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 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 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.
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.”
“Really?” I smiled at the way she blushed. Maybe I was flattered, too, that Jill had come for me—although I’d suspected she was too smart to nurse a “crush” on a football player, which seemed almost mandatory for other girls at Supplee Mill. “What’s up?”
Jill tucked some wayward strands of brown hair behind her ear, a gesture I’d seen countless times in chemistry class when Messerschmidt would put her on the spot to explain concepts that I suspected baffled him. “It’s . . . it’s about the chemistry contest,” she said. “About maybe working together.”
I opened my mouth to advise Jill, flatly, that I wasn’t interested. After all, I’d had no
