grandparents.

“Anything else?”

He nodded. “A few desktop files, but they’re mostly for her school stuff.”

“Does she have one for her Stanford application?”

“Interesting you should ask that.” He raised a knowing finger. “She does indeed.”