The Strangers

Bored by her substitute teacher, Emma counts how many weird things she can find during the school day. She counts 21. She decides this is an excellent strategy for getting through the day. When she gets home, however, the weirdness continues. The porch light is on, and the curtains are drawn, which is very unusual for the daytime. When Emma follows Finn into the kitchen for a snack, she sees her mother staring at her laptop and hears a voice announcing, “The kidnapped children are in second and fourth and sixth grade” (7). 

Seeing his mother’s rigid body language triggers Chess’s memory of his father’s death. He peeks at the laptop before his mother can close it and catches a glimpse of the story: three kids from Arizona have been kidnapped, but their mother claims not to know anything about it. Chess suspects his mother may be in shock and for a good reason: The three kidnapped children have exactly the same first and middle names as the Greystones.

Finn doesn’t understand why his mother and siblings are suddenly so quiet. Wanting attention, he threatens to turn off the laptop, but Emma grabs his hand, holding it tightly. Looking at the pictures on the screen, they realize that the kidnapped children not only have the same names but the same birthdays. The coincidence is too strange. Finn tries to lighten the mood with humor, but no one laughs.

Despite the eerie similarities, Emma notices that the kidnapped Emma doesn’t look anything like her. The other Emma looks peaceful while her own pictures always look “like she was trying to solve complicated math problems in her head” (16). She tries to see this coincidence as a complex statistical problem, hoping to rationalize the strangeness. However, her math skills aren’t up to the task.

Eventually, their mother comes out of her daze and acknowledges her children’s presence. She promises never to let them be kidnapped, although her voice wavers, and Emma wonders why she would need to make such a promise. 

Lying in bed, his legs aching with growing pains, Chess imagines the kidnapped Chess—whose full name is Rochester, just like him—locked in a basement with his siblings, trying to comfort them despite his own fears. As the eldest child, Chess understands this feeling all too well. He wants to believe that the kidnapped children have been rescued, but his mother constantly checks the news—a sign that things are not okay. When Chess decides to go downstairs for a drink of water, he hears his mother on the stairs ahead of him. He wonders if she plans to work, or if maybe she’s just going to “remember everything she could about Dad, like Chess did sometimes” (22). Quietly following his mother downstairs, he notices the basement door ajar. As he starts to descend the stairs, he hears his mother on the phone at 3:15 am. She is angry, a tone he doesn’t recognize in her, as she talks about the kidnapped children as if she has some personal stake in their fate.