"What is?"

Ruth reached up to adjust her rearview mirror. "Um," she said, staring pointedly into it. "That."

I looked behind us. We had a police escort, a bunch of the motorcycle cops rolling along beside us in an attempt to keep the hordes of news vans from bearing down on us too hard. But there were a lot more news vans than I would have thought. And they were all coming right at us. It wasn't going to be very funny when we tried to get out of the car.

"Maybe they won't let them onto school property," I said, hopefully.

"Yeah, right. Feeney's going to be standing there with a big welcome banner. Are you kidding?"

I said, "Well, maybe if I just talked to them …"

Which was how, just before the start of first period, I found myself standing on the school steps, fielding questions from these news reporters I'd been watching on TV my whole life.

"No," I said, in reply to one question, "it didn't hurt, really. It just felt sort of tingly."

"Yes," I said to someone else, "I do think the government should be doing more to find these children."

"No," I replied to another question, "I don't know where Elvis is."

Mr. Feeney, just as Ruth had predicted, was there all right. He was there with a little flock of reporters all his own. He and Mr. Goodhart stood on either side of me as I answered the reporters' questions. Mr. Goodhart looked uncomfortable, but Mr. Feeney, you could tell, was having the time of his life. He kept on saying to anyone who would listen how Ernest Pyle High School had won the state basketball championship in 1997. Like anyone cared.

And then, in the middle of this lame little impromptu press conference, something happened. Something happened that changed everything, even more than Douglas's episode had.

"Miss Mastriani," someone in the middle of the horde of reporters cried, "do you feel any guilt whatsoever over the fact that Sean Patrick O'Hanahan claims that, when his mother kidnapped him five years ago, it was in order to protect him from his abusive father?"

I blinked. It was another beautiful spring day, with the temperature already climbing into the seventies. But, suddenly, I felt cold.

"What?" I said, scanning the crowd, trying to figure out who was talking.

"And that your revealing Sean's whereabouts to the authorities," the voice went on, "has not only endangered his life, but put his mother's freedom in jeopardy?"

And then, instead of there being a sea of faces in front of me, there was only one face. I couldn't even tell if I was really seeing it, or if it was just in my mind's eye. But there it was, Sean's face, as I'd seen it that day in front of the little brick house in Paoli. A small face, white as paper, the freckles on it standing out like hives. His fingers, clinging to me, had shaken like leaves.

"Don't you tell anyone," he'd hissed at me. "Don't you ever tell anyone you saw me, understand?"

He had begged me not to tell. He had clung to me and begged me not to tell.

And I had told anyway. Because I had thought—I had honestly thought—he was being held against his will, by people of whom he was deathly afraid. He had certainly acted as if he were afraid.

And that was because he had been afraid. Of me.

I had truly thought I was doing the right thing. But I hadn't been doing the right thing. I hadn't done the right thing at all.

The reporters were still yelling questions at me. I heard them, but it was as if they were yelling them from very far away.

"Jessica?" Mr. Goodhart was looking down at me. "Are you all right?"

"I am not Sean Patrick O'Hanahan." That's what Sean had said to me that day outside his house. "So you can just go away, do you hear? You can just go away."

"And don't ever come back."

"Okay." Mr. Goodhart put his arm around me and started steering me back into the school. "That's enough for one day."

"Wait," I said. "Who said that? Who said that about Sean?"

But, unfortunately, as soon as they saw I was leaving, all the reporters started screaming questions at once, and I couldn't figure out who had asked me about Sean Patrick O'Hanahan.

"Is it true?" I asked Mr. Goodhart as he hustled me back inside the school.

"Is what true?"

"Is it true what that reporter said?" My lips felt funny, like I'd been to the dentist and gotten novocaine. "About Sean Patrick O'Hanahan not having been kidnapped at all?"

"I don't know, Jessica."

"Could his mom really go to jail?"

"I don't know, Jessica. But if it is, it isn't your fault."

"Why isn't it my fault?" He was walking me to my homeroom. For once I was late and nobody gave a damn. "How do you know it isn't my fault?"

"No court in the land," Mr. Goodhart said, "is going to award custody of a child to an abusive parent. The mother's probably just brainwashed the kid into thinking his father abused him."

"But how do you know?" I repeated. "How can anyone know? How am I supposed to know if what I'm doing, revealing these kids' locations to the authorities, is really in the best interest of the kids? I mean, maybe some of them don't want to be found. How am I supposed to know the difference?"

"You can't know," Mr. Goodhart said. We'd reached my classroom by then. "Jess, you can't know. You just have to assume that if someone loved them enough to report them missing, that person deserves to know where they are. Don't you think?"

No. That was the problem. I hadn't thought. I hadn't thought about anything at all. Once I'd figured out that my dream was true—that Sean Patrick O'Hanahan really was alive and well and living in that little brick house in Paoli—I had acted, without the slightest bit of further consideration.

And now, because of it, a little kid was in more trouble than ever.

Oh, yeah. I'd been touched by the finger of God, all right.

The question was, which finger?



C H A P T E R

13

It wasn't all bad news.

The good news was, I no longer had detention.

Pretty impressive, right? Girl gets psychic powers, girl gets punishment lifted. Just like that. I wonder how Coach Albright would feel if he knew. Essentially, I'd pretty much gotten away with punching his star tackle. That's gotta be a kick in the pants, right?

In the midst of beating myself up over the whole Sean Patrick O'Hanahan thing, I spared a thought, every once in a while, for Miss Clemmings and the Ws. How was she going to handle Hank and Greg without my help? And what about Rob? Would he miss me? Would he even notice I was gone?

I got my answer after lunch. Ruth and I were making our way toward our lockers, when suddenly she elbowed me, hard. I grabbed my side and was like, "What are you trying to do, give me a splenectomy? What is with you?"

She pointed. I looked. And then I knew.

Rob Wilkins was standing by my locker.

Ruth made a hasty and completely obvious retreat. I squared my shoulders and kept going. There was nothing to be nervous about. Rob and I were just friends, as he'd made only too clear.

"Hey," he said when I walked up.

"Hey," I said. I ducked my head, working my combination. Twenty-one, the age I'd like to be. Sixteen, the age I am. Thirty-five, the age I'll be before Rob Wilkins decides I am mature enough for him to go out with.

"So," he said. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

I got out my geometry book. "Actually," I said, "I wasn't planning on telling anyone."

"That's what I figured. And the kid?"

"What kid?" But I knew. I knew.

"The kid in Paoli. That was the first one?"

"Yep," I said. And all of a sudden I felt like crying.

Really. And I never cry.

Well, except for that time with the FBI agents in Mr. Goodhart's office.

"You could have told me," he said.

"I could have." I took out my geometry notebook. "Would you have believed me?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I would have."

I think he would have, too. Or maybe I just wanted to think he would have. He looked so … I don't know. Nice, I guess, standing there, leaning against the locker next door to mine. He didn't have any books or anything, just that ubiquitous paperback in the back pocket of his jeans, those jeans that were butter-soft from constant wear, and faded in spots, like at the knees and other, more interesting, places.

He had on a long-sleeved T-shirt, dark green, but he'd pushed up the sleeves so his forearms, tanned from all the riding he does, showed, and …

See how pathetic I am?

I slammed my locker door closed.

"Well," I said. "I gotta go."

"Jess," he called after me, as I was turning to walk away.

I looked back.

I changed my mind. That's what I was hoping he was going to say. I changed my mind. Want to go to the prom with me?

What he actually said was, "I heard. About the kid. Sean." He looked uncomfortable, like he wasn't used to having these kinds of conversations in the middle of the school hallway, under the unnatural glow of the fluorescent overheads.

But he went on anyway.

"It wasn't your fault, Jess. The way he acted that day, outside his house … well, I thought there was something weird going on with him, too. You couldn't have known. That's all." He nodded, like he was satisfied he'd made every point he'd meant to. "You did the right thing."

I shook my head. I could feel tears pricking my eyes. Dammit, I was standing there, with about a thousand people streaming around me, trying not to cry in front of this guy I had a total crush on. Could there possibly be anything more humiliating?

"No," I said. "I didn't."

And then I turned around and walked away.

And this time, he didn't try to stop me.

Since I didn't have detention anymore, Ruth and I came home together after school. We decided we'd practice together. She said she'd found a new concerto for flute and cello. It was modern, but we'd take a stab at it.

But when she pulled onto Lumley Lane, I saw right away something was wrong. All the reporters had been herded down to the far end of the street, where they were standing behind police barricades. When they saw Ruth's car, they started yelling and frantically taking pictures.  .  .  .

But the cops wouldn't let them near our house.

When Ruth pulled into my driveway, and I saw the blood on the sidewalk, I knew why.

Not just on the sidewalk either, but little drops of it, leading all the way up to the front porch.

Ruth saw them, too. She went, "Uh-oh."

Then the screen door opened, and my dad and Mikey came out. My dad held up both his hands and said, "It's not as bad as it looks. This afternoon, Dougie attacked one of the reporters who'd stayed behind to try and interview the neighbors. They're both all right. Don't get upset."

I guess it might have sounded funny, my brother attacking a reporter. If it had been Mike who'd done it, it would have been very funny. But since it was Doug, it wasn't funny. It wasn't funny at all.

"Look," my dad said, sitting down on the porch steps. Ruth had switched off the ignition, and we both got out of the car. I went and sat down beside my dad, careful not to look at—or touch—any of the spots of blood all around us. Ruth went to sit with Mike on the porch swing. It creaked ominously under both their weights. Plus Mike looked annoyed at having to share it, only Ruth didn't notice.

"It's not your fault, Jess," my dad went on, "but the reporters, and the news vans, and the police and everything. It was all just a little too much for Dougie. Things started going a little haywire in his head. After you left this morning, we thought we'd calmed him down. We got him to take his medicine, and it seemed like he was okay. But the doctor says stress can sometimes—"

I groaned and laid my head upon my knees. "What do you mean, it isn't my fault?" I wailed. "Of course it's my fault. Everything is my fault. If I'd never called that stupid number—"

"You had to call that stupid number," my dad said patiently. "If you hadn't called that stupid number, those kids' parents would still be wondering what happened to their little son or daughter—"

"Yeah," I said. "And Sean Patrick O'Hanahan wouldn't be being sent back to his abusive father. And his mother wouldn't be in trouble. And—"

"You did the right thing, Jess," my dad said again. "You can't know everything. And Douglas will be all right. It would just be better if he could be somewhere a little quieter—"