The Strangers

As the kids and their mother discuss arrangements for a sitter, Emma also notices that Chess and her mother’s behavior is odd. Chess sounds robotic, like he’s reading from a script, and their mother’s sudden “business” trip is upsetting Finn, so Emma tries to spin her mother’s trip in a positive way as a fun adventure.

As the kids get dressed, Emma thinks about how she snuck out of bed the night before, borrowed her mother’s phone without her knowledge, and researched the kidnapping—which, as it turns out, happened three full days before the Greystones heard about it. Emma finds this strange, as if some psychic connection should have warned her sooner that the other Emma was in danger. She asks herself, what’s in a name? Are people with the same name connected in some way? She studies the photographs of the kidnapped kids and tries to focus on the differences—height, weight, and skin tone—but the similarities are too great to ignore. She and her brothers, she reasons, must share some link to the other Chess, Emma, and Finn. Over breakfast, their mother tells them that Ms. Morales, a virtual stranger, will watch them while she’s away. Emma examines the situation like a huge math problem in which all the elements—the kidnapping, her mother’s trip to Chicago, and the babysitter—are connected. However, she fears this may be a problem with no solution.

Chess regrets not asking his mother about the phone call the night before. That said, her distress triggers memories of the time after his father’s death, and he doesn’t want to upset her further. He feels it’s his responsibility to keep Emma and Finn safe while she’s away. When their mother tells them that they will be staying at Ms. Morales’s house, Chess feels anxious; he wants to confront his mother and ask her what’s really going on. Something about the phone call convinces Chess that they are all in danger despite the lack of any real evidence.

Their mother reminds the kids of the password routine—Ms. Morales will use the agreed-upon password, succotash, when she picks them up. The necessity of such a safety precaution reminds Chess that their mother is their sole guardian. They have no one else.

As their mother sees them off to school, she embraces Chess and whispers, “And don’t forget anything” (48), which startles and confuses him. Chess realizes that his mother doesn’t want them to ask any questions and that she intends to offer no answers.

Sitting in class, Finn has reservations about his mother’s trip; he wonders why he didn’t ask her more questions. He considers faking an illness so he can go home and spend a few last moments with her. When his friends Tyrell and Lucy arrive late, Tyrell announces that their bus was involved in an accident. While waiting for the police to arrive, Tyrell sees Finn’s mother run out of a nearby bank carrying a large bag, get into her car, and drive off “like she was making a quick getaway!” (53). Tyrell speculates wildly that the car that crashed into the school bus may have been pursuing Finn’s mother, and that she may have robbed the bank. Finn tries to dispel these thoughts, but the strangeness of the past day haunts him.

Ms. Morales picks the kids up from school and announces they have to stop by their house to pick up their suitcases and feed the cat. On the way out to the parking lot, Emma has the distinct impression that Ms. Morales doesn’t want anyone to know she’s watching them. They climb into Ms. Morales’s SUV and meet her teenage daughter, Natalie, who is too engrossed in her phone to acknowledge their new houseguests. Then, Ms. Morales receives a message from the kids’ mother saying that her meetings have all run late and she won’t be able to call them that night. Chess responds to the message, but the response is directed to Ms. Morales, as if she never noticed that Chess replied. This strikes Emma as very uncharacteristic. Her mother’s lack of transparency frightens her. 

Chess recognizes Natalie as a “Lip Gloss Girl,” a clique of popular girls that “had kind of run the whole school last year, before they moved on to middle school” (66). He recalls an encounter in which one of them calls him “cute.” He is too embarrassed to respond, and he regrets not having his father to talk to about it.

When they arrive at the house, Ms. Morales insists that Natalie help the kids with their suitcases, but Chess wonders if there’s something else going on. As he and Emma go to the basement to change the cat litter, Chess wants to tell his sister about their mother’s phone call the night before; but he also wants to talk about Natalie. The surreal nature of their situation, coupled with his obligation of responsibility, ties him in knots. Suddenly, Finn calls from upstairs, “Chess! Emma! Get up here now!” (74).