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  Surveying the other vendors around me, I started to wonder what the burger joint and the ice cream shack were hiding behind them. A loud scooting sound was made again, and just as if the five round tables were gears, they all rotated, chairs shifting and repositioning into different spots. It was as if Greg was literally playing musical chairs with the people he knew, ordering them to his liking.

  When they finally stopped configuring themselves, I walked back to the heart-shaped table once more. Circling it, I found that all the place settings were the same—nothing changed. I planted myself in Dean’s chair. Did Greg really love Dean? I mean, Dean was a cool guy and all, but for another guy to, well, love him, after just having met him a day or so before, seemed a bit excessive. It was obvious that Greg wanted to be popular.

  I buried my face in my hands, resting my elbows on the table. This was ridiculous. This stupid food court, stupid chairs being branded by names and smelling like delicious Chinese cuisine, and then everything shifting around—it was a waste of time being here. I slammed the table with a fist. It was time to leave.

  “Stupid heart-shaped table. Who has a heart-shaped table anyway?” I said out loud. Nobody answered. I closed my eyes.

  That was it, the heart-shaped table! I fell to the ground on my knees and then to my side. The tiled floor was hard, but it seemed clean enough. I supposed this food court didn’t even serve food, so why would it be dirty? On my back, I squirmed under the table. The poor overhead lighting and crossing shadows from the chairs made it hard to see, but there it was, written underneath. Just like in the backs of the chairs, a blackened name was seared into the underside of the table.

  “Good, Greg, very good,” I said, but not because of his cleverness of hiding the name under the table. The name read “Stephanie Daniels.”

  Chapter Eleven

  REVERTING TO MY MIND, I blinked a few times as a chill swept over my skin and I realized I was standing in front of Greg again.

  “Hello?” Greg waved his hand at me. “Hey, it’s Nolan, right?” He was still trying to place a name with my face.

  “Yeah, Nolan Day.”

  Greg blinked at me. I wanted to make a sizzling noise because my name, no doubt, had just been branded into a chair. Then a thought occurred to me. I wanted to test something.

  “Hey, do you like Will Smith movies?” Greg gave me a scrunched-up face. I let the question sink in and then followed with, “You know, the actor?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Yeah, he’s only my favorite actor. I love that guy’s movies.”

  I smiled.

  Turning around, I called out to Kate. She was maybe halfway to Stephanie now, so I jogged to catch up.

  “Whoa, that was fast. What did you find out?” she asked. I was a bit out of breath.

  “Greg likes Stephanie,” I said plainly.

  “He does? Wait, I thought he was going to the Fall Ball with Laura.”

  “He is, but for some reason Laura knows he’s lying about something.”

  I let Kate chew on it for a second.

  “I’m confused,” she said.

  I just gave Kate a shrug because I honestly didn’t know myself what was really going on, and my heart was beating about a million times a minute hanging on to another thought. I could tell Stephanie everything was fine. Even though Laura was going to the dance with Greg, he was really in love with her.

  Looking past Kate, I set my sights on Stephanie, who had just made it to the outer sidewalk that bordered the school’s campus. I had to tell her the truth, release the wrong I had placed in her crumbling mind. I was sure it was tearing everything inside apart.

  I gripped Kate’s hand to focus her attention on me.

  “Hey, let me talk to Stephanie. I need to undo this.”

  Kate was about to speak, obviously still trying to connect the dots.

  I took off toward Stephanie. What would I say to her when we met up? Would she even believe me or listen to what I had to say? She had to, right? This was something that would change everything. I felt that burdened feeling begin to lighten; it felt good. Everything was going to be okay; everything was going to work out.

  I could see Stephanie just ahead of me, but I stopped running and watched in complete horror as Stephanie stepped off the curb of the sidewalk and right into oncoming traffic.

  Chapter Twelve

  I WAS STILL IN the passenger seat of Dean’s car. He had gone inside twenty minutes ago. Our car ride had been silent, safe, and I was afraid to remove myself from that state.

  Back at school, at the scene of the accident that played out right in front of me, I had watched ambulances show up in record time and the paramedics move at superhuman speed in order to save Stephanie. Me, I froze. Dean’s the one who found me, shook me out of it, and helped me into his car. There was nothing we could do. I didn’t even remember seeing Kate afterward. I didn’t remember much after seeing that image of Stephanie’s frail, bloody body lying in the street.

  The front door to the house opened and a man stepped onto the porch. I was sure Dean had told his dad everything. What did you call that sort of relationship with your parents? Oh, that’s right—a real one.

  Rick Mitchell was good guy and an even better foster dad. It was as if he’d been plucked right out of the 1950s and transported to now. His horn-rimmed glasses and the distinct part in his hair both spoke to his character and good-natured sensibility. He always wore an expression on his face that reassured me, as if to say, “Sure, you can live with us, just as long as you eat your green beans and drink your milk.”

  I could almost see Dean’s good traits in his dad, Rick’s all-American attitude and small-town respect that he’d gained through hard work and honesty being a local sheriff’s deputy. And even though he looked like Ned Flanders, he was no Barney Fife. When it came to doing justice or upholding the law, Rick was there.

  Our town wasn’t like the neighboring metropolis of Chicago, and when it came to crime in River City, it had probably only seen its bulk of gangsters in the movies. Heck, if you had a flat tire, it was enough to get Deputy Mitchell to stop, fix it for you, and then buy you a cup of coffee. I was almost positive he paid out more for coffee than he brought in with traffic violations.

  And here he was now, standing there, ready to buy me a cup of coffee if he thought it would cheer me up. He took soft steps to the side of the car as I got out.

  “Hey,” he said, meeting me halfway.

  “Don’t worry—I was going to come in. Just had a crazy day at school,” I interjected.

  He nodded. This was the way the man operated—simple, quick, and respectful.

  “Tracy is making spaghetti. It’s ready whenever you are.”

  Tracy Mitchell was Rick’s wife. The pair couldn’t have been a better match. She worked part-time at River City Savings and Loan Bank. The rest of her time, she used to volunteer at their church.

  Yet what made the couple a perfect match was their willingness to search out and help those in need. They’d been doing foster care and charity work ever since they had taken their wedding vows—or at least, that’s what Rick had told me. I was just one of the many foster kids they’d taken in over their twenty-some-odd years of marriage.

  The Mitchells were good at it, too. No matter the length of time children lived in the household, they loved them unconditionally, from tiniest infant to the oldest teenager—or that’s how Dean put it.

  I’d asked him once if it had affected him in any way, having all these strangers in his house and his parents treating them as though they were their own. I remember him just smiling and saying, “I’m the lucky one. I have a chance to impact someone’s life even if it’s only for a weekend. We are that speck of hope in a world that has deemed them hopeless.”

  I could honestly say I had no clue where I would’ve been without the Mitchell family.

  Looking at Rick now, I watched him survey the sky above, hands on his hips, as if the only thing he had to do in life was wait
on me.

  “Well, we’d better get inside. We don’t want Dean to eat it all,” he said.

  “Let me drop my stuff off upstairs and I’ll be down in a second.”

  Rick smiled, tipping his imaginary hat. His job was done.

  ***

  THE REFRESHING FEEL OF cool water over my face brought my anxiety down, just as Rick’s presence had. I stood in the bathroom that adjoined my bedroom and wiped my face with a soft towel.

  I slumped down on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes. What a crappy day. My mind tried to review everything. With so many events and way too many unresolved questions, I felt drained.

  On top of everything else, I was worn out physically. My insomnia from the night before weakened me, and just the idea of trying to battle for sleep that night made my already aching stomach swirl with nausea.

  Then I heard them, but not with my ears. They came from inside my head. The voices. A whispering chatter dug its way into my psyche. The words were nothing but empty mumblings, like a storm of thunderclouds brewing inside me. I had to gain control somehow, fight them or contain them, shut them out.

  I felt my eyes squeeze and my teeth grit against one another. Out of the blackness of my mind, I tried scale the dark tides of walls from within. I cast the waters like a black tarp over some invisible object. The voices began to muffle and recede. Had I done it? Had I contained them? Astonishment shook through my body, and I opened my eyes.

  I looked down at my hands. They were covered in black liquid, and in each palm stretched a silently screaming face of agony. I fell back on my bed and feverishly rubbed the oily liquid from my hands. I stopped in horror, recognizing the face on my right hand. It was Stephanie’s.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MY BODY SHOT UP. Dean was there at the foot of my bed. I looked at him then instantly at my hands. No blackness, no faces of agony, no Stephanie. If it had really been her.

  Dean ran his finger under his nose and nodded to me. I mimicked his motion, but my fingers found blood.

  “Nolan, you’ve got to do something about this.”

  I used the sleeve of my shirt to soak up the rest of the blood then checked it again with a fresh finger. It was clean. Rising out of my bed, I went to the bathroom, removing my shirt along the way. I knew he was just trying to look out for me, but ever since I’d been warned by Trent and then Kate alluded to something Dean had told her about me, I felt defensive with him. How much could I trust him now?

  Using a wet towel from my shower early that morning, I wiped my face again then went to my closet and pulled on a new shirt.

  Dean stood in my path to the hallway, unmoving.

  “I don’t want to have this conversation right now!” I said.

  I went to step around him, and he grabbed my arm.

  In a low voice I said, “Let go.”

  I tried to pull away, but Dean was bigger and stronger than me, so it didn’t work. Dean had somehow betrayed me to Kate; whether it was about my secret or not, I knew something wasn’t right.

  I looked him in his deep-set blue eyes.

  “Nolan, don’t you dare go inside there. I told you if you ever wanted to talk to me, we talk face-to-face.” Dean was seriously pissed now, although I wasn’t enjoying this either. I’d never seen him this way.

  My body flooded with anger. With my free hand I shoved him back, hard. Dean hadn’t expected this and he released me.

  “Look, man, I don’t have to listen to you. So why don’t you back off?” I said.

  Dean’s face fell; he was hurt by my words. We’d never fought like this before.

  “Hey!” The voice startled me. “You guys ready to eat? We’ve been waiting.” Rick’s voice cut between the two of us. Rick looked at Dean then to me, and then he turned and headed back downstairs. Dean followed suit, but I didn’t move. Even though I’d been hungry ever since the sweet-and-sour chicken smell in Greg’s food court, I didn’t feel much like conversing with Rick and Tracy or, much less, Dean.

  I took a breath and closed my eyes. Like a lightning bolt, the image of Stephanie’s crumpled body struck my mind—her eyes staring up at me, her blood-red lips starting to move. I opened my eyes; my breathing quickened. My body felt instantly zapped of energy from the day’s events. I wanted to go back to sleep, although I couldn’t be certain another fiendish nightmare wouldn’t swallow me up.

  Closing the door to my room, I made the decision not to eat dinner. It wasn’t the first time. The first few weeks I lived there, Tracy just made me something to eat anytime I asked while the rest of them ate together. I wasn’t worried about it—they all knew what happened to Stephanie. I just needed to lie low for a while.

  I threw on some headphones and woke up my laptop from sleep mode. Leaning back in the chair at my desk, I wiped my hands over my face as the trickling guitars of the band Anberlin began to rise in my head.

  Then a ping noise sounded over a guitar riff. I arched up and looked at my screen. In my task bar was an instant message alert blinking green. It was from user “MuddyHuddy.” I blew out a sigh and clicked the new message.

  MuddyHuddy: Whoa, intense afternoon!!!

  I let the cursor sit in the reply box. Kate didn’t often bother me online unless she was all wrapped up in a lead of some sort on a theory or story.

  Starting to type, I began to think about how casual she was with her comment. Stephanie Daniels was dead, and for all I knew, it was my fault. I erased my first response to Kate in the reply screen. It was going to be a crack about her insensitivity. Instead I just typed:

  UncannyDay: Yeah.

  Seconds later, she responded.

  MuddyHuddy: I heard they finally got her stable.

  Kate’s reply sank in. Wait, did that mean she—

  I typed what I was thinking.

  UncannyDay: Stephanie is alive?!?

  MuddyHuddy: Yep, but they say she suffered massive head trauma and major broken bones.

  I didn’t even have to type my next question.

  MuddyHuddy: I followed the ambulance to the hospital.

  Geez, nothing held her back, but it didn’t surprise me. My mind was overcome with relief as my fingers flew over the keyboard.

  UncannyDay: Are you still there? Is she going to be okay?

  Kate’s next message took a second to come back.

  MuddyHuddy: Just got home. They stopped me from going into the emergency area, but I overheard them saying the word “coma.”

  A coma. Stephanie was in a coma? Even when Kate told me that she was still alive, the guilt hadn’t left me. I was glad Stephanie had made it, but a coma was serious. Leave it to Kate to find out first.

  UncannyDay: Thanks for the update. I’ve got to tell Dean.

  That’s what I typed, and it was the first thought that came to my head. But then the sullen realization of the fight he and I just had sank back in. The feeling sucked. First of all, Dean had no idea what was going on, and I doubted he was in the mood to hear it.

  I turned back to the computer, but Kate’s status read “offline.” Great. She was the only person I could talk to at this point. I guessed I could at least update the Mitchells on what was going on—plus, I was ready to eat. Maybe with a meal in my stomach, I could sort things out better, find some answers.

  My head was still reeling. Stephanie was alive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I FELT UNEASY WHEN I took my place at the family table. The rest of the Mitchells had only just finished eating when I arrived, but a steaming pile of noodles and sauce was waiting for me. Somehow they’d known I would come down eventually. I was eager to tell them the good news about Stephanie, but wanted to at least get something choked down before I starved to death. Dean didn’t give me a second look as I began to dig in.

  I found my eyes traveling to Tracy Mitchell between chews. She had that motherly look if ever there was one. An optimistic style of hair, a touch that spoke to the heart, and eyes that smiled as genuinely as the one across her lips. She
was the first one to break the stiff silence.

  “I got a phone call today, Nolan.” The way she said the sentence didn’t sound right, like she was talking in some sort of secret code. Even though her statement was directed at me, Rick replied to her. I continued shoveling in pasta.

  “Really? Who was it from?”

  That’s when it sank in. I stopped eating. Not again.

  Tracy went on. “It was Dr. Vance.” She paused a second, as if I didn’t know who that was.

  I’d never met the guy face-to-face, but I was sure Dr. Vance was a decent guy. It was the person he was linked to whom I detested. My mentally unstable dad.

  Tracy played with her silver necklace, obviously nervous about the conversation she had just started.

  “Nolan, he really wants to see you,” she said, a little more firmness in her voice.

  I took a swallow of ice water and wiped my face with my cloth napkin.

  “Forget it,” I said, putting my focus back on my food.

  This was, I thought, maybe the third time Vance had called that month? It was more often than usual.

  “He says it would be beneficial for your dad’s state of mind and maybe for you as well to come to terms with everything.”

  I suddenly lost my appetite. Hadn’t I had enough issues for one day? I crossed my arms and slowly shook my head.

  “Think about it, Nolan. Your dad just wants to reconnect with you,” Rick chimed in, trying to sound casual.

  “Like I’ve said before, I want nothing to do with him,” I responded.

  “Dr. Vance says your father’s been working so hard,” Tracy said, her eyes shifting to her husband. A dead silence hung in the dining room. Then things got worse.

  “Nolan, you’ve got to do something.” Dean finally said, but the words were grounded and didn’t come with as much bite as they had upstairs.