Either way, they took a booth as far from the counter as possible. The red vinyl booths were retro-style, looking like they were made from vintage car seats, and there were pictures of icons like Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elvis, and even some of Betty Boop plastered all over the walls. With the black-and-white-checkered tiling on the floors, it was like stepping into an old-fashioned soda shop.
Rafe, never one to mince words, got straight to the point. “It’s been months since the kidnapping, and you still don’t seem like yourself.” Stony-faced, he watched Violet as she toyed with her straw, swirling it through the thick ice cream. When she didn’t answer, he tried again. “I thought that, maybe, getting rid of that
imprint
thing might make things better for you.”
She glanced up, shrugging noncommittally. “I don’t really know yet,” she told him truthfully. “It wasn’t just that,” she admitted, but it wasn’t an easy subject for her. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s gone. I hated being reminded of what I’d done—”
“Of what you
had
to do,” he interrupted, his jaw tight and his voice filled with emotion. “No one blames you for that. You did what you had to do, V. If you hadn’t, you’d be dead.”
“Right. I had to,” she agreed, sounding less than convinced. “But it was still hard to be reminded all the time.” She took a breath. “Getting rid of the imprint doesn’t change the fact that when I close my eyes . . .” And she did then, she closed her eyes. “. . . he’s still there.”
She felt his fingers cover hers, and her eyes flew open once more. “V . . . I . . . I’m so sorry. . . .”
Like before, when he’d caught her watching him and Chelsea in the quad, she saw longing in his expression, and she recoiled inwardly, her stomach tightening. She didn’t want him to look at her like that.
“I know,” she said, pulling her hand away.
They sat there in silence—the kind of uncomfortable silence Violet hadn’t experienced in a long time. She didn’t want to push him away, but she couldn’t encourage him either.
She thought of what he’d said last night, right before hanging up,
I think it changes everything
, and she wondered if there might be just the tiniest grain of truth in those words. She couldn’t help feeling some gratitude, and even a sense of obligation for what he’d done. But was that all she felt?
She shook her head.
Of course that was all
, she reprimanded herself. She was just confused. This was a lot to process.
Besides, she had other things to tell him, other things she wanted to talk about than her imprint. She leaned forward on her elbows. “What do you know about Dr. Lee?” she finally blurted out. “What has Sara said about him?”
Rafe stared back at her, confused. “Dr. Lee? What’s he got to do with this?” He frowned, but he answered anyway, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was walking into. “I know that he’s a psychiatrist. And that he works for whoever runs the Center. I think Sara trusts him, she’s never really said she doesn’t.” He paused. “Come to think of it, she’s never really said much at all about him. Why are you asking? What do
you
know about him?” And then his lips tightened as a thought occurred to him. “Has he done something to you? Has he . . . has he acted
inappropriately
with you?”
Rafe’s meaning was crystal clear. He wanted to know if Dr. Lee had made some sort of unwanted advance on her. The idea was almost laughable, partly because it was hard to imagine the rigid Dr. Lee doing anything “inappropriate,” at least of the sexual nature. He seemed like the sort of guy who went home to his stark, spotless apartment and hung his perfectly starched black suit in a row of identical perfectly starched black suits, all on hangers that were equidistant from the next.
Truthfully, she had no idea who the
real
Dr. Lee was. Not even after reading her grandmother’s journals.
“God, Rafe, are you kidding? No. At least not the way
you
mean.”
Rafe relaxed, if only a little. “What, then? Why are you asking?”
She remembered the way Dr. Lee had warned Violet about telling anyone about their “arrangement.” And she remembered her grandmother’s handwriting, scrawled on the pages of her diary:
Muriel is dead. And I know why. She tried to quit the Circle.
Was this the same as quitting, revealing a secret she’d been cautioned to keep? Could the consequences be just as deadly?
But she knew she couldn’t remain silent forever. She didn’t want to. “Remember when I told you I didn’t want to be on the team anymore, that I was quitting?”
Rafe’s eyes fell away guiltily as he cleared his throat, and Violet could practically read his thoughts. He still blamed himself. He still believed she’d been leaving because of him. “I remember.”
She was the one who reached over then, her fingers hovering near his—not quite touching, but almost. He watched them. “It wasn’t your fault,” she told him in a voice that was infinitely quieter than it had been before. “It wasn’t about you. It was me. I felt like I needed some distance, from you
and
from the team. That’s when I told Sara I was quitting.” She paused, waiting for him to look up again. When he did, at last, she continued, “But I didn’t change my mind about that, Rafe.
I
wasn’t the one who decided to stay. It was Dr. Lee. He told me I couldn’t quit. He said there were others . . . those higher up than him in the organization who wouldn’t allow me to just
leave
.” She whispered now, her words barely a breath as she voiced them aloud for the very first time. “He threatened my family.”
Rafe’s scowl was intense as he sorted through what she’d just revealed to him, and Violet waited for him to say something. She thought he seemed closer to her now, but she’d never noticed him move. It felt as if he’d stretched all the way across the tabletop, until he was somehow sharing her very breath.
He wasn’t, though. He was right where he’d always been. Sitting in the booth across from her, his eyes sliding over her face as he absorbed the accusations she was making.
She waited for him to say she was crazy, that she’d lost her mind. That the imprint she had listened to on a daily basis had finally—completely—driven her mad.
But that wasn’t what he said at all. He just nodded, a brief and decisive gesture. “If this is true . . . if what you’re saying is true, we need to find out what he’s up to.”
Blinking, Violet shifted in the booth. “There’s more,” she explained, reaching into her pocket and sliding the picture across the table. “That’s him,” she told Rafe as she tapped the picture of a younger Dr. Lee—James Lee. “And that,” she said, moving her finger over less than an inch, “is my grandmother.”
He looked up at her, and then back at the picture in front of him.
She nodded. “They knew each other, Rafe. They were on a different team, sorta like ours. They called themselves the Circle of Seven.”
He took a breath, his shoulders tense as he hunched forward, studying the picture. “Your grandmother’s not the only one,” he said at last, and then his finger touched the image too, landing on a girl, probably the youngest in the entire group. She had dark, shoulder-length hair. “That . . .” he said, his voice a whisper, “is my mom.”
Dumbfounded by his words, Violet sat there. She let them sink in, waiting until her brain had sorted them through, making them find a place in the puzzle that was growing more complicated with each passing minute. “Was she”—she lifted her eyes to his—“like you?”
“No. I mean . . . I didn’t think so, but I guess I don’t really know. She never said anything. Sara never said anything.” And then his lips tightened. “I’m sure Sara doesn’t know anything about this.” Violet wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her . . . or himself now. “She’d never have kept a secret like this, not from me.”
“No,” Violet agreed. “You’re right, I don’t think she would.” Her eyes widened as she reached for him again, this time clutching him like a lifeline. And he was, in a way. He was the only thing standing between Dr. Lee and her family’s safety. “Rafe, he told me not to tell anyone. Ever.” Her voice wavered. “I’m afraid of him, of what he’ll do if he finds out you know.”
Unflinchingly, Rafe nodded, making her a vow. “He won’t find out. I won’t tell anyone. Not even Sara.”
Violet’s grip on him eased. She reached out and pulled her milk shake closer and took her first taste of the creamy concoction, letting the peanut butter ice cream melt over her tongue as she thought about what she’d just done and about what Rafe had revealed. The shake was cold and sweet, but did little to calm her churning stomach. “So how will we find out what he’s up to . . . if we can’t talk to Sara about him?” she asked at last.
Rafe leaned back now, looking more like himself again, like he belonged in a place like this, his leather jacket making him look like he was one of the props. He could definitely give James Dean a run for his money. “I don’t know exactly,” he said, lifting his own straw to his lips as he rested his arm over the back of the bench seat and studied her. “But give me some time and I’ll come up with a plan that’ll blow old Dr. Lee outta the water.”
Violet smiled, wishing she felt half as cocky as Rafe did—or at least half as cocky as he appeared. “So basically you have no idea.”
He lifted his chin and grinned at her. “Exactly.”
Since they were already in trouble for ditching school, Violet suggested they might as well go back to her house after finishing their shakes so she could show Rafe her grandmother’s journals.
He’d been at her house a few times before, but having him at her house then wasn’t the same as having him in her bedroom now.
She’d been in his bedroom once. And like that time, when she’d seen the place where he slept, and where he spent most of his downtime, it felt too
personal
. Sharing this part of herself made her feel exposed.
Rafe’s eyes moved over her patchwork quilt, which suddenly seemed more girly now that she was looking at it from his point of view. He surveyed her oversized corkboard, the one plastered with ticket stubs, birthday cards, ribbons she’d collected from spelling bees and sack races, photo booth strips—all depicting her, Chelsea, Claire, and Jules crammed into the tight space and vying for the camera’s attention—along with other mementos she’d accumulated over the years.
It was like a scrapbook of her life, hanging right there on the wall . . . in plain sight.
“They’re over here,” Violet said, trying to draw Rafe’s attention away from the collection of memorabilia. Knowing what he could do—his ability to glean information from a simple touch, especially from items of importance or with sentimental value—made her uneasy about his being in the presence of such intimate details of her life. Like he might uncover her most personal thoughts and feelings and secrets.
“I never realized you were so talented with your tongue.” His voice was subdued, but she heard a hint of amusement.
“Excuse me?”
He reached out and tapped one of the pictures. In it, Violet and Chelsea were flanking Jules, squishing her between them, and each of them had their tongues sticking all the way out, as if, at any moment, they were planning to assault her by licking her cheeks. Jules, on the other hand, looked typically bored by their antics, and Claire was crammed all the way to the back of the booth so that only her hair was visible behind the rest of them.
Violet grinned, puckering one side of her lips. “You don’t know all my tricks.”
He rolled his eyes and came over to inspect the box of journals she’d set on her bed for him.
He watched thoughtfully as she reached inside and handed him a single diary. “Here,” she told him. “Maybe you can figure something out.”
Rafe took it, his expression uncertain. “What about the rest?”
Violet wasn’t ready to part with all of them, not now that she’d just gotten to know her grandmother . . .
really know her
. Besides, he only needed the one that had entries about the Circle of Seven . . . it was the only one that was relevant. She still didn’t know what happened beyond that last entry she’d read, the one in which Muriel had died. “I’ll give them to you after I’m finished.”
He hesitated, and then his eyes shifted, as if searching for something. Violet followed his gaze until it landed on the ivory music box on her bedside table. “She loved that song, you know?” he told Violet. “She bought it for your mother . . . when she was just a baby.”
A lump formed in Violet’s throat. “How could you . . . ? You didn’t even touch it—” She stopped herself, because the answer was so obvious. “It—it doesn’t say that in there.” She pointed to the book in his hand, still amazed by what he could do, and knowing that one thing didn’t have to have anything to do with the other. Rafe’s ability was about “reading” things that were important, and the journal must have triggered something for him . . . something about the music box. “It’s just that easy for you, huh?” she said instead.
His lips pressed together, not an unpleasant gesture. “Yep. Sometimes things are just that simple.”
“Let’s hope you get more than just a feeling about a music box,” Violet said.
Even though school had just let out, by the time they got back to campus, the lot was practically deserted. That was the thing about the last bell of the school day, it was like signaling the start of some sort of race, and the students couldn’t clear out fast enough. Rafe had to go back to pick up Gemma, and Violet needed to get her car before heading back home to power through more of the journals, searching for clues as to how Dr. Lee, her grandmother, and Rafe’s mother all fit together.
But when they got there, Jay’s shiny black Acura was parked beside Violet’s car, and Gemma was perched against it, her arms folded and her lips pursed in a sulk. But even without Gemma’s pout, the fact that Jay was actually
letting
her lean against his car indicated something was wrong, since he generally parked his car in the back forty so no one could even breathe on it.
Violet glanced his way and realized that his expression didn’t match Gemma’s at all. He didn’t look annoyed the way she did . . . he looked pissed.