Jay.
He was everything she could have hoped for, going out of his way to make them—her—feel welcome. He’d smiled when he’d introduced himself, and she’d actually felt something. He was telling her with that smile that he would be her friend. And maybe, someday, something more.
But she also recalled that other moment, could taste it like bitter bile. It was the moment she’d realized that he already had a friend. A girlfriend.
It was the moment that Megan had stopped feeling special.
Only that wasn’t entirely true, because Jay didn’t stop smiling at her. He didn’t stop inviting her to join him, and he even went so far as to use her brother to get closer to her. So, obviously, the girl—his girl—didn’t mean that much to him after all.
She was just the girl standing in Megan’s way.
Megan pounded her fist against the solid concrete of the column and peered around it once again. She pressed her cheek against the cool surface as she stared at her brother’s table.
Jay was still there. And so was Violet.
Why couldn’t Jay see Violet for the obstacle she really was? Why couldn’t he brush her aside so he could—finally—be with Megan?
Tears blinded her and she blinked hard, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
Why couldn’t he love her?
Well, it didn’t matter now. She was done trying to frighten Violet. It hadn’t worked anyway. Had she really expected that Violet would be so afraid that she’d . . . what, dump Jay? Stop coming to school? Or, better yet, leave town? All because of some stupid phone calls and a note?
Or a dead cat in a box?
It seemed to work for a while—Violet’s absence from school, her separation from Jay—but now they were closer than ever.
It turned out to be more childish fantasies on her part. More foolish daydreams.
She’d had to stop anyway. Violet suspected her. Violet had said her name, that night on the phone.
Of course, there was no way Violet could really know it was Megan. She’d only been guessing. But it wasn’t worth the risk.
Megan wouldn’t call her again. There would be no more “messages.”
Megan smoothed out the crumpled hall pass and read it one last time before dropping it into the garbage on her way back to her class.
Who was she kidding anyway?
She was never going to the guidance counselor’s office. She was never going to admit that her father was a drunk. That she was lonely and frightened and angry.
She was just going to shrivel up . . . and fade away.
Chapter 25
After school, Violet thumbed through the files that Rafe had given her when she’d gone to the FBI offices. Well, just the one actually . . . Serena Russo’s file.
Violet had made a decision after seeing Mike at lunch that afternoon. She needed to do something for him—and for his sister—to try to make up for everything she’d thought and for the horrible things she’d accused Megan of doing.
She had this ability. This gift. Why not use it, as Sara pointed out? Why not try to help someone?
And in this case, someone Violet felt she had wronged.
She dialed the phone quickly, before she lost her nerve.
After a moment, she spoke. “If I give you an address, can you meet me?”
Violet smiled as she listened to the response on the other end and then repeated the address of Serena Russo’s ex-husband, who lived less than an hour from her.
Tonight she was going to try to make a difference.
She’d hoped to get there before dark, but by the time Violet made her way down I-5 through rush-hour traffic, the one-hour drive had stretched to nearly two. Dusk was already blanketing the sky.
Her stomach felt dangerously unsettled, and she tried to tell herself that she didn’t have to do this, that she could still turn back.
But she was determined—she was definitely going. She owed it to Mike’s family, and she owed it to herself to see if she could make her ability useful once more. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going alone, she reminded herself.
She turned off the main roads as she followed the directions she’d printed from her computer. She hadn’t expected them to take her so far outside the city, for the location to be so . . . isolated. Why couldn’t someone, just once, live in a nice little subdivision? A peaceful—yet populated—neighborhood?
She slowed her car, watching the mailboxes along the side of the road, trying to spot the address she was searching for. When she finally saw it, her pulse kicked up a notch. She took a deep breath as she pulled off to the side of the road, her car bouncing over the uneven surface. She exhaled noisily.
There were no other cars in sight, which probably meant she’d arrived ahead of the person she was meeting. She thought about waiting but decided against it; she had no idea how much longer that might be.
“This is it,” she told herself, her version of a pep talk. “It’s now or never.”
No one answered, and the corner of her mouth quirked up as she bit her lip and got out. She’d decided to park on the street, hoping that—just maybe—she’d be able to glimpse an imprint from a distance, without Roger Hartman ever knowing that she’d been there at all.
Parking her car in his driveway would’ve been a dead giveaway.
She hoped that his imprint—if he carried one—would be something she could sense from a distance and not something that required her to be in close proximity, like Jay’s mom’s imprint was. Violet could only sense the campfire smoke if she was standing right beside, or touching, Ann Heaton.