“Yeah,” Douglas said. “But it was all right, because I had Jessica to protect me. Even though I was in fifth grade, and she was in first. God, Tom couldn’t hold his head up all year after that. The snot beat out of him by a tiny first grade girl.”

Tasha smiled at me admiringly, but I know there was nothing all that admirable about that situation. My high school counselor and I had worked long and hard to combat my seemingly uncontrollable temper, which was always getting me in hot water. I’d finally succeeded in getting control of it, but only after seeing for myself firsthand what could happen when someone with a bad temper got too much power—such as some of the men I’d helped catch in Afghanistan.

We walked into the school’s combination auditorium, complete with stage, gym (basketball hoops), and cafeteria (long tables that folded up into the walls to get them out of the way during PE or Assembly). The room seemed ridiculously small compared to the way I remembered it. About ten rows of folding chairs had been set up before a long table, on top of which sat a scale model of Pine Heights school, only with the windows and landscaping redone, so it looked more like an upscale condo complex than a school.

Standing behind this model, glad-handing what had to be a bunch of city planners and local politicians, was a pot-bellied businessman in an expensive new suit…which couldn’t have been all that comfortable in the summer heat, considering the school had no air-conditioning.

And standing next to the beer-bellied man was another guy in a suit, although this one was more appropriate for the weather, being silk. Also, the guy in it wore the jacket over a black T-shirt instead of a button-down and tie.

Except for the change of clothes, though, he was still perfectly recognizable as someone I had seen—albeit from a distance—just a few hours before.

Hannah’s boyfriend, the two-timing Randy.

Ten

“Everyone, if you could take your seats, please.”

The city councilperson called everyone who was milling around, greeting one another—including my suddenly civic-minded brother—to order. We took our seats and sat there in the evening heat, some people fanning themselves with handouts Randy’s dad had left on all our seats. The handouts described the complex he wanted to convert Pine Heights school into—a brand-new luxury condo “experience,” with a gym and a coffee shop on the first floor. Apparently, more and more DINKs—double income, no kids—were moving to our town, commuting from it to Indianapolis. Such a condo “experience” would perfectly suit their needs.

People stood up and started talking, but the truth was, I didn’t hear a word they said. I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was staring at Randy Whitehead.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, we live in a pretty small town. If a guy’s dad owns one apartment complex, chances are he’s going to own more than one. I mean, look at my dad. He owned not one, but three of the most popular restaurants in a town barely large enough to support a single McDonald’s.

Still, it was a shock to see Randy, up close and personal. He seemed to be there strictly in a “supportive son” role, not saying much, and handing his dad things when it was Mr. Whitehead’s turn to make his presentation. There was no denying that the guy was hot. Randy, I mean. If you like the hundred-dollar-haircut, loafers-without-socks type. Which I guess, to an inexperienced girl like Hannah, would seem pretty exotic.

To me, though, he looked like he would smell. Not of BO. But of too much cologne. I hate it when guys smell of anything but soap. Randy Whitehead looked as if he were DRIPPING in Calvin Klein For Men.

“The overall cost of each of these units,” Mr. Whitehead was saying, “would be in keeping with the rising cost of real estate in a town that is fast becoming an extremely sought-after bedroom community for upwardly mobile workers in nearby Indianapolis. We’re talking low to mid six figures, depending on the type of amenities buyers choose to incorporate into the overall design plan they select. In no way will the Pine Heights community suffer an influx of undesirably lower-income residents through this conversion.”

Randy, while his father spoke, softly tapped a pencil. He didn’t look like a man wondering where his soul mate had vanished to earlier in the day. He looked like a man who wanted to go home to watch some HBO and have a Heineken or two.

The community listened politely to Mr. Whitehead’s spiel, asking one or two questions pertaining to parking and the school’s baseball field, which was still utilized on a somewhat sporadic basis by families who enjoyed an impromptu game of softball on a summer evening. The baseball field would go, turned into a “lush green park area, open to the public, complete with a duck pond.” This, in turn, led to questions about mosquitoes and West Nile virus.

What, I asked myself, was I still doing here? In Indiana, I mean. I had done what Rob had asked me to do. Why wasn’t I on a plane back to New York by now? That’s where my life was these days. Not here, listening to people freak out about a baseball field.

Of course, back in New York, I never really felt as if I belonged, either. I mean, everyone in New York was so excited about going to Broadway shows and having picnics in Central Park. Everyone but me.

Maybe the problem wasn’t Indiana or New York. Maybe the problem was me. Maybe I wasn’t capable of happiness anymore. Maybe Rob was right, and I was broken. Permanently broken, and would never find happiness again—

My musings on my seemingly permanent state of not caring about anything were interrupted by, of all people, my brother Douglas as he stood up and said, “I’d like to know how far the city council has gotten on its review of our proposal for Pine Heights to be turned into an alternative high school.”

There was considerable murmuring about this. But not because people thought it was so out there or weird, as people have murmured over things my brother’s said in the past. There was a general note of approval in this murmur. Someone at the far side of the gym shouted, “Yeah!” while someone on the other side said, “We don’t want teenagers roaming around loose in our neighborhood.”

“Alternative doesn’t mean unsupervised,” Douglas was quick to point out. “State certification will be required of teachers wishing to apply to work at Pine Heights Alternative High School. And like any school, loitering on school grounds after hours will not be permitted.”

“But kids who go to so-called alternative schools,” a woman I didn’t recognize, but who evidently lived in our neighborhood, stood up to say, “are generally kids who’ve been expelled from mainstream schools. The troublemakers.”

There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.

“Not our school,” Tasha Thompkins stood up to say. “Our school will have strict admittance policies. Applicants will need to have references.”

Back and forth it went between the supporters of an alternative high school and those who felt it would cause real estate values in the neighborhood to plummet. I sat there, not so much interested in the fight than in the fact that my brother—my brother Douglas—was leading it. My brother Douglas, who years previously had been interested in comic books and keeping to himself, in that order. Now he was leading—really, leading—a charge for change in a neighborhood he didn’t even live in anymore.

And people were LISTENING to him. The boy who used to come home crying every day from school because some bigger kid had stolen his lunch money and called him a spaz. He was LEADING a group of citizens concerned about the direction their town was going.

And he was leading because he had a heretofore unknown—to me, anyway—talent for public speaking.

“The reason we’re even here,” he was saying, “is because the young people in our community can no longer afford to raise their children here. They’re being priced out for homes in this community by people who don’t even own businesses in this community, but choose to live here rather than in Indianapolis, the big city where they do business. Soon this town will become completely unaffordable to people my age. We’re losing young people to big cities like New York and Chicago because there’s no work for them here. Talented teachers are slipping away because there are no openings for them in our overcrowded public schools. Why not give us an opportunity to employ some of these people, pull them back into the local community, while at the same time, affording teens who might otherwise feel lost at the monstrosity that is our local public high school a chance to really shine?”

A few people clapped. Really, clapped, for something my brother Douglas said. It brought tears to my eyes. It really did. After the meeting ended—with an assurance by the city councilperson that both the proposed alternative high school and Mr. Whitehead’s condo plan would be thoroughly reviewed and a decision made by the end of the month, I turned to Douglas and said, struggling to keep my emotions in check, “That was good, Dougie. Really good.”

“Yeah,” he said, still looking angry. “Well, not good enough. I think I swayed a couple of them, but that bastard Whitehead—he really has them snowed about the property values and turning this neighborhood into the Beverly Hills of Indiana….”

“Don’t worry,” Tasha said, giving my brother a comforting rub on the back. “My dad knows the mayor. He promised to put a word in. I mean, after all, it’s his neighborhood, too. And it’s an election year.”

“It would just be so cool,” Douglas said, “if we could turn this place back into a school—the right kind of school, I mean. The kind of school you wouldn’t have hated, Jess.”

I laughed—not very easily—and then moved away as people came up to congratulate Douglas on his speech and strategize as to what the next step ought to be in their plan.

And I found myself standing not five feet away from Randy Whitehead, who was putting his dad’s model into a big white box.

Before I even thought about what I was doing, I strolled over to him, leaned down, and said, “Nice model.”

Randy glanced at me and gave me a big, capped-tooth smile.

“Thanks,” he said. “You new around here? I’ve never seen you at one of these community board meetings before.”

“You might say I’m new around here.” I smiled back at him. “You?”

“Just moved here from Indy,” he said. “Last year.”

“That must be quite a change,” I said. “Small town living, after life in the big city.”

“It’s surprisingly the same,” he said. “I mean, mostly work, very little play.”

I smiled even harder at him. “Come on,” I said. “A guy as good-looking as you? You must get LOTS of play.”

He ducked his head modestly, allowing some of his hundred-dollar haircut to fall over his eyes. “Well,” he said. “Now and then, I suppose. How about you?”

I tried to look surprised. “Me? Oh, I don’t have much time for playing.”

“Really?” He’d successfully wrestled the model into the box. “Why not?”

“I’m too busy finding people, usually,” I said.

“Finding people?” He regarded me with eyes that were the same color as Rob’s. But somehow I suspected Randy’s misty gray irises were the result of contacts. “What are you? A truant officer?”

“No,” I said. “I’m Jess Mastriani. Maybe you haven’t heard of me. I’m the girl who was struck by lightning a few years ago and developed the psychic power to find missing people.”

He stared at me for a full beat. Then recognition dawned.

“No kidding?” He looked delighted. “Hey, I watch that show about you, sometimes. The one on cable.”

“Huh,” I said, in a small-world kind of way.

“Wow,” Randy said. “It’s really cool meeting you. I had no idea you were so young. In real life, I mean.”

“Huh,” I said again, this time in a gee-whillikers way.

“It is a real honor to meet you,” Randy said, reaching out his right hand to shake mine. “I’m Randall Whitehead Junior.”

“I know,” I said, pumping his hand with vigor.

“You do?” He looked psyched to hear it. “Oh, right. Well, I mean, of course you do. You’re psychic!”

“Not that kind of psychic,” I said. “Actually, I know you through a friend of yours. Hannah Snyder.”

Randy was a smooth one, all right. He didn’t quit pumping my hand. But I felt it grow a little cooler in mine. And he blinked, twice, hard, at the name.

Then he said, “Snyder? I don’t believe I know the name.”

“Oh, sure, you do, Randy,” I said in the same warm voice. “She’s the underage runaway you were stashing in Apartment Two-T over at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex by the hospital. I found her there myself earlier today.”