My fingers curled around the edge of my mattress, and I searched my friend's expression for some clue as to what she meant by that word "saw." Like, she
saw
Tristen with her eyes? Or had Becca Wright
gone out
with the only guy I'd ever come even close to kissing? I
really
didn't want to hear more. Yet I found myself asking, "So ... what happened?"
I never got to hear the end of Becca's story that night, though, because, before she could tell the rest, my bedroom door swung open, causing us both to jump nearly out of our skins. "Mom!" I cried. "I didn't hear you come in!"
My mother stood in the doorway, wet from the rain, looking so grim and tired that, without even being told to go, Becca slipped on her sequined flip-flops, gathered her stuff, and slunk out, muttering, "See you," to both of us before darting down the stairs. 36
Mom didn't say a word until we heard the front door shut. Then she brushed her damp, graying hair from her forehead and announced, "We need to talk, Jill. I have some bad news."
"Of course," I agreed.
That was the first reply that sprang to mind, and although the words seemed very matter-of-fact, very resigned, in my thoughts, they sounded surprisingly bitter, almost angry when I heard them blurted out loud.
Of course Mom had bad news.
Would there ever be news of any other kind, in the cursed old Jekel house?
Chapter 7
Jill
MY MOTHER SAT HUNCHED
at the kitchen table, shivering a little in her damp scrubs, which clung to her frame. I found myself staring at her shoulders, two bony knobs jutting through the thin cotton fabric. "I'll make you some tea," I offered. "And something to eat while we talk."
"Just tea," Mom said, not even sounding interested in that.
"I'm not hungry."
"But you should eat," I told her, a cold knot forming in the pit of my stomach. She'd stopped eating, dropping to nearly one hundred pounds, before her breakdown. "Just a little something."
"No, Jill.
I couldn't force her, so I went to make the tea, putting the kettle 37
on the stove and taking a china cup from the shelf. "So, what's up?" I asked, although I had my suspicions. Bad news ... that was usually about Dad. "Did the police find something?"
"No, Jill. Nothing."
"Oh." Although Mom certainly hadn't led me to expect anything good, I was still a little foolishly disappointed that there was no news at all about my father.
Ever since we'd learned about the grainy videos captured by Carson Pharmaceuticals' security cameras that showed my dad working at three and four a.m., sometimes with a man whose face was indistinct because they kept the lights so low... Ever since then I'd clung to the hope that someday the mysterious man would be identified, and not only would the police solve the case and bring Dad's killer to justice, but Dad would somehow be vindicated.
Silly me.
The kettle whistled, and I reached for it, filling the cup. "So, it's nothing about Dad? Or the other man?"
"Jill."
I turned around to see my mom staring at me, looking more steely than she had in months. "What?" I asked, not sure what I'd done wrong.
"The police are never going to solve the case," Mom said,
sounding
more forceful, too. Sounding angry. "They lost interest when they learned that your father was a
criminal,
too, as surely as his killer!"
I'd known that my excitement was ill-advised, and yet when Mom said that, snuffing out my hope, and calling my dad a criminal, a flash of anger tore through me, too. A wave of fury that bordered on rage.
Mom was giving up on Dad, too ...
My fingers wrapped around
38
the teacup, and for just a second I had this crazy urge to hurl it across the room so it would shatter against the wall in a million pieces.
But of course I couldn't do that. Couldn't
break
things. Instead, my eyes filled with tears. Crying ... that was the pathetic way
I
expressed rage. "Mom, please don't call him a criminal." My defense of Dad, weak as it was, only seemed to make her more mad, though.
"Your father
lied
to us, Jill," she said through gritted teeth. "He stole out of the house in the middle of the night while I was working and you were sleeping! He stole chemicals from his employer!" She paused, then dropped the bomb she'd been holding all along. "He stole your
college fund,
Jill! Nearly every cent!"
I froze in place, stunned into mute silence. "What?" I finally asked.
"Your college money," Mom repeated, her own anger seeming to dissolve closer to tears. Her eyes got wide, miserable, like suddenly she couldn't believe what she was telling me, either. "He withdrew it from the bank in the months before his murder. I don't know why, and I tried to work extra shifts to replace some of the money, but I'm so tired ..."
Mom closed her eyes again then, anger seeming spent, and buried her face in her hands, like she couldn't bear to face me when she added, "I'm so sorry... but I don't know if you can go to school next year. Even with loans--I just don't think we can afford it right away."
The teacup that I held did shatter then, but not in a satisfying way, as it slipped from my fingers, which seemed to have gone numb.
"No." My voice sounded strangled in my ears. "Dad wouldn't have done that. Not to me."
39
Mom still didn't look at me, and it seemed like the room started to spin. I reached for the kitchen counter to steady myself. My college fund ... I had a shot at valedictorian, but I might not even
go
to school? My father had stolen my future?
All at once, as I stood in that puddle of tea, I
hated my
dad, just like I suspected Mom did. For a split second I was
glad
that my father was dead.
"I'm sorry, Jill," Mom mumbled again.
"Yeah. Me, too."
Silly, silly me...
There was nothing else to say after that. Not much left to feel, even. So I got a rag and cleaned up the mess I'd made. Mom sat at the table, not even trying to help, like she was too exhausted to move.
When the kitchen was clean, I went back upstairs and climbed into my bed, where I stared straight into space, into the darkness, for about an hour, my mind just blank. Completely numb, like somebody had jammed a needle full of Novocain deep, deep into the cortex of my brain.
Then, when the room was pitch black--it must have been almost midnight--I noticed that the green light on the bottom of my laptop's monitor was glowing. I got up, went to my desk, and shook the mouse, thinking I should shut down the computer for the night. Heaven knew we Jekels couldn't afford to waste power!
But when I rattled the mouse and the screen came to life, I jumped a little.
Because there, staring straight out at me, was none other than Tristen Hyde, whose MySpace page Becca had never closed. Tristen, the guy who'd come to my rescue the first time I'd hit rock bottom.
40
I slid down into my desk chair, studying Tristen's face. Studying him and wondering, with a growing flicker of excitement. Was there a chance he might be able to help me again?
Maybe. If I could just convince him ...
But the rules we'd have to break, the
locks
we'd have to pick ... Was I really ready for that kind of trespass, even to right the huge wrongs done to me?
I leaned closer, staring hard into those intense, brown eyes. And was I ready to do those things with ...
him?
Chapter 8 Tristen
"TRIS, THIS ISN'T THE ROUTE
coach mapped," someone griped as I led the cross-country team off the paved streets and onto the path that ran along the Susquehanna River. "Coach said--"
"Coach isn't here," I reminded them over my shoulder. "If someone else wants to lead ... ?"
I didn't await a response. Of course they would follow me, their captain, because they knew that, should one of them pass me, it would be only a temporary state. I would let my lungs burst before I ceded my spot in front.
"I hate this trail," I heard a loud complaint from the back.
"Me, too," I muttered. But I had to take that route again and again. Needed to see the spot. Face it down.
As we ran deeper into the forest, the canopy of trees grew denser, blocking the September sun, and shadows dappled the path. The path in my nightmares. The dreams where I held the knife.
41
Stop it, Tristen,
I told myself.
Get control.
Yet I subtly picked up our pace, trying to outrace the images that were already bubbling up from my troubled subconscious. Of course, my thoughts matched me stride for stride--threatening to overtake me, hurrying faster than my footsteps.
This is the way I approach her...
I stretched out my legs, running harder.
"Geez, Tris." I heard another protest, called loudly. "It's just practice!"
Practice.
Was the dream a form of "practice," as Grandfather had predicted? Rehearsal for the crimes, the violence, to come ... ?
Ahead of me the path veered nearer to the river, widening at the spot, the clearing, where I'd actually been with the girl that evening in July. The place that I also conjured again and again in the nightmare.
I'd nearly lost control with her. She'd been willing--and then something had happened, something I couldn't recall. And I'd come back to myself to find her pushing me away, terror in her eyes. Just like in the dream.
And what had happened in England? Was there a chance I had really ... ?
Behind me my teammates fought to keep up, their footsteps falling harder against the dirt, sounding for all the world like a mob chasing me. A lynch mob after Tristen Hyde.
Murderer.
Pulling even farther ahead of my struggling squad, I began to tear through the clearing at a breakneck pace, mind flashing to London.
Oh, hell.
The
blood...
I actually squeezed my eyes shut, a stupid thing for a runner to 42
do, and of course I stumbled, my foot striking a rock, my ankle twisting sharply, and I went down, hard. Borne by momentum, my teammates did their best to avoid me, veering off the trail and crashing through the brush or leaping over me as I shielded my head with my arms, choking on the dust raised by their feet. When they had all passed, I sat up, signaling at those who looked back, telling them to continue on. Standing, I coughed and brushed myself off, listening to the wind through the dry, rasping leaves and the trilling of the cicadas as I berated myself. It was just a path. And the nightmare just a dream, as my father insisted. The missing moments--they could be explained, too, somehow. I wasn't
really
dangerous.
Right?
Taking a deep breath, I continued on and ignoring the pain in my ankle, soon overtook my teammates again. Assuming my place as leader, I guided us out of that hated forest and back into the light.
However, when I arrived back at school, still pushing us all too hard, someone was waiting for me in the bleachers. A timid girl with an innocent suggestion that would eventually plunge me even deeper into the shadows I'd just escaped.
Chapter 9
Jill
I
WAS WAITING
on the bleachers, trying to figure out what I'd say to Tristen, when the cross-country team came running in from the street and onto the track, finishing practice. Actually, it wasn't 43
so much the
team
that arrived as Tristen, alone. He was so far ahead of the other runners that, although I'd heard he was captain, he didn't even seem like part of his own squad. As I watched, Tristen finished a lap, literally running circles around the football players who grunted and tackled in the middle of the field--minus
their
leader. Tristen kept a steady and seemingly effortless pace until he reached Coach Parker and pulled up short, bending over and bracing his hands on his knees, taking a few deep breaths before straightening and almost immediately falling into a discussion with the coach, their eyes trained on the other runners, who finally entered the field and finished their own, weaker laps.
From where I sat, Tristen and Coach Parker seemed to be taking stock of the team, like they were co-coaches, not teacher and student. Tristen's hands rested on his narrow hips, and his hair was dark and shiny, soaked with sweat. There was a deep, dark V down the middle of his T-shirt, too, and when he raised his hand to point at a straggler, I saw that although Tristen was lean, like most runners, his biceps were sharply defined, stretching the fabric of his shirt. And was it the sun that cast a shadow under his eye, or could I see, even at that distance, the bruise he'd gotten when he'd shattered Todd's arm?
My fingers wrapped around the bleachers, squeezing. Maybe the whole idea of coming there ... of the experiment, even ... was bad
... wrong.
I was standing up, thinking I should just go home, when I guess my movement caught Tristen's eye. He glanced in my direction and hesitated for a second, like he was surprised to see me there. Then he shaded his eyes against the sun, smiled, and waved. I waved back, feeling like an idiot.
44
Now what should I do?
I was starting to sheepishly step down off the bleachers when Tristen clapped his hand on his coach's shoulder, apparently excused himself... and started loping over in my direction.
Chapter 10 Tristen
I
WASN'T SURE
why I abandoned cross-country practice to talk with Jill Jekel on a hot September afternoon. Perhaps it was something about the uncertain way that Jill stood--or half stood--alone in a huge stretch of empty seats that reminded me of the day I'd held her at the cemetery, in the heart of an equally vast expanse of headstones. As Jill fidgeted in the bleachers, she looked to me as if she needed help again.
"What brings you here?" I asked, taking the bleachers two by two until I reached her. I jerked my thumb toward the football players, grinning. "Don't tell me you've got your eye on one of them." Jill's cheeks reddened. "No! I was just... I wanted to talk to
you."