of it that didn’t involve werewolves—my own mother didn’t even know that much, and considering her fragile mental state, it was probably for the best.
“All I want to say is that Jude was troubled and ran away,” Dad had explained to us. “And we’d appreciate everyone’s patience while our family adjusts.”
But Mom wouldn’t allow it. She hated the idea of people judging her parenting, thinking anything ill of our family.
“So what do you want us to do?” Dad had asked her.
“We lie,” she said.
“To the entire town?” I asked.
“Yes.” She rocked back and forth in her chair and stared at the TV set. “He’ll be home soon. We’ll find him. Nobody will know anything was ever wrong.”
So that second Sunday in January, Dad fed the “official” story to Rose Crest—lied to everyone right over the pulpit. According to what my mother wanted him to say, Jude had gone to live with Grandma and Grandpa Kramer in Florida, because they needed help around the house after
Grandpa’s back surgery—and Dad would occasionally be flying down to help, too.
But people aren’t stupid. They were bound to notice that Jude had been gone for almost ten months without coming home to visit once. And that his disappearance coincided with a mysterious “dog attack” inside the parish that had put Daniel in the ICU for a week. They were bound to notice that Mom could barely make it through one of Dad’s sermons, with that fake grin plastered on her face and her eyes completely glassed over. They were going to notice that Dad was “flying down to Florida” to help his in-laws more often than he was home some weeks.
Which meant people were also going to talk.
I knew it wasn’t possible to come completely clean about everything that had happened in the last year, but on top of knowing the secrets of the underworld and lying to everyone about my brother’s disappearance, I also had to hide the fact that I could hear what people said about my family and me behind our backs. Another less exciting perk of having superhuman hearing that decides to kick in at the most inconvenient times.
Most people are genuinely nice, you know. But some people were nice only to my face, and I could hear them whisper about my family when they thought I was well out of earshot. They liked to speculate about how Jude must have been on drugs, or how he possibly ran away to join a cult. Or maybe he was at one of those schools out west where they make messed-up kids hike through the desert without enough water.
“I always knew that kid was too perfect to be for real. I bet they were all getting high in the parish that night,” I heard Brett Johnson—one of Jude’s friends—whisper once when I was a good block away from him and his girlfriend.
I knew people called my mom crazy when they thought I couldn’t possibly hear them.
Only slightly less annoying was the stuff people at school would say about me. I’d always been used to people watching me, judging me, because
I was the pastor’s daughter. But now I was pretty much the school pariah when my back was turned—which is apparently what happens to you when the captain of the school hockey team gets arrested and then kicked out of school for assaulting you. I mean, seriously, I had no idea HTA was so fanatic about hockey until I got blamed for us losing our chance to win State last year. Never mind the fact that Pete Bradshaw was the one who attacked me.
And I couldn’t even react, because normal people aren’t supposed to hear what others say about them when they’re two rooms away. So I have to admit that when my superhearing decided to act up at school today, I felt only slightly guilty that the masses had a whole new topic of juicy gossip to chew on.
News spread quickly about what happened at Day’s Market, and the speculations about the culprit only heightened when my second-period gym class was cancelled because it was discovered there had been an attempted break-in at the school through one of the gymnasium windows.
And by third period, rumors flew like spit wads across the halls when it was announced that all religion classes were cancelled, too, because Mr.
Shumway, the religion teacher, hadn’t shown up for school.
Some people claimed that Mr. Shumway was missing, but as I walked by the main hall I overheard one of the secretaries inside the principal’s office say that Mr. Shumway had up and quit first thing this morning. But that didn’t make any sense at all since Mr. Shumway had been teasing our class with some big surprise for the last two weeks, and he was supposedly going to tell us the details today. I was almost ready to believe the guy about fifty yards down the hall from my locker who said he heard that Mr. Shumway had “seen something” connected with the break-in. And it had freaked him out so bad he refused to come back to the school.
There was so much chatter, in fact, that by the time I got to fourth period all I could do was lay my head on the art table and clamp my hands over my ears.
“That bad?” Daniel asked as he slipped into the seat next to mine.
“Blech. This whole not being able to turn on and off my superhearing whenever I want is getting to be way too nauseating. Oh, and remind me not to walk past the boys’ locker room when my hearing is acting up. For a bunch of Christian guys, they sure have dirty mouths.”
Daniel laughed. The vibration made me want to pound my forehead against the table.
“Sorry,” Daniel whispered. He cleared his throat. “So do you think Jude may have had something to do with the attempted break-in at the gym?”
he asked as quietly as possible. “Coach Brown says he thinks whoever did it must have been after the computers in the lab next door. But my guess is that Jude went there after Day’s.”
I lifted my head just as April Thomas flitted past our table and headed for her spot in the back of the room. Her eyes flicked in my direction for a quarter of a second, but then she went straight to the table she shared with Kimberly Woodruff without making any other acknowledgment that I was even alive. I remembered not too long ago when she and I shared a table together—last year, when we were the only juniors allowed in Mr. Barlow’s
AP art class. Back before Daniel returned to town and April started dating my brother and everything got weird between us.
“What do you think?” Daniel asked.
I didn’t want to believe it, but it would make sense that Jude would go to the school after Day’s, considering that’s where he went the same night he planted Jessica Day’s body behind the market. He’d gone to the gym looking for Daniel at the Christmas dance.
I was about to comment on Daniel’s theory when someone behind me said, “Hey, guys!” so loud I jumped in my seat.
Daniel and I turned in our chairs to see Katie Summers, the new transfer student from Brighton, standing there with a handful of charcoal pencils tied with a bright orange ribbon, which looked surprisingly like a bra strap. It matched perfectly with the funky handmade headband in her blond A-
line bobbed hair. “Wow, Grace, your hair looks great today. You should wear it up all the time. It’s totally quirky.”
Coming from most people, that might sound like a backhanded compliment—especially since I’d worn my hair up in a messy ponytail because I hadn’t bothered to do anything else with it this morning—but from someone like Katie, who brought her tofu sandwiches and organic wheatgrass juice in a varying collection of vintage lunch boxes, quirky seemed like a good thing.
“Um, thanks,” I said. Considering my own best friend didn’t even talk to me anymore, I always found it surprising when anyone at school other than my teachers or Daniel actually made an effort to engage me in conversation. “You look awesome, as always.”
Which she did.
Katie was one of those naturally beautiful people who could wear a dress made out of a dyed blue potato sack to a school picnic—which she had back in September—and still look drop-dead gorgeous.
“You’re too sweet.” Katie turned her cobalt blue eyes on Daniel. “Hey,” she said. “Thanks for letting me borrow your charcoal pencil last week. I so wouldn’t have finished my project on time without you.” She held out the bundle of pencils with her many-ringed fingers and offered it to Daniel. “This is for you.”
“Really? Thanks, Katie.” Daniel’s cheeks tinged with pink, and he seemed extra careful not to touch the bra-
