“I—I’d like them today. Please.”
“Everything will be yours tomorrow,” Tristen said. “Just be patient for one more day.”
Tomorrow? “Tristen, what are you doing tonight?” I asked.
“You’re a smart girl, Jill,” he said. “One of the smartest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Surely you can guess.”
“You’re going to start drinking the solutions.”
“The last solution,” he clarified, still staring out across the field. Then he turned to me and smiled, and I saw a hint of his usual wry humor. “Solution. I never thought how appropriate the word is, did you? Might it really be the solution for me?”
“Tristen,” I said, growing alarmed—even though I never wanted to see or talk to him again after I got the box and list back. “If nothing happens, if you don’t feel anything, how will you even know . . . ?”
I couldn’t seem to express all the thoughts that were whirling through my head. If he drank a solution and survived, how would he know if he was cured? And if he didn’t feel cured, what would that mean? What would he do?
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a plan of action. And I promise you, as of tomorrow, all of the things that do rightly belong to the Jekels will be back in your possession.”
He stood up, brushing the cold cigarette to the ground under the bleachers, where it joined about a thousand dead comrades. “Now I’ve really got to go.”
“Where?”
Tristen didn’t answer. He took wide steps down across the bleacher seats, and when he reached the bottom, I couldn’t help but call after him, even though I didn’t care what happened to him. “Tristen?”
He turned. “Yes, Jill?”
“The last formula . . . what is the salt tainted with?”
Tristen smiled, white teeth flashing in the bright sunlight. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing too deadly.”
He was making a joke. But I’d come to know the mysterious Tristen Hyde just well enough to know that he wasn’t really joking.
I watched as he walked, seeming completely relaxed, across the football field, headed away from school and toward who knew where.
When he was about fifty yards away, I noticed that Tristen had left a nearly full pack of cigarettes on the bleachers where he’d been sitting.
One last cigarette . . . Through with running . . . I’d get the box back tomorrow . . .
I realized, then, that I was watching a guy who was pretty sure he was doomed. A person who was prepared to do desperate things. I clambered down the bleachers, thinking I should chase after him and beg him to be reasonable.
When my feet hit the ground, though, I thought about my mom lying drugged on the couch, her heart just barely beating, and I stopped following him.
Turning back toward school, I told myself that I wasn’t responsible for anything Tristen Hyde might do. My family and I, none of us Jekels could be blamed for the history or the fate of the Hydes.
Chapter 39
Tristen
AS THE SUN SET, I emptied my school books from my bag and replaced them with the box and my notes—and one last item I’d purchased at a hardware store on the way home from school. Inside myself, deep within my brain—my soul—the beast wriggled, clearly understanding that something was happening to both of us. It was the first time I’d consciously ever felt us coexist, and the sensation was at once alarming and reassuring.
The thing inside of me was growing stronger, asserting itself—which meant that I was right to stop it, even if that meant ending my life.
I’d never thought much about heaven and hell, but as I closed my bag with the vial of rat poison—deadly strychnine—inside, I wondered, briefly, what the verdict would be if I stood in judgment that night. Some people believed suicide doomed a soul to hell. But Christ himself had been born to sacrifice his life.
I hoisted my bag, thinking the point was moot, anyway. I would do what I needed to do.
Walking down the hallway, I passed my father’s office. The door was open, and the room dark. Dad was at the university as usual. His home computer, at which he used to work so often, sat abandoned on his desk.
I hesitated, thinking that I would probably die without ever knowing just who he was, how much of Dad was left—and how much the beast controlled.
On a whim I set down everything that I carried and went to his computer, thinking that perhaps I’d drop him a line. A farewell note explaining what I’d done and what I knew for certain about both of us. Logging onto his machine, which clicked and whirred in the dark room, I called up the word processing program and actually started to smile, mentally composing my message.
Dear Dad . . . Guess what your insubordinate son’s done now!
I actually typed that line and hit “save,” not wanting my work to disappear inadvertently like its author. The prompt popped up asking me what I wanted to call the letter. I smiled more broadly, nearly laughing at the absurdity. What else but “suicide note”?
I typed “su,” and the computer automatically began to file alphabetically. And what should I notice but a document in my father’s personal files entitled “SubjugateHydeJrnl1.doc.”
Curiosity piqued by the strange title, so relevant to my own plans for the evening, I saved and temporarily abandoned my note, then opened my father’s work.
Scrolling and skimming, with increasing speed and heightening amazement, I leaned toward the screen, unable to believe my eyes.
Chapter 40
Jill
“HOW’S THE SOUP, MOM?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
She rested against a nest of pillows, spooning broth into her mouth in a steady rhythm. “It tastes good. Thank you, Jill.”
I smiled, thinking that even that simple comment was another breakthrough. Mom wasn’t starving herself anymore, and some food even tasted good. “You look better tonight,” I said. “You have more color.”
“I feel better.” Mom set the empty bowl on her nightstand and closed her eyes. “Tired from a full day at the hospital, but
