The three Greystone siblings—Finn the youngest, Chess the eldest, and middle-child Emma—return home from school one day expecting their usual routine: their mother at work designing websites and with a snack prepared for them. Instead, they find her in the kitchen, her cell phone on the floor and her laptop on the counter, quietly moaning, “No, no, no, no, no…” (4).

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.