“Don’t be so sure you’re going to win,” I warned her. “Tristen and I have a good presentation.”
“I’ve seen you talk in public.” Darcy smiled, dropping her makeup into her purse. “Remember seventh grade when you gave that book report? You ended up running out of the room!”
“This isn’t seventh grade anymore,” I reminded her.
“But you’re the same person,” Darcy said. “The same mousy girl you’ve always been—and always will be. You might be teamed up with a smooth-talking, arrogant thug, but at heart you’re still a frightened little baby, Jill. It’s just who you are.”
I knew Darcy was deliberately undermining my confidence to boost her chances of winning. But I also knew that she was just being mean for the hell of it. And to make matters worse, she’d just insulted Tristen.
Pulling my hand out of my pocket, I walked up to Darcy and took the fingers that had just been clutching the formula, opened them wide, and slapped her across the face hard enough to make up for about a decade of abuse. My palm print stained her cheek, and she clapped her hand across her face, glaring at me in mute disbelief.
“I’ll see you on stage,” I said. “And don’t ever insult me or Tristen again.”
Then I marched out of the bathroom, forgetting all about taking the formula. I found Tristen backstage doing some last-minute rehearsal. He glanced up from his notes. “I suppose you’d prefer that I speak—”
“No,” I interrupted, holding out my hand. “This is my experiment, right?”
Tristen seemed surprised but handed over the notes. “Of course.”
“Jekel? Hyde?” A woman with a clipboard approached us. “It’s time.”
“Let’s go,” I said, shrugging out of my wool coat, dropping it with the rest of our stuff, and leading Tristen onto the stage.
Chapter 89
Jill
“YOU TWO SHOULD really be proud,” Mr. Messerschmidt said as we drove down the turnpike. “You did a great job.”
“We didn’t win, though,” I said, hunched in the back seat.
Tristen twisted around to face me. “But you were outstanding, Jill. Everyone loved you.”
The compliment was bittersweet. Everyone but you, Tristen. I’d seen to that.
“Thanks,” I said.
Tristen didn’t turn back around. He kept facing me in the darkness. A car passed us in the next lane, and the headlights briefly lit his face, and I thought I saw a trace of admiration and maybe even affection in his eyes, and suddenly I didn’t care so much about losing the money. At least Tristen had thawed a little.
“We did do okay, didn’t we?” I sort of smiled at the memory of me, Jill Jekel, delivering a flawless speech in front of about two hundred people. “Third place isn’t bad.”
Tristen’s white teeth flashed in the darkness. “Especially since Darcy got fifth.”
It was mean to be happy about her failure, but I couldn’t help grinning, too.
Tristen reached back then and gave my knee a shake. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I repeated as he turned to face forward again.
Although the heater in Mr. Messerschmidt’s car wasn’t reaching the back seat, I felt warmer suddenly. Tristen had touched me. It didn’t mean he still loved me, but it was better than the cold distance that had separated us. It was a start, maybe.
Hunkering down in my seat, I buried my hands in my pockets and stared out at the passing night. I was so distracted, thinking about Tristen, that we went about a full mile before I realized that the vial was gone.
Chapter 90
Tristen
MESSERSCHMIDT PULLED UP in front of Jill’s house, and immediately something struck me as not quite right.
“Jill,” I said, opening the door and flipping up my seat, “I thought you said your mother was out of town.”
She clasped my hand and struggled to get out. “She is.”
I continued holding her hand and directed her attention to the glowing windows—and the smoking chimney—of her house. “Well, someone’s home. And they’ve lit a fire.”
She started to pull her hand from mine, but I wouldn’t let her go. I didn’t want to release her. Not yet. For I had a very bad feeling about the scene before us. It was just an instinct born of my own knowledge of how the beast would behave.
I stroked Jill’s hand with my thumb, hoping to convey that even if she hated me, I still loved her. I couldn’t help loving her. I wanted to do so much more than just touch her hand. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her that I was sorry for all that had gone wrong between us and for all of the awful things I had wrought upon her life, from forcing her to trespass in the school to carelessly altering her very soul with a kiss.
But of course I couldn’t, with Messerschmidt watching.
“Maybe Mom came back,” Jill said. She didn’t sound convinced, though. In fact, I got the clear sense that alarm bells were going off for her, too.
The scene was so innocuous. And yet something was wrong.
Messerschmidt opened the trunk, offering, “I’ll help you take everything inside.”
I squeezed Jill’s hand again. “You wait out here, eh?”
She looked up at me with those wide, wonderful eyes, which had just captivated an entire auditorium full of people as they’d always captivated me, and shook her head, her ponytail swinging. “No, Tristen. Let’s go in together.”
“Jill . . .”
“Come on,” Messerschmidt prompted, lifting out the old box. “It’s late and cold.”
She pressed my palm, and I knew that she wouldn’t let me go alone, no matter how I insisted. She truly had changed—and not only because she’d tasted the formula. The Jill Jekel who had emerged in the last few weeks was completely beyond my control.
“Let’s get a move on,” Messerschmidt urged, starting up the steps.
Releasing
