“No, I don’t want you to.” He stumbled toward his motorcycle in the Day’s Market lot. “I just need to go home.”
I followed after him. “Are you in shock? You can’t drive a motorcycle like this. You probably need stitches.”
“I’ll be fine.” He climbed onto his bike, his arm still pressed into his chest.
“Damn it, Daniel. Let me help you.”
“You’ve helped enough already,” Daniel said, and kicked his bike to life. He twisted the throttle with his good hand, then flew out of the parking lot before I could respond.
He didn’t even look back to see me standing there, my arms at my sides, not knowing what on earth had just happened.
What did he mean by saying that I’d helped enough already?
I hadn’t been able to do anything.
I sat in my car in the parking lot for a good ten minutes, debating whether or not I should follow Daniel home to make sure he got there all right. And then force him to go to the ER to get his cut checked out. But he’d been so adamant about not wanting me to help him that I worried he’d only get angrier if I showed up uninvited. Perhaps it was best to let him cool off. Maybe call him in a couple of hours to make sure he was okay.
But a creeping thought kept bothering me as I started my car. Was Daniel just pissed at me for causing that fight with Pete, or was it possible that he didn’t want my help because he thought I didn’t have enough control over my powers to handle the sight of his blood?
I turned on the car radio, trying to drown out my guilty thoughts, and listened to the news report on the local Rose Crest station. They were discussing the attempted break-in at the school and how it might relate to Day’s Market. The reporter speculated that the burglar must have been scared off somehow, because nothing was missing from the school. But, of course, the school’s security cameras were blank.
I flipped off the radio and discovered my phone ringing deep within my backpack, which I’d left in the car all afternoon. What kind of calls could I have missed? What if Jude had tried to contact me again?
I looked at the display and sighed with relief.
“Hey, Dad,” I said into the phone. “You got my messages?”
“Yes.” Dad sounded so tired, and I could barely hear him over the din on his end of the phone. “Tell me what happened?”
I told him all about the phone call from Jude, trying to recount it word for word. Then I told him about how Jude had been in Daniel’s apartment in
Maryanne’s basement.
Dad was silent for a moment. “All this searching for him, and he was practically in our own backyard,” he finally said. He sounded angry, shocked, and relieved all at the same time. “Anything else? Have you heard from him again?”
“No.” I hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share Daniel’s theory with Dad, but I knew I shouldn’t hold anything back that might help find Jude. “Nothing definitive, anyway, but I think he may have actually been in our backyard.” I told Dad about James’s seeing something at his window, then the ransacking of Day’s Market, and the attempted break-in at the school.
“Daniel thinks it’s Jude.” I was just pulling into our driveway, and I decided to sit in the idling car until I was done talking to Dad—I didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation.
“That’s a logical conclusion,” Dad said. “It makes sense.”
“Does it? Why would he do those things? Why is he back?”
“I don’t know, Gracie.” He sighed, and I heard some announcer’s voice in the background. He must have been at an airport or a train station. “I really don’t know.”
“Are you on your way home?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“What? But Jude was here. Why aren’t you coming—?”
“I need to go. It’s the last call for my train. I’ll explain later, but I don’t know when I’ll be home.”
Anger surged inside of me. Dad was gone all the time, and I’d thought it was because he was desperately looking for Jude—looking for a way to make our family whole again. But maybe it was us he was trying to stay away from? Why else wouldn’t he come home now? Right now when we needed him most.
“Fine. Just don’t forget where you live in the meantime,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I’ll come home as soon as I can.” Then he called to someone else on his end, “Yes, that’s my bag. I’m coming.” He cleared his throat and spoke back into the phone again. “One last thing, Gracie. You are not, under any circumstances, allowed to go looking for Jude on your own.”
I made a scoffing noise. It would have been a laugh if I hadn’t been so upset. I just found it funny and annoying at the same time that Dad would say the same thing as Daniel. Like they thought I wasn’t capable of not going out and looking for Jude.
“Just don’t, Gracie. You aren’t prepared for what you might find.…” He sighed heavily into the phone. “And we’ve already lost one child. Your mother would never survive if you left us, too.”
Mom was asleep on the couch when I finally went inside, the evening news playing in the background. I didn’t bother to wake her and went straight up the stairs. I was more than exhausted, drained of everything, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I was halfway to my bed when Baby James started crying in his room. It was a whimpering, frightened whine, growing louder and louder. I pushed his door open and looked in on him. He sat in his toddler-sized bed, rubbing his eyes. With the light from the hallway, I could see big, fat tears running down his red-splotched face.
“It’s okay.” I dropped my backpack in his doorway and scooped him up in my arms. “It’s okay, Baby James.”
“Not baby,” James said through his sobs. He was only two and half and was already starting to resist his family pet name.
“You’re right. You’re a big boy, huh?”
James nodded and cuddled close into my shoulder.
“Did you have another bad dream?”
“Yuh.” He trembled in my arms.
“It’s okay.” I curled up with him in his tiny bed and brushed my fingers through his brown curls. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ll protect you … I promise.”
James smiled through his tears and patted my face. Within a few minutes his breathing became heavy and deep. His eyes closed, and he fell fast asleep with his fingers wrapped around a fistful of my hair.
I watched his chest rise and fall, thinking about everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, knowing that something terrible was trying to tear apart my little world. The crimes of the city were spreading to my hometown. Jude had been here, staring in at our little brother with his silver, glowing eyes. I didn’t know Jude’s intentions, and I didn’t know how he was connected to what had happened at Day’s or at the school, but all of this made it feel like the sky was about to come crashing down on us at any given moment.
I thought about what Daniel had said about his believing that I could be a hero. And I wished beyond all wishes that he were right—that I had the ability to keep the promise I had just made to James. I wished I really were capable of protecting everyone I loved.
I glanced over at my backpack in the doorway, remembering my Trenton application tucked inside of it. James snored slightly next to me, looking innocent and helpless, but what would he be like if I hadn’t been here to quiet his cries?
And that was when it hit me: even if I beat out April and Katie, even if Trenton decided to let both Daniel and me in, I still couldn’t go.
Any possibility of my going to Trenton, or to college at all, had been destroyed the day Jude ran away. What with my dad always gone looking for him, and Mom’s manic-depressive state. And wouldn’t Mom just get worse when I went off to school? Who would watch over Baby James? A part-
time housekeeper wasn’t the same as a mother or a sister. And how could I leave Charity with all this to deal with on her own? She was the smart one in the family—practically all she ever did was homework—and it
