Maggie calls the police; their father and stepmother cut their honeymoon short, and a search is organized, involving most of Maggie's classmates. There are a number of suspects: Birdie, the bus driver, an elderly woman who never could have kids of her own, and who was scheduled to get her hair dyed that day; Jack Tierno, Leigh's ex-husband, who hadn't wanted to be divorced from Leigh and felt that Courtenay should have been his child with Leigh; and Jessica Ellis, Maggie and Mike's mother, who is revealed to be other than what the kids have been led to believe. Finally, Maggie has been receiving disturbing and perverted phone calls from an unknown caller.
Provides Examples of:
- 555: The Ellis' phone number is 555-2836, and the de Christophers' number is 555-2183.
- The '80s: The majority of the events in the novel take place from April 21 to May 10, 1986. Even aside from the author expressly stating this, there are other clues: the Stranger Danger theme of the story; the presence of VCRs, which not everybody owns; the absence of caller ID that would have easily put the brakes on Brad's telephone harassment of Maggienote ; the use of milk cartons to track down missing children; phone booths; and the absence of AMBER alerts, cell phonesnote , home computers with printers, the internet, and social media note .
- Abhorrent Admirer: Brad to Maggie. According to her, he is handsome enough, but his overall behavior is creepy.
- Abusive Parents: Jessica is revealed to have been this prior to the divorce with Owen. Although not physically abusive, she did lock Maggie in a closet and damage her dolls.
- An Aesop: That, as parents or guardians of a child, you can't be there all the time, and you need to give your children the tools necessary to look out for themselves when you're not around.
- Amicable Exes: Subverted, as Maggie and Mike think their parents are this, but the reality is that their mother was driven away due to being psychological abusive.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: During the TV interview, the following exchangeRobert Ford: And how does it feel to know your four-year-old is out there somewhere — frightened and confused?Leigh: How do you think it feels? It feels ''wonderful''. Wouldn't you be thrilled to pieces if ''your'' daughter were missing?
- Author Tract: About Stranger Danger and missing children.
- Big Brother Bully: Brad to Jane, Andrew, and just about everyone else. He's not the kind of bully that beats people up, but he blackmails his siblings to get his way, and generally acts like a creep to Maggie.
- Big Brother Instinct / Big Sister Instinct: Mike and Maggie to Courtenay.
- Children Are Innocent: Owen uses this to justify concealing the real truth about Jessica from his kids. Leigh believes protecting Courtenay's innocence means sheltering her from knowledge about stranger-danger and other harsh realities.
- Didn't Think This Through: Okay, so you just kidnapped your ex's four-year-old daughter. Now, what do you do with her? Jessica's attempt to return Courtenay to Mike and Maggie resulted from her inability to figure this out. Also, Courtenay's dirty, disheveled appearance during her recovery (being in the same clothes she wore when she had disappeared nineteen days before, for instance), shows that Jessica is utterly incapable of caring for a child.
- Empathic Environment: The first day, when Maggie discovers Courtenay's disappearance and calls the police, a thunderstorm is beginning.
- Engineered Heroics: Jessica attempts this, claiming to return Courtenay to Maggie and Mike after having "found" her. The police don't buy it for an instant.
- Face on a Milk Carton: Not actually seen in the story, but referenced as one of the means to be used to publicize Courtenay's disappearance.
- Foreshadowing: In the first chapter, Maggie and Leigh argue about the appropriateness and necessity of teaching Courtenay about Stranger Danger. Mike and Maggie play the "Lost Game", which teaches Courtenay what to do if she's lost, shortly afterward.
- Good Samaritan: Too many to list, from the printer, a classmate's mother, who agrees to print four thousand posters and wait to be paid, to the school principal, who excuses anyone from school from two days to look for Courtenay, to the various classmates and neighbors who do what they can to help find Courtenay.
- Harassing Phone Call: Maggie gets these in the weeks leading up to Courtenay's kidnapping, and continuing afterward. With the police there, it becomes clear that the caller is Brad.
- Immoral Journalist: Robert Ford, the reporter who interviews the Ellis family, is transparently concerned more with what a good story this makes rather than the family's plight.
- It's All About Me: To Maggie, Leigh's mother seems to be this way.
- Jerkass: Brad de Christopher, and how. The book introduces him as a college dropout Big Brother Bully to Andrew and Jane, Maggie and Mike's friends, who uses blackmail rather than his fists to get his way. It turns out that he is the one making the disturbing phone calls to Maggie, which, in continuing to do so even after Courtenay's abduction, even bringing up said abduction during the subsequent phone calls, comes damn close to the
Moral Event Horizon, if it doesn't actually cross it. - Lies to Children: For years, Owen told Mike and Maggie that he and Jessica got divorced because Jessica was a free spirit, a modern-day hippie, who couldn't be tied down to one place and a family. The truth: she was neglectful and psychologically abusive, and had to be kept away from the children for their own safety.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Their father keeps the truth about their birth mother from Maggie and Mike.
- Maggie keeps secret the disturbing calls she has been getting, so her father and stepmother won't cancel their already delayed honeymoon.
- Neither Maggie nor Mike mention the creepy way Brad was acting around Courtenay at the party, two days before her disappearance.
- Leigh attempts to do this to Courtenay regarding the dangers of the world; however, Maggie and Mike surreptitiously try to keep their sister informed about such dangers anyway.
- Manly Tears: When Courtenay is returned, it is the first time Maggie has seen her father cry.
- Media Scaremongering: Sort of. According to this
Kirkus review, although the author "somewhat exaggerates the danger [of child abduction], her prescriptions for safety are sensible." It is notable that, despite the moral panic of Stranger Danger that gave rise to works such as this, in this story, the abduction was carried out by someone who, although not known to the victim, was connected to her family. - Middle Child Syndrome: Averted. Maggie is a middle child but she doesn’t get the shorter end of the stick like one of her birth order would have.
- Missing Child: Courtenay has gone missing after she got on the bus to school, and was dropped off, but somehow never made it into the school itself. There is no sign of her. To make matters worse, a couple days later, there is a call to the police that the body of a little girl matching Courtenay's description, has been found in the woods, all slashed up. One of the frightening things about this story is that Maggie and Mike did everything they were supposed to do in looking after Courtenay: they fed her, got her ready, saw her off to school, making sure she got on the bus. What happened afterward was completely out of their control. Indeed, Maggie did do one markedly stupid thing in this book, but it ended up having nothing to do with Courtenay's disappearance.
- My Beloved Smother: Leigh objects to Courtenay getting dirty, eating candy, staying up late, and being warned about strangers. It’s somewhat justified as Courtenay is her first biological child.
- Official Couple: Maggie and David.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Maggie, Mike, Birdie, and Brad. Also, Courtenay is often called "Courtie".
- Parental Neglect: Jessica is revealed to have been this before she and Owen divorced, as she left Mike and Maggie alone when they were very young.
- Parental Obliviousness: Neither the Ellis nor the de Christopher parents are aware of Brad's activities.
- Parent with New Paramour: Mike and Maggie’s father Owen remarried some time after he and Jessica divorced.
- Phone Number Jingle: A non-commercial one, where Maggie and Mike teach Courtenay one of these to help her memorize her phone number.
- Phone-Trace Race: The police have Maggie participate in one of these, keeping the caller talking, to track down the source of the telephone harassment.
- Protectorate: Courtenay. Leigh is very protective of her, as are Mike and Maggie. Their differing views as to how to protect Courtenay fuels some of the conflict between Leigh on the one hand, and Mike and Maggie on the other.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: Jessica is a somewhat toned down version of this. She is clearly immature, she psychologically abused Maggie in the past, and she kidnapped Courtenay to hurt Owen and his family. Owen himself says that she was very much like a child herself.
- Real Dreams are Weirder: Courtenay has recurring nightmares about an evil red mitten that snores.
- Redheaded Hero: Maggie
- Red Herring: A few:
- The harassing calls to Maggie have nothing to do with Courtenay's abduction.
- Jack Tierno and Birdie are also innocent.
- The body in the woods is not Courtenay's.
- At the party, Brad is overly familiar with Courtenay, almost looking like a child molester. He has nothing to do with her abduction.
- The Reveal: A few:
- Maggie and Mike's free spirit mother was actually dangerously insane and had to be kept from the children by court order.
- The person making the disturbing phone calls to Maggie was Brad.
- And, finally, Jessica — Maggie and Mike's birth mother — was the one who kidnapped Courtenay.
- Satellite Love Interest: Maggie’s boyfriend doesn’t have much characterization or do much of anything other than ask her to his junior prom.
- The Scapegoat: Leigh initially blames Mike and Maggie for Courtenay's abduction, despite the fact that they did everything right and, if anyone dropped the ball, it was Birdie, the bus driver, for not making sure her charges made it into the school, and the school staff for similarly not taking similar precautions or calling home when it was clear that Courtenay was absent without an excuse.
- Skewed Priorities: Maggie fails to tell anyone about the harassing phone calls, even after Courtenay's disappearance, because she is embarrassed that she hadn't said anything before. True, the calls have nothing to do with Courtenay, but she doesn't know that.
- Spell My Name With An S: It's "Courtenay" as opposed to "Courtney."
- Stalker with a Crush: Brad to Maggie.
- Stranger Danger: Sort of. Jessica wasn't a stranger to Mike, Maggie, or their father, but Courtenay certainly didn't know her. This was a rare example where the dangerous person was a woman rather than a man.
- Tempting Fate: Leigh insists that Courtenay does not need to know about Stranger Danger, because Leigh will always be there to keep Courtenay out of trouble.
- Terms of Endangerment: Brad calls Maggie "baby" even after she tells him to stop.
- Truth in Television: Although Courtenay's abduction is treated as a "stranger abduction" by the police, it turns out that, like most child abductions, the culprit was someone known to the family rather than a random complete stranger.
- On a related note, Jessica Ellis is the prime suspect in the kidnapping. Like many cases in Real Life, she is also guilty.
- Maggie screws up royally by not telling anyone about the harassing phone calls she received. A few weeks after the calls began, Courtenay is kidnapped. Contrary to the convention of Can't Get Away with Nuthin', which was very popular at the time this book was written, Courtenay's kidnapping has nothing to do with Maggie's stupidity. Oftentimes, in Real Life you screw up and nothing happens as a result, or your mistake has no connection to whatever does happen.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: "Courtie" can be considered this, if not the spelling of her full name.
