Mr. Messerschmidt had a point. It was probably better to play it safe and have at least a decent shot at $15,000, which was nothing to sneeze at. It was like a year of education if I went to a nearby state university, like Kutztown or Millersville, and lived at home. And even at Smith, my dream school... my long shot... the money would go a long way.
But Darcy was already looking from me to Tristen and back again with an exaggerated frown. "Sorry, kids," she said. "But Darcy Gray works solo."
Had either of us begged for her help?
I looked to Tristen, mouth starting to open, about to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we might want to consider a partnership. Just to improve our chances.
But before I could speak, he said, with a laugh, "And Tristen Hyde doesn't work at all!" Then he crammed the flyer into his messenger bag, where presumably his lab manual was also
crumpled and already forgotten. "Or at least not
that hard."
Then both Darcy Gray and Tristen Hyde turned on their heels and headed for their next classes, leaving me. The odd girl out.
"That's a shame," Mr. Messerschmidt mused, shaking his balding head at their abrupt departure. "For both of you."
"Um ... how's that?" I asked, taking time to refold my flyer, tuck it into my chemistry folder, and zip that into my backpack. What did my teacher consider unfortunate for me and ... who did he even mean? Darcy or Tristen?
"I really thought the whole idea of a Jekel-Hyde team of chemists might be just interesting enough in itself to get you an advantage," Mr. Messerschmidt said. "Too bad Tristen's not interested." 19
My hand stopped in mid-zip, and my head jerked up.
Jekel and Hyde.
Of course, it wasn't the first time I'd thought of our names in that way. When Tristen had arrived at Supplee Mill at the start of our junior year, people had made the connection and joked about us being soul mates. Not only was the teasing embarrassing, but it was obvious that nobody really remembered the old Robert Louis Stevenson novel
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
which we'd all read in freshman lit. In the book, mild-mannered Dr. Henry Jekyll had created a formula that changed him into his evil alter-ego, "Mr. Hyde"--a ruthless killer. It was far from a love story. Thankfully, since Tristen and I hardly ever crossed paths, the jokes had quickly gotten old and pointless, and before long, like everybody else, I'd pretty much forgotten our names were even linked.
Certainly, when Mr. Messerschmidt brought up the connection again in the context of a chemistry competition, that was the first time in months I'd thought about the coincidence of Jekel meeting Hyde again--and connected us both to the old locked box in Dad's sealed home office.
I resumed zipping my backpack, but my thoughts were a million miles away.
Or would that be over one hundred years away?
Me, Tristen, and that box ... The one I'd been warned never, ever to touch.
And certainly never to
open.
Forget it, Jill,
I told myself, shouldering my backpack and abandoning the idea almost as quickly as it had crossed my mind. I'd been told to leave the box alone, and I would follow my parents' rules.
At least that's what I thought I'd do until two nights later, when my mom called me to a family meeting--convening what little was 20
left of our family--and confided a nasty little secret that she'd been hiding specifically from me.
Chapter 3 Tristen
"HEY, TRISTEN."
I looked first to my arm--surprised and more than a little unhappy to discover a hand resting there--and then shifted my eyes to learn that it was Darcy Gray who dared to touch me, uninvited, as I shoved books into my open locker.
"About that chemistry scholarship," Darcy said without removing her hand. "I've been rethinking working alone." My mouth began to twitch with amusement, and I arched my eyebrows. "Really, Darcy? Have you?"
Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to advise Darcy that
I
had not rethought
anything
related to the contest--including the partnership that she was about to suggest--because we were both interrupted by yet
another
hand very unwisely clamping down on my shoulder.
I turned slowly to see Todd Flick's narrow, suspicious, simian eyes glaring up at me as he demanded, "Why the hell are you touching my girlfriend, Hyde?"
Forgetting Darcy entirely, I turned my head to stare pointedly at Flick's knuckles. "Take your hand away," I advised. "Now." Although I'd heard much of quarterbacks being the smartest players on American football teams, Flick wasn't bright enough to 21
do as I said. Instead he issued an ultimatum, snarling, "You have two seconds to explain, Hyde--or I'm gonna
kick your ass."
After that, just as my grandfather had predicted, I forgot pretty much everything. Again.
Chapter 4 Tristen
IN HIS REMARKABLE
Symphony No. 5 Ludwig van Beethoven required only four notes--three rapid Gs and a long E-flat--to evoke in generations of listeners a sense of impending doom. Sitting in a Pennsylvania diner, my father, the preeminent psychoanalyst Dr. Frederick Hyde, managed--of course--to best even the great German composer, with a grim, one-note, growling sigh that caused the blood to run cold in my veins.
"Rrrrrrrrr ..." Dad shook his head as he sliced neatly into a thick slab of rare prime rib. "I hardly know what to say, Tristen."
"Sorry, sir," I apologized yet again, picking up a french fry and dredging it through a puddle of ketchup. "I know you're disappointed."
" 'Disappointed' is hardly the word," Dad said, glancing up at me.
"You
pummeled
a classmate, Tristen. Sent him to the hospital with a
broken arm
that will end his football season. I am far, far beyond 'disappointed.'"
"Yes, sir." I slouched lower in the booth. "Sorry."
"Sit up, please, Tristen," my father directed, using his knife to point at the french fry in my fingers. "And use utensils. This may 22
not be The Ivy, but it's still a step above a
kennel.
There's no excuse for eating like an
animal."
"Sorry," I said again, straightening my spine and abandoning my food entirely.
My father dabbed a napkin against his impeccably trimmed, tribute-to-Freud beard, then resumed eating his dinner in a profound silence that managed to speak volumes about me while I stared out the window, watching the people of Supplee Mill as they went about their business on Market Street. A few blocks away Todd Flick was probably just leaving Mercy Hospital with a freshly set bone. I reached up and pressed my fingers against my own bruised face, wincing.
Dammit.
Yet things could have turned out much worse. At least Flick was going to be okay.
Still, the story that had emerged had been unnerving. Apparently it had taken two of Flick's teammates to subdue me. How could I not remember
that?
My fingers again traced the purple, swollen skin just below my eye.
"Hurt, Tristen?" Dad asked.
I looked across the table to see that he'd finished eating and crossed his knife and fork atop the plate. "Yes," I admitted, dropping my hand. "A little."
"Good. Maybe the pain will deter you from fighting in the future."
"We can only hope," I agreed.
Dad gave me a long level stare that made me regret even the hint of sarcasm.
Then, when he was sure his point had been delivered, he leaned 23
back in the booth, adjusted his eyeglasses, and began drumming his fingers against the table, head cocked, observing me as if I were one of his patients. A particularly difficult case who showed no signs of progress, in spite of years of intensive treatment.
"Well, Tristen," he finally began, "now that we've both had a chance to calm down, why don't you explain--again--what
happened at school today."
I averted my eyes and fidgeted with my water glass, erasing the condensation. "I tried to tell you in the car. I don't remember." Daring to check his reaction, I saw a muscle in Dad's jaw twitch. A warning sign. "Tristen, please don't start with that again."
"It's true." I leaned forward. "Can't you at least give me the benefit of the doubt?"
"No, Tristen," Dad said, mouth set in a firm line. "Because if I validate this 'blackout,' then I am validating a component of the
stories
your grandfather filled your head with--" I could feel the muscle in
my
jaw starting to jump. "Grandfather swore they weren't stories. If you'd just listen--"
"Tristen, no." Dad cut me off sharply, leaning in, too, so we were eye-to-eye. "For the last time--the
very
last time--there is no 'Hyde curse.' I will not speak seriously of nonsense!"
"But--"
"Your grandfather suffered from dementia in his final days." Dad overrode me again, actually reaching across the table and clasping my arm. I suppose the gesture was meant to be
reassuring, but he held too tightly, and it came off as confining, almost threatening. "Those 'crimes' he confessed to--they never happened. There was no 'evil alter ego.' No late-night forays that ended in violence. No 'blackouts,' for god's sake."
"But--"
24
Dad squeezed harder, his fingers surprisingly powerful, given that the only exercise they ever got was turning the pages of his academic texts. "The
Case of Jekyll and Hyde
was a
novel,
Tristen," he said, boring into my eyes. "A work of fiction. A good book, with some admittedly interesting insights into man's dual nature. But a
tall tale.
There was no 'real' Dr. Jekyll, no 'formula,'
and no 'real' Mr. Hyde. And we are, quite obviously,
not
descended from a fictional character. It's ludicrous!" I stared at my father's eyes, which were a peculiar metallic gray. Eyes the color of two padlocks and nearly as impenetrable. I had inherited my mother's brown eyes. Sometimes when I looked in the mirror, I could almost see her in my reflection. I loved and despised those moments.
Where was Mom?
I watched my father's opaque eyes, searching again.
When my mother had first disappeared, vanishing in the middle of the night three years before, the police had nosed around Dad, sniffing for signs of foul play. But they'd found nothing. Of course they'd found nothing, I reassured myself.
My father was imperious and overbearing, but my parents had loved each other, in their own curious way. Mom had understood how to tease out of Dad a gruff, grudging, but genuine affection that I never got to experience now that she was gone.
No, even if there was a Hyde curse--even if the Hyde men were descended from
the
evil "Mr. Hyde" and genetically doomed to commit unspeakable acts of violence--surely Dad wouldn't have harmed
Mom.
Then again, I didn't believe Dad's assertion that my mother had abandoned us of her own free will as part of some midlife 25
crisis that she'd snap out of eventually. That was "ludicrous," to use his own word.
Someone had harmed her.
Killed
her. But who?
I blinked at Dad, utterly confused, and pulled my arm free. What did I believe?
My father seemed to sense that I was struggling inside and seized upon my uncertainty. "Tristen, I am one of the world's best psychotherapists," he said with his characteristic, shameless hubris. "I have spent my professional life exploring the workings of the mind. And I am telling you right now, there is nothing wrong with you--aside from the fact that you've let your grandfather's ridiculous stories cloud your thinking."
"But my nightmares," I noted. "My dreams. Even Freud said dreams were important. That they are the subconscious
expressing its true desires."
And the dreams that I suffered--if they represented my true desires, I wasn't just sick, or deviant, even. I was a
psychopath.
The nightmares had started out chaotic, little more than random images of gore. More recently, however, they had begun to coalesce into a narrative dominated by a river, a knife--and a girl's pale, vulnerable throat.
"Oh, Tristen." Dad smiled at his teenage son's effort to educate the great Dr. Hyde about
Freud,
of all topics. "You talk as if you've never read Jung." His smile faded. "The images that appear in our dreams are influenced by--
complicated
by--the dreamer's history, his circumstances. And the images in your nightmares were placed there by my father. Your subconscious isn't playing out its hopes. It is expressing your very
conscious
fears. You don't secretly want to kill anyone."
26
He did have a point. I
didn't
want to kill. If anything, I desperately wanted Grandfather to be wrong. I just wanted to be normal. My father sat back, looking out the window and shaking his head.
"If I'd had any idea my father would have such a terrible impact on you, I would never have allowed you to visit him so often. I would have forbade it."
"No, don't say that!" I objected. "Without Grandfather I wouldn't have studied music. I wouldn't compose!"
Dad returned his attention to me. "Nor would you be
infected
with this foolish notion that you are predisposed to become an
insane
killing machine."
I knew we'd reached the end of the discussion. Or perhaps not quite the end, because he reached out again, taking my wrist more gently this time. "Tristen," he said, his tone sorter, too, "if there was a 'Hyde curse,' I would also suffer, wouldn't I?
According to your grandfather's fables,
all
the Hyde men go mad, correct?"
"Yes," I agreed, looking away, unable to meet his eyes, because, even discounting Mom's disappearance, there had been times after Grandfather had started talking so freely, so desperately, that I'd looked back on my father's behavior and wondered if
something
wasn't quite right.
"Tristen, look at me," Dad ordered, removing his glasses, as if to eradicate any small barrier that might impede my understanding. I forced myself to meet those gray eyes. "Yes?"