"What's going on in that beautiful brain?" he asked again. Lovely. Beautiful. Not me but my
mind.
What would a truly beautiful girl, like Becca, think of such a strange compliment? Would she laugh at it?
Probably.
Suddenly it was like Becca was standing with us again, tossing her shiny, auburn hair. Becca, who definitely intrigued guys. Who probably intrigued Tristen ...
"Nothing," I said, breaking our gaze and needlessly shuffling the papers piled in front of me. "I'm just thinking we should get to work. I shouldn't stay out too late. My mom might wake up and wonder where I am."
"Yes," Tristen agreed, clearing his throat and edging his stool away from mine, just an inch or so. And he sounded aloof, almost like we were business partners--which we sort of were--when he added, "And how
is
your mother?"
98
"Pretty sedated most of the time," I said, tapping the papers back into order. I dared to look at him. "Is that normal for most of your father's patients?"
"I don't know too much about Dad's methods," he said. "But, yes, I understand that the initial phase--'stabilization,' as he calls it--involves heavy sedation. It's meant to keep patients from doing themselves harm while the brilliant Dr. Hyde probes their psyches looking for more practical, lasting solutions."
I had planned to ask Tristen just how long "stabilization" lasted, but the sarcasm I heard when he assessed his father's work surprised me. "Don't you think he's really brilliant? You said he's the best."
Tristen smiled wryly, resuming writing. "Yes, Jill. I suppose he is brilliant.
He
certainly thinks so."
I decided to let the subject go, just happy for the reassurance that my mother was getting care from a top psychiatrist. One whose methods enabled me to come to the lab at night--and who didn't seem in any hurry to add to the growing pile of bills that I kept arranged by order of urgency in a box in our kitchen.
Tristen and I worked in silence for a while, the only sound in the room the scratch of his pen and the crackle of stiff paper when I turned the pages, checking his work.
Addition 5 ml hydrochloric acid to ...
I swallowed hard, imagining how the acid would feel going down someone's throat. Had one of my old relations actually
drunk
that? Would
Tristen?
I kept reading.
Increased HCl to 10 ml...
Yes, the first Dr. Jekyll had used a lot of common pantry ingredients. But there was dangerous stuff in there, too.
"Does your mother ever say those things anymore?" Tristen eventually broke the silence, interrupting my worried thoughts: 99
images of him drinking a deadly concoction, writhing in agony ... I shook the pictures out of my head. "Things?" I asked. "What things?"
"About the 'bloody list.' In the 'compartment.' The things she mumbled as I lifted her."
"No," I said. "For a while it was like a mantra ... the whole thing about the 'altered salts.' But I guess the medicine kicked in--"
"Jill?"
I looked up to see him staring at me, a strange look on his face like I'd startled him. "What?"
"What did you just say?"
"The medicine kicked in--"
"Before that. About the salts."
"Mom kept mumbling about 'altered salts.' You remember."
"No." Tristen shook his head. "I couldn't hear everything she said."
"She kept talking about a list of altered salts in a compartment," I said, not sure why he found Mom's delusional ramblings so interesting. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"The book, Jill. The book ..."
"What book?" He was losing me completely.
"Oh, hell," he muttered, rising from the stool and reaching for his messenger bag, rummaging deep inside. "Oh, hell."
"Tristen, what book?"
"Jekyll and Hyde,"
he said with impatience, pulling an object from his bag. I recognized the first edition novel that his grandfather had given him. Tristen sat on the stool again and grew distant, talking to himself, clearly agitated. His face was pale. "How could I have forgotten the 'altered salt'? Grandfather told me--read the novel. 'If there is a chance for salvation, the clues are in the novel.'"
100
But Tristen didn't open the book he'd retrieved. He slammed it onto the table like he was punishing it and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, hell. Bloody, fucking
hell!"
I didn't scold him for swearing that time. His despair was so raw that I rested a tentative hand on his shoulder. His muscle was hard, tense under my fingers. "Tristen? What's wrong?" He looked up, misery in his eyes, and I wished I had the courage to be even bolder, maybe take his hand. He was scaring me.
"Oh, Jill," he groaned. "It's all pointless. The experiment can't cure me."
My heart jumped at the unexpected announcement. He said he'd
kill
himself... Whether or not I believed in the "beast" we had to at least try ... "Why not?" I asked, mouth dry.
Tristen picked up the book again, leafing through, fingers tearing at the pages until he was almost at the end of the novel. "Listen," he said, reading. " 'My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it, and it was without efficiency ... I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.'"
Tristen slammed the cover shut. "Jekyll tried to recreate the formula to kill Hyde once and for all, only to learn that the original potion contained a
tainted
salt. The formula could never be repeated. That's why he could never destroy Hyde. It's such a brief passage ..." He gestured to the box. "But it means this is all worthless for me." He buried his face again, his voice muffled by his hands. "How could I have forgotten
that?
I suppose I got so excited by the idea that the formula even existed ... I'm such an idiot. It's all
pointless."
101
"No, Tristen," I said with more conviction than I felt. "We'll find an answer. We can read the passage again. Maybe you're wrong--"
"No. I'm correct." He dropped his hands and fell silent, staring into the distance.
I started to reach out to him again, but he seemed so distant, so isolated, that I let my hand fall to the table.
Yet a few seconds later Tristen turned and reached out to
me,
grabbing my wrist and squeezing it. "Jill," he said, and I saw that his brown eyes were gleaming again--almost fevered, like Mom's had been. "The list of altered salts
... his last
list?"
"Yes?"
"What if... What if your father was working on the formula, too?" he suggested. "I thought the old lock on the box gave too easily. What if your mother saw some list he was keeping just before he died ... ?"
"But why?" I asked, confused. He was grasping at straws. "Why would
Dad work
with the formula?"
"I'm not sure," Tristen admitted. His eyes clouded. "Perhaps ..." I waited, but he seemed to change his mind about speculating, saying only, "Who knows? But the coincidence is a strange one, isn't it?"
"Yes, but..." There
was
an element of coincidence--tainted salts in the book, my mom's talk of altered salts--but it was thin at best. "I don't think you should get too excited," I cautioned.
"Perhaps." Tristen absently rubbed my wrist, too hard, because in spite of my warning he
was
excited. "We need to find that list," he said. "We need to find that 'compartment.'" He met my eyes, shaking my arm. "You've got to ask your mother if she recalls what she said."
I shook my head. "No."
102
Tristen released my wrist, incredulous. "Jill, this is life or death for me."
I rubbed the spot he'd clutched, feeling sick to my stomach. "I don't have to ask, Tristen, because I already know." If a list of altered salts existed, I was pretty sure where it was hidden. Oh, but I didn't want to go to that terrible place. Even though it was right in my own backyard.
Chapter 29
Jill
"MOM ALWAYS COMPLAINED
about Dad's messy car," I said as Tristen pulled the school door shut then replaced the padlock.
"He never carried a briefcase, so he just threw loose papers on the seats." I smiled a little at the memory of my dad's "filing system," adding, "Unless it was important. Then he would jam it in the glove compartment 'for safekeeping.'"
"So you really think this list--"
"If it exists," I cautioned, "which I doubt."
"If it exists," Tristen conceded, leading us across the parking lot and toward the sidewalk, "it might be in the car?"
"Yes." The night was chilly, and I rubbed my arms, wishing I'd brought a jacket. "But this is such a long shot, Tristen--"
"Are you cold?" he interrupted, looking down at me. My teeth chattered. "A little."
"Here." Before I could object or even grasp what he was doing, he stopped walking and shrugged off an old striped dress shirt that 103
he wore unbuttoned over a T-shirt almost like a jacket and held it out. "Wear this." Tristen taking control as usual.
"No." I raised my hands, pushing the offering away. "I can't take your shirt!"
"Just wear it, Jill." He sidestepped me and draped it over my shoulders. "Put this on and let's get moving."
"Okay ... thanks," I agreed. As we started walking again, I put my arms in the sleeves, which dangled past my fingertips. The shirt still held the warmth of Tristen's body and smelled like the soap I associated with him. Wrapping myself inside, I inhaled, feeling not just warmer but somehow braver, like I'd donned armor or borrowed some of Tristen's swagger.
Maybe I could do this: face my Dad's car ...
"Wouldn't someone have noticed this list?" Tristen mused aloud as we moved across the parking lot side-by-side. "Surely you've used the car since your father died?"
"No, we haven't," I said. "We had it cleaned to get rid of the blood on the seats." I flinched to say that out loud and kept talking to erase the image. "And then Mom parked it in the garage, threw a tarp over it, and never drove it again. It's like we don't know what to do with it. I mean, who would even buy it?"
Tristen halted again, seeming taken aback. "Your father was murdered
in the car?"
"Yes, I thought you knew. It was all over the news."
"I seldom watch news," he said grimly. "Especially not that type. The grief others suffer is not my entertainment. I've misery enough of my own to keep me quite diverted."
We continued walking again in silence, Tristen probably lost in the past, in thoughts of his mom, and me trying to face the future, 104
where the interior of that car waited. It had been detailed, but what if it somehow
smelled
like blood? Like ...
murder?
We passed under a canopy of trees, both staring at the shadowed pavement when a voice broke the silence of the sleepy street.
"Tristen? Jill? Is that
you?"
Chapter 30
Jill
"WELL, WELL, WELL."
Todd Flick laughed, strolling up with Darcy, who had called to us. "What's going on
here?"
"What do you want, Flick?" Tristen demanded, already sort of squaring off against Todd, who still wore a soft blue cast on his arm. "We're busy."
"Doing what?" Darcy asked, clearly suspicious. "Why were you in school after hours?"
My heart sank. We were busted. In so much trouble.
But Tristen didn't seem nervous. "What we do in or out of school is not your business," he said levelly.
"It is if you just broke into a locked building," Darcy said, but with a hint of laughter, like she thought the idea was ridiculous. "That's illegal!"
Oh, we were going to jail...
"You're here, too," Tristen pointed out with a shrug.
"Walking
past,"
Darcy countered, "on the way to my house. But you guys came
out of the
school. I saw you."
"Yeah." Todd draped his broken arm around his girlfriend's shoulders. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you two were fooling 105
around in there or something. A little action on the wrestling mats, maybe?"
"You're pushing your luck again, Todd," Tristen cautioned. "Don't go there."
Todd ignored the warning, snorting a laugh. "Hey, Hyde, if you're hoping Jekel will put out, you're gonna be disappointed." He withdrew his arm from around Darcy, smirking. "Good luck getting those skinny legs apart!"
"Todd," Darcy snapped at him. "Stop it." I wasn't sure if she was defending me or trying to save her boyfriend. If it was the latter, she was too late, because Tristen's hand had already darted out, and before I knew what was
happening, he'd grabbed Todd's shirt and was twisting it in his fist, dragging Todd toward him, so in a split second they were nose-to-nose, Todd up on his toes, Tristen glaring down at the shorter quarterback. "Talk about Jill like that again, and I won't bother with breaking your arm," he snarled. "I'll rip your whole damned, empty head off."
There was something so menacing in Tristen's voice that even Todd suddenly looked nervous. And I was scared, too. Terrified and flattered at the same time. Tristen was defending me. But was this the
other
side of him? Was I seeing it right there? He'd changed so abruptly, seemed so different. "Tristen?" I squeaked.
"Um ... Tristen?"
"Come on, Todd." Darcy intervened more forcibly, tugging at Flick's sleeve. She appealed to Tristen. "Tristen, let go. Please. This is stupid."
I stood by, mutely helpless.
Please, Tristen. Please...
Tristen remained tense, clutching Todd's shirt, jaw set, eyes fixed on Flick's. Then he suddenly shoved Todd away, stepped back, 106
and to my complete shock, sought my arm, slipping his hand up under the long sleeve of his own shirt, twining his fingers in mine, and pulling us both back a step.
"Don't ever make a crack like that again, Flick," Tristen warned more calmly. "Not unless you want to answer to me." He paused, then his voice dropped back to a low growl. "And god help you if you ever
touch
a hair on Jill's head. They'll find yours in a gutter somewhere."