1-800-Where-R-You:Sanctuary1-800-WHERE-R-YOU
Sanctuary
Jenny Carroll
For Jeemo
my heart, my love, always
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
About the Author
C H A P T E R
1
This time when it started, I so totally wasn't expecting it.
You would think I'd have figured it out by now. I mean, after all this time. But 
apparently not. Apparently, in spite of everything, I am just as big an idiot as 
I ever was.
This time when it started, it wasn't with a phone call, or a letter in the mail. 
This time it was the doorbell. It rang right in the middle of Thanksgiving 
dinner.
This wasn't so unusual. I mean, lately, our doorbell? Yeah, it's been ringing a 
lot. That's because a couple of months ago, one of my parents' restaurants 
burned down, and our neighborsówe live in a pretty small townówanted to show 
their sympathy for our loss by bringing over beef Stroganoff and the occasional 
persimmon pie.
Seriously. As if someone had died. People always bring over gifts of food when 
someone has died, because the grieving family isn't supposed to feel up to 
cooking, and would starve to death if friends and neighbors didn't come over all 
the time with lemon squares or whatever.
Like there was no such thing as Dominos.
Only in our case, it wasn't a person who had died. It was Mastriani's, an 
Establishment for Fine Diningóthechoice for pre-prom dinner, or catering local 
weddings or bar mitzvahsówhich got burned down thanks to some juvenile 
delinquents who'd wanted to show me just how much they didn't appreciate the way 
I was poking my nose into their business.
Yeah. It was my fault the family business got torched.
Never mind the fact that I'd been trying to stop a killer. Never mind that the 
folks this guy had been trying to kill weren't just, you know, strangers to me, 
but people I actually knew, who went to my school.
What was I supposed to do, just sit back and let him off my friends?
Whatever. The cops nailed the guy in the end. And it wasn't like Mastriani's 
wasn't insured, or that we don't own two other restaurants that didn't get 
incinerated.
I'm not saying it wasn't a terrible loss, or anything. Mastriani's was my dad's 
baby, not to mention the best restaurant in town. I'm just saying, you know, the 
persimmon pies weren't strictly necessary. We were bummed and all, but it wasn't 
like we didn't feel like cooking. Not inmy family. I mean, you grow up around a 
bunch of restaurants, you learn how to cookóamong other things, like how to 
drain a steam table or make sure the perch is fresh and that the fish guy isn't 
trying to rip you off again. There was never a shortage of food in my house.
That Thanksgiving, in fact, the table was groaning with it. Food, I mean. There 
was barely room for our plates, there were so many serving dishes stacked with 
turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry relish, two kinds of dressing, string beans, 
salad, rolls, scalloped potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, turnip 
puree, and creamed spinach in front of us.
And it wasn't like we were expected to take, you know, just a little bit of 
everything. No way. Not with my mom and dad around. It was like, if you didn't 
pile your plate sky-high with stuff, you were insulting them.
Which was a very big problem, you see, because I had a second Thanksgiving 
dinner to attendósomething I hadn't exactly mentioned to them, on account of how 
I knew they wouldn't exactly be too thrilled about it. I was just trying to save 
a little room, you know?
Only maybe I should have said something. Because certain people at the table 
observed my apparent lack of appetite and felt obligated to comment upon it.
"What's wrong with Jessica?" my great-aunt Rose, who was down from Chicago for 
the holiday, wanted to know. "How come she's not eating? She sick?"
"No, Aunt Rose," I said, from between gritted teeth. "I am not sick. I'm just 
not that hungry right now."
"Not that hungry?" Great-aunt Rose looked at my mother. "Who's not hungry at 
Thanksgiving? Your mother and father slaved all day making this delicious meal. 
Now you eat up."
My mother broke off her conversation with Mr. Abramowitz to say, "She's eating, 
Rose."
"I'm eating, Aunt Rose," I said, sticking some sweet potato in my mouth to prove 
it. "See?"
"You know what the problem with her is," Great-aunt Rose said conspiratorially 
to Claire Lippman's mother, but in a voice still loud enough for the guys 
working down at the Stop and Shop on First Street to hear. "She's got one of 
those eating disorders. You know. That anorexia."
"Jessica doesn't have anorexia, Rose," my mom said, looking annoyed. "Douglas, 
pass the string beans to Ruth, will you?"
Douglas, who in the best of circumstances does not like to have attention drawn 
to him, quickly passed the string beans to my best friend Ruth, as if he thought 
he could ward off Great-aunt Rose's evil death glare by doing so.
"You know what they call that?" Great-aunt Rose asked Mrs. Lippman, in a chummy 
sort of way.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Mastriani," Mrs. Lippman said. I gathered from her slightly 
harassed tone that, in accepting my mother's invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, 
Mr. and Mrs. Lippman had not known what they were getting themselves into. 
Clearly, no warning had been issued about Great-aunt Rose. "I don't know what 
you mean."
"Denial," Great-aunt Rose said, snapping her fingers triumphantly. "I saw that 
onOprah . I suppose you're just going to let Jessica pick at that dressing, 
Antonia, and not make her eat it, just like you let her get away with 
everything. Those disgraceful dungarees she goes around in, and that hair Ö and 
don't even get me started on that whole business last spring. You know, nice 
girls don't have armed federal officers following them aroundó"
Thankfully, at that moment, the doorbell rang. I threw my napkin down and got up 
so fast, I nearly knocked over my chair.
"I'll get it!" I yelled, then tore for the foyer.
Well, you would have run out of there, too. I mean, who wanted to hear that 
whole thingóabout how I'd been struck by lightning and consequently developed 
the psychic power to find missing people; how I'd been more or less kidnapped by 
a less-than-savory arm of the government, who'd wanted me to come work for them; 
and how some friends of mine sort of had to blow up a few things in order to get 
me safely back homeóagain? I mean, hello, that subject is way tired, can we 
change it, please?
"Now, who could that be?" my mother wondered, as I rushed for the door. 
"Everyone we know is right here at this table."
This was pretty much true. Besides Great-aunt Rose and me and my mom and dad, 
there were my two older brothers, Douglas and Michael, Michael's new girlfriend 
(it still felt weird to call her that, since for years Mikey had only dreamed 
that Claire Lippman might one day glance in his direction, and now, flying in 
the face of societal convention, they were going togetheróthe Beauty and the 
Geek), and her family, as well as my best friend Ruth Abramowitz and her twin 
brother Skip and their parents. In all, there were thirteen people gathered 
around our dining room table. It sure didn't seem to me like anyone was missing.
But when I got to the door, I found out someone was. Oh, not from our dinner 
table. But from someone else's.
It was dark outsideóit gets dark early in November in Indianaóbut the porch 
light was on. As I approached the front door, which was partly glass, I saw a 
large, African-American man standing there, looking out onto the street while he 
waited for someone to answer the bell.
I knew who he was right away. Like I said, our town is pretty small, and up 
until a few weeks ago, there hadn't been a single African American living in it. 
That had changed when the old Hoadley place across the street from our house was 
finally bought by Dr. Thompkins, a physician who'd taken a job as chief surgeon 
at our county hospital, relocating his family, which included a wife, son, and 
daughter, from Chicago.
I opened the door and said, "Hey, Dr. Thompkins."
He turned around and smiled, "Hello, Jessica. Er, I mean, hey." In Indiana, hey 
is what you say instead of hello. Dr. Thompkins, you could tell, was still 
trying to adjust to the lingo.
"Come on in," I said, moving out of the way so he could get out of the cold. It 
hadn't started to snow yet, but on the Weather Channel they'd said it was going 
to. Not enough snow was expected, however, for them to cancel school on Monday, 
much to my chagrin.
"Thanks, Jessica," Dr. Thompkins said, looking past me through the foyer, to 
where he could see everybody gathered in the dining room. "Oh, I'm sorry. I 
didn't mean to interrupt your meal."
"No biggie," I said. "Want some turkey? We have plenty."
"Oh, no. No, thank you," Dr. Thompkins said. "I just stopped by because I was 
hoping Ö well, it's sort of embarrassing, but I wanted to see if Ö"
Dr. Thompkins seemed pretty nervous. I assumed he needed to borrow something. 
Whenever anybody in the neighborhood needs to borrow something, particularly 
something cooking related, we are almost always their first stop. Because my 
parents are in the restaurant business, we pretty much have anything you could 
possibly need to cook with, and generally in giant bulk containers.
Since he was from a big city, and all, I guessed Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that 
in a small town, it's perfectly acceptable to ask your neighbors if you can 
borrow something. There was actually a lot I suspected Dr. Thompkins didn't know 
about our town. For instance, I suspected that Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that 
even though Indiana officially sided with the North during the Civil War, there 
were still some peopleóespecially in the southern half of the state, where we 
liveówho didn't think the Confederates were so bad.
That's why the day the Thompkinses' moving truck pulled up, my mom was over 
there with a big dish of manicotti, welcoming them to the neighborhood, before 
they'd even gotten out of the car, practically. Mrs. Abramowitz, who can't cook 
to save her life, brought over store-bought pastries in a big white box. And the 
Lippmans came over with a plate of Claire's famous chocolate-chip cookies. (Her 
secret? They're Tollhouse Break and Bake. All Claire does is grease the cookie 
pan. Seriously. I am privy to secrets like this, and many other much more 
interesting ones, now that Claire is my brother's girlfriend.)
Just about everybody in the neighborhood, and a lot of neighborhoods farther 
away, showed up to welcome the Thompkinses to our town the day they moved in. I 
bet, coming from Chicago and all, the Thompkinses must have thought we were a 
true bunch of freaks, knocking on their door all day long, and even several days 
after they'd gotten moved in, with brownies and eggplant parmigiana and 
Snickerdoodles and macaroni and cheese and Jell-O salad and homemade coffee 
cake.
But what the Thompkins didn't knowóand what we were all too aware ofówas that 
our town, like the United States a hundred and fifty years ago, had a line 
running through the middle of it, dividing it into two distinct parts. There was 
the part Lumbley Lane was on, which also held the courthouse square and most of 
the businesses, including the hospital and the mall and the high school and 
stuff. This part of the city housed what people in my school call the "Townies."
And then there was the rest of the county, outside the city limits, which 
consisted mostly of woods and cornfields, with the occasional trailer park and 
abandoned plastics factory thrown in for picturesque effect. Outside town, there 
were still patches of illiteracy, prejudice, and even, in the deepest backwoods, 
where my dad used to take us camping when we were little, moonshining. Kids at 
school called people who lived this far outside of town, and who had to be bused 
in for school, "Grits," as that is what many of them purportedly have for 
breakfast every morning. Grits are like oatmeal, only not as socially 
acceptable, and without raisins.
In my town, Grits are the ones who still sometimes drive around with Confederate 
flags hanging off their pickups and stuff. Grits are the ones who still say the 
N word sometimes, and not because they are quoting Chris Rock or Jennifer Lopez 
or whoever. Although I happen to know quite a few so-called Grits who would 
never call someone the N word, just like I happen to know, from personal 
experience, a few Townies who wouldn't hesitate to call a female like myself 
with very short hair and a tendency to be a little quick with my fists the D 
word, or my friend Ruth, who happens to be Jewish, the K word that rhymes with 
it.
So you can see why when we saw the Thompkinses moving in, some of us thought 
there might be trouble from other people.
But it had been almost a month, and so far, no incidents. So maybe everything 
was going to be all right.
That's what I thought then. Everything's different now, of course. Still, at the 
time, all I did was try to put Dr. Thompkins at ease as he stood there in our 
foyer. Hey, I didn't know. How could I possibly have known? I may be psychic, 
but I'm notthat psychic.
"Hey,mi casa es su casa , Dr. Thompkins," I told him, which is probably about 
the lamest thing on earth there is to say, but whatever. I wasn't feeling real 
creative, thanks to Great-aunt Rose, who is a major brain drain. Also, I am 
taking French, not Spanish.
Dr. Thompkins smiled, but only just. Then he uttered the words that made it feel 
like it had started to snow after all. Only all the snow was pouring down the 
back of my sweater.
"It's just that I was wondering," he said, "if you'd seen my son."
C H A P T E R
2
Ibacked up until my calves hit the stairs to the second floor. When they did, I 
had to sit down on the first landing, which was only about four steps up, 
because my knees didn't feel like they would hold me up anymore.
"I don'tó" I said, through lips that seemed to have gone as cold as ice. "I 
don't do that anymore. Maybe nobody told you. But I don't do that anymore."
Dr. Thompkins looked down at me like I had said a dingo ate my baby, or 
something. He went, his face all perplexed, "I beg your pardon?"
Fortunately at that moment my dad came out of the dining room, his napkin still 
tucked into the waistband of his pants. My mom followed him, with MikeóClaire, 
as usual, attached to his hipótrailing behind her.
"Hey, Jerry," my dad said, to Dr. Thompkins, holding out his right hand. "How's 
it going?"
"Hello, Joe," Dr. Thompkins said. Then he corrected himself. "I mean, hey." He 
took my dad's hand and shook it. To my mom, he said, "How are you, Toni?"
"Fine, Jerry," my mom said. "And you?"
"Could be better," Dr. Thompkins said. "I'm really sorry to interrupt your meal. 
I was just wondering if any of you had seen my son, Nate. He went out a couple 
hours ago, saying he was just going to run to the storeóRowena ran out of 
whipped creamóbut we haven't seen him since. I thought maybe he'd have stopped 
over here to visit with your boys, or maybe Jessica. . . ."
Over on the steps where I'd sank, I felt color start to return to my face. Sure, 
I was relievedórelieved that Dr. Thompkins hadn't been asking me to find his 
son. . . . He'd merely been asking if I'd seen him.
And I was also a little embarrassed. Because I could tell from the glances Dr. 
Thompkins kept throwing me that he thought I was a freak of the first order for 
my weird reaction to his simple question about his son. Well, and why not? He 
hadn't been around last summer, or even this fall. He didn't know I was the one 
the press had dubbed "Lightning Girl." He didn't know about my "special" gift.
But you could tell Mike, snickering behind his hand, had figured out what had 
happened. You know, what I thought Dr. Thompkins had been asking. And he 
considered the whole thing simply hilarious.
"No, we haven't seen Nate," my mom said, looking worried. She looks worried 
whenever she hears about any kid who has strayed away from the parental tether. 
That's because one of her own kids did that once, and when she'd finally found 
him again, it had been in a hospital emergency room.
"Oh," Dr. Thompkins said. You could tell he was way disappointed that we hadn't 
seen Nate. "Well, I figured it was worth a try. He probably stopped at the video 
arcade. . . ."
I didn't want to be the one to tell Dr. Thompkins that the video arcade was 
closed. Everything in our town was closed, on account of it being Thanksgiving, 
with the exception of the Stop and Shop, which never closed, even on Christmas.
But Claire apparently had no problem being the one to deliver the bad news.
"Oh, the arcade is closed, Dr. Thompkins," she said. "Everything's closed. Even 
the bowling alley. Even the movie theaters."
Dr. Thompkins looked super bummed when Claire said this. My mom even shot her a 
disapproving look. And in my mom's eyes, Claire Lippman can do no wrong, on 
account of, you know, liking my reject brother, even if it is partly because of 
Claire that Mike is currently attending the local community college instead of 
Harvard, where he was supposed to be going this year.
"Oh," Dr. Thompkins said. He managed a brave smile. "Well, I'm sure he's just 
run into some friends somewhere."
This was entirely possible. Nate Thompkins, a sophomore at Ernest Pyle High 
School, where I am a junior, hadn't had too much trouble fitting in, in spite of 
being the new kidóand the only African-American maleóon the block. That's 
because handsome, athletic Nate had immediately tried out for and gotten onto 
the Ernie Pyle High football team. Never mind that Coach Albright had been 
desperate for any players, given that thanks to me, three of his best, including 
the quarterback, had recently taken up residency in the Indiana state men's 
penitentiary. Nate supposedly had real talent, and that had thrust him right 
into the "In Crowd" Ö
Ö unlike his older sister Tasha, a bookish senior, whom I'd spied hovering 
around the classroom where the yearbook committee meets every day after school. 
Theyearbook committee, okay? And the girl was too shy to go in. I'd walked up to 
her and been like, "Look, I'll introduce you." She'd given me a smile like I'd 
offered to suck snake venom out of a bite on her shin.
I guess Nate's extrovertedness was not an inherited trait, since Tasha sure 
didn't have it.
"I'm sure he'll be home soon," Dr. Thompkins said, and, after apologizing again, 
he left.
"Oh, dear," my mom said, looking worried, as she closed the door. "I hopeó"
But my dad broke in with, "Not now, Toni," in this warning voice.
"What?" Mike wanted to know.
"Never mind," my dad said. "Come on. We've still got four different kinds of pie 
to get through."
"You madefour pies?" Claire, who, unlike me, was tall and willowyóand who must 
have had a hollow leg or something, because she ate more than practically any 
human being I knewósounded pleased. "What kind?"
"Apple, pumpkin, pecan, and persimmon," my dad said, sounding equally pleased. 
Good cooks like people who appreciate their food.
No one, however, that I could tell, appreciated Great-aunt Rose.
"Joseph," she said, the minute we reappeared in the dining room. "Who was that 
colored man?"
It is really embarrassing having a relative like Great-aunt Rose. It isn't even 
like she is an alcoholic or anything so you can blame her bad behavior on 
outside forces. She is just plain mean. A couple of times I have considered 
hauling off and slugging her, but since she is about one hundred years old 
(okay, seventy-five, big diff) my parents would probably not take too kindly to 
this. On top of which I have really been trying to curtail my tendency toward 
violence, thanks to a lawsuit I got slapped with not too long ago for deviating 
a certain someone's septum.
Though I still think she deserved it.
"African-American, Rose," my mom said. "And he is our neighbor, Dr. Thompkins. 
Can I get anyone some more wine? Skip, more Coke?"
Skip is Ruth's twin brother. He is supposed to have a crush on me, but he always 
forgets about it when Claire Lippman is around. That's because all the 
boysóincluding my other brother, Douglasólove Claire. It is like she gives off a 
pheromone or something that girls like Ruth and I don't have. It is somewhat 
upsetting.
Not, of course, that I want Skip to like me. Because I don't even like Skip. I 
like someone else.
Someone who was expecting me for Thanksgiving dinner. Only the way things were 
goingó
"What's wrong with saying colored?" Great-aunt Rose wanted to know. "Heis 
colored, isn't he?"
"Can I get you a little more creamed spinach?" Mr. Abramowitz asked Great-aunt 
Rose. Being a lawyer, he is used to having to be nice to people he doesn't like.
"What'd Dr. Thompkins want?" Skip asked.
"Oh, nothing," my mother said, a little too brightly. "He was just wondering if 
any of us had seen Nate. Who'd like more mashed potatoes?"
"What's wrong with saying colored?" Great-aunt Rose was mad because no one was 
paying any attention to her. Though she probably would have changed her tune if 
I'd paid the kind of attention to her that I wanted to.
"I heard the only reason Dr. Thompkins took the chief surgeon job over at County 
Medical was because Nate was getting into trouble at their old school." Claire 
looked around the table as she dropped this little bombshell. Being an actress, 
Claire enjoys seeing what kind of reactions her little performances generate. 
Also, since she babysits for all the rich doctor types when she is not attending 
rehearsals, she knows all the gossip in town. "I heard Nate was in agang up in 
Chicago."
"A gang!" Mrs. Lippman looked upset. "Oh, no! That nice boy?"
"Many a nice boy's fallen in with the wrong crowd," Mr. Abramowitz said mildly.
"But Nate Thompkins." Mrs. Lippman, who was big-time involved with the PTA, 
shook her head. "Why, he's always been so polite when I've seen him at the Stop 
and Shop."
"Nate may have been involved with some unsavory individuals back in Chicago," my 
dad said. "But everybody's entitled to a fresh new start. That's one of the 
ideals this country was founded on, anyway."
"He's probably out there right now," Great-aunt Rose said, with certain relish, 
"with his little gang friends, getting high on reefer cigarettes."
Mike, Douglas, and I all exchanged glances. It was always amusing to hear 
Great-aunt Rose use the word "reefer."
My mom apparently didn't find it very amusing, though, since she said, in a 
stern voice, "Don't be ridiculous, Rose. There are no drugs here. I mean, not in 
this town."
I didn't think it would be politic to point out to my mom that the weekend 
before, at theHello Dolly cast party (Claire, of course, had gotten the part of 
Dolly), two kids (not Claire, obviouslyóshe doesn't do drugs, as an actress's 
body, she informed me, is her temple) had been hauled out by EMTs after imbibing 
in a little too much Ecstasy. It is better in the long run that my mom be 
shielded from these things.
"Can I be excused?" I asked, instead. "I have to run over to Joanne's house and 
get those trig notes I was telling you about."
"MayI be excused," my mom said. "And no, you may not. It's Thanksgiving, 
Jessica. You have three whole days off. You can pick up the notes tomorrow."
"You know somebody graffitied the overpass last week," Mrs. Lippman informed 
everyone. "You can't even tell what it says. I never thought of it before now, 
but supposing it's one of those Ö what do they call them, again? I saw it 
onSixty Minutes . Oh, yes. A gang tag. I mean, I'm sure it's not. But what if it 
is?"
"I can't get the notes tomorrow," I said. "Joanne's going to her grandma's 
tomorrow. Tonight's the only time I can get them."
"Hush," my mom said.
"Reefer today," Great-aunt Rose said, shaking her head. "Heroin tomorrow."
"You don't know anybody named Joanne," Douglas leaned over to whisper in my ear.
"Mom," I said, ignoring Douglas. Which was kind of mean, on account of it had 
taken a lot for him even to come down to dinner at all. Douglas is not what 
you'd call the most sociable guy. In fact, antisocial is more the word for it, 
really. But he's gotten a little better since he started a job at a local comic 
book store. Well, better for him, anyway.
"Come on, Mom," I said. "I'll be back in less than an hour." This was a total 
lie, but I was hoping that she'd be so busy with her guests and everything, she 
wouldn't even notice I wasn't home yet.
"Jessica," my dad said, signaling for me to help him start gathering people's 
plates. "You'll miss pie."
"Save a piece of each for me," I said, reaching out to grab the plates nearest 
me, then following him into the kitchen. "Please?"
My dad, after rolling his eyes at me a little, finally tilted his head toward 
the driveway. So I knew it was okay.
"Take Ruth with you," my dad said, as I was pulling my coat down from its hook 
by the garage door.
"Aw, Dad," I said.
"You have a learner's permit," my dad said. "Not a license. You may not get 
behind the wheel without a licensed driver in the passenger seat."
"Dad." I thought my head was going to explode. "It's Thanksgiving. There is no 
one out on the streets. Even the cops are at home."
"It's supposed to snow," he said.
"The forecast said tomorrow, not tonight." I tried to look my most dependable. 
"I will call you as soon as I get there, and then again, right before I leave. I 
swear."
"Well, Joe." Mr. Lippman walked into the kitchen. "May I extend my compliments 
to the chef? That was the best Thanksgiving dinner I've had in ages."
My dad looked pleased. "Really, Burt? Well, thank you. Thank you so much."
"Dad," I said, standing by the heart-shaped key peg by the garage door.
My dad barely looked at me. "Take your mother's car," he said to me. Then, to 
Mr. Lippman, he went, "You didn't think the mashed potatoes were a little too 
garlicky?"
Victorious, I snatched my mom's car keysóon a Girl Scout whistle key chain, in 
case she got attacked in the parking lot at Wal-Mart; no one had ever gotten 
attacked there before, but you never knew. Besides, everybody had gotten 
paranoid since Mastriani's burnt down, even though they'd caught the perpsóand I 
bolted.
Free at last, I thought, as I climbed behind the wheel of her Volkswagen 
Rabbit.Free at last. Thank God almighty, I am free at last .
Which is an actual historical quote from a famous person, and probably didn't 
really apply to the current situation. But believe me, if you'd been cooped up 
all evening with Great-aunt Rose, you'd have thought it, too.
About the license thing. Yeah, that was kind of funny, actually. I was virtually 
the only junior at Ernie Pyle High who didn't have a driver's license. It wasn't 
because I wasn't old enough, either. I just couldn't seem to pass the exam. And 
not because I can't drive. It's just this whole, you know, speed limit thing. 
Something happens to me when I get behind the wheel of a car. I don't know what 
it is. I just needóI mean reallyneed óto go fast. It must be like a hormonal 
thing, like Mike and Claire Lippman, because I fully can't help it.
So really, my parents have no business letting me use the car. I mean, if I got 
into a wreck, no way was their insurance going to cover the damages.
But the thing was, I wasn't going to get into a wreck. Because except for the 
lead foot thing, I'm a good driver. Areally good driver.
Too bad I suck at pretty much everything else.
My mother's car is a Rabbit. It doesn't have nearly the power of my dad's Volvo, 
but it's got punch. Plus, with me being so short, it's a little easier to 
maneuver. I backed out of the drivewayópiece of cake, even in the darkóand 
pulled out onto empty Lumbley Lane. Across the street, all the lights in the 
Hoadley placeóI mean, the Thompkins placeówere blazing. I looked up, at the 
windows directly across the street from my bedroom dormers. Those, I knew, from 
having seen her in them, were Tasha Thompkins's bedroom windows. The 
Thompkinses, who had grandparents visitingóI knew because they'd turned down my 
mom and dad's invitation to Thanksgiving dinner on account of their already 
having their own guestsóhad eaten earlier than we had, if Nate had been sent out 
two hours ago for whipped cream. Tasha, I could see, was upstairs in her room 
already. I wondered what she was doing. I hoped not homework. But Tasha sort of 
seemed like the homework-after-Thanksgiving-dinner kind of girl.
Unlike me. I was the sneak-out-to-meet-her-boyfriend-after-Thanksgiving-dinner 
kind of girl.
And at that moment, I was more glad than I'd been in a long, long time to be me. 
I didn't wonder, not even for a second, what it might be like to be Tasha, much 
less her brother Nate.
Except of course if I hadóif I had bothered to think, even for a minute, about 
Nate Thompkinsóhe'd probably still be alive today.
C H A P T E R
3
"Gosh, Mrs. Wilkins," I said. "That was the best pumpkin pie I ever had."
Rob's mom brightened. "You really think so, Jess?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, meaning it. "Better than my dad's, even."
"Well, I doubt that," Mrs. Wilkins said with a laugh. She looked pretty in the 
soft light over the kitchen sink, with all her red hair piled up on top of her 
head. She had on a nice dress, too, a silk one in jade green. She didn't look 
like a mom. She looked like she was somebody's girlfriend. Which she was, in 
fact. She was this guy Gary-No-Really-Just-Call-Me-Gary's girlfriend.
But she was also my boyfriend Rob's mom.
"Isn't your dad a gourmet cook?" Just-Call-Me-Gary asked, as he helped bring in 
the dishes from the Wilkinses' dining room table.
"Well," I said. "I don't know about gourmet. But he's a good cook. Still, his 
pumpkin pie can't hold a candle to yours, Mrs. Wilkins."
"Go on," Mrs. Wilkins said, flushing with pleasure. "Me? Better than a gourmet 
cook? I don't think so."
"Sure is good enough for me," Gary said, and he put his arms around her waist, 
and sort of danced her around the kitchen.
I noticed Rob, watching from the kitchen door, kind of grimace, then turn around 
and walk away. Maybe Rob had a right to be disgusted. He worked with 
Just-Call-Me-Gary at his uncle's auto repair shop. It was through Rob that Mrs. 
Wilkins had met Just-Call-Me-Gary in the first place.
After watching Gary and Rob's mom dance for a few seconds moreóthey actually 
looked pretty good together, since he was all lean and tall and good looking in 
a cowboy sort of way, and she was all pretty and plump in a dance hall girl kind 
of wayóI followed Rob out into the living room, where he'd switched on the TV, 
and was watching football.
And Rob is not a huge sports fan. Like me, he prefers bikes.
Motorbikes, that is.
"Hey," I said, flopping down onto the couch next to him. "Why so glum, chum?"
Which was a toolish thing to say, I know, but when confronted with six feet of 
hot, freshly showered male in softly faded denim, it is hard for a girl like me 
to think straight.
"Nothing." Rob, normally fairly uncommunicative, at least where his deepest 
emotions were concernedólike, for instance, the ones he felt for meóaimed the 
remote and changed the channel.
"Is it Gary?" I asked. "I thought you liked him."
"He's all right," Rob said.Click. Click. Click . He was going through channels 
like Claire Lippman, a champion tanner, went through bottles of sunscreen.
"Then what's the matter?"
"Nothing," Rob said. "I told you."
"Oh."
I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. It wasn't like I'd expected him 
to propose to me or anything, but I had sort of thought, when he'd invited me to 
have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his mom, that Rob and I were making some 
headway, you know, in the relationship department. I thought maybe he was 
finally going to put aside this ridiculous prejudice he has against me, on 
account of my being sixteen and him being eighteen and on probation for some 
crime the nature of which he has yet to reveal to me.
Instead, the whole thing seemed to have been cooked up by his mom. Not just the 
dinner, but the invitation, as well.
"We just don't see enough of you," Mrs. Wilkins had said, when I'd come through 
the door bearing flowers. (Stop and Shop, but what she didn't know wouldn't hurt 
her. Besides, they were pretty nice, and had cost me ten whole dollars.) "Do we, 
Rob?"
Rob had only glared at me. "You could have called," he said. "I'd have come and 
picked you up."
"Why should you have gone to all that trouble?" I'd asked, airily. "My mom was 
fine with me taking the car."
"Mastriani, I think you're forgetting something."
"What?"
"You don't have a license."
For a guy I'd met in detention, you would think Rob would be a lot more 
open-minded. But he is surprisingly old-fashioned on a large number of topics.
Such as, I was finding out, his mom and her dating habits.
"It's just," he said, when sounds of playful splashing started coming from the 
kitchen, "she has to work tomorrow, that's all. I mean, the whole reason we 
stayed here instead of going to Evansville with my uncle is that she has to work 
tomorrow."
"Oh," I said. What else could I say?
"I just hope he isn't planning on staying late," Rob said.Click. Click. Click . 
"Mom's got the breakfast shift."
I knew all about Mrs. Wilkins and her breakfast shift. Before it burned down, 
Rob's mom had worked at Mastriani's. Since it got toasted, she's been working 
instead at Joe's, my mom and dad's other restaurant.
"I'm sure he's going to leave soon," I said encouragingly, even though it wasn't 
even ten o'clock. Rob was way overreacting. "Hey, why don't we volunteer to do 
the dishes, so they can, you know, visit?"
Rob made a face, but since he is basically a guy who would do anything for his 
mom, on account of his dad having left them both a long time ago, he stood up.
But when we got into the kitchen, it was clear from the amount of suds being 
flung about that Just-Call-Me-Gary and Mrs. Wilkins were having a pretty good 
time doing the dishes themselves.
"Mom," Rob said, trying, I could tell, not to get mad. "Isn't that your good 
dress?"
"Oh." Mrs. Wilkins looked down at herself. "Yes, it is. Where is my apron? Oh, I 
left it in my bedroom. . . ."
"I'll get it," I volunteered, because I am nosey and I wanted to see what Mrs. 
Wilkins's bedroom looked like.
"Oh, aren't you sweet?" Mrs. Wilkins said. And then she aimed the dish nozzle at 
Just-Call-Me-Gary and got him right in the chest with a stream of hot water.
Rob looked nauseated.
Mrs. Wilkins's bedroom was on the second floor of the tiny little farmhouse she 
and Rob lived in. Her room was a lot like her, pink and cream and pretty. She 
had some baby pictures of Rob on the wall that I admired for a few seconds, 
after I'd found her apron on the bed. That, I thought to myself, is how my kid 
with Rob would look. If we ever had kids. Which would have to wait until I had a 
career, first. Oh, and for Rob to propose. Or take me out on a real date.
In one of the photos, Rob, who was still young enough to be in diapers, was 
being held by a man whom I didn't recognize. He didn't look like any of Rob's 
uncles, who, like Rob's mom, were all redheaded. In fact, this man looked more 
like Rob, with the same dark hair and smokey gray eyes.
This, I decided, had to be Rob's dad. Rob never wanted to talk about his dad, I 
guess because he was still mad at him for walking out on Rob and his mom. Still, 
I could see why Rob's mom would have gone for the guy. He was something of a 
hottie.
Back downstairs, I handed Mrs. Wilkins her apron. She was still giggling over 
something Just-Call-Me-Gary had said. Just-Call-Me-Gary looked pretty happy, 
too. In fact the only person who didn't look very happy was Rob.
Mrs. Wilkins must have noticed, since she went, "Rob, why don't you show Jessica 
the progress you've made on your bike?"
I perked up at this. Rob kept the bike he was currently working on, a totally 
choice but ancient Harley, in the barn. This was practically an invitation from 
Rob's mom to go and make out with her son. I could not believe my good fortune.
But once we got into the barn, Rob didn't look very inclined to make out. Not 
that he ever does. He is unfortunately very good at resisting his carnal urges. 
In fact, I would almost say that he doesn't have any carnal urges, except that 
every once in a while, and all too rarely for my tastes, I am able to wear him 
down with my charm and cherry Chap Stick.
Or maybe he just gets so sick of me talking all the time that he kisses me in 
order to shut me up. Who knows?
In any case, he didn't seem particularly inclined to take advantage of my 
vulnerable femininity there in the barn. Maybe I should have worn a skirt, or 
something.
"Is this just because I drove out here?" I asked, as I watched him tinker around 
with the bike.
Rob, looking up at the bike, which rested on a worktable in the middle of the 
barn, tightened something with a wrench. "What are you talking about?"
"This," I said. "I mean, if I'd known you were going to be so crabby about it, 
I'd have called you to come pick me up, I swear."
"No, you wouldn't have," Rob said, doing something with the wrench that made the 
muscles in his upper arms bunch up beneath the gray sweater he wore. Which was 
way more entertaining than watching sports on TV, let me tell you.
"What are you talking about? I just saidó"
"You didn't even tell your parents you were coming here, Mastriani," Rob said. 
"So cut the crap."
"What do you mean?" I tried to sound offended, even though of course he was 
telling the truth. "They know where I am."
Rob put down the wrench, folded his arms across his chest, leaned his butt 
against the work-table, and said, "Then why, when you called to tell them you 
got here, did you say you were at somebody Joanne's?"
Damn! I hadn't realized he'd been in the room when I'd made that call.
"Look, Mastriani," he said. "You know I've had my doubts from the start about 
thisóyou and me, I mean. And not just because I've graduated and you're still in 
the eleventh gradeónot to mention the whole jailbait factor. But let's be real. 
You and I come from different worlds."
"That," I said, "is so notó"
"Well, different sides of the tracks, then."
"Just because I'm a Townie," I said, "and you're aó"
He held up a single hand. "Look, Mastriani. Let's face it. This isn't going to 
work."
I've been working really hard on my anger management issues lately. Except for 
that whole thing with the football playersóand Karen Sue HankeyóI hadn't beat up 
a single person or served a day of detention the whole semester. Mr. Goodhart, 
my guidance counselor, said he was really proud of my progress, and was thinking 
about canceling my mandatory weekly meetings with him.
But when Rob held up his hand like that, and said that this, meaning us, wasn't 
going to work, it was about all I could do to keep from grabbing that hand and 
twisting Rob's arm behind his back until he said uncle. All that kept me from 
doing it, really, was that I have found that boys don't really like it when you 
do things like this to them, and I wanted Rob to like me. To more than like me.
So instead of twisting his arm behind his back, I put my hands on my hips, 
cocked my head, and went, "Does this have something to do with that Gary dude?"
Rob unfolded his arms and turned back to his bike. "No," he said. "This is 
between you and me, Mastriani."
"Because I noticed you don't seem to like him very much."
"You're sixteen years old," Rob said, to the bike. "Sixteen!"
"I mean, I guess I could understand why you don't like him. It must be weird to 
see your mom with some guy other than your dad. But that doesn't mean it's okay 
to take it out on me."
"Jess." It always meant trouble when Rob called me by my first name. "You've got 
to see that this can't go anywhere. I'm on probation, okay? I can't get caught 
hanging out with somekid ó"
The kid part stung, but I graciously chose to ignore it, observing that Rob, in 
the words of Great-aunt Rose's hero, Oprah, was in some psychic pain.
"What I hear you saying," I said, talking the way Mr. Goodhart had advised me to 
talk when I was in a situation that might turn adversarial, "is that you don't 
want to see me anymore because you feel that our age and socioeconomic 
differences are too greató"
"Don't even tell me that you don't agree," Rob interrupted, in a warning tone. 
"Otherwise, why haven't you told your parents about me? Huh? Why am I this dark 
secret in your life? If you were so sure that we have something that could work, 
you'd have introduced me to them by now."
"What I am saying to you in response," I went on, as if he hadn't spoken, "is 
that I believe you are pushing me away because your father pushed you away, and 
you can't stand to be hurt that way again."
Rob looked at me over his shoulder. His smokey gray eyes, in the light from the 
single bulb hanging from the wooden beam overhead, were shadowed.
"You're nuts," was all he said. But he really seemed to mean it sincerely.
"Rob," I said, taking a step toward him. "I just want you to know, I am not like 
your dad. I will never leave you."
"Because you're a freaking psycho," Rob said.
"No," I said. "That's not why. It's because I loó"
"Don't!" he said, thrusting the rag out at me like it was a weapon. There was a 
look of naked panic on his face. "Don't say it! Mastriani, I am warning youó"
"óve you."
"Itold you"óHe wadded the rag up and threw it viciously into a far corner of the 
barnó"not to say it."
"I'm sorry," I said, gravely. "But I am afraid my unbridled passion was simply 
too great to hold in check a moment longer."
A second later it appeared that in actuality Rob was the one suffering from the 
unbridled passion, not me. At least if the way he grabbed me by the shoulders, 
dragged me toward him, and started kissing me was any indication.
While it was, of course, highly gratifying to be kissed by a young man who was 
clearly so incapable of controlling his tremendous ardor for me, it has to be 
remembered that we were kissing in a barn, which at the end of November is not 
the warmest place to be at night. Furthermore, it wasn't like there were any 
comfy couches or beds nearby for him to throw me down on or anything. I suppose 
we could have done it in the hay, but
a)eew,and
b) my passion for Rob is notthatunbridled .
I mean, sex is a big enough step in any relationship without doing it in an old 
barn. Um, no thank you. I am willing to wait until the moment is rightósuch as 
prom night. In the unlikely event I am ever invited to prom. Which, considering 
that my boyfriend is already a high school graduate, seems unlikely. Unless of 
courseI invitehim .
But again,eew .
"I think I should go home now," I said, the next time we both came up for air.
"That," Rob said, resting his forehead against mine and breathing hard, "would 
probably be a good idea."
So I went in and said thank you to Rob's mom, who was sitting on the couch with 
Just-Call-Me-Gary watching TV in a snuggly sort of position that, had Rob seen 
it, might just have sent him over the edge. Fortunately, however, he did not see 
it. And I did not tell him about it, either.
"Well," I said to him, as I climbed behind the wheel of my mom's car. "Seeing as 
how we aren't broken up anymore, do you want to do something Saturday? Like go 
see a movie or whatever?"
"Gosh, I don't know," Rob said. "I thought you might be busy with your good 
friend Joanne."
"Look," I said. It was so cold out that my breath was coming out in little white 
puffs, but I didn't care. "My parents have a lot to deal with right now. I mean, 
there's the restaurant, and Mike dropping out of Harvard. . . ."
"You're never going to tell them about me, are you?" Rob's gray eyes bore into 
me.
"Just let me give them a chance to adjust to the idea," I said. "I mean, there's 
the whole thing with Douglas and his job, and Great-aunt Rose, andó"
"And you and the psychic thing," he reminded me, with just the faintest trace of 
bitterness. "Don't forget you and the psychic thing."
"Right," I said. "Me and the psychic thing." The one thing I could never forget, 
no matter how much I tried.
"Look, you better get going," Rob said, straightening up. "I'll follow behind, 
and make sure you get home okay."
"You don't have toó"
"Mastriani," he said. "Just shut up and drive."
And so I did.
Only it turned out we didn't get very far.
C H A P T E R
4
Not, may I point here and now, because of my poor driving skills. As I think 
I've stated before, I am an extremely good driver.
But I didn't know that at first. That I wasn't being pulled over on account of 
my driving ability, or lack thereof. All I knew was one minute I was cruising 
along the dark, empty country road that ran from Rob's house back into town, 
with Rob purring along behind me on his Indian. And the next, I rounded a curve 
to find the entire road blocked off by emergency vehiclesócounty sheriff's SUVs, 
police cruisers, highway patrol Ö even an ambulance. My face was bathed in 
flashing red and white. All I could think was,Whoa! I was only going eighty, I 
swear!
Of course it was a forty-mile-an-hour zone. But come on. It was Thanksgiving, 
for crying out loud. There hadn't been another soul on the road for the past ten 
miles. . . .
A skinny sheriff's deputy waved me to the shoulder. I obeyed, my palms sweaty.My 
God , was all I could think.All this because I was driving without a license? 
Who knew they were so strict?
The officer who strolled up to the car after I pulled over was one I recognized 
from the night Mastriani's burned down. I didn't remember his name, but I knew 
he was a nice guyóthe kind of guy who maybe wouldn't bust my chops too badly for 
driving illegally. He shined a flashlight first on me, then into the backseat of 
my mom's car. I hoped he didn't think the stuff my mom had in the backseatóboxes 
of cassette tapes by Carly Simon and Billy Joel, and some videos of romantic 
comedies she kept forgetting to return to Blockbusterówere mine. I am so not the 
Carly Simon,Sleepless in Seattle type.
"Jessica, isn't it?" the cop said, when I put the window down. "Aren't you Joe 
Mastriani's daughter?"
"Yes, sir," I said. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Rob pull up right 
behind me on his Indian. His long legs were stretched out so that his feet 
rested on the ground, keeping him and the bike upright while he waited for me to 
get waved through the roadblock. Rob was gazing out at the cornfield to the 
right of us. The brown, withered stalks were bathed in the flashing 
red-and-white lights from the dozen squad cars and ambulance parked alongside 
the road. A few yards deeper into the field, a giant floodlight had been set up 
on a metal pole, and was shining down on something that we couldn't see, with 
the tall corn in the way.
"Too bad you have to work on Thanksgiving," I said to the cop. I was trying to 
be way nice to him, on account of my not having a driver's license, and all. 
Meanwhile, my palms were now so sweaty, I could barely grip the wheel. I had no 
idea what happens to people caught driving without a license, but I was pretty 
sure it wouldn't be very nice.
"Yeah," the cop said. "Well, you know. Listen, we kinda got a situation over 
here. Where you coming from, anyway?"
"Oh, I was just having dinner over at my friend's house," I said, and told him 
the address of Rob's house. "That's him," I added, helpfully, pointing behind 
me.
Rob had, by this time, switched off his engine and gotten down from his bike. He 
strolled up to the police officer with his hands at his sides instead of in the 
pockets of his leather jacket, I guess to show he wasn't holding a weapon or 
anything. Rob is pretty leery of cops, on account of having been arrested 
before.
"What's going on, Officer?" Rob wanted to know, all casual-like. You could tell 
he, like me, was worried about the whole driving without a license thing. But 
what kind of police force would set up a roadblock to catch license-less drivers 
on Thanksgiving? I mean, that was going way above and beyond the call of duty, 
if you asked me.
"Oh, we got a tip a little while ago," the cop said to Rob. "Regarding some 
suspicious activity out here. Came out to have a look around." I noticed he 
hadn't taken out his little ticket book to write me up.Maybe , I thought.Maybe 
this isn't about me .
Especially considering the floodlight. I could see people traipsing out from and 
then back into the cornfield. They appeared to be carrying things, toolboxes and 
stuff.
"You see anything strange?" the police officer asked me. "When you were driving 
out here from town?"
"No," I said. "No, I didn't see anything."
It was a clear night. . . . Cold, but cloudless. Overhead was a moon, full, or 
nearly so. You could see pretty far, even though it was only about an hour shy 
of midnight, by the light of that moon.
Except that there wasn't much to see. Just the big cornfield, stretching out 
from the side of the road like a dark, rustling sea. Rising above it, off in the 
distance, was a hill covered thickly in trees. The backwoods. Where my dad used 
to take us camping, before Douglas got sick, and Mikey decided he liked 
computers better than baiting fishhooks, and I developed a pretty severe allergy 
to going to the bathroom out of doors.
People lived in the backwoods Ö if you wanted to call the conditions they 
endured there living. If you ask me, anything involving an outhouse is on the 
same par with camping.
But not everyone who got laid off when the plastics factory closed was as lucky 
as Rob's mom, who found another jobóthanks to meópretty quickly. Some of them, 
too proud to accept welfare from the state, had retreated into those woods, and 
were living in shacks, or worse.
And some of them, my dad once told me, weren't even living there because they 
didn't have the money to move somewhere with an actual toilet. Some of them 
lived there because theyliked it there.
Apparently not everyone has as fond an attachment as I do to indoor plumbing.
"When you drove through, coming from town," the police officer said, "what time 
would that have been?"
I told him I thought it had been after eight, but well before nine. He nodded 
thoughtfully, and wrote down what I said, which was not much, considering I 
hadn't seen anything. Rob, standing by my mom's car, blew on his gloved hands. 
Itwas pretty cold, sitting there with the window rolled down. I felt especially 
bad for Rob, who was just going to have to climb back on his motorcycle when we 
were through being questioned and ride behind me all the way into town and then 
back to his house, without even a chance to get warmed up. Unless of course I 
invited him into my mom's car. Just for a few minutes. You know. To defrost.
Suddenly I noticed that those police officers, hurrying in and out of that 
cornfield? Yeah, those weren't toolboxes they were carrying. No, not at all.
Suddenly my palms were sweaty for a whole different reason than before.
Let me just say that in Indiana, they are always finding bodies in cornfields. 
Cornfields seem to be the preferred dumping ground for victims of foul play by 
Midwestern killers. That's because until the farmer who owns the field cuts down 
all the stalks to plant new rows, you can't really see what all is going on in 
there.
Well, suddenly I had a pretty good idea what was going on in this particular 
cornfield.
"Who is it?" I asked the policeman, in a high-pitched voice that didn't really 
sound like my own.
The cop was still busy writing down what I'd said about not having seen anyone. 
He didn't bother to pretend that he didn't know what I was talking about. Nor 
did he try to convince me I was wrong.
"Nobody you'd know," he said, without even looking up.
But I had a feeling I did know. Which was why I suddenly undid my seatbelt and 
got out of the car.
The cop looked up when I did that. He looked more than up. He looked pretty 
surprised. So did Rob.
"Mastriani," Rob said, in a cautious voice. "What are you doing?"
Instead of replying, I started walking toward the harsh white glow of the 
floodlight, out in the middle of that cornfield.
"Wait a minute." The cop put away his notebook and pen. "Miss? Um, you can't go 
over there."
The moon was bright enough that I could see perfectly well even without all the 
flashing red-and-white lights. I walked rapidly along the side of the road, past 
clusters of cops and sheriff's deputies. Some of them looked up at me in 
surprise as I breezed past. The ones who did look up seemed startled, like 
they'd seen something disturbing. The disturbing thing appeared to be me, 
striding toward the floodlight in the corn.
"Whoa, little missy." One of the cops detached himself from the group he was in, 
and grabbed my arm. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to look," I said. I recognized this police officer, too, only not 
from the fire at Mastriani's. I recognized this one from Joe Junior's, where I 
sometimes bussed tables on weekends. He always got a large pie, half sausage and 
half pepperoni.
"I don't think so," said Half-Sausage, Half-Pepperoni. "We got everything under 
control. Why don't you get back in your car, like a good little girl, and go on 
home."
"Because," I said, my breath coming out in white puffs. "I think I might know 
him."
"Come on now," Half-Sausage, Half-Pepperoni said, in a kindly voice. "There's 
nothing to see. Nothing to see at all. You go on home like a good girl. Son?" He 
said this last to Rob, who'd come hurrying up behind him. "This your little 
girlfriend? You be a good boy, now, and take her on home."
"Yes, sir," Rob said, taking hold of my arm the same way the police officer had. 
"I'll do that, sir." To me, he hissed, "Are you nuts, Mastriani? Let's go, 
before they ask to see your license."
Only I wouldn't budge. Being only five feet tall and a hundred pounds, I am not 
exactly a difficult person to lift up and sling around, as Rob had illustrated a 
couple of times. But I had gotten pretty mad upon both those occasions, and Rob 
seemed to remember this, since he didn't try it now. Instead, he followed me 
with nothing more than a deep sigh as I barreled past the police officers, and 
toward that white light in the corn.
None of the emergency workers gathered around the body noticed me, at first. The 
ones on the outskirts of the crime scene hadn't exactly been expecting gawkers 
this far out from town, and on Thanksgiving night, no less. So it wasn't like 
they'd been looking out for rubber neckers. There wasn't even any yellow 
emergency tape up. I breezed past them without any problem. . . .
And then halted so suddenly that Rob, following behind, collided into me. Hisoof 
drew the attention of more than a few officers, who looked up from what they 
were doing, and went, "What theó"
"Miss," a sheriff's deputy said, getting up from the cold hard soil upon which 
he'd been kneeling. "I'm sorry, miss, but you need to stand back. Marty? Marty, 
what are you thinking, letting people through here?"
Marty came hurrying up, looking red-faced and ashamed.
"Sorry, Earl," he said, panting. "I didn't see her, she came by so fast. Come 
on, miss. Let's goó"
But I didn't move. Instead, I pointed.
"I know him," I said, looking down at the body that lay, shirtless, on the 
frozen ground.
"Jesus." Rob's soft breath was warm on my ear.
"That's my neighbor," I said. "Nate Thompkins."
Marty and Earl exchanged glances.
"He went to get whipped cream," I said. "A couple of hours ago." When I finally 
tore my gaze from Nate's bruised and broken body, there were tears in my eyes. 
They felt warm, compared to the freezing air all around us.
I felt one of Rob's hands, heavy and reassuring, on my shoulder.
A second later, the county sheriff, a big man in a red plaid jacket with fleece 
lining came up to me.
"You're the Mastriani girl," he said. It wasn't really a question. His voice was 
deep and gruff.
When I nodded, he went, "I thought you didn't have that psychic thing anymore."
"I don't," I said, reaching up to wipe the moisture from my eyes.
"Then how'd you know"óHe nodded down at Nate, who was being covered up with a 
piece of blue plasticó"he was here?"
"I didn't," I said. I explained how Rob and I had come to be there. Also how Dr. 
Thompkins had been over at my house earlier, looking for his son.
The sheriff listened patiently, then nodded.
"I see," he said. "Well, that's good to know. He wasn't carrying any ID, least 
that we could find. So now we have an idea who he is. Thank you. You go on home 
now, and we'll take it from here."
Then the sheriff turned around to supervise what was going on beneath the flood 
lamp.
Except that I didn't leave. I wanted to, but somehow, I couldn't. Because 
something was bothering me.
I looked at Marty, the sheriff's deputy, and asked, "How did he die?"
The deputy shot a glance at the sheriff, who was busy talking to somebody on the 
EMS team.
"Look, miss," Marty said. "You betteró"
"Was it from those marks?" I had seen that there'd been some kind of symbol 
carved into Nate's naked chest.
"Jess." Now Rob had hold of my hand. "Come on. Let's go. These guys have work to 
do."
"What were those marks, anyway?" I asked Marty. "I couldn't tell."
Marty looked uncomfortable. "Really, miss," he said. "You'd better go."
But I didn't go. I couldn't go. I just stood there, wondering what Dr. Thompkins 
and his wife were going to do, when they found out what had happened to their 
son. Would they decide to move back to Chicago?
And what about Tasha? She seemed to really like Ernest Pyle High School, if her 
enthusiasm about the yearbook committee was any indication. But would she want 
to stay in a town in which her only brother had been brutally murdered?
And what was Coach Albright going to say when he learned he'd lost yet another 
quarterback?
"Mastriani." Rob was starting to sound desperate. "Let's go."
I didn't realize precisely why Rob was sounding so desperate until I turned 
around. That was when I very nearly walked into a tall, thin man wearing a long 
black coat and a badge that indicated that he was a member of the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation.
"Hello, Jessica," Cyrus Krantz said to me, with a smile that I'm sure he meant 
to be reassuring, but which was actually merely sickening. "Remember me?"
C H A P T E R
5
It would be hard to forget Cyrus Krantz. Believe me, I've tried. He's the new 
agent assigned to my case. You know, on account of me being Lightning Girl and 
all.
Only Cyrus Krantz isn't exactly a special agent. He's apparently some kind of 
FBI director. Of special operations, or something. He explained the whole 
thingóor at least he tried toóto my parents and me. He came over to our house 
not long after Mastriani's burned down. He didn't bring a pie or anything with 
him, which I thought was kind of tacky, but whatever. At least he called first, 
and made an appointment.
Then he sat in our living room and explained to my parents over coffee and 
biscotti about this new program he's developed. It is a division of the FBI, 
only instead of special agents, it is manned by psychics. Seriously. Only Dr. 
Krantzóyeah, he's a doctoródoesn't call them psychics. He calls them "specially 
abled" individuals.
Which if you ask me makes it sound like they must all take the little bus to 
school, but whatever. Dr. Krantz was very eager for me to join his new team of 
"specially abled" secret agents.
Except of course I couldn't. Because I am not specially abled anymore. At least, 
that's what I told Dr. Krantz.
My parents backed me up, even when Dr. Krantz took out what he called "the 
evidence" that I was lying. He had all these records of phone calls to 
1-800-WHERE-R-YOU, the missing children's organization with which I have worked 
in the past, that supposedly came from me. Only of course all the calls, though 
they were from my town, were placed through pay phones, so there was no real way 
to trace who'd made them. Dr. Krantz wanted to know who else in town would know 
the exact location of so many missing kidsóa couple hundred, actually, since 
that day I'd been hit by lightning.
I said you never know. It could be anybody, really.
Dr. Krantz made this big appeal to my patriotism. He said I could help catch 
terrorists and stuff. Which I admit would be pretty cool.
But you know, I am not really sure that is something I would like to subject my 
family to. You know, the vengeful wrath of terrorists, peeved that I caught 
their leader, or whatever. I mean, Douglas gets freaked by call-waiting. How 
much would terrorists rock his world?
So I politely declined Dr. Krantz's invitation, all the while insisting I was 
about as "specially abled" as Cindy Brady.
But that didn't mean Dr. Krantz had given up. Like his protÈgÈsóSpecial Agents 
Smith and Johnson, who'd been pulled off my case and whom I sort of missed, in a 
weird wayóDr. Krantz wasn't about to take no for an answer. He was always, it 
seemed, lurking around, waiting for me to mess up so that he could prove I 
really did still have my psychic powers.
Which was unfortunate, because he was neither as pretty as Special Agent Smith, 
or as fun to tease as Special Agent Johnson. Dr. Krantz was just Ö
Scary.
Which was why when I saw him there in that cornfield, I let out a little shriek, 
and must have jumped about a mile and a half into the air.
"Oh," I said, when I'd pulled myself together enough to speak in a normal voice. 
"Oh, Dr. Krantz. It's you. Hi."
"Hello, Jessica." Dr. Krantz has kind of an egg-shaped head, totally bald on 
top, only you couldn't tell just then, because he was wearing a hat pulled down 
low over his eyes. I guess he thought this made him look like Dr. Magneto, or 
something. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd want to be compared to 
theX-men's Dr. Magneto.
His gaze flicked over Rob, whom he'd met before, only not in my living room, of 
course.
"Mr. Wilkins," he said, with a nod. "Good evening."
"Evening," Rob said, and, letting go of my hand to grab my arm instead, he began 
pulling. "Sorry. But we were just leaving."
"Slow down," Dr. Krantz said, with a creaky laugh. "Slow down there, young man. 
I'd like a word with Miss Mastriani, if I may."
"Yeah?" Rob said. He was about as fond as scientists in the employ of the U.S. 
government as he was of cops. "Well, she doesn't have anything to say to you."
"He's right," I said, to Dr. Krantz. "I really don't. Bye."
"I see." Dr. Krantz looked faintly amused. "And I suppose it was only by 
coincidence that you stumbled across this crime scene?"
"As a matter of fact," I said, in some surprise, since for once I was telling 
the truth, "it was. I was just passing by on my way home from Rob's."
"And the fact that I overheard you tell those gentlemen over there that the 
victim happens to be your neighbor?"
I said, "Hey, you're the government operative, not me. You ought to know more 
about this than I do. I mean, I'd feel pretty bad if a kid got killed during my 
watch."
Dr. Krantz's expression did not change. It never does. So I wasn't sure whether 
or not my words hit home.
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "I want to show you something."
We were standing a little ways away from the circle the police officers and 
sheriff's deputies had made around the blue tarp covering Nate's body. But the 
glare from the floodlight was bright enough that, even though it was nighttime, 
I could see the details in the photo Cyrus Krantz pulled from inside his coat 
with perfect clarity.
It was, I realized, the overpass Mrs. Lippman had been talking about at dinner. 
The one with the graffiti spray-painted onto it. The graffiti she'd assumed was 
a gang tag. I myself had never noticed it.
Looking at it then, in the cold white glow of the floodlight, I saw that the red 
squiggleóthat's all it looked like to meóseemed vaguely familiar. I had seen it 
before. Only where? There is not a lot of graffiti in our town. Oh, sure, the 
occasionalRick Loves Nancy out by the quarry. Every once in a while someone with 
a little too much school spirit paintedCougars Rule on the side of our rival 
high school's gymnasium. But that was it as far as graffiti went. I couldn't 
think where I could possibly have seen that red squiggle before.
Then, all at once, it hit me.
On Nate Thompkins's chest.
"So itis gang related?" I asked, handing the photo back to Cyrus Krantz. The two 
Thanksgiving suppers I'd eaten weren't sitting too well in my stomach all of a 
sudden.
Dr. Krantz tucked the photo back where he'd found it. "No," he said, rebuttoning 
his coat. Dr. Krantz was always very neat and tidy. At our house, he hadn't left 
a single crumb on his plate. And my mom's biscotti is pretty crumbly.
"This," he said, tapping the pocket that held the photo, "was a warning. 
That"óHe nodded at the blue tarpó"is just the beginning."
"The beginning of what?" I asked. Mrs. Wilkins's pumpkin pie was definitely on 
its way back up.
"That," Cyrus Krantz said, "is what we're going to find out, I'm afraid."
Then he turned around and started striding from the cornfield, back to his long, 
warm car.
Wait, I wanted to call after him.What can I do? What can I do to help ?
But then I remembered that I am not supposed to have my psychic powers anymore. 
So I couldn't really offer him my help.
Besides, what could I do? Nobody was missing.
Not anymore.
I didn't speed the rest of the way home. Not because I was afraid of getting 
caught, but because I was really afraid of what I was going to find when I 
pulled onto Lumbley Lane. Even the purr of Rob's motorcycle behind meóhe 
followed me homeówasn't very reassuring.
When we pulled onto my street, I saw the flashing lights right away. The sheriff 
must have radioed in the information I'd given him, since there were already two 
squad cars parked outside the Thompkins house. As I pulled into our driveway, 
Dr. Thompkins was just opening the door to let in the officers who stood there, 
their hats in their hands. Neither of them turned around as Rob, with a wave to 
me, took off down the street, having successfully escorted me practically to my 
door.
My entire family had their faces pressed to the glass of the living room windows 
when I walked in. Well, everybody except for Douglas, who was probably hiding in 
his room (flashing lights are not among his favorite things: They tend to remind 
him of the several ambulance trips he has taken in his lifetime).
"Oh, Jess," my mom said, when she saw me. The dining room table was clear. 
Everyone except for Claire had left. "Thank God you're home. I was getting 
worried."
"I'm fine," I said.
"Where does this Joanne live, anyway?" my mom wanted to know. "You were gone for 
hours."
But I could tell she wasn't really interested in my answer. All of her attention 
was focused on the HoadleyóI mean, Thompkinsóhouse across the street.
"Those poor people," she murmured. "I hope it isn't bad news."
"Ma," Mike said, in a sarcastic voice. "Two sheriff cars are parked in their 
driveway. You think they're there with good news?"
"Don't call me Ma," my mother said. Then she seemed to realize what everybody 
was doing. She looked shocked. "Get away from the windows! It's shameful, spying 
on those poor people like this."
"We aren't spying, Antonia," Great-aunt Rose said. "We are merely looking out 
the window. There's no law against that."
"Mrs. Mastriani is right," Claire said primly, getting up off the couch. "It's 
wrong to peep through other people's windows."
Claire obviously had no clue that Mike had been spying on her through her 
windows with a telescope for years.
I could have told them, I guess. I mean about Nate. But the way it was, I had 
barely been able to make it home with my dinner intact. I wasn't all that eager 
to risk losing it again. Instead, I said, "I'm going to bed," and I started up 
the stairs to my room. Only my mother said good night, and she sounded pretty 
distracted.
Upstairs, I saw that Douglas's bedroom light was still on. I thumped on his door 
instead of just barging in, like I used to do. Douglas has gotten a lot better 
since starting his job in the comic book store. I figured I'd reward him by 
letting him have some privacy for a change. Mr. Goodhart says this is called 
positive reinforcement.
"Come in, Jess," Douglas said. He knew it was me by my thump. My mom taps all 
timidly, my dad knocks Shave-and-a-Haircut, and Mike never visits Douglas, if he 
can help it. So Douglas always knows when it's me.
"Hey," I said. Douglas was lying on his bed, reading, as usual. Tonight it was 
the latest installment ofSuperman . "What time did everybody leave?"
"About an hour ago," he said. "Mr. and Mrs. Abramowitz had a big fight over 
where they're going to go for Christmas break, Aspen or Antigua."
"Must be nice," I said. The Abramowitzes are way rich.
"Yeah. Skip contributed by having an asthma attack. Between that and Aunt Rose, 
it was an evening to remember."
"Huh," I said.
He must have seen by my face that something was wrong, since he went, "What?"
I shook my head. For a minute, I'd been picturing Nate Thompkins, as I'd last 
seen him, lifeless in that cornfield. "Oh," I said. "Nothing."
"Not nothing," Douglas said. "Tell me."
I told him. I didn't want to. All right, I did. But I shouldn't have. Douglas 
has never been what you'd call well. I mean, he was always the one the other 
kids picked on in school, at the park, wherever. You know the kind. The one they 
call Spaz and Tard and Reject. I had spent much of my young adulthood pounding 
on the faces of people who'd dared to make fun of my older brother for being 
different.
And that's all Douglas is. Not crazy. Not retarded. Just different.
When I was through, Douglas, who knows the truth about my "special ability"óbut 
not about Rob; no one knows the truth about Rob, except for Ruth who is, after 
all, my best friendólet out a big gush of air.
"Whoa," he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Those poor people," he said, meaning the Thompkinses.
"Yeah," I said.
"I've seen the daughter," he said, meaning Tasha. "At the store."
"Really?" Somehow I could not picture shy, pretty Tasha Thompkins, always so 
conservatively dressed, in Underground Comix, where Douglas worked.
"She's intoWitchblade ," Douglas elaborated. He seemed really concerned. I mean, 
for Douglas. "What did it look like, anyway?"
He had thrown me. "What did what look like?"
"The symbol," Douglas said, patiently. "The one on Nate's chest."
"Oh," I said. I went over to his desk and drew it, not very expertly, on a pad 
of paper I found lying there. "Like this," I said, and handed it to him.


 


He took the pad and studied what I had drawn. When, after a minute, he continued 
to squint down at it, I said, "It's supposed to be a gang symbol, or something. 
It only makes sense if you're in the gang."
"This isn't a gang symbol," Douglas said. "I mean, I don't think so. It looks 
familiar."
"Yeah," I said. "Because you've probably seen it before, driving under the 
overpass. Somebody spray-painted it there."
"I never go by the overpass," Douglas said. Then he did something really weird. 
I mean weird for Douglas.
He got out of bed and started pulling books off his shelves. Douglas has more 
booksóand comic booksóthan anyone I know. Still, if you wanted to borrow one, 
and took it down off the shelf and forgot to mention it to him, Douglas would 
notice right away it was missing, even though there are maybe a thousand other 
ones that look exactly like it right there on the shelf beside it.
Douglas is one of those book people.
Seeing that he was going to be occupied until well into the night, I left. I 
doubted he even noticed. He was way too absorbed in looking things up.
In my own room, I undressed quickly, slipping into my pajamasóa pair of fleece 
warm-up pants and a long-sleeved teeówith lightning speed. That is because my 
room, which is on the third floor, is the draftiest room in the house, and from 
Halloween until Easter it is freezing, in spite of the space heater my dad had 
installed.
I don't mind the cold, however, because I have the best view of anybody from my 
bedroom windows, and that's including Mike, whose view into Claire Lippman's 
bedroom is what caused all that trouble a few months ago, when he decided to 
drop out of Harvard because he and Claire were in love. My view, which is from 
some dormer windows high above the treetops, is of all of Lumbley Lane, which in 
the moonlight always looks like a silver river, the sidewalks on either side of 
it mossy banks. In fact, when I'd been younger, I used to pretend Lumbley Lane 
was a river, and that I was the lighthouse operator, high above it. . . .
Whatever. I'd been a weird kid.
That night, as I undid Rob's watch, which he'd given me a few months earlier, 
and which I wore like an ID bracelet, (much to the bewilderment of my parents, 
who thought it was a bit odd that I went around with this bulky man's watch 
weighing my hand down all the time), I didn't look down at the street. I didn't 
pretend Lumbley Lane was a river, or that I was the lighthouse operator, guiding 
tempest-tossed ships safely to shore.
Instead, I looked across the street, into Tasha Thompkins's bedroom window. The 
lights in her room were still on. She had probably heard the news about her 
brother by now. I wondered if she was stretched out on her bed, crying. That's 
where I'd be, if I found out either of my brothers had been killed. I felt a 
wave of grief for Tasha, and for her parents. I didn't know anything about 
gangs, but I thought that whoever had killed Nate couldn't have known him all 
that well, because he'd been a nice kid. Smart, too. It was a waste. A real 
waste.
After a while, the front door to the HoadleyóI mean, Thompkinsóhouse opened, and 
Dr. Thompkins, looking much older than when I had seen him earlier that evening, 
came out, wearing his coat. He followed the sheriff's deputies to their squad 
cars, then got into one. I knew he was going to ID the body. At the front door, 
his wife stood watching him. I couldn't tell whether or not she was crying, but 
I suspected she was. Two people stood on either side of her. Nate's 
grandparents, I assumed.
Above them, I saw a curtain move. Tasha was standing in her window, looking down 
as the squad car with her father in it pulled away. I saw that Tasha's shoulders 
were shaking. Unlike her mother, she was definitely crying.
Poor, shy, yearbook-committee-and-Witchblade-loving Tasha. There was nothing I 
could do for her. I mean, if I had known when his father had come over that Nate 
was in trouble, I might have been able to find him. Maybe. But it was too late, 
now. Too late for me to help Nate, anyway.
But not too late, I realized, to help his sister. How I was going to do that, I 
hadn't the slightest idea.
All I could do was try.
Little did I know, of course, how my decision to help Tasha Thompkins was going 
to change my life. And the life of just about everybody in our entire town.
C H A P T E R
6
The next day, when Ruth told me some kid from her synagogue was missing, I 
didn't make the connection. I had a lot on my mind. I mean, there was the whole 
thing with Nate Thompkins, of course. I hadn't forgotten about my promise to 
myself that I was going to try to help Tasha, if I could.
There was something else, though. Something I'd dreamed about that had been, 
well, pretty disturbing. Not as disturbing as having your brother left for dead 
in a cornfield, but still wicked strange.
"Are you listening to me, Jess?" Ruth wanted to know. She had to talk pretty 
loudly to be heard over the Muzak in the mall. We were hitting the post-holiday 
sales. Hey, it was the Friday after Thanksgiving. There was nothing else to do.
"Sure," I said, fingering a pair of hoop earrings on a nearby display rack. And 
I don't even have pierced ears. That's how distracted I was.
"They found his bike," Ruth said. "And that's it. Just his bike. In the parking 
lot. No other sign of him. Not his book bag. Not his clarinet. Nothing."
"Maybe he ran away," I said. The earrings, I thought, wouldn't make a bad 
Christmas present for Ruth. I mean, Hanukkah present. Because Ruth was Jewish, 
of course.
"No way Seth Blumenthal is going to run away before his thirteenth birthday," 
Ruth said. "He's supposed to be having his bar mitzvah tomorrow, Jess. That's 
what he was doing at the synagogue in the first place. Having his last Hebrew 
lesson before the big ceremony on Saturday. The kid is due to rake it in. No way 
would he take off beforehand. And no way would he leave his bike behind."
This finally got my attention. Twelve-year-olds do not generally abandon their 
bikes. Not without a fight, anyway. And Ruth was right: She'd pulled in roughly 
twenty thousand dollars for her bat mitzvah. No way some kid was going to run 
away before making that kind of dough.
"You got a picture of him?" I asked Ruth, as she worked her way through a 
Cinnabon she was carrying around. "Seth, I mean."
"There's one in the temple directory," she said. "I mean, it's a shot of his 
whole family. But I can point him out for you, if you want."
"Okay," I said. "I'll take care of it."
"Soon," Ruth said to me. "You better take care of it soon. There's no telling 
what might have happened to him. I mean, that gang might have gotten him."
I rolled my eyes. I actually had to keep a eye out, because I'd spotted my 
mother and Great-aunt Roseóhorror of horrorsógoing into JC Penney, and I wanted 
to be sure to avoid running into them. I was fairly certain that if Great-aunt 
Rose hadn't been visiting, there'd have been no way my mom would be at the mall 
the day after one of her neighbors found out their kid was dead. But I suspected 
since the neighbor in question was the Thompkinses, my mom hadn't dared risk a 
sympathy visit, since Great-aunt Rose would have insisted on coming along. And 
knowing Rose, she'd have started in about the darkies, or something equally 
appalling.
She was leaving on Sunday. Which might as well have been forever, it seemed so 
far away.
"If I get a piece of his clothing," Ruth was asking me, "could you do that 
thing? You know, that thing you did with Shane? And Claire? Where you smeló"
She broke off with a cry of pain as I reached up and seized her by the back of 
the neck. She was so surprised, a piece of Cinnabon fell out of her mouth.
"I told you not to talk about that, remember?" I hissed at her. Over at Santa's 
Workshopóthe day after Thanksgiving was the day Santa arrived at our local 
mallóa bunch of moms looked our way, disapproving Ö probably because we were 
still young and weren't saddled down with three whiny brats, but whatever. "The 
Feds are still following me around, you know. I bumped into Cyrus just last 
night."
"Ow," Ruth said, shrugging off my hand. "Leggo, you freak."
"I mean it," I said. "Just be cool."
"You be cool." Ruth adjusted her shirt collar. "Or try just being normal for a 
change. What is the matter with you, anyway? You've been acting like a freak all 
day."
"Gee, I don't know, Ruth," I said, in my most sarcastic tone. "Maybe it's just 
because last night I saw the mutilated body of the guy who used to live across 
the street lying mangled in a cornfield."
Ruth curled her upper lip. "God," she said. "Be a little gross, why don't you?" 
Then Ruth looked at me a little closer. "Wait a minute. You aren't blaming 
yourself over Nate's death, are you?" When I didn't reply, she went, "Oh my God. 
Youare . Jess, hello? You didn't kill him, okay? His little gang-bang buddies 
did."
"I knew he was missing," I said. Over at Santa's Workshop some kid was screaming 
his head off because he was afraid of the mechanical elves building toys in the 
fake snow. "And I didn't try to find him."
"You knew he'd gone out for whipped cream," Ruth corrected me. "And that he 
didn't come back right away. You didn't know he was being murdered. You couldn't 
have known. Comeon , Jess. Give yourself a break. You can't be responsible for 
every single person on the planet who gets himself killed."
"I guess not," I said. I turned away from the sight of the mall Santa 
ho-ho-hoing. "Look, Ruth, let's go home. You can show me that picture. So maybe 
if the bar-mitzvah boy really is missing, I can find him before he becomes crow 
fodder, the way Nate did."
"Eew," Ruth said. "Graphic much?" But she started heading toward the nearest 
exit.
Only not soon enough, unfortunately.
"Jessica!"
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice Ö then blanched.
It was Mrs. Wilkins. And Rob.
Just about the last two peopleówith the exception of my mom and Great-aunt 
RoseóI'd wanted to run into. Not because I wasn't happy to see them. Let's face 
it, when have I ever been unhappy about seeing Rob? That would be like being 
unhappy about seeing the sun come out after forty days and nights of rain.
But knowing what I knew now Ö what I'd learned overnight, as I slept, without 
consciously meaning to, and all because of that stupid picture I'd seen on Rob's 
mother's bedroom wall. . . .
"Hi, you guys," I said, brightly, to cover up what I was really feeling, which 
was,Oh, shit . "Wow. Fancy meeting you here." Again, among the most toolish of 
things to say, but I was trying to think fast.
Rob looked about as uncomfortable as I had ever seen him. This was on account of 
the fact that:
a)He was in a mall.
b)He was in a mall with his mom.
c)He had run into me there.
d)I was with Ruth.
Ruth and Rob are not among one another's favorite people. In fact, I had only 
recently convinced Ruth to stop referring to Rob as The Jerk on account of him 
never calling me. Rob thought Ruth was an elitist Townie snob who looked down on 
non-college-bound people such as himself. Which in fact she was. But that didn't 
make her a bad person, necessarily.
"Isn't this funny," Mrs. Wilkins said, with a happy smile. "I've been trying to 
convince Rob to let me take him to get measured for a tux for my brother's 
wedding since Ö well, forever, it seems like. And today, when he picked me up 
after work, he finally agreed. So here we are. And here you are! Isn't that 
funny?"
"It sure is," I said, even though I didn't think it was funny at all. Especially 
since Rob hadn't said anything to me about having a wedding to attend. A wedding 
at which he might be expected to bring a date. Who by rights should be have been 
me. "I thought Earl was already married," I said, to cover up my inner rage over 
Rob having never mentioned this before.
"Oh, it's not Earl," Mrs. Wilkins said. "It's my little brother Randy. He and 
his fiancee are tying the knot on Christmas Eve. Have you ever heard of anything 
so romantic?"
Christmas Eve? A Christmas Eve wedding at which Rob would be wearing a tuxedo, 
and he hadn't said a word to me about it? I'd have gone with him, if he'd asked 
me. I'd have gone with him gladly. I'd have worn the green velvet sheath dress 
my mom had made me for last year's Lion's Club dinner in honor of Mike winning 
that scholarship. If my mom wasn't around, wearing the one she'd made herself 
that matched mine, it actually looked good on me.
But no. No, Rob hadn't even bothered to mention he'd been invited to this 
affair. Nothing. Not a word.
Suddenly I felt like blurting out what I had learned in my dreams last night 
about Rob's dad, right in front of everyone, just to get back at him for having 
purposefully left me out of this very important family event that I was now 
dying to go to more than I had ever wanted to go to anything before in my life.
"How nice," I said, with what I hoped was a frosty smile in Rob's direction. He 
was studiously avoiding my gaze. Or maybe he was just trying to avoid making eye 
contact with Ruth, who was pointedly returning the favor. Either way, he was a 
dead man.
"Oh, but, Jess!" Mrs. Wilkins's hand shot out, and she grasped my fingers, the 
smile wiped from her face. "Rob told me what happened to you two on your way 
back home last night. I'm so sorry! It must have been awful. I feel so terrible 
for the boy's parents. . . ."
"Yes," I said, my smile growing less frosty. "It was pretty bad."
"If there's anything I can do," Mrs. Wilkins said. "I mean, I can't imagine how 
I could help, but if you think those poor people could use some home cooking, or 
something, let me know. I do make a decent casserole. . . ."
"Sure thing, Mrs. Wilkins," I said. "I'll let you know. And thanks again for 
dinner last night."
"Oh, honey, it was nothing," Mrs. Wilkins said, squeezing my fingers one last 
time before letting them go. "I'm just so glad you could share it with us."
All that would have been bad enough. But a second later, the whole thing got 
about ten times worse. Just when I thought I was about to escape virtually 
unscathedóexcept for the whole not-having-been-asked-to-Rob's-uncle's-wedding 
thingóI heard a sound that caused the blood in my veins to curdle.
Which was Great-aunt Rose, calling my name.
"See, I told you it was Jessica," Great-aunt Rose said, hauling my mother up to 
us. Rose's blue eyes, which appeared rheumy, but which actually took in 
everything around them with uncanny clarity, crackled as she looked from Rob to 
me and then back again. "Who is your little friend, Jessica? Aren't you going to 
introduce us?"
The idea of Great-aunt Rose, a tiny shrimp of a woman, calling Rob "little" 
would have made me laugh at any other time. As it was, however, I merely longed 
for the floor of the mall to open up and swallow me as quickly and as painlessly 
as possible.
My mother, looking tired and distractedóand who wouldn't, having spent the day 
with Great-aunt Roseóput down the many bags she was holding and said, "Oh, Mary. 
It's you. How are you?" My mom knew Mrs. Wilkins from the restaurant, of course.
"Hi, Mrs. Mastriani," Mrs. Wilkins said with her sunny smile. "How are you 
today?"
"Fair," my mom said, "to middling." She looked at me and Ruth. "Hello, girls. 
Any luck with the sales?"
"I got a cashmere sweater at Benneton," Ruth said, holding up a bag like a 
triumphant hunter, "for only fifteen dollars."
"It's chartreuse," I reminded her, before she could get too cocky.
"I'm sure it's very flattering," my mother said, just to be polite, because 
anyone who saw Ruth's blonde hair and sallow complexion would know chartreuse 
would not be flattering on her at all.
"Andyou are?" Great-aunt Rose asked Rob, pointedly.
Rob, God love him, carefully wiped off his hand on his jeans before extending it 
toward my aunt and going, in his deep voice, "Rob Wilkins, ma'am. Very nice to 
meet you."
Great-aunt Rose merely lifted her nose at the sight of Rob's hand. "And what are 
your intentions toward my niece?" she demanded.
Mrs. Wilkins looked startled. My mother looked confused. Ruth looked delighted. 
I am sure I looked like I had just swallowed a cactus. Only Rob remained calm, 
as he replied, in the same polite tone, "I have no intentions toward her at all, 
ma'am."
Which is exactly the problem.
I saw my mother's eyes narrow as she looked at Rob. I knew what she was going to 
say a second before it was out of her mouth.
"Wait a minute," she said. "I know you from somewhere, don't I?"
The sad part was, she did. But I wasn't about to let her stick around to figure 
out where. Because where she knew Rob from was the police station, the last time 
I'd been hauled in there for questioning Ö a connection I did not want my mother 
making just then.
"I'm sure you've just seen him around, Mom," I said, taking her by the arm and 
propelling her toward Santa's Workshop. "Hey, look, Santa's back! Don't you want 
to take my picture sitting on his lap?"
My mom looked down at me with mild amusement. "Not exactly," she said. 
"Considering you're no longer five years old."
Ruth, for once in her life, did something helpful, and came up on my mom's other 
side, saying, "Aw, come on, Mrs. M. It would be so funny. My parents would crack 
up if they saw a picture of me and Jess on Santa's lap. And to get her back, 
I'll make Jess come to temple and sit on Hanukkah Harry's lap next week. Come 
on."
My mom looked helplessly at Mrs. Wilkins, who fortunately didn't seem aware that 
anything unusualósuch as the fact that her son's supposed girlfriend was doing 
everything in her power to keep her mother from actually meeting himówas going 
on.
"Oh, go on," Mrs. Wilkins said, laughingly, to my mom. "It'll be a hoot."
My mom, shaking her head, let us steer her into the line to see Santa. It was 
only when I came back to say good-bye to Mrs. WilkinsóI was ignoring Robóand to 
get the bags my mom had set down that I overheard Great-aunt Rose hiss at Rob, 
"Watch yourself, young man. I've seen your type before, and I'm warning you: 
Don't you even think about laying a finger on my niece. Not if you know what's 
good for you."
I glared at Great-aunt Rose. Just what I needed, for her to give Rob yet another 
excuse why he couldn't go out with me.
Rob seemed hardly to have heard her, however. Instead, he only looked at me, 
those smokey gray eyes unreadable. . . .
Almost. I was pretty sure I read something in the set of his square jaw. And 
that something said,Thanks for nothing .
It was only then that I realized I'd had a perfect chance finally to introduce 
him to my mother, and that, in my panic, I'd blown it.
But hey, who'd had the perfect chance to ask me to be his escort at his uncle 
Randy's Christmas Eve wedding, and blown that?
When I returned to the line to see Santa, with my mom's bags and Great-aunt Rose 
in tow, it was only to hear Ruth whisper in a low voice, "You owe me." It took 
me a minute to realize what Ruth meant. I heard snickering. Looking past the 
cottony field of fake snow that surrounded us, I saw Karen Sue Hankey and some 
of her cronies pointing at us and laughing their heads off.
I really don't think my mom should have gotten so mad over the gesture I made at 
them, despite the fact that there were small children around. They probably 
didn't even know what it meant. Great-aunt Rose sure didn't.
"No, Jessica," she informed me acidly, a second later. "The peace sign is with 
two fingers, not one. Don't they teach you children anything in school these 
days?"
C H A P T E R
7
There were more cars than ever outside the HoadleyóI mean Thompkinsóhouse when 
we got home from the mall later that afternoon.
I was surprised the Thompkinses were acquainted with that many people. For being 
so new in town, they were pretty popular.
"Look," Ruth said, as I got out of her car. "Coach Albright's there."
Sure enough, I recognized the coach's Dodge Plymouth. It was hard not to, as 
he'd had the car custom painted in the Ernie Pyle High School colors of purple 
and white.
"God," Ruth said, sympathetically, as I climbed out of her car. "Poor Tasha. Can 
you imagine having that blowhard in your living room the day after your brother 
got murdered? That has to be one of those circles of hell Dante was going on 
about." We are doing Dante'sInferno in English. Well, everyone else is. I am 
mainly playing Tetris on my Gameboy in the back row with the sound off.
"Come over later with that picture," I said. "I mean, if the kid from your 
synagogue is still missing when you get home."
"He will be," Ruth said, bleakly. "This appears to be a day destined for human 
tragedy. I mean, look at my new sweater."
I slammed the car door shut and started across my yard, into the house. The snow 
that the Weather Channel had been talking about still hadn't appeared, but there 
was a thick layer of grayish-white clouds overhead. Not a hint of blue showed 
anywhere. And the wind was pretty nippy. My face, the only part of me exposed to 
the elements, practically froze during my twenty-foot walk from the driveway to 
our front door.
"Hey," I yelled, as I came in. "I'm home." It was safe to yell this, as Ruth and 
I had beaten my mom and Great-aunt Rose home from the mall. So the only people 
who might have heard me were people I didn't actually mind speaking to.
Only nobody answered my yell. The house appeared to be empty.
I walked over to the hall table to look at the mail. Christmas catalog, 
Christmas catalog, Christmas catalog. It was amazing how those Christmas 
catalogs piled up, starting before Halloween, even. Ours all went straight into 
the recycle bin.
A bill. Another bill. A letter from Harvard, addressed to my parents, no doubt 
begging them to reconsider letting Mikey drop out. Like they'd had any choice in 
the matter. Mike had purchased a one-way ticket home the minute he'd heard his 
lady fair had been hospitalized on account of almost being murdered, and then 
had refused to go back once Claire turned the full force of her baby blues on 
him. (It's way cooler, Claire told me, to have a boyfriend in college than one 
who is still in high school. I guess even if that boyfriend is a Class 
A-certified geek.)
There was nothing in the mail for me. There is never anything in the mail for 
me. All of my mailósuch as it isógets sent to me secretly from my friend 
Rosemary at 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU via Ruth, who then smuggles it over. But Rosemary 
was in Rhode Island visiting her mother for Thanksgiving, so I wasn't expecting 
anything from her this week. The missing kids were just going to have to wait 
until next week to get found.
Except for Seth Blumenthal, if he really was missing.
Sighing, I pulled off my hat and gloves, stuffed them in my coat pockets, and 
went to hang up my coat by the door to the garage. A perusal of the fridge 
revealed that no one had been by recently with any interesting offerings in the 
form of food solace. I nibbled on some leftover persimmon pie, but my heart 
wasn't in it. You would think I'd have been standing there thinking about what 
was going on across the street. I mean about Nate, and all. A sixteen-year-old 
kid, killed before he'd ever even gotten his driver's license, and for what? 
Wearing the wrong gang's colors?
But of course I wasn't thinking about Nate at all. I was thinking about Rob, and 
how hurt he'd looked when I hadn't introduced him to my mom. Well, how hurt did 
he think I felt when I found out about that wedding he hadn't invited me to? He 
couldn't have it both ways. He couldn't insist that we can't go out because of 
our age difference, then be hurt when I didn't introduce him to my mom.
The two of us definitely had some problems in our relationship that needed 
working out. Maybe we needed to go onOprah , and talk to that bald doctor dude 
she's always having on.
"Doctor, my girlfriend is ashamed of me," I could almost hear Rob saying. "She 
won't introduce me to her parents."
"Well, my boyfriend doesn't trust me," I would retort. "He won't tell me what he 
got arrested for. Or invite me to his uncle Randy's wedding."
Yeah. The two of us onOprah . That was so going to happen.
It wasn't until I got upstairs that I heard the voices. I have to admit that my 
brother Douglas, even when he isn't having one of his episodes, has a tendency 
to talk to himself.
But this time, someone was talking back. I was sure of it. The door to his room 
was closed, as always, but I pressed my ear up to it, and there was no doubt 
about it: There were two voices coming from Douglas's room.
And one of them belonged to agirl .
I assumed it was Claire. Maybe she was consulting with Douglas over what to get 
Mike for a Christmas present. Or had gone to him for advice because their 
relationship had run into trouble. . . .
But why would she go to Douglas with something like that? Why not me? I was 
clearly the logical choice. I mean, I may be a freak and all, with my psychic 
powers, but I am way less of a freak than Douglas, much as I love him.
I couldn't help it. I knew I shouldn't, but I did it anyway. I thumped, once on 
the door, then threw it open.
"Hey, good lookin'," I started to say. "What's cookin'?"
Only it wasn't Claire in Douglas's room. It wasn't Claire at all.
It was Tasha Thompkins.
My jaw sagged so loose at the sight of her, sitting all primly on the end of 
Douglas's bed, in her black turtleneck and gray wool jumper, I swear I felt my 
chin hit the floor.
"Oh," she said, when she saw me, her tear-filled brown eyes soft as her voice. 
"Hi, Jess."
"Wh Ö" I said. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. Never in a million 
years would I have expected to open Douglas's bedroom door and find a girl in 
his room. Much less one to whom he wasn't related by blood, or who was dating 
his younger brother. "Wh Ö wh Ö wh Ö"
"Close the barn door," Douglas said mildly to me, from where he sat in front of 
his desktop computer. "You're letting the flies in."
I snapped my mouth shut. But I couldn't think of anything to say. I just stared 
at Tasha, looking neat and pretty and strangely not out of place in Douglas's 
book- and comic book-filled bedroom.
"I just couldn't take it anymore," Tasha said, helping me out a little. "At our 
house, I mean. It's just so Ö Well, Coach Albright is there right now."
"I saw his car," I managed to croak.
"Yes," Tasha said. "Well. I couldn't stand it. Then I remembered that the last 
time I'd seen Doug, he'd said he had some really early issues of a comic book I 
like, and that I could come over sometime to see them." She shrugged her slender 
shoulders. "So I came over." When I didn't say anything, and just continued to 
stare at her, she said, looking vaguely troubled, "That's all right with you, 
isn't it, Jessica?"
I tried to say yes, but what came out was some kind of garbled noise like Helen 
Keller made in that movie about her life. So I just nodded instead.
"Don't worry about Jess," Douglas said. "She's just shy."
That made Tasha laugh a little. "That's not what I heard," she said. Then she 
looked guilty. For laughing, though, not because of what she'd said.
"I was asking Tasha about Nate," Douglas said casually, as if he were continuing 
a conversation that had gotten interrupted.
I tried to make an effort to speak intelligently. "I'm sorry," was all I managed 
to get out. When Tasha just looked at me, I went, "About your brother, I mean."
Tasha looked down at her shoes. "Thank you," she said, so softly, I could barely 
hear her.
"It turns out," Douglas said, after clearing his throat, "that Nate had a few 
unsavory friends."
Tasha nodded, her expression grave. "But they wouldn't have done this," she 
explained. "I mean, killed him. They were just a bunch of hop-heads who thought 
they were all that, you know?"
When both Douglas and I looked at Tasha blankly, she elaborated. Apparently, it 
isn't just that Chicagoans say hello instead of hey. They have a whole separate 
language unto themselves.
"They were the bomb," Tasha explained. "They ruled the school."
"Oh," I said. Douglas looked even more confused than I felt.
"It was all so lame," Tasha said, shaking her head so that the curled ends of 
her hair, held back in a second clip at the nape of her neck, swept her 
shoulders. "I mean, the only reason they wanted Nate around was because of Dad. 
You know. Prescription pads and all. Oxy makes for a wicked weekend high."
I nodded like I knew what she was talking about.
"But Nate, he was flattered, you know? I tried to tell him those guys were just 
using him, but he wouldn't listen. Fortunately it wasn't long before my dad 
found out. Nate had always been a good student, you know? So when his grades 
started to slip Ö" Tasha stared at aLord of the Rings poster on Douglas's wall, 
but it was clear she wasn't seeing it. She was seeing something else entirely.
"My dad was so mad," she went on, after a minute, "that he pulled us both out of 
school. He took the job down here the very next day. We moved that week."
Whoa. Talk about tough love.
But I guess I could understand Dr. Thompkins's point of view. I mean, my 
family's had problems for sure, but drugs have never been one of them.
"So." I didn't want to bring up what was clearly going to be a painful subject 
for her, but I didn't see how it could be avoided. "Is that what happened to 
him, then? Your brother, I mean? Those, um, hopheads got him? For not giving 
them any more prescription pads, or something?"
Tasha shook her head, looking troubled.
"I don't know," she said. "I mean, those guys were bad news, but they weren't 
killers."
I thought for a minute.
"What about that symbol?"
Douglas, over by the desk, was making a slashing motion with his hand beneath 
his chin. But it was too late.
Tasha looked at me blankly. "What symbol?"
I had blown it. Tasha didn't know. Tasha didn't know the details of her 
brother's death.
"Nothing," I said. "Just Ö um. There's been some graffiti popping up around 
town, and some people were speculating that it was a gang tag."
"You think my brother was in a gang?" Tasha asked, in an incredulous voice.
Douglas dropped his forehead into one hand, as if he couldn't bear to watch.
"Well," I said. I couldn't tell her the truth, of course. About the symbol 
having been carved into her brother's chest. "That's kind of the rumor."
Tasha may not have been able to see things up close without the aid of 
prescription lenses, but she could see things far away without any problem. She 
glared at me pretty hard.
"Because he's black," she said, in a hard voice. "People assumed Nate was in a 
gang, and that he was the one going around tagging things, because he's black."
"Um," I said, throwing an alarmed look at Douglas. "Well, not exactly. I mean, 
you even said he was hanging out with, um, a bad element. . . ."
"For your information," Tasha said, standing up. Like almost everyone else in 
the world, she was taller than me. "That bad element happened to be, for the 
most part, white. We did not, as you seem to think, move here from the ghetto, 
you know."
"Look," I said, defensively. "I never said you did. All I said was that it's 
weird this symbol would start cropping up around town the same time that you 
happened to move here, and I was merely wondering ifó"
"If we brought the criminal element down with us from the big, bad city?" Tasha 
reached down and grabbed her coat, which had been draped across the bed beside 
her. "You know, the police have been asking us the same kind of questions. They 
all want to believe the same thing you do, that my brother deserved to be killed 
because of who he associated with. Well, I've got news for the cops in this 
town, and for you, too, Jessica. It wasn't some evil street gang from the big 
city that murdered my brother. It was a homegrown killer all your own."
With that, she stomped from Douglas's room. It wasn't until we heard the front 
door slam shut behind her that Douglas started to applaud.
"Way to go," he said to me. "Have you ever considered a career in the diplomatic 
corp?"
I sank down onto the spot on Douglas's bed Tasha had vacated. "Oh, bite me."
Noting my dour expression, Douglas said, "Aw, cheer up. She'll get over it. She 
just lost her brother, after all."
"Yeah, and I really helped," I said. "Implying he was a gang-banger who might 
have had it coming."
"You didn't imply that," Douglas said. "Besides, I was basically asking her the 
same thing when you walked in."
"Yeah, well, I notice she didn't fly off the handle atyou ."
"Well," Douglas said. "Who could? Considering my personal charm, and all."
But I noticed a slight redness to his cheeks that hadn't been there before.
"Whoa," I said, sitting up straight. "Douglas!"
He looked at me warily. "What?"
"You like her! Admit it!"
"Of course I like her." Douglas turned back to his computer, and began to type 
rapidly. Douglas can out-type even Mikey, when he puts his mind to it. "She 
seems like a very nice person."
"No, but youreally like her," I said. "Youlike like her."
Douglas stopped typing. Then he turned around in his computer chair and said, 
"Jess, if you tell anyone, I will kill you."
I rolled my eyes. "Who am I going to tell? So, why don't you ask her out?"
"Well, for one thing," Douglas said, "because thanks to you, she now hates my 
guts."
I took umbrage at that. "You said she'd get over it!"
"I was only saying that to make you feel better. Face it. You ruined it."
"Oh, no way." I got up off the bed. "You are not pegging her not wanting to go 
out with you on me. Not when you haven't even asked her yet. Why don't you ask 
her to go to a movie tomorrow night? One of those weird independent films comic 
book freaks like you are always going to."
"Um," Douglas said. "Let me see. Because her brother just got murdered?"
"Oh, yeah," I said, crestfallen. Then I brightened. "But you could ask her as a 
friend. I mean, she must be going crazy over there, with Coach Albright hanging 
around. I bet she'd say yes."
"I'll think about it," Douglas said, and turned back to his computer. "About 
your symbol. I've been researching it all day, but I haven't been able to come 
up with anything about it. Are you sure you drew it right?"
"Of course I'm sure," I said. "Douglas, I'm serious, you should totally ask her 
out."
"Jess," he said, to his monitor. "She's in high school."
Memories of Rob and me, in the barn the night before, came flooding back. But I 
shoved them firmly aside.
"So?" I said. "She's a senior, and mature for her age. You're immature for 
yours. It's a perfect match."
"Thanks," Douglas said, deprecatingly.
At that moment, I heard Ruth's voice calling my name. As was our custom, she had 
let herself into the house.
"I got that stuff," she said, appearing in the doorway a minute later, 
breathless and covered with flakes of snow. I guess the Weather Channel had been 
right after all. "On Seth Blumenthal. You know, that kid who disappeared this 
morning. Oh, hey, Douglas."
"Hey," Douglas said to Ruth, not making eye contact with her, as washis custom.
"Was that Tasha Thompkins I just saw leaving here?" Ruth wanted to know.
"Yes," I said. "That was her all right."
"I didn't know you two were so friendly," Ruth said to me, as she began to 
unwind her scarf from her neck. "That was nice of you to ask her over."
"I didn't," I said.
Ruth looked confused. "Then what was she doing here?"
"Askhim ," I said, tilting my head in Douglas's direction.
He ducked back over his computer, but I could still see the tips of his ears 
reddening.
"What's a guy have to do," he wanted to know, "to get some privacy around here?"
C H A P T E R
8
When I woke up the next morning, I knew where Seth Blumenthal was.
And where Seth Blumenthal was wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.
Having the psychic power to find anyone, anyone at all, isn't an easy thing to 
live with. I mean, look at how, just by seeing his picture on the wall of Mrs. 
Wilkins's bedroom, I now knew this thing about Rob's dad. I would have traded 
anything in the world not to have been in possession of that little piece of 
information, let me tell you.
Just as I would have traded anything in the world not to have to do what I knew 
I had to next.
No big deal, right? Just pick up the phone and dial 911, right?
Not. So not.
Normally when I am contacted about a missing kid, it goes like this: I make 
sure, before I call anyone, that the kid really does want to be found. This is 
on account of how once I found a kid who was way better off missing than with 
his custodial parent, who was a bonafide creep. Ever since then, I have really 
gone out of my way to make sure the kids I find aren't better off missing.
But in Seth's case, there was no question. No question at all.
But I couldn't simply pick up the phone, dial 911, and go, "Oh, yeah, hi, by the 
way, you'll find Seth Blumenthal on blankity-blank street; hurry up and get him, 
his mom's missing him a lot," and hang up, click.
Because ever since this whole psychic thing started, and the U.S. government 
began expressing its great desire to put me on the payroll, I've been having to 
pretend like I don't have my powers anymore. So how would it look if I called 
911 from my bedroom phone and went, "Oh, yeah, Seth Blumenthal? Here's where to 
find him."
Not cool. Not cool at all.
So I had to get up and go find a pay phone somewhere so that at least I could 
give the semblance of a denial the next time Cyrus Krantz accuses me of lying 
about my "specially abled-ness."
But let me tell you, if there'd ever been a day I considered giving up on the 
whole subterfuge thing, it was this one. That's because when I stumbled out of 
my bed, heading for the space heater I always turned off before I went to sleep, 
only to wake with ice chips practically formed in my nostrils, I happened to 
look out the window, and noticed that Lumbley Lane was completely carpeted in 
white.
That's right. It had started snowing around four in the afternoon the day 
before, and apparently, it had not stopped. There had to be a foot and a half at 
least of fluffy white stuff already on the ground, and more was falling.
"Great," I muttered, as I hastily donned an extra pair of socks and all the 
flannel I could find. "Just great."
With that much snow, there'd naturally be a hush over everything outside. But 
there seemed to be an equal silence inside the house. As I came down the stairs, 
I noticed that neither Douglas nor Mikey's rooms were occupied. And when I got 
to the kitchen, the only person sitting there, unfortunately, was Great-aunt 
Rose.
"I hope you don't think you're going to go out looking like that," she said, 
over the steaming cup of coffee she was holding. "Why, you look like you just 
pulled some old clothes on over your pajamas."
Since this was exactly what I had done, I was not exactly ruffled by this 
statement.
"I'm just going to the convenience store," I said. I went over to the mudroom 
and started tugging on some boots. "I'll be right back. You want anything?"
"The convenience store?" Great-aunt Rose looked shocked. "You have a 
refrigerator stocked with every kind of food imaginable, and you still can't 
find something to eat? What could you possibly need from the convenience store?"
"Tampons," I said, to shut her up.
It didn't work, though. She just started in about toxic shock syndrome. She'd 
seen an episode ofOprah about it once.
"And by the time they got to her," Great-aunt Rose was saying, as I stomped 
around, looking for a pair of mittens, "her uterus had fallen out!"
I knew someone whose uterus I wished would fall out. I didn't say so, though. I 
pulled a ski cap over my bed-head hair and went, "I'll be right back. Where is 
everybody, anyway?"
"Your brother Douglas," Great-aunt Rose said, "left for that ridiculous job of 
his in that comic book store. What your parents can be thinking, allowing him to 
fritter away his time in a dead-end job like that, I can't imagine. He ought to 
be in school. And don't tell me he's sick. There isn't a single thing wrong with 
Douglas except that your parents are coddling him half to death. What that boy 
needs isn't pills. It's a swift kick in the patootie."
I could see why none of Great-aunt Rose's own kids ever invited her over anymore 
for the holidays. She was a real joy to have around.
"What about my mom and dad?" I asked. "Where are they?"
"Your father went to one of those restaurants of his," Great-aunt Rose said, in 
tones of great disapproval. Restauranting was probably, in her opinion, another 
example of time frittered away. "And your other brother went with your mom."
"Oh, yeah?" I pulled on the biggest, heaviest coat I could find. It was my dad's 
old ski parka. It was about ten sizes too big for me, but it was warm. Who cared 
if I looked like Nanook of the North? I certainly wasn't trying to impress the 
guys at the Stop and Shop. "Where'd they go?"
"To the fire," Great-aunt Rose said, and turned back to the newspaper that was 
spread out in front of her.LOCAL RESIDENT FOUND DEAD , screamed the 
headline.FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED . Uh, no duh.
I thought Great-aunt Rose had finally gone round the bend. You know, 
Alzheimer's. Because the fire that had burned down the restaurant had been 
nearly three months ago.
"You mean Mastriani's?" I asked. "They went to the job site?" It didn't make 
much sense that they'd go there, especially on a day like today. The contractors 
who were rebuilding the restaurant had knocked off for the winter. They said 
they'd finish the place in the spring, when the ground wasn't so hard.
So what were my mom and Michael doing at an empty lot?
"Not that fire," Great-aunt Rose said, disparagingly. "The new one. The one at 
that Jewish church."
Now Great-aunt Rose had my full attention. I stared at her dumbfounded. "There's 
a fire at the synagogue?"
"Synagogue," Great-aunt Rose said. "That's what they call it. Whatever. Looks 
like a church to me."
"There's afire at the synagogue?" I repeated, more loudly.
Great-aunt Rose gave me an irritated look. "That's what I said, didn't I? And 
there's no need to shout, Jessica. I may be old, but I'm notó"
Deaf, is what she probably said. I wouldn't know, since I booked out of there 
before she could finish her sentence.
A fire at the synagogue. This was not a good thing. I mean, not that I go to 
temple, not being Jewish.
Still, Ruth and her family go to temple. They go to temple a lot.
And if the fire was big enough that my mom and Mikey had felt compelled to go Ö
Oh, yes. The fire was big enough. I saw the dark plume of smoke in the air 
before I even got to the end of Lumbley Lane. This was not good.
I slogged through the snow, heading for the Stop and Shop, which was fortunately 
in the same direction as the synagogue. They have plows in my town, but it takes 
forever for them to get around to the residential streets. They do all the roads 
around the hospital and courthouse first, then the residential areas Ö if they 
don't have to go back and do the important roads again, which, in a storm like 
this, they'd need to. They never bothered with rural routes at all. A big storm 
tended to guarantee that everyone who lived outside the city limits was snowed 
in for days. Which was good for kidsóno schoolóbut not so good for adults, who 
had to get to work. Lumbley Lane had not been plowed. Only our driveway had been 
shoveled. Mr. Abramowitz, the champion shoveler in the neighborhood, had barely 
made a dent in his driveway. . . . Only enough had been shoveled so that he 
could get the car out, undoubtedly so that he and his family could head over to 
the synagogue and see what they could do to help, the way my mom and Mikey had. 
In a small town, people tend to pitch in. This can be a good thing, but it can 
also be a bad thing. For instance, people are also eager to pitch in with the 
latest gossip. Whichócase in point, Nate Thompkinsówas not always so helpful.
By the time I got to the Stop and Shop, which was only a few streets away from 
my house, I was panting from the exertion of wading through so much snow. Plus 
my face felt frozen on account of the wind whipping into it, despite my dad's 
voluminous hood.
Still, I couldn't go inside to warm up. I had a call to make on the pay phone 
over by the air hose.
"Yeah," I said, when the emergency operator picked up. "Can you please let the 
police know that the kid they've been looking for, Seth Blumenthal, is at 
Five-sixty Rural Route One, in the second trailer to the right of the Mr. 
Shaky's sign?"
The operator, stunned, went, "What?"
"Look," I said. This was really just my luck. You know, getting a brain-dead 
emergency services operator, on top of a freaking snowstorm. "Get a pen and 
write it down." I repeated my message one more time. "Got it?"
"Butó"
"Good-bye."
I hung up. All around me, the snow was swirling like millions of tiny ballerinas 
in fluffy white tutus. You know, like in thatFantasia movie. Or maybe those were 
milkweed pod seeds. Whatever. Any other time, it would have been pretty.
As it was, however, it was a huge pain in my ass.
I could have gone inside the Stop and Shop and warmed up, but I decided against 
it. It would be just my luck if LutheróLuther had worked the Saturday morning 
shift at the Stop and Shop since I'd been a little kid, and I had gone down 
there religiously every weekend to blow my allowance on licorice and Bazooka 
Joeóremembered I'd been there. When Cyrus came around and started asking 
questions, I mean, after Seth Blumenthal got found. Luther had a memory like a 
steel trap. He could name every race Dale Earnhardt had ever won.
The snow and wind were pretty bad, but they weren't blizzard level. You could 
get around, it was just really awkward. If I'd had a car, though, it probably 
would have been about as bad. I mean, I'd have made just about as much progress.
By the time I finally got to the synagogue, the wind had died down a little. 
There was still that eery silence, though, that you get when everything is 
carpeted in snow Ö this in spite of all the fire engines and men running with 
hoses. I spied my mom standing in the synagogue parking lotóall the snow there 
had melted on account of the flames and the water from the fire trucksówith 
Mikey and the Abramowitzes. I picked my way across the maze of hoses on the 
ground and came up to them.
"What is it with this town," I asked my mom, "and buildings going up in flames?"
"Oh, honey," my mom said, slipping an arm around me. "What are you doing here? 
You didn't walk all this way, did you?"
"Sure," I said, with a shrug. "Anything to get away from Aunt Rose."
My mom fingered my hood distractedly. "Why are you wearing Daddy's old coat?" 
she wanted to know. But I didn't have a chance to reply, because Michael punched 
me on the arm.
"So you finally decided to join us, huh?" he said.
"Yeah," I said. "Thanks for waking me up."
"I tried," Michael said. "You were dead to the world. Plus it looked like you 
were having one hell of a nightmare."
He wasn't kidding. Only it hadn't been my nightmare. It had been Seth 
Blumenthal's reality.
Ruth, standing there with her brother and parents, looked miserable. Her nose 
was red, and tears were streaming down her face. I didn't think from the cold, 
either.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
"Not really," Ruth said. "I mean, I've been better."
"Oh, Jess." Mrs. Abramowitz noticed me for the first time. "It's you." I guess 
she hadn't recognized me right away with my dad's ski parka on. "Isn't it 
awful?"
Awful wasn't the word for it. The building was almost completely destroyed. Only 
a couple of interior walls still stood. The rest was just charred rubble, black 
against the whiteness of the snow.
"They couldn't get here fast enough to save it," Mrs. Abramowitz said, wiping a 
tear from where it dangled off the end of her nose. "On account of the ice."
"Now, Louise," my mom said, reaching out to give Mrs. Abramowitz's shoulders a 
squeeze. "Remember what you told me when it was the restaurant that was burning. 
It's the people that matter, not the building."
"Right," Mr. Abramowitz said. He and Skip were standing there with some other 
men, huddled in the wind. "No one got hurt. And that's what's important."
"No," Mrs. Abramowitz said, mournfully. "But Ö but the Torah. It's justtoo 
awful."
I looked questioningly at Ruth.
"The Torah," she explained. "You know, the holy scrolls. They think that's what 
they lit on fire first."
"They?" I stared at her. "What are you talking about? Someoneset this fire? 
Onpurpose ?"
"Judge for yourself," Ruth said, and pointed.
Following the direction of her gloved hand, I looked. Across the street from the 
synagogue stood our town's only Jewish cemetery. Because there aren't a whole 
lot of Jews in southern Indianaóthere are more churches here than there are 
McDonalds, for sureóthe cemetery was pretty small.
So it had been pretty easy for whoever had gone to town on it to knock over 
every single headstone.
Oh, yes. Every single one. Except of course the mausoleums, which they couldn't 
knock over. But they'd satisfied themselves by spray-painting those with 
swastikas. Swastikas and something else. Something that looked familiar.
It took me a minute, but finally, I recognized it: the symbol I'd seen on Nate 
Thompkins's chest.
C H A P T E R
9
"It's a gang," Claire said.
"It's not a gang, all right?" I was pacing up and down the hallway outside 
Michael's room. "Nate Thompkins wasn't in a gang."
"Just because his sister doesn't want to believe it," Michael pointed out, 
"doesn't mean it isn't true."
"She said all they wanted to do was scam prescription drugs," I said. "Does what 
happened over at the synagogue look like the work of people whose primary 
interest is in partying?"
I threw an aggravated look at the two of them, but it was no good. They refused 
to get as upset about it as I was. This was partly because Claire was sitting in 
Michael's lap. I guess it's hard to get upset about murder, arson, and bias 
crimes going on in your own town while you're getting cozy with that special 
someone.
"Grits, then," Claire said, with a shrug.
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Well, think about it," Claire said. "We were all so worried when the 
Thompkinses moved in, that the Grits were going to try something. You know, burn 
a cross on their lawn, or whatever. Maybe the Grits did it. Killed Nate."
Michael brightened. "Hey," he said. "Yeah. And Grits hate Jews, too."
"Oh, my God." I stared at them. "Would you two stop? Grits couldn't have done 
any of this."
"Why not?" Claire asked. "When we had to readMalcolm X in World Civ, a lot of 
the Grits wouldn't do it, because they said they wouldn't read a book written by 
a black person. Only they didn't say black," she added, meaningfully.
"And I heard a Grit," Michael said, "at the grocery store the other day, going 
on about how the Holocaust never happened, and was all made up by the Jews."
"Would you two cut it out?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Not all 
Grits are like that."
"She just says that," Michael said confidently to Claire, "because she's dating 
one."
Claire looked at me with bright-eyed interest. "Youare ? Oh, my God, Jess! 
That's so politically correct of you. But does he talk about NASCAR racing all 
the time? Because that would really bore me after a while."
I tried to give Michael the same kind of evil death glare Great-aunt Rose had 
down so perfect.
"Don't try to blame all this on the Grits," I said. "The Grits have been around 
a long time, and so has the synagogue, and we never had a problem like this 
before."
Michael looked thoughtful. "Well," he said. "That's true enough."
"Grits are, for the most part, hard-working people," I said, "who haven't had 
the same advantages as us. It's wrong to blame them for every bad thing that 
happens in this town just because they happen to have less money than we do."
Claire went, "Well, there's only one explanation, then. It has to be Nate's 
gang."
I rolled my eyes. I couldn't believe we were back to square one all over again.
Fortunately at that moment footsteps sounded on the stairs. We turned to see 
Douglas, covered from head to toe in protective outerwear, but looking chilled 
to the bone nonetheless, come staggering into the hallway. His face, the only 
part of him that wasn't covered, was flushed. There were snowflakes in his 
eyelashes.
"Where haveyou been?" I demanded.
"Nowhere," Douglas said, with deceptive innocence, as he reached up to pull off 
his knit ski cap. His hair, beneath the cap, was sweaty looking, and stuck up at 
weird angles. He looked like a demented snowplow driver.
"What?" Michael said. "Did Dad corner you about the driveway?"
"Uh, yeah," Douglas said, ducking into his room. "Yeah, that's where I was."
He shut the door, so we were all looking at theDO NOT DISTURB sign he'd pinned 
up there.
Mike glanced at me. "Do we start worrying about him now," he wanted to know, "or 
later?"
The phone rang. I didn't rush to pick it up, or anything, since no one but Ruth 
ever calls me. And I knew Ruth wasn't home. She and her family had gone over to 
their rabbi's house, to try to console him over the loss of the Torah, which 
turned out to be a really bad thing. Like someone coming in and burning your 
Bible, only worse, because Torahs are harder to replace.
So you can imagine my surprise when my mom called up the stairs, "Jess, it's for 
you. Your friend Joanne."
Which would have been fine, of course. Except that I have no friend named 
Joanne.
"Hello?" I said curiously, after picking up the extension in Mike's room.
"Mastriani." It was Rob. Of course it was Rob. Who else would call me, 
pretending to be someone named Joanne?
"Oh," I said, watching with a fair amount of disgust as Mikey and Claire started 
kissing. Right there in front of me. Granted, it was Mike's room, and I guess he 
could do what he wanted to in it, but excuse me, ew. "Hey."
"Listen. About tonight," Rob said, in his deep voice. I wondered how he'd 
managed to fool my mom into thinking he was someone named Joanne. Had he spoken 
in falsetto? Or had he had his mom ask for me? Surely not. I mean, then he'd 
have had to admit to his mom that I hadn't told my parents about him. And that 
was something I was pretty sure Rob wasn't going to admit to anybody.
"You still want to do something?" Rob asked.
I prickled immediately. "What do you mean, do I still want to do something? Of 
course I still want to do something. We're going out, right? I mean, aren't we?"
Mikey and Claire, distracted by my tone of voice, which had suddenly gotten a 
little shrill, stopped kissing, and looked at me.
"Is that the Grit?" Claire mouthed, excitedly. I turned my back on them.
"Well," Rob said. "I don't know. I mean, yesterday at the mall, you seemed to 
wig out a little."
"I did not wig out," I said, appalled. "That was not wigging out. That was just 
Ö I mean, come on. That was weird. I mean, your mom, my mom. Whatever."
"Right," Rob said. But he didn't sound very convinced. "Whatever."
"But of course I still want to go out tonight," I said. I was clutching the 
phone very tightly, so tightly my knuckles were white. "I mean, if you want to. 
Go to dinner. Or a movie." Or to your uncle's Christmas Eve wedding. Whichever. 
Or both, actually.
"Well," Rob said, stretching that single syllable out unbelievably far. I hung 
onto the receiver in breathless anticipation. This was, I knew, ridiculous. Ruth 
would have killed me for it, if she'd known. Ruth has very firm rules about 
boys, and one of the rules is that you should never, ever chase them. Let the 
boys come to you.
And even though Ruth isn't what you'd call your stereotypical babe, the whole 
rules thing seemed to work pretty well for her.
But then again, as far as I know, Ruth isn't going out with a high school 
graduate who happens to have a criminal record.
Before Rob could say another word, however, the call waiting went off, as it 
usually did, right when I least wanted it to. I said to Rob, "Hold on. I've got 
another call." I tried to make it sound like this other call might conceivably 
be from one of the many other boys I knew who were just dying to take me out, 
but I don't know if I did a very convincing job. Especially since the only other 
boy I happen to know who wanted to take me out was Skip from next door, but 
Saturday nights he's always busy grand-wizarding the neighborhood Dungeons and 
Dragons game, so it probably wasn't him.
So, not surprisingly, when I pressed the receiver, the voice I heard on the 
other line was not Skip's. But I was far from expecting to hear from the person 
to whom it belonged.
"Jessica," Dr. Cyrus Krantz said. He sounded agitated. "We've got a problem."
You think you've got problems? I wanted to say. Igot a guy on the other line who 
apparently isn't aware that I am the best thing that ever happened to him .
Instead, I said, "Oh?" like I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. Even 
though I had a pretty good idea. He was calling about Nate Thompkins and the 
synagogue.
Only it turned out he wasn't. He was calling about something I'd almost managed 
to forget about Ö almost, because it was so horrible, I doubted I'd ever fully 
be able to forget it.
"Seth Blumenthal," he said, heavily. "We missed him, Jessica."
I felt something inside my head explode. The next thing I knew, I was screaming 
into the phone like a maniac.
"What do you mean, you missed him?" I shouted.
It was only when I saw the expressions on Mike's and Claire's faces that I 
realized what I'd just done.
Outed myself. Officially. To the head of the psychic network of the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation.
I felt all the blood run out of my face. Could my day, I wondered, possibly get 
worse?
"The officers who were dispatched to the scene," Dr. Krantz was saying, in my 
ear, "were unprepared for the amount of resistance they received from theó"
"Resistance?" I blurted, once again forgetting, in my indignation, that the call 
I'd made concerning Seth Blumenthal was supposed to have been anonymous. "What 
are you talking about, resistance? All they had to do was go in and get the kid 
and come out again. How hard is that?"
"Jessica." Dr. Krantz sounded strange. "They were fired upon."
"Well, of course they were," I practically shouted. "Because the people who took 
Seth Blumenthal against his will are criminals, Dr. Krantz. That's who tends to 
kidnap kids. Criminals. And that's what criminals do when the police show up. 
They try to evade capture."
"You failed to mention," Dr. Krantz said, "that Seth was being held against his 
will when you spoke to the nine-eleven operator, Jessica. You failed to 
mentionó"
"That he'd been tied up and gagged and shut up in the linen closet of a 
double-wide? I guess I did fail to mention that, didn't I?" I could feel tears 
welling up beneath my eyelids. Crying. I wascrying . "Maybe because I had to 
keep that call short, in the event it was traced. Something I wouldn't have to 
do, if you people would leave me and my family alone."
"One of the officers," Cyrus Krantz said, completely ignoring my barb, "was 
critically injured in the exchange of gunfire." I realized then why it was his 
voice sounded strange. He was frustrated. I had never heard Cyrus Krantz sound 
frustrated before. I was surprised. I have to admit, I thought of him as one of 
those Energizer bunnies. You know, that he just kept going, and going. . . .
"The perpetrators got away," Dr. Krantz went on. "With Seth."
"Shit!" I yelled. Claire, on Michael's lap, opened her eyes very wide, but I 
didn't care. "Can't you people do anything right?"
"It's a little difficult, Jessica," Dr. Krantz said, "when you insist upon 
playing these childish games with us, claiming you no longer have your psychic 
powers."
"Don't you go blaming me," I yelled into the phone, "for your incompetence!"
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Calm down."
"I can't calm down," I shouted. "Not when that kid's still out there. Not whenó"
My voice caught. Because, of course, it was all coming back. The fear and terror 
I'd felt in my dreamómy dream about Seth.
Only it hadn't been a dream. Well, to me it had. But it was Seth's reality. A 
reality that had gone spinning out of control the minute he'd been snatched off 
his bike in the synagogue parking lot the day before. Who knew what all he'd 
endured since that moment? All I could seeóall I could feelówas what Seth was 
seeing and experiencing at the exact moment my mind, expansive in sleep, reached 
out to him.
And that was the cold confinement of the closet he'd been locked into. The 
throbbing pain of the ropes cutting into his wrists, cruelly tied behind his 
back. The rough gag biting into the corners of his mouth. The muffled but still 
terrifying sounds he could hear outside the closet door.
That was Seth Blumenthal's reality. And my nightmare.
The fact that that nightmare was ongoing was almost more than I could bear.
"Jessica," Cyrus Krantz was saying. "I know how you feel about me, and about my 
organization. But I swear to you, if you would just give us another chanceóone 
more chance for us to work togetheróyou won't regret it. We need to find this 
boy, Jessica, and soon. He's in danger. Real danger. The people who have him are 
animals. Anyone who would torture a twelve-year-oldó"
"What?" I'd been pacing up and down the hallway with the cordless phone gripped 
in my hand. Now I froze. "What do you mean, torture?"
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Haven't you realized by now that all of thisóNate, 
the synagogue, Sethóis connected?"
"Connected?" Something was buzzing inside my head. "To Seth? Connected how?"
"How do you think the people who set that fire at the synagogue knew where to 
find the scrolls?" Dr. Krantz asked. "Think about it, Jessica. Who would know 
exactly where those scrolls were kept? Someone who would have been reading from 
them on his birthday today."
Seth. Seth Blumenthal.
I couldn't believe it.
He didn't wait for the information to digest. Dr. Krantz said, quickly, "That's 
why I called. We desperately need your help, Jessica. Listen to meó"
"No, you listen to me," I said. "I tried to do things your way, and all it did 
was get a cop shot. We're going to do thingsmy way now."
Dr. Krantz sounded more frustrated than ever. In fact, now he sounded kind of 
pissed off. "Oh, yes? And how, precisely, are we going to do that?"
But since of course I had no idea, I couldn't answer his question. Instead, I 
pressed the Talk button, ending the call.
"Whoa," Mike said, looking at me from over Claire's shoulder. She sat, seemingly 
frozen, in his lap. "Are you Ö are you okay?"
"No," I said. I lifted a hand to my hair, then noticed that my fingers were 
shaking. Slowly, I began to slide down the wall, until I was sitting in the 
middle of the hallway. "No, I'm not all right."
That's when I heard a voice calling from the phone, "Mastriani? Mastriani!"
Like someone in a dream, I brought the receiver to my ear. "Hello?"
"Mastriani, it's me." Rob's voice sounded irritated. "Remember? You put me on 
hold."
"Rob." I had completely forgotten about him. "Rob. Yeah. Sorry. Look, I can't go 
out tonight. Something came up."
"Something came up," he repeated, slowly.
"Yes," I said. I felt as if I were underwater. "I'm really sorry. It's Seth. The 
cops couldn't get to him, and there was a shootout, and now one of them is in 
critical condition, and those people still have Seth, and I've got to find him 
before they kill him, too."
"Whoa," Rob said. "Slow down. Who's Seth?"
"Dr. Krantz thinks there's a connection," I said. In some distant part of my 
brain, I realized I must have sounded to Rob like I was babbling. Maybe Iwas 
babbling. I just couldn't believe it. A cop. A cop had been shot. And Seth was 
still out there. Seth was still in danger. "A connection between Nate, Seth, and 
the synagogue."
"Wait a minute," Rob said. "Dr. Krantz? When did you talk to Krantz? Was that 
him just now?"
"I'm sorry, Rob," I said. I could see Mickey and Claire looking at me with 
growing concern. I knew I'd have to pull myself together soon, or Mike would go 
get my mother. "Look, I've got to goó"
But Rob, as usual, was already taking charge of the situation.
"What's the connection?" Rob wanted to know. "What does Krantz say?"
All I wanted to do was hang up the phone, go upstairs to my room, and climb into 
bed. Yes, that was it. That was what I needed to do. Go back to sleep, and wake 
up again tomorrow, so that all of this would just seem like a bad dream.
"Mastriani!" Rob yelled in my ear. "What's the connection?"
"It's the symbol, okay?" I couldn't believe he was yelling at me. I mean, I 
wasn't the one who'd shot a cop, or anything. "The one that was on Nate's chest. 
It's the same thing that was spray-painted onto the headstones at the 
synagogue."
"What does it look like?" Rob wanted to know. "This symbol?"
Look, Rob is my soul mate and all, but that doesn't mean that there aren't times 
when I don't feel like hauling off and decking him. Now was one of those times.
"Jeez, Rob," I said. "You were there in that cornfield with me, remember?" This 
caused a pointed look to be exchanged between my brother and his girlfriend, but 
I ignored them. "Didn't you notice what Nate had on his chest?"
Rob's voice was strangely quiet. "No, not really," he said. "I didn't Ö I didn't 
actually look. That kind of thing Ö well, I don't really do too well, you know, 
at the sight of Ö"
Blood. He didn't say it, but then, he didn't have to. All my annoyance with him 
dissipated. Just like that.
Well, love will do that to you.
"It was this squiggly line," I explained. "With an arrow coming out of one end."
"An arrow," Rob echoed.
"Yeah," I said. "An arrow."
"An M? The squiggly line. Was it shaped like a M, only on its side?"
"I don't know," I said. "I guess so. Look, Rob, I don't feel so good. I gotta 
goó"
Then Rob said a strange thing. Something that got my attention right away, even 
though I was feeling so lousy, like I was going to pass out, practically.
He said, "It's not an arrow."
I had been about to press the Talk button and hang up the phone. When he said 
that, however, I stopped myself. "What do you mean, it's not an arrow?"
"Jess," he said. The fact that he used my first name made me realize the 
situation was far from normal. "I think I might know who these people are. The 
people who are doing this stuff."
I didn't even hesitate. It was like all of a sudden, the blood that had seemed 
frozen in my veins was flowing again.
"I'll meet you at the Stop and Shop," I said. "Come pick me up."
"Mastrianió"
"Just be there," I said, and hung up. Then I threw down the phone, got up, and 
started for the stairs.
"Jess, wait," Michael called. "Where are you going?"
"Out," I called back. "Tell Mom I'll be home soon."
And then, after struggling into my hat and coat, I was tearing off down the 
street. I couldn't help noticing as I jogged that while our own driveway was 
still full of snow, the Thompkinses' driveway had been shoveled so clean, you 
could practically have played basketball on it. All the snow that had been 
shoveled away was piled along the curb, as neatly as if a plow had pushed it 
there.
But it hadn't been the work of a plow. Oh, no. It was the work of a person. 
Namely, my brother Douglas.
Love. It makes people do the craziest things.
C H A P T E R
10
Chickóowner and proprietor of Chick's Bar and Motorcycle Clubólooked down at the 
drawing I had made and went, "Oh, sure. The True Americans."
I looked at the squiggle. It was kind of hard to see in the dark gloom of the 
bar.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean Ö you really know what this is?"
"Oh, yeah." Chick was eating a meatball sandwich he'd made for himself back in 
the kitchen. He'd offered one to each of us, as well, but we'd declined the 
invitation. Our loss, Chick had said.
Now a large piece of meatball escaped from between the buns Chick clutched in 
one of his enormous hands, and it dropped down onto the drawing I'd made. Chick 
brushed it away with a set of hairy knuckles.
"Yeah," he said, squinting down at the drawing in the blue-and-red neon light 
from the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign behind the bar. "Yeah, that's it, all right. 
They all got it tattooed right here." He indicated the webbing between his thumb 
and index finger. "Only you got it sideways, or something."
He turned the drawing so that instead of looking like it looked like .
"There," Chick said. There was sauce in his goatee, but he didn't seem to know 
it Ö or care, anyway. "Yeah. That's how it's supposed to look. See? Like a 
snake?"
"Don't tread on me," Rob said.
"Don't what?" I asked.
It was weird to be sitting in a bar with Rob. Well, it would have been weird to 
have been sitting in a bar with anyone, seeing as how I am only sixteen and not 
actually allowed in bars. But it was particularly weird to be in this bar, and 
with Rob. It was the same bar Rob had taken me to that first time he'd given me 
a ride home from detention, nearly a year earlier, back when he hadn't realized 
I was jailbait. We hadn't imbibed or anythingójust burgers and Cokesóbut it had 
been one of the best nights of my entire life.
That was because I had always wanted to go to Chick's, a biker bar I had been 
passing every year since I was a little kid, whenever I went with my dad to the 
dump to get rid of our Christmas tree. Far outside of the city limits, Chick's 
held mystery for a Townie like meóthough Ruth, and most of the rest of the other 
people I knew, called it a Grit bar, filled as it was with bikers and truckers.
That night, howeveróeven though it was a Saturdayóthe place was pretty much 
devoid of customers. That was on account of all the snow. It was no joke, trying 
to ride a motorcycle through a foot and a half of fresh powder. Rob thankfully 
hadn't even tried it, and had come to get me instead in his mother's pickup.
But he had been one of the few to brave the mostly unplowed back countryroads. 
With the exception of Rob and me, Chick's was empty, of both clientele and 
employees. Neither the bartender nor the fry cook had made it in. Chick hadn't 
been too happy about having to make his own sandwich. But mostly, if you ask me, 
because he was so huge, he didn't fit too easily in the small galley kitchen out 
back.
"Don't tread on me," Rob repeated, for my benefit. "Remember? That was printed 
on one of the first American flags, along with a coiled snake." He held up my 
drawing, but tilted it the way Chick had. "That thing on the end isn't an arrow. 
It's the snake's head. See?"
All I saw was still just a squiggly line with an arrow coming out of it. But I 
went, "Oh, yeah," so I wouldn't seem too stupid.
"So, these True Americans," I said. "What are they? A motorcycle gang, like the 
Hell's Angels, or something?"
"Hell, no!" Chick exploded, spraying bits of meatball and bread around. "Ain't a 
one of 'em could ride his way out of a paper bag!"
"They're a militia group, Mastriani," Rob explained, showing a bit more patience 
than his friend and mentor, Chick. "Run by a guy who grew up around here Ö Jim 
Henderson."
"Oh," I said. I was trying to appear worldly and sophisticated and all, since I 
was in a bar. But it was kind of hard. Especially when I didn't understand half 
of what anybody was saying. Finally, I gave up.
"Okay," I said, resting my elbows on the sticky, heavily graffitied bar. "What's 
a militia group?"
Chick rolled his surprisingly pretty blue eyes. They were hard to notice, being 
mostly hidden from view by a pair of straggly gray eyebrows.
"You know," he said. "One of those survivalist outfits, live way out in the 
backwoods. Won't pay their taxes, but that don't seem to stop 'em from feeling 
like they got a right to steal all the water and electricity they can."
"Why won't they pay their taxes?" I asked.
"Because Jim Henderson doesn't approve of the way the government spends his 
hard-earned money," Rob said. "He doesn't want his taxes going to things like 
education and welfare Ö unless the right people are the ones receiving the 
education and welfare."
"The right people?" I looked from Rob to Chick questioningly. "And who are the 
right people?"
Chick shrugged his broad, leather-jacketed shoulders. "You know. Your basic 
blond, blue-eyed, Aryan types."
"But Ö" I fingered the smooth letters of a woman's nameóBETTYóthat had been 
carved into the bar beneath my arms. "But the true Americans are the Native 
Americans, right? I mean, they aren't blond."
"It ain't no use," Chick said, with his mouth full, "arguin' semantics with Jim 
Henderson. To him, the only true Americans're the ones that climbed down offa 
theMayflower Ö white Christians. And you ain't gonna tell 'im differently. Not 
if you don't want a twelve gauge up your hooha."
I raised my eyebrows at this. I wasn't sure what ahooha was. I was pretty sure I 
didn'twant to know.
"Oh," I said. "So they killed Nate Ö"
"Ö because he was black," Rob finished for me.
"And they burned down the synagogue Ö"
"Ö because it's not Christian," Rob said.
"So the only true Americans, according to Jim Henderson," I said, "are people 
who are exactly like Ö Jim Henderson."
Chick finished up his last bite of meatball sandwich. "Give the girl a prize," 
he said, with a grin, revealing large chunks of meat and bread trapped between 
his teeth.
I slapped the bar so hard with the flat of my hand, it stung.
"I don't believe this," I yelled, while both Rob and Chick looked at me in 
astonishment. "Are you saying that all this time, there's been this freaky hate 
group running around town, and nobody's bothered to do anything about it?"
Rob regarded me calmly. "And what should someone have done, Mastriani?" he 
asked.
"Arrested them, already!" I yelled.
"Can't arrest a man on account of his beliefs," Chick reminded me. "A man's 
entitled to believe whatever he wants, no matter how back-ass-ward it might be."
"But he still has to pay his taxes," I pointed out.
"True enough," Chick said. "Only ol' Jim never had two nickels to rub together, 
so I doubt the county ever thought it'd be worth its while to go after him for 
tax evasion."
"How about," I said, coldly, "kidnapping and murder? The county might think 
those worth its while."
"Imagine so," Chick said, looking thoughtful. "Don't know what ol' Jim must be 
thinking. Isn't like 'im, really. I always thought Jimmy was, you know, all blow 
and no go."
"Perhaps the arrival," Rob said, "of the Thompkinses, the first African-American 
family to come to town, offended Mr. Henderson. Aroused in him a feeling of 
righteous indignation."
Chick stared at Rob, clearly impressed. "Ooh," he said. "Righteous indignation. 
I'm going to remember that one."
"Right," I said, slipping off my barstool. "Well, that's it, then. Let's go."
Both Chick and Rob blinked at me.
"Go?" Chick echoed. "Where?"
I couldn't believe he even had to ask. "To Jim Henderson's place," I said. "To 
get Seth Blumenthal."
Chick had been swallowing a sip of beer as I said this. Well, okay, not a sip, 
exactly. Guys like Chick don't sip, they guzzle.
In any case, when I said this, he let loose what had been in his mouth in a 
plume that hit Rob, me, and the jukebox.
"Oh, man," Rob said, reaching for some cocktail napkins Chick kept in a pile 
behind the bar.
"Yeah, Mr. Chick," I said. "Say it, don't spray it."
"Nobody," Chick said, ignoring us, "is going to Jim Henderson's place. Got it? 
Nobody."
I couldn't believe it.
"Why not?" I demanded. "I mean, we know they did it, right? It's not like they 
tried to hide it, or anything. They practically hung up a big sign that says 'We 
Did It.' So let's go over there and make 'em give Seth back."
Chick looked at me for a moment. Then he threw back his head and laughed. A lot.
"Give the kid back," he chortled. "Wheredja get this one, Wilkins? She's a 
riot."
Rob wasn't laughing. He looked at me sadly.
"What?" I said. "What's so funny?"
"We can't go to Jim Henderson's, Mastriani," Rob said.
I blinked at him. "Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, Henderson shoots at the water meter-men the county sends 
out," Rob said. "You think he's not going to try to take us out?"
"Um," I said. "Hello? That's why we sneak in."
"Little lady," Chick said, stubbing a finger thickly encrusted with motorcycle 
grease at me. I didn't mind him calling me little lady because, well, there 
wasn't much I could do about it, seeing as how he was about three times as big 
as me. Mr. Goodhart would have been proud of the progress I was making. Normally 
the size of my opponent was just about the last thing I considered before 
tackling someone. "You don't know squat. Didn't I hear you say these folks 
already shot up a cop earlier today, on account of not wanting to give up some 
kid they got hold of?"
"Yes," I said. "But the officers involved weren't prepared for what they were up 
against. We'll be ready."
"Mastriani," Rob said, shaking his head. "I get where you're coming from. I 
really do. But we aren't talking the Flintstones here. These guys have a pretty 
sophisticated setup."
"Yeah," Chick said, after letting out a long, aromatic belch. "You're talking 
some major security precautions. They got the barbed wire, guard dogs, armed 
sentriesó"
"What?" I was so mad, I felt like kicking something. "Are youkidding me? These 
guys have all that? And the cops justlet them?"
"No law against fences and guard dogs," Chick said, with a shrug. "And a man's 
allowed to carry a rifle on his own propertyó"
"But he's not allowed to shoot cops," I pointed out. "And if what you're saying 
about these True Americans is accurate, then somebody in that group did just 
that, earlier today, over at the trailer park by Mr. Shaky's. They got awayówith 
a twelve-year-old hostage. I'm willing to bet they're holed up now with this Jim 
Henderson guy. And if we don't do something, and soon, that kid is going to end 
up in a cornfield, same as Nate Thompkins."
Rob and Chick exchanged glances. And in those glances, despite the darkness of 
the bar, I was able to catch a glimpse of something I didn't like. Something I 
didn't like at all.
And that was hopelessness.
"Look," I said, my hands going to my hips. "I don't care how secure their 
fortress is. Seth Blumenthal is in there, and it's up to us to get him out."
Chick shook his head. For the first time, he looked serious Ö serious and sad.
"Little lady," he said. "Jimmy's crazy as they come, but one thing he ain't is 
stupid. There ain't gonna be a scrap of evidence to connect him with any of this 
stuff, except the fact that he's head of the group that claimed responsibility. 
Bustin' in thereówhich'd be damn near impossible, seeing as how you can't even 
approach Jim's place by road. It's so far back into the woods, ain't no way the 
plows can get to itóto rescue some kid is just plain stupid. Ten to one," Chick 
said, "that boy is long dead."
"No," I said, quietly. "He isn't dead, actually."
Chick looked startled. "Now how in hell," he wanted to know, "could you know 
that?"
Rob lifted his forehead from his hands, into which he'd sunk it earlier.
"Because," he answered, bleakly. "She's Lightning Girl."
Chick studied me appraisingly in the neon glow. I'm sure my face, like his, must 
have been an unflattering shade of purple. I probably resembled Violet from that 
Willy Wonka movie. You know, after she ate the gum.
But Chick must have seen something there that he liked, since he didn't end the 
conversation then and there.
"You think we should go busting in there," he said, slowly, "and get that kid 
out?"
"Busting," I said, "is not the word I would use. I think we could probably come 
up with a more subtle form of entry. But yes. Yes, I do."
"Wait." Rob shook his head. "Wait just a minute here. Mastriani, this is insane. 
We can't get involved in this. This is a job for the copsó"
"ówho don't know what they're up against," I said. "Forget it, Rob. One cop 
already got shot on account of me. I'm not going to let anyone else get hurt, if 
I can help it."
"Anyone else," Rob burst out. "What about yourself? Have you ever stopped to 
think these guys might have a bullet with your name on it next?"
"Rob." I couldn't believe how myopic he was being. "Jim Henderson isn't going to 
shoot me."
Rob looked shocked. "Why not?"
"Because I'm a girl, of course."
Rob said a very bad word in response to this. Then he pushed away from the bar 
and went stalking over to the jukebox Ö which he punched. Not hard enough to 
break it, but hard enough so that Chick looked up and went, "Hey!"
Rob didn't apologize though. Instead, he said, looking at Chick with appeal in 
his gray eyes, "Can you help me out here? Can you please explain to my 
girlfriend that she must be suffering from a chemical imbalance if she thinks 
I'm letting her anywhere near Jim Henderson's place?"
Which was a horribly sexist thing to say, and which I knew I should have 
resented, but I couldn't, since he'd called me the G word. You know. 
Hisgirlfriend . It was the first time I'd ever heard him call me that. Within 
earshot of someone else, I mean.
Being his date at that Christmas Eve wedding didn't look so far out of the realm 
of possibility now.
But Chick, instead of doing as Rob had asked, and telling me to forget about 
busting in on the True Americans, stroked his goatee thoughtfully. "You know," 
he said. "It isn't the worst idea I ever heard."
Rob stared at him in horror.
"Hey," Chick said, defensively. "I ain't saying she should go in alone. But a 
kid's dead, Wilkins. And if I know Henderson, this other one hasn't got much 
time left."
I threw Rob a triumphant look, as if to say,See? I'm not crazy after all .
"And you might say," Chick went on, "this is a homegrown problem, Wilkins. I 
mean, Henderson's one of our own. Ain't it appropriate that we be the ones to 
mete out the justice? I can put in a few calls and have enough boys over here in 
five minutes, it'd put the National Guard to shame."
I raised my eyebrows, impressed by themete out the justice line.
Rob wasn't going for it, though. "Even if we did agree this was a good idea," he 
said, "which I am not doing, you said yourself it's inaccessible. There's nearly 
two feet of snow on the ground. How are we even going to get near the place?"
Chick did a surprising thing, then. He crooked a finger at us, then started 
walkingóthough, given his girth and height, lumbering was really more the word 
for itótoward the back door.
I followed him, with Rob reluctantly trailing behind me. Chick went down a short 
hallway that opened out into a sort of a ramshackle garage. Wind whistled 
through the haphazardly thrown up wooden slats that made up the walls.
Flicking on the single electric bulb that served as a light, Chick strode 
forward until he came to something covered with a tarp.
"Voil‡," he said, in what I assumed was a purposefully bad European accent.
Then he flung back the tarp to reveal two brand-new snowmobiles.
C H A P T E R
11
Hey, I'll admit it. I wanted on that snowmobile. I wanted on it, bad.
Can you blame me? I'd never been on one before.
And for someone who likes going fast, well, what's more thrilling than going 
fast over snow? Oh, sure, I'd been skiing before, over at the dinky slopes of 
Paoli Peaks. It had been fun and all. For like an hour. I mean, let's face it, 
Indiana is not exactly known for its mountainous terrain, so the Peaks got old 
kind of fast for any thrill seeker worthy of the name.
But nothing could compare to the sensation of zipping over all that thickly 
packed white stuff with my arms wrapped tightly around the waist of my hot, if 
disapproving, boyfriend.
Oh, it was good. It was real good.
But I have to admit, the part after we'd pulled up in front of the True 
Americans' barbed-wire fence, and just sat there with the engine switched off, 
gazing at the lights of Jim Henderson's house, glimmering through the trees?
Yeah, that part wasn't so fun.
That was on account of the fact that deep in the backwoods of Indiana, on a late 
November evening, it is very, very cold. Bone-chillingly cold. Mind-numbingly 
cold. Or at least toe and finger-numbingly cold.
You would think that Rob and I could have thought up something to do, you know, 
to pass the timeóas well as keep warmówhile we waited for Chick to catch up to 
us with the backup he'd promised. But given the fact that Rob was still so mad 
we were here at all, there hadn't been much, you know, ofthat going on. In fact, 
none at all.
"So what are we waiting for, again?" I asked.
"Reinforcements," was Rob's terse reply.
"Yeah," I said. "I get that part. But can't we just, you know, go and wait 
inside?"
"And what are we going to do," Rob said, "if we find Seth?"
"Bust on out of there," I said.
"Using what as a weapon?"
I thought a minute. "Our rapier wit?"
"Like I said."
Well. So much for that.
Rob didn't seem as cold as I was. Why is that? How come boys never get as cold 
as girls do? And also, what's with the peeing thing? Like how come I totally had 
to pee, and he didn't? He'd had as many Cokes back at Chick's as I did.
And even if he had had to pee, it wouldn't have been any big deal for him. I 
mean, he could have just gone over to any old tree and done it.
But for me, it would have been like this major production. And a lot more of me 
would have been exposed to the forces of nature. Which, with it being like ten 
below, or something, were pretty harsh.
Whatever. Life is just unfair. That's all I have to say.
Not that I had it so bad, I guess. I mean, comparatively, I guess I've always 
had it pretty good. I mean, my parents are still together, and seem pretty happy 
to stay that way Ö except, you know, when one of us kids is causing them 
trouble, like hearing voices that aren't there, or dropping out of Harvard, or 
being struck by lightning and getting psychic powers and then causing the family 
restaurant to be burned down.
You know. The usual parental stresses.
At least we were pretty well off. I mean, no one was buying me my own ponyóor 
Harleyóbut we weren't exactly on welfare, either. In all, the Mastriani family 
had it pretty good.
As opposed to, just for an example, the Wilkins family. I mean, Rob had been 
working in his uncle's garage pretty much full time since he was like fourteen 
or something, just to help his mom make ends meet. He hadn't seen his dad since 
he was a little kid. He didn't even know where his dad was.
But I did. I knew where Rob's dad was.
Not that I was very grateful for the information. But there it was, embedded in 
my brain just like Seth Blumenthal's current location and status.
The question was, should I tell Rob, or not?
Would I want to know? I mean, if my dad had disappeared when I was a little kid. 
Had just walked out on Mom and Mike and Douglas and me. Would I want to know 
where he was now? Would I even care?
Yeah. Probably. If only so I could go pound his face in.
But would Rob want to know?
There was only one way, really, to find out. But I really, really didn't want to 
do it. Just come out and ask him if he wanted to know, I mean. Because I didn't 
want him to know I'd been snooping. I hadn't, really. His mom had needed that 
apron from her room. Was it my fault that while I'd been in there, I'd happened 
to see a picture of Rob's dad? And that afterward, as always tended to happen 
when I saw photos of missing people, I dreamed about his dad, and exactly where 
he was now? Was it my fault that, thanks to that stupid lightning, that I can't 
see a pictureóor sometimes, even smell the sweater or pillowóof a missing person 
without getting a mental picture of their exact location?
"Listen," I said, pressing myself a little harder against his back. It was 
damned cold on the back of that snowmobile. "Rob, Ió"
"Mastriani," Rob said, sounding tired. "Not now, okay?"
"What?" I asked, defensively. "I was just going toó"
"I am not going to tell you," Rob said.
"Tell me what?"
"What I'm on probation for. Okay? You can forget it. Because you're never 
getting it out of me. You can drag me out to the middle of nowhere," he said, 
"on some lunatic mission to stop a murdering white supremacist. You can make me 
sit for hours in sub-zero temperatures until my fingers feel like they are going 
to fall off. You can even tell me that you love me. But I am not going to tell 
you why I got arrested."
I digested this. While this was not, of course, the subject I'd meant to bring 
up, it was nonetheless a very interesting one. Perhaps more interesting, even, 
than the current location of Rob's father. To me, anyway.
"I didn't tell you that I love you," I said, after some thought, "because I 
wanted you to tell me what you're on probation for. Although I do want to know. 
I told you that I love you becauseó"
Rob swung around on the back of the snowmobile and threw a gloved hand over my 
mouth. "Don't," he said. His light-colored eyes were easy to distinguish in the 
moonlight. Because yeah, there was a moon. A pretty full one, too, hanging low 
in the cold, cloudless sky. Any other time, it might have been romantic. If, you 
know, it hadn't been like twenty below, and I hadn't had to pee, and my 
boyfriend had actually sort of liked me.
"Don't start on that again," Rob said, keeping his hand over my mouth. "Remember 
what happened last time."
"I liked what happened last time," I said, from behind his fingers.
"Yeah," Rob said. "Well, so did I. Too much, okay? So just keep your I love yous 
to yourself, all right, Mastriani?"
Sure. Like that was going to happen, after a girl hears a thing like that.
"Rob," I said, tightening my arms around his waist. "Ió"
But I never got to finish. That was on account of a figure moving toward us 
through the trees. We heard the snow crunching beneath his feet.
Rob said a bad word and turned on the flashlight Chick had loaned us.
"Who's there?" he hissed, and shined the flashlight full on into the face of 
none other than Cyrus Krantz.
Now it was my turn to say a bad word.
"Shhh," Dr. Krantz said. "Jessica, please!"
"Well, whatever," I said, disgustedly. "What are you doing here?"
I couldn't believe his getup. Dr. Krantz's, I mean. He looked like somebody out 
ofIcestation Zebra . He had the full-on arctic gear, complete with puffy 
camouflage ski pants. I had barely recognized him with all the fur trim on his 
hood.
"I followed you, of course," Dr. Krantz replied. "Is this where they're holding 
Seth, Jessica?"
"Would you get out of here?" I couldn't tell which was making me madder, the 
fact that he was putting our plan to rescue Seth in jeopardy, or that he'd 
interrupted Rob and me just when things had been starting to get interesting. 
"You're going to ruin everything. How did you get out here, anyway?" If he said 
snowmobile, I was going to seriously reconsider my refusal to work for him. Any 
institution that willingly supplied its employees with snowmobiles was one I 
could see myself getting behind.
"Never mind about that," Dr. Krantz said. "Really, Jessica, this is just too 
ridiculous. You shouldn't be here. You're going to get hurt."
"I'mgoing to get hurt?" I laughed bitterlyóthough quietly. "Sorry, Doc, but I 
think you got it backward. So far the only person who's gotten hurt is one of 
yours."
"And Nate Thompkins," Dr. Krantz reminded me softly. "Don't forget him."
As if I could. As if he wasn't half the reason I was out there, freezing myhooha 
off. I hadn't forgotten my promise to myself to try to help Tasha, if I could. 
And the best way to help her, I couldn't help thinking, was to bring her 
brother's murderers to justice.
And of course to keep them from hurting anybody else. Such as Seth Blumenthal.
"Nobody's forgetting about Nate," I whispered. "We're just going to take care of 
this in our own way, all right? Now get out of here, before you mess everything 
up."
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Rob. I really must object. If Seth Blumenthal is 
being harbored on this property, you are under an obligation to report it, then 
stand back and allow the appropriate law enforcement agents to do theiró"
"Oh, bite me," I said.
I couldn't be sure, given the way the moonlight, reflecting off all the snow, 
made it hard to see past the thick lenses of his glasses, but I thought Dr. 
Krantz blinked a few times.
"I b-beg your pardon," he stammered.
"You heard me," I said. "You and the appropriate law enforcement agents don't 
have the slightest clue what you're dealing with here, okay?"
"Oh." Now Dr. Krantz sounded sarcastic, which was sort of amusing, considering 
the fact that he was such a geek. "And I suppose you do."
"Better than you," I said. "At least we've got a chance at infiltrating them 
from the inside, instead of going in there blasting away, and possibly getting 
Seth killed in the crossfire."
"Infiltration?" Dr. Krantz sounded appalled. "What are you talking about? You 
can't possibly think you have a better chance ató"
"Oh, yeah?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "What number comes after nine?"
He looked at me like I was crazy. "What? What does that have to do withó"
"Just answer the question, Dr. Krantz," I said. "What number comes after nine?"
"Why, ten, of course."
"Wrong," I said. "What are Coke cans made out of?"
"Aluminum, of course. Jessica, Ió"
"Wrong again," I said. "The answer to both questions, Dr. Krantz, is tin. I've 
just administered a Grit test, and you failed miserably. There is no way you are 
going to be able to pass for a local. Now get out of here, before you ruin it 
for the rest of us."
"This," Dr. Krantz said, looking scandalized, "is ridiculous. Rob, surely youó"
But Rob straightened on the back of the snowmobile, his head turned in the 
direction of the lights from Jim Henderson's house.
"Bogey," he said, "at twelve o'clock. Krantz, if you don't get the hell out of 
sight, you're gonna find yourself with a belly full of buckshot."
"W-what?" Dr. Krantz looked around nervously. "What are youó"
Rob was off the snowmobile and shoving Cyrus Krantz behind a tree before the 
good doctor knew what was happening. At the same time, I saw what Rob had seen, 
a light coming toward us through the thick trees on Jim Henderson's side of the 
barbed wire. As the light came closer, I saw that it came from one of those 
old-fashioned kerosene lanterns. The lantern was held by a big man in red-plaid 
hunting gear, a rifle in his other hand, and a dog big enough to pass for a 
small pony at his side.
The dog, when it noticed us, began hurtling through the snow in our direction. 
For a second or two, as it came careening toward us, its long tongue lolling and 
its eyes blazing, I thought it was one of those hell dogs. . . . You know, from 
thatHound of the Baskervilles they made us read in ninth grade?
But as it got closer, I realized it was just your run of the mill German 
shepherd. You know, the kind that clamp down on your throat and won't let go, 
even if you hit them over the head with a socket wrench.
Fortunately, just as this particular German shepherd was preparing to leap over 
the barbed wire between us and do just that, the guy with the rifle went, 
"Chigger! Down!" and the dog collapsed into the snow not two feet away from Rob 
and me, growling menacingly, with its gaze never wavering from us.
The man with the rifle put the lantern down, reached into his pocket, and pulled 
something out.Handgun , I thought, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I 
thought it might cause an avalanche. If there'd been any cliffs around, 
anyway.The rifle's too messy. He's going to put a bullet through each of our 
skulls and let Chigger eat our frozen carcasses .
Sometimes it really did seem like the whole world was conspiring against me ever 
seeing Rob in a tux.
"Hey," Rob said, keeping his hands in the air and his gaze on Chigger. "Hey, 
don't shoot. We don't mean any harm. We just want to talk to Jim."
But it turned out the thing Chigger's owner had taken out of his pocket wasn't a 
gun. It was a Walkie-Talkie.
"Blue Leader, this is Red Leader," Red Plaid Jacket said into the Walkie-Talkie. 
"We got intruders over by the south fence. Repeat. Intruders by the south 
fence."
"We aren't intruders," I said. Then, remembering what our cover story was 
supposed to beóexcept of course that we weren't supposed to have let ourselves 
get caught untilafter Chick and his friends were safely hidden in the bushes and 
trees around the compound, ready to bust us on out as soon as we successfully 
found SethóI quickly amended that claim. "I mean, weain't intruders. We want to 
join you. We want to be True Americans, too."
Static burst over Red Plaid Jacket's Walkie-Talkie. Apparently, someone was 
replying to his intruder warning. He must have been speaking in code, though, 
because I couldn't understand what he was saying.
"Copy that, Red Leader," the voice said. "Tag and transport. Repeat, tag and 
transport."
Red Plaid Jacket put his Walkie-Talkie away, then signaled for Rob and me to 
climb over the barbed wire. The way he signaled this was, he pointed the rifle 
at us, and went, "Git on over here."
Climbing over barbed wire is never a pleasant experience. But it is an even less 
pleasant experience when you are doing it under the watchful gaze of a massive 
German shepherd named Chigger. Rob went first, and didn't seem to snag anything 
too vital while climbing. He very politely held as much of the barbed wire down 
for me as he was able, so that I could arrive uninjured on the other side, as 
well. I didn't succeed as nimbly as he had, being about a foot shorter than he 
was, but all that really suffered was the inside seam of my jeans.
Once we were safely on the True Americans' side of the fence, Red Plaid Jacket 
went, "Git on, then," and signaled, again with the mouth of his rifle, that we 
should start walking toward the house.
Rob looked back at the snowmobile.
"What about our ride?" he asked. "Is it safe to leave it there?"
Red Plaid Jacket let out a harsh laugh. That wasn't all he let out, either. He 
also let out a stream of tobacco juice from between his cheek and gum. It 
landed, in a steaming brown puddle, in the snow.
"Safe from what?" he wanted to know. "The coons? Or the possums?"
This was a comforting response, as it indicated that Red Plaid was as unaware of 
the presence of Dr. Krantz, hidden behind the thick pines, as he was of the many 
patrons of Chick's who had answered the call to arms by the owner of their 
favorite carousing spot Ö or who at least I was hoping would answer that call. 
And show up soon.
"Move," Red Plaid said to Rob and me.
And so we moved.
C H A P T E R
12
It would be wrong to say I enjoyed our long walk toward Jim Henderson's house. I 
relished any time I got to spend in the presence of Rob Wilkins, as our 
meetings, now that he had graduated but I remained trapped behind in high school 
hell, had grown all too infrequent.
No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant 
to have a rifle pointed at one's back. While I didn't think Red Plaid Jacket 
would fire at us in cold blood, there was always the chance that he might trip 
over Chigger or a stump hidden in the snow, and accidentally pull the trigger.
And though this would solve my problem of how I was going to get Rob to invite 
me to a formal affair like his uncle's wedding (so I could impress him by now 
nice I look in a dress), it would not solve it in the right way. So it was with 
some trepidation that I made the long journey from the south fence to the heart 
of the True Americans' compound.
Once we got moving, though, I did start to feel a little less cold. Now that the 
blizzard had blown away, the sky was completely clear, and this far out from the 
lights of town, it was magically dusted with stars. I could even make out the 
Milky Way. It might almost have been romantic, a moonlit walk through the 
freshly fallen snow, the smell of wood smoke hanging tantalizingly in the air.
Except, of course, for the rifle. Oh, and the dangerous German shepherd slogging 
along beside us.
I am not afraid of dogs, and in general, they seem to like me. So during our 
walk, since we didn't dare talk to pass the time, I concentrated on trying to 
get Chigger to give up on the idea of tearing my throat out. I did this by 
thrusting my hand, whenever Red Plaid Jacket wasn't looking, and the dog came 
close enough, in front of Chigger's nose. Dogs operate by smell, and I figured 
if Chigger smelled that I really wasn't the lunchmeat type, he might hesitate 
about eating me.
Chigger, however, like most males I've encountered in my life, seemed remarkably 
uninterested in me. Maybe I should have taken Ruth's advice and invested in some 
perfume, instead of just splashing on some of Mike's Old English Leather now and 
then.
As we got closer to the buildings we were approaching, I have to admit, I wasn't 
too impressed. I mean, compared to Jim Henderson's place, David Koresh's 
compound over in Waco had looked like the freaking Taj Mahal. Henderson's entire 
operation seemed to consist of nothing more than a ranch-style house, a few 
trailers, and one rambling barn. Sure, the whole thing had that army barracks, 
ready-to-mobilize-at-any-minute kind of lack of permanency.
But hello, where was the bathroom? That was all I wanted to know.
To my dismay, Red Plaid Jacket, tailed by the ever faithful Chigger, led us not 
toward the ranch house, or either of the trailers, but directly to the barn. My 
chances of finding a working toilet were beginning to look dimmer than ever.
You can imagine my delight then when Red Plaid threw back the massive barn door 
to reveal what appeared to be the True Americans' command center, or bunker, if 
you will. Oh, it was no NORAD, don't get me wrong. There were no computers. 
There wasn't even a TV in sight.
Instead, the seat of Jim Henderson's white supremacist group resembled photos 
we'd seen in World Civ of Nazi headquarters, back in the forties. There were a 
lot of long tables, at which sat a good many fair-haired gentlemen. (Apparently, 
we had interrupted their supper.) And there was a giant flag hanging against the 
back wall. But instead of a swastika, the flag depicted the symbol that had been 
carved into Nate Thompkins's chest, and spray-painted onto the overpass and on 
the overturned headstones at the Jewish cemetery. It was the coiled snake Chick 
had described, with the wordsDON'T TREAD ON ME beneath it.
But may I just point out that there the resemblance to the Nazi war machine 
ended? Because the gentlemen, fair-haired as they were, gathered in the large, 
drafty room, were neither as tidily dressed nor as intelligent looking as your 
average 1940s-style Nazi, and seemed also to prefer body art to actual hygiene, 
a choice perhaps thrust upon them by the lack of easily available running water, 
if what Chick had said about Jim Henderson refusing to pay his water bill was 
true.
There weren't only men gathered in Henderson's barn, however. Oh, no. There were 
women, too, and even children. I mean, who else was going to serve the men their 
food? And a fine, healthy lot those women and children looked, too. The women's 
garb I instantly recognized as typical of a local religious sect which, besides 
favoring snake-handling and coming-to-the-water-to-be-born-again, also forbade 
its female practitioners from cutting their hair or wearing pants. This made it 
difficult for girls belonging to this religious group to participate in physical 
education classes in the public school system, as it is almost impossible to 
climb a rope or learn the breast stroke in a dress, so many of them opted for 
homeschooling.
The children were a pasty-faced, runny-nosed lot, who seemed as uninterested in 
a man with a rifle dragging two perfect strangers into their midst as I would 
have been by cooking lessons from Great-aunt Rose.
"Jimmy," Red Plaid Jacket said, to a sandy-haired man at the head of one of the 
long tables, who'd just been presented with a plate of what looked to 
meóconsidering that I hadn't eaten since downing a turkey sandwich around 
noonólike delectable fried chicken. "These're the kids we found sneakin' around 
by the south fence."
Kids! I resented the implication on Rob's behalf. I of course am used to being 
mistaken for a child, given my relatively diminutive size. But Rob stood a good 
twelve inches taller than me. . . .
And, I soon noticed, twelve inches taller than the leader of the True Americans, 
that fine, upstanding citizen who had, if we weren't mistaken, killed one kid, 
abducted another, attempted to murder a law enforcement officer, and burned down 
a synagogue.
That's right. Jim Henderson was short.
Really, really short. Like Napoleon short. Like Danny Devito short.
He also seemed kind of miffed that we had interrupted his dinner.
"What the hell you want?" Henderson inquired, showing some of those exemplary 
leadership qualities for which he was apparently so deeply admired by his 
followers.
I looked at Rob. He appeared to be at a loss for words. Either that or he was 
doing one of those Native American-silence things, to psych out our captors. Rob 
reads a lot of books that take place on Indian reservations.
I felt it was up to me to salvage the situation. I went, "Gee, Mr. Henderson, 
it's a real honor to meet you. Me and Hank here, well, we just been admirers of 
yours for so long."
Henderson sucked on his fried-chickeny fingers, his sandy-colored eyebrows 
raised. "That so?" he said.
"Yes," I said. "And when we saw what ya'll did to that, um, Jew church, we 
decided we had to come up and offer our, um, congratulations. Hank and me, we 
think we'd make real good True Americans, because we both hate blacks and Jews, 
and stuff."
There appeared to be a good deal more interest in Rob and me now that I had 
begun speaking. Nearly everyone in the barn was looking at us, in sort of 
stunned silence. Everyone except Chigger, I mean. Chigger had found a plate of 
chicken bones, and was consuming them with great noise and rapidity. I noticed 
no one leapt to stop him, which proved that the True Americans were not only 
despicable human beings, but also lousy pet owners, as everyone knows you should 
never let a dog eat chicken bones.
Henderson was looking at us with more interest than anyone. Unlike Chigger, he 
seemed completely oblivious to the chicken on his plate. He went, "Why?"
I'd been prepared for this question. I said, "Well, you should take us because 
Hank here, he is really good with his hands. He's a mechanic, you know, and he 
can fix just about anything. So if you ever got a tank, or whatever, and it 
broke down, well, Hank'd be your man. And me, well, I may not look like it, but 
I'm pretty swift on my feet. In a fight, you wouldn't want me on your bad side, 
let me tell you."
Henderson looked bored. He leaned forward to pick a piece of chicken off the 
bone and pop it into his little mouth. He reminded me, as he did it, of a baby 
bird. Except that he had a sandy-colored mustache.
"That ain't what I mean," he said. "I mean, why do you hate the blacks and 
Jews?"
"Oh." This was not a question I'd been prepared for. I hurried to think of a 
reply. "Because as everyone knows," I said, "the Jews, they made up that whole 
Holocaust thing, you know, so they could get their hands on Israel. And black 
people, well, they're taking away all our jobs."
This was not apparently the correct answer, since Jim looked away from me. 
Instead, he stared at Rob. He appeared to be sizing up my boyfriend. I had seen 
this kind of appraising look before. It was the kind of look that little guys 
always gave to big guys, right before they barreled their tiny heads into the 
bigger guy's stomach.
"What about you?" Henderson asked Rob. "Or do you let your woman do your talking 
for you?"
This caused a ripple of amusement amongst the men at the dinner tables. Even the 
women, poised at their husbands' elbows with pitchers of what looked to me like 
iced tea, seemed to find this hilarious, instead of the piece of sexist crap it 
was.
Rob, I knew, was being tested. I had not passed the test. That much was clear. 
It was clear by the fact that Red Plaid Jacket still had his rifle trained on 
us, just waiting for the order from his boss to blow our heads off. Chigger, I 
was certain, would gladly lick up whatever mess our scattered brains made upon 
the barn floor.
It was up to Rob to save us. It was up to Rob to convince Henderson that we were 
a pair of budding white supremacists.
And I didn't have much faith Rob was going to perform any better than I had. 
After all, Rob hadn't liked this idea in the first place. He had objected 
strenuously to it from the start. All he wanted to do, I was sure, was book on 
out of there, and if it was without Seth, well, that was just too bad. Just so 
long as we still had heads on our shoulders, I had a feeling Rob would be happy.
So you can imagine my surprise when Rob opened his mouth and this is what came 
out of it:
"To be born white," he said, "is an honor and a privilege. It is time that all 
white men and women join together to protect this bond they share by their blood 
and faith. The responsibility of every American is to protect the welfare 
ofourselves ónot those in Mexico, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or some other 
third-world country. It is time to take America back from drug-addicted welfare 
recipients living in large urban areas. . . ."
Whoa. If Rob had my attention with this stuff, you can bet he had Jim 
Henderson's attentionónot to mention the rest of the True Americans. You could 
have heard a pin drop, everybody was listening so intently.
"It's time," Rob went on, "to protect our borders from illegal aliens, and stop 
the insidious repeal of miscegenation laws and statutes. We need to do away with 
affirmative action and same-sex marriages. We need to prevent American industry 
and property from slipping into the hands of the Japanese, Arabs, and Jews. 
America should be owned by Americansó"
Applause burst from one of the tables at this. It was soon joined by standing 
ovations from several other tables. In the thunderous cheering that followed, I 
stared at my boyfriend with total disbelief. Where on earth, I wondered, had he 
gotten all that stuff? Was there something about Rob I didn't know? I had never 
heard him say any of that kind of stuff before. Was Claire right? Were all Grits 
the same?
The applause was cut off abruptly as Jim Henderson climbed to his feet. All eyes 
were on the tiny figure, really no taller than I was, as he eyed Rob, one finger 
thoughtfully stroking his thick mustache. Again, the room was silent, except for 
Chigger, who was enthusiastically licking a now empty plate.
Staring at Rob with a pair of eyes so blue, they almost seemed to blaze, 
Henderson finally thrust an index finger at him and commanded, "Get Ö that Ö boy 
Ö some Ö chicken!"
Cheers erupted as one of the women hurried forward to present Rob with a plate 
of fried chicken. I couldn't believe it. Chicken. They were giving Rob chicken! 
Easy as that, he'd been accepted into the bosom of the True Americans.
Or was it possible that they knew something I didn't? Like that Rob was maybe 
already a member?
Hey, I know it was a disloyal thought. And I didn't believe it. Not really. 
Except that Ö well, it was kind of weird that he'd known exactly the right thing 
to say to get these freaks to believe we were on their side. And knowing what I 
did about his dad, it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine there might be a few 
things Rob hadn't told me Ö and I didn't just mean what he was on probation for.
Rob stood there, smiling shyly as he was applauded. I couldn't help it. Ihad to 
know. So I asked him, out of the corner of my mouth, "Where'd you come up with 
that horse shit?"
Rob replied, from the corner of his own mouth, "Public access cable. Would you 
get this chicken away from me before I barf?"
I grabbed the plate just as Rob was engulfed in a crowd of happy white 
supremacists, who slapped him on the back and offered him chews from their bags 
of tobacco. I stood there like an idiot watching him, the plate of chicken 
getting cold in my hands. I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been. Ofcourse Rob 
wasn't one of them.
But it was scary how easily I'd been swayed into thinking he might have been. 
Prejudice runs deep. Grits and Townies, blacks and whites Ö you grow up hearing 
one thing, it's hard to believe that something else might actually be true.
Hard to believe, maybe. But not impossible. I mean, look at Rob. He was nothing 
like your stereotypical Grit, gleefully chowing down on fried chicken while 
discussing the supremacy of the white race. Rob didn't evenlike fried chicken. 
Who knows how long I would have stood there, admiring the genius of my 
boyfriend, if a voice at my elbow hadn't gone, "Well, just don't there stand 
there, girlie. Give that chicken to one of the men and then git on back to the 
kitchen fer more."
I turned and saw a doughy-faced woman with a kerchief holding back her long 
blonde hair glaring at me.
"Go on," the woman said, giving me a push toward one of the men's tables. "Git."
I got. I put the chicken down in front of the first man I sawóa gentleman who 
did not appear to have as many teeth as he did tattoosóthen followed 
Kerchief-Head out a side door. . . .
Into the cold night air.
"Come on," the woman barked at me, when I froze in my tracks, shocked by the 
sudden cold. "We gotta git the mashed potatoes."
I followed her, thinking,Well, at least this way, I'll have a chance to look for 
Seth . I knew he was here on the compound somewhere. I knew that he was no 
longer tied up or gagged, but locked into a small, wood-paneled room. That 
didn't mean he wasn't still scared, though. I could feel his fear around me like 
a second coat.
Kerchief-Head threw open the door to the ranch house. This, apparently, was 
where all the cooking was done. I could tell by the intoxicating odors that hit 
me as I came through the door. Chicken, potatoes, bread Ö it was a dizzying set 
of aromas for a girl as hungry as I was.
But when we got into the kitchenówhich was crowded with other doughy-faced, 
long-haired womenóand I tried to bogart a roll, Kerchief-Head slapped my hands.
"We don't eat," she said, harshly, "until the men're done!"
Whoa, I wanted to say.Nice operation you got going here. If you're a guy . What 
is it with women like Kerchief-Head? I mean, why are they so willing to put up 
with that kind of treatment? I would way rather have no guy than some guy who 
tried to make me wait to eat until after he was done.
But I didn't want to blow things with the True Americans, so I dropped the roll 
like a good white supremacist housewife and asked, "You got a bathroom around 
here?"
Kerchief-Head pointed down a hallway, but she didn't look too happy about it. I 
guess she thought I was trying to shirk kitchen duty or something.
I'll tell you something, those True Americans were pretty scary. Even their 
bathrooms were filled with racist propaganda. I couldn't believe it. Instead of 
issues ofNational Geographic orTime magazine, like in a normal house, there was 
a copy ofMein Kampf to peruse while you were otherwise indisposed. Like these 
guys had totally missed the part where Hitler turned out to be a maniac or 
something.
When I was through in the bathroom, I looked up and down the hall to make sure 
Kerchief-Head or any of her cronies weren't lurking around. Then I started 
testing doorknobs. I figured when I got to a locked one, that's the one I'd find 
Seth behind.
It didn't take me long. It wasn't like the house was so big, or anything. The 
room they were keeping Seth in was way at the end of the hall, past the 
homeschooling roomóinstead of the old red, white, and blue, there was another 
one of those "Don't Tread On Me" flags hanging in there. The door was locked, 
but it was one of those cheap button locks you only have to turn from the right 
side to undo. I turned it, opened the door, and looked inside.
Seth Blumenthal, tears streaming down his face, sat up in bed, and blinked at me 
in the semi-darkness.
"Wh-who are you?" Seth asked, hesitantly. "Wh-what do you want?"
How else was I supposed to reply? The words were out of my mouth before I could 
stop them. I mean, I'd only seen the movie like seventeen times.
"I'm Luke Skywalker," I said. "I'm here to rescue you."
C H A P T E R
13
Seth didn't fall for the Luke Skywalker line. This was one kid you obviously 
couldn't pull anything over on.
"No," he said. "Who are you, really? You don't look like one of them."
I closed the door behind me, in case Kerchief-Head came looking for me. There 
was no light in the room, except the moonlight that came filtering in between 
the wooden boards that covered the windowsóalways a Martha Stewart "do," 
boarding up your windows, by the way.
"My name's Jess," I said, to Seth. "And we're going to get you out of here." But 
not through those windows, I now realized. "Are you hurt anywhere? Can you run?"
"I'm okay," Seth said. "Just my hand."
He held out his right hand. It wasn't hard to see, even in the moonlight, what 
was wrong with it. Somebody had burned a shape into it, between Seth's thumb and 
forefinger. The burn was red and blistered. And it was in the shape of a coiled 
snake.
Just like the shape that had been carved into Nate Thompkins's naked chest.
I knew now how they'd gotten Seth to tell them where to find the Torah.
And I wanted to kill them for it.
First things first, however.
"Six weeks hydro-therapy," I said to him, "that puppy'll be gone. Won't even 
leave a scar." I knew from my own third-degree burn, which had been roughly the 
same size, but which I'd received from a motorcycle exhaust pipe when I'd been 
around his own age. "Okay?"
Seth nodded. He wasn't crying anymore. "That policeman," he said. "The one they 
shot, back at the trailer. Is he okay?"
"He sure is," I lied. "Now listen, I've got to get back to the kitchen before 
they notice I'm missing. But I promise I'll be back for you just as soon as the 
shooting starts."
"Shooting?" Seth looked concerned. "Who's going to start shooting?"
"Friends of mine," I said. "They got the place surrounded." I hoped. "So you 
just hang in there, and I'll be back for you lickety-split. Got it?"
"I got it," Seth said. Then, as I started for the door, he went, "Hey, Jess?"
I turned. "Yeah?"
"What day is it?"
I told him. He nodded thoughtfully. "Today's my birthday," he said, seemingly to 
no one in particular. "I'm thirteen."
"Happy birthday," I said. Well, what else was I supposed to say?
I was just sauntering away from the newly relocked door when Kerchief-Head 
appeared.
"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded. One thing I had to say for the 
wives of the True Americans, they weren't very polite.
"Oh," I said, giving my ditziest giggle. "I got lost."
Kerchief-Head just glared at me. Then she thrust a huge bowl of something white 
and glutinous in my arms. Looking down, I realized it was mashed potatoes. Only 
the True Americans, unlike my dad, hadn't put any garlic in them, so the aroma 
they gave off was somewhat nondescript.
"Take this to the men," Kerchief-Head said.
"Can do," I told her, and headed out the door.
The big question, of course, was would it work. I mean, would Chick and his 
friends show up in time for us to get Seth out? And what about Dr. Krantz? Let's 
not forget about him. The Feds had a major tendency to mess things like surprise 
attacks up, big time. Would Chick be able to get around whatever idiot scheme 
Dr. Krantz was probably, at this very moment, cooking up?
I hoped so. Not for my own sake. I didn't much care what happened to me. It was 
Seth I was worried about. We had to get Seth out.
Oh, yeah. And kill every True American we possibly could.
I don't normally go around wanting to kill people, but when I'd seen that burn 
on Seth's hand, I'd felt something I'd never felt before. I am no stranger to 
rage, either. I get mad fast, and I get mad often. But I could never remember 
feeling the way I had when I'd seen that burn.
I'd felt like killing someone. Really killing them. Not breaking someone's nose, 
or kicking someone in the groin. I wanted him to pay for branding that kid, and 
I wanted him to pay with his life.
And I had a pretty good idea who that someone was.
When I got back into the barn, everyone had calmed down from Rob's little 
speech, and was busy chowing down again. Being the mashed potato girl, I was 
pretty popular. Guys kept on raising up their plates as I passed, holding them 
out for me to glop mashed potatoes onto. I obliged, since what else was I 
supposed to do? I got through it by pretending I was a prison guard, and all 
these guys were demented serial killers that I was mandated by the state to keep 
fed.
In the back of my mind, however, this mantra was playing over and over. It 
went,Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick .
When I reached Rob, I saw that he and Henderson were already well on their way 
to becoming best friends. Well, and why not? Rob would be a boon to any hate 
group. He was good-looking, great with his hands, andóthough I hadn't been aware 
of this talent until very recentlyóhe was obviously a passionate and lucid 
orator. I had a feeling that, given enough time, Rob would have been appointed 
Jim Henderson's right-hand man.
Too bad for the True Americans that it was all an act.
A good one, though. Claire Lippman would have been astounded by Rob's theatrical 
flair. As I leaned over his chair to lump potatoes onto his plate, he didn't 
even seem to notice me, he was so wound up in what he was saying Ö something 
about how the criminals in Washington were selling us out with something called 
GATT.
Wow. Rob had obviously been watching a lot more CNN than I had.
After piling some potatoes onto Jim Henderson's plateóonly for a second did I 
fantasize about pretending to accidentally drop them into his lapóI moved on to 
the rest of the table, trying not to notice as I did so a disturbing thing. 
There were lots of disturbing things to notice in that barn, but the one that I 
kept coming back to was the men's hands. Each and every one of them had the same 
tattoo on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of their right hand. And 
that was the coiled snake of the "Don't Tread On Me" flag. The same snake that 
had been on Nate's chest. The same snake that had been burned into Seth's hand. 
This was some fraternity, let me tell you.
It wasn't until my bowl was almost empty that I felt the cold, wet nudge on one 
hand. I looked down and saw Chigger, his big brown eyes rolling up at me 
appealingly. Gone was the menacing growl and raised back hairs. I had food, and 
Chigger wanted food. Therefore, if I gave Chigger food, I would be Chigger's 
friend.
I let Chigger lick what remained in the bowl.
I fully intended to go back to the ranch house kitchen and refill that bowl 
without rinsing it out first. In fact, I was headed toward the barn door to do 
just that when I noticed something that I didn't like Ö that I didn't like at 
all. And that was Kerchief-Head, over at Jim Henderson's table, leaning down to 
whisper something in his ear. As she whispered I saw Jim glance around the room, 
until at last his gaze found me. Those piercing blue eyes stayed on me, too, 
until Kerchief-Head finished whatever it was she'd had to say and straightened 
up.
Look, it could have been a lot of things. It could have been the thing with the 
roll. Heck, she could have seen me letting Chigger lick the bowl.
But I'm not stupid. I knew what it was. I knew what it was the minute Jim 
Henderson's gaze landed on me.
Kerchief-Head had told him about catching me in the hallway near where they were 
keeping Seth. That was all.
We were dead.
It took a little while for it to happen, though. Henderson whispered something 
back to Kerchief-Head, and she scuttled out of there like a water bug. For a 
little while, I thought maybe we were all right. You know, that maybe I'd made a 
mistake. Rob was going on about abominations of nature and how America would 
never be restored to the great nation it had once been until all Christians 
banded together, and Henderson seemed to be listening to him pretty intently.
But then I saw something that made my heart stop.
And that was Red Plaid Jacket with the end of his rifle pointed at the back of 
Seth Blumenthal's neck as he forced the boy to walk across the barn floor, right 
up to where Jim Henderson and Rob sat.
Everyone stopped talking when they saw this, and once again, the silence in the 
barn was overwhelming. The only sound I could hear was the sound of Seth's sobs. 
He had started crying again. I saw him look frantically around the barn, and I 
knew he was looking for me. Fortunately, I was far enough in the shadows that he 
hadn't been able to see me, or without a doubt, I'd have been dead.
If I'd known, of course, what was going to happen a minute later anyway, I 
probably wouldn't have cared so much. As it was, I was actually relieved Seth 
hadn't spotted me. I sunk my fingers into Chigger's soft fur and willed my heart 
to start beating again.Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick !
"Americans," Jim Henderson said to the assembled masses. I could see at once 
that he was every bit the orator Rob was. Everyone looked at him with that 
glazed expression of adoration I recognized from that movie about the Jim Jones 
massacre. Henderson was these people's messiah on earth.
"We've made some fine new friends tonight," Henderson went on, slapping a hand 
to Rob's shoulder. The only reason he'd been able to reach it was that Rob was 
sitting and he was standing. "And I for one am grateful. Grateful that Hank and 
Ginger found their way to our little flock."
Ginger? Who the hell was Ginger? Then, as a good many heads turned in my 
direction, I realized Rob had told them my name was Ginger.
He is such a card.
"But however impressed we may be by Hank and Ginger's professed dedication to 
our cause," Henderson went on, "there's really only one way to test the loyalty 
of a true American, isn't there?"
There was a general murmur of assent. My heart thudded more loudly than ever. I 
did not like the sound of this. I did not like the sound of this at all.
"Hank," Henderson said, turning to Rob. "You see before you a boy. Seemingly 
innocent enough looking, I know. But innocence, as we all know, can be 
deceiving. The devil sometimes tries to fool us into believing in the innocence 
of an individual, when in fact that individual is laden with sin. In this case, 
this boy is soaked in sin. Because he is, in fact, a Jew."
I dug my fingers so hard into Chigger's coat, a smaller dog would have cried 
out. Chigger, however, only wagged his tail, still hoping for another crack at 
the bowl I held. Apparently, nobody had ever bothered to feed Chigger before. 
How else could you explain how easily I'd won over his allegiance?
"Hank," Henderson said. "Because you've already, in the short time I've known 
you, so thoroughly impressed me with your sincerity and commitment to the cause, 
I am going to allow you a great privilege I've heretofore denied both myself and 
my other men. Hank, I am going to let you kill a Jew."
And with that, Jim Henderson presented Rob with a knife he pulled out of his own 
boot.
A lot of things when through my mind then. I thought about how much I loved my 
mom, even though she can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, with her weird 
ideas about how I should dress and who I should date. I thought about how mad I 
was going to be if I didn't get to stick around to find out if Douglas ever did 
anything about his crush on Tasha Thompkins. I thought about the state orchestra 
championship, and how for the first time in years, I wouldn't be bringing home a 
blue ribbon cut in the shape of the state of Indiana.
It's strange the things you think about right before you die. I don't even know 
how I knew I was going to die. I just knew it, the way I knew that eventually, 
all that snow outside was going to melt, and it would be spring again someday. 
Rob and I were going to die, and the only thing we had to make sure of was that 
they didn't try to kill Seth along with us.
"Well," Henderson was saying to my boyfriend. "Go on. Take my knife. Really. 
It's okay. He's just a Jew."
Seth Blumenthal, I have to say, was being pretty brave. He was crying, but he 
was doing it quietly, with his head held high. I guess after what he'd been 
through, death didn't seem like such a bad thing. I don't know how else to 
explain it. I kind of felt the same way. I wasn't scared, really. Oh, I didn't 
want it to hurt. But I wasn't scared to die.
All I wanted was to take as many True Americans down with me as I could.
Rob reached out and took the knife from Jim Henderson.
"Thataboy," Henderson said, smiling in a sickly way beneath his mustache. "Now 
go ahead. Show us you are true believer. Stick it to the pig."
So Rob did the only thing he could. The same thing I'd have done, in his 
situation.
He threw an arm around Jim Henderson's neck, brought the knife blade to his 
jugular vein, and said, "Anybody moves, and Jimbo here gets it."
C H A P T E R
14
Have you ever been to a football game where the higher ranked team was so 
certain of winning, there wasn't even a doubt in the minds of their fans that 
they wouldn't? And then, through some total miscalculation on the part of the 
superior team, the underdog got the upper hand?
The faces of the True Americans looked like the faces of the fans of the winning 
team, seconds after their team mangled some play so horribly, their opponent, 
against all odds, scored a touchdown.
They were stunned. Just stunned.
"Thanks," I said to Red Plaid Jacket, as I relieved him of his rifle. "I'll take 
that."
I had never held a rifle before in my life, but I had a pretty good idea how one 
worked. You just pointed at the thing you wanted to hit, and pulled the trigger. 
No big mystery in that.
Of course, if you thought about it, there was no reason in the world for us to 
be so cocky. Okay, so yeah, Rob had a knife to a guy's throat, and I had a 
rifle. Big deal. It was still about fifty to two. Well, three, if you counted 
Seth. Four, if you included Chigger, who was still following me around, hoping 
for more mashed potatoes, even though I'd put down the bowl.
But hey, we had the upper hand for the moment, and we were going to take 
advantage of it while we could.
"Okay," Rob said, as the blood slowly drained from Jim Henderson's face. Not 
because Rob had poked a hole in him or anything. Just because the leader of the 
True Americans was so very, very scared.
"Okay, now. Everybody just stay very calm, and no one is going to get hurt." 
Hey, he had me convinced. Rob seemed totally believable, as far as 
knife-wielding hostage-takers went. "Me and the girl and the kid and Jimbo here 
are going to take a little walk. And if any of you want to see your fearless 
leader live through this, you're going to let us go. Okay?"
When no one objected, Rob went, "Good. Jess. Seth. Let's go."
And so started what had to have looked like one weird parade. With me leading 
the way, rifle in hand and dog at my heels, a dazed-looking Seth following me, 
and Rob, with his arm around Henderson, taking up the rear, we made our way down 
the length of the barn. I wouldn't want to give you the impression that Mr. 
Henderson was playing the silent martyr in all of this, however. Oh, no. See, 
people who haven't the slightest qualm about doing unspeakably horrible things 
to others are always the ones who act like the biggest babies of all whenever 
anybody in turn threatens them.
I'm not kidding. Jim Henderson was practically crying. He was wailing, in a 
high-pitched voice, "You may think you're gonna get away with this, but I'll 
tell you what. The people are gonna rise up. The people are gonna rise up and 
walk the path of righteousness. And traitors like you, boyótraitors to your own 
raceóare going to burn in hellfire for all eternityó"
"Would you," Rob said, "shut up?"
Only Jim Henderson was wrong. The people weren't going to rise up. Not all at 
once, anyway. They were too shocked by what was happening to their leader even 
to think about lifting a finger to help him. Or maybe it was just that they 
really did believe that if they tried anything to stop us, Rob would slit their 
beloved Jim Henderson's throat.
In any case, the people did not rise up.
Just one person did.
Kerchief-Head, to be exact.
I should have seen it coming. I mean, it had been way, way too easy.
But I'll admit it. I got cocky. I started thinking that these people were 
stupid, because they had these stupid ideas about things. That was my first 
mistake. Because the scariest thing about the True Americans was that they 
weren't stupid. They were just really, really evil.
As became all too clear when I heard, from behind me, the sound of breaking 
glass.
I realized my second mistake the second I turned around. The first had been in 
assuming the True Americans were stupid. The second had been in not covering 
Rob's back with the rifle.
Because when I spun around, what I saw was Kerchief-Head standing there with two 
broken pieces of my mashed potato bowl in her hands. The rest of the pieces were 
all over the floor Ö where Rob also lay. The bitch had snuck up behind him and 
cracked his skull open.
Hey, I didn't hesitate. I lifted that rifle, and I fired. I didn't even think 
about it, I was so mad Ö mad and scared. There was a lot of blood coming out of 
the gash in Rob's head. More was pouring out every second.
But I had never fired a rifle before. I didn't know how they kicked. And it is 
not like I am this terrifically large person or anything. I pulled the trigger, 
the gun exploded, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, with Chigger 
licking my face and about a million and one handguns pointed at my face.
Whatever else the True Americans might have been, lacking in firearms was not 
one of them.
The worst part of it was, I didn't even hit Kerchief-Head. I missed her by a 
mile.
I did, however, manage to do some major damage to the "Don't Tread On Me" flag.
"If you've killed my boyfriend," I snarled at Kerchief-Head, as a lot of hands 
started grabbing me and dragging me to my feet, "I'll make you regret the day 
you were ever born. Do you hear me, placenta breath?"
It was childish, I knew, to stoop to name-calling. But I'm not sure I was in my 
right mind. I mean, Rob was lying there, completely unconscious, with all this 
blood making a puddle around his head. And they wouldn't let me near him. I 
tried to get to him. I really did. But they wouldn't let me.
Instead, they locked me up. That's right. In that little room Seth had been 
locked in. They threw me right in there. Me and Seth. In the dark. In the cold. 
With no way of knowing whether my boyfriend was dead or alive.
I don't know how much time passed before I stopped kicking the door and 
screaming. All I know was that the sides of my wrists hurt from where I'd 
pounded them against the surprisingly sturdy wood. And Seth was staring at me 
like I was some kind of escapee from a lunatic asylum. Really. The kid looked 
scared.
He looked even more scared when I said to him, "Don't worry. I'm going to get 
you out of here."
Well, I guess I couldn't blame him. I probably wasn't exactly giving off an aura 
of mature adulthood just then.
I crossed over to where he was sitting and sank down onto the bed beside him. 
Suddenly, I was really tired. It had been a long day.
Seth and I sat there in the dark, listening to the distant sounds of the women 
banging pots and pans around in the kitchen. I guess no matter what kind of 
murder and mayhem was happening over in the barn, dinner still needed serving. I 
mean, all those men needed to keep their strength up for making the country safe 
for the white man, right?
Finally, after what seemed like a million years, Seth spoke. He said, in a shy 
voice, "I'm sorry about your friend."
I shrugged. I didn't exactly want to think about Rob. If he was dead, that was 
one thing. I would deal with that when the time came, probably by throwing 
myself headfirst into Pike's Quarry, or whatever.
But if he was still alive, and they were doing stuff to him, the way they had to 
Seth....
Well, let's just say that whether Rob was dead or alive, I was going to make it 
my sole mission in life to track down each and every one of the True Americans, 
and make them pay.
Preferably with a flame-thrower.
"How Ö" Seth scratched his head. He was a funny-looking kid, tall for his age, 
with dark hair and eyes, like me. "How did you find me, anyway?"
I looked down at my Timberlands, though I wasn't exactly seeing them, or much 
else, for that matter. All I could see was Rob, lying there with his head bashed 
in.
"I have this thing," I said, tiredly.
"A thing?" Seth asked.
"A psychic thing," I said. Which is another thing. If Rob were dead, wouldn't I 
know it? I mean, wouldn't I feel it? I was pretty sure I would.
But I didn't. I didn't feel anything. Except really, really tired.
"Really?" In the moonlight, Seth's face looked way younger than his thirteen 
years. "Hey, that's right. You're that girl. That lightning girl. I thought I'd 
seen you before somewhere. You were on the news."
"That's me," I said. "Lightning Girl."
"That is so cool," Seth said, admiringly.
"It's not so cool," I told him.
"No," Seth said. "It is. It really is. It's like you've got kid Lojack, or 
something."
"Yeah," I said. "And look what good it's done for me. You and I are stuck in 
here, and my boyfriend's out there bleeding to death, and another kid is dead, 
and possibly a cop, tooó"
I saw his face crumble, and only then realized what I had said. I had let my 
personal grief get the better of me, and spoken out of turn. I bit my lip.
"You said he was all right," Seth said, his dark eyes suddenly swimming in 
tears. "That cop. You said he was okay."
"He is okay," I said, putting my arm around the little guy. "He is, really. 
Sorry. I just lost it for a minute there."
"He's not okay," Seth wailed. "He's dead, isn't he? And because of me! All 
because of me!"
It was kind of amazing that after what this kid had been through, the only thing 
that really got him upset was the idea that a cop that had been trying to save 
him had ended up catching a bullet for his troubles. Seth Blumenthal, bar 
mitzvah boy, really was something else.
"No, not because of you," I assured him. "Because of those asshole True 
Americans. And besides, he isn't dead, all right? I mean, he's hurt bad, but he 
isn't dead. I swear."
But Seth clearly didn't believe me. And why should he? I hadn't exactly been the 
most truth-worthy person he'd ever met, had I? I'd told him I was there to 
rescue him, only instead of rescuing him, now I was just as much a prisoner as 
he was. I'll tell you what, I was starting to agree with him: As a rescuer, I 
pretty much sucked.
I was just thinking these pleasant thoughts as the door to the room we were 
locked in suddenly opened. I blinked as the light from the hallway, which seemed 
unnaturally bright thanks to my eyes having adjusted to the dimness of our cell, 
flooded the room. Then a figure in the doorway blocked out the light.
"Well, now." I recognized Jim Henderson's Southern twang. "Ain't that cozy, now, 
the two of you. Like something out of a picture postcard."
I took my arm away from Seth's shoulders and stood up. With my vision having 
grown accustomed to the light from the hallway, I was able to see that Henderson 
looked slightly disconcerted as I did this, on account of him being only an inch 
or two taller than me.
"Where's Rob?" I demanded.
Henderson looked confused. "Rob? Who's Rob?" Then comprehension dawned. "Oh, you 
meanHank ? Your friend with the smart mouth? Oh, I'm sorry. He's dead."
My nose was practically level with his. It took everything I had in me not to 
head-butt the jerk.
"I don't believe you," I said.
"Well, you better start believing me, honey," Henderson said. His eyes, blue as 
they were, seemed to have trouble focusing, I noticed. He had what I, having 
been in enough fights with people who have them, call crazy eyes. His gaze was 
all over the place, sometimes on the boarded-up windows behind me, sometimes on 
Seth, sometimes on the ceiling, but rarely, rarely where it should have been: on 
mine.
See? Crazy eyes.
Unfortunately, I knew from experience that there was no predicting what someone 
with crazy eyes was going to do next. Generally, it was just about the last 
thing you'd expect.
I'd have taken my chances and reached out and wrapped Jim Henderson's crazy-eyed 
neck into a headlock if it hadn't been for Red Plaid Jacket standing there in 
the hallway behind him. Red Plaid had retrieved his rifle, and had it pointed 
casually at me. This was discouraging, to say the least. I had a bad feeling his 
aim was probably better than mine.
"You know," Henderson said. "It's not just minorities like the Jews and the 
blacks who are ruining this country. It's people like you and your boyfriend 
back there. Traitors to your own race. People like you who are ashamed of the 
whiteness of your skin, instead of being proudóproud!óto be members of God's 
chosen race."
"The only time I'm ashamed to be a member of the white race," I said, "is when 
I'm around freaking lunatics like you."
"See," Henderson said to Kerchief-Head, who was behind Red Plaid, and was 
watching her leader's dealings with me with great interest. "See what happens 
when the liberal media gets their hands on our children? That's why I don't 
allow the sons and daughters of the True Americans to watch TV. No movies or 
radio, neither, or any of that noise people like you call music. No newspapers, 
no magazines. Nothing to fog the mind and cloud the judgment."
I couldn't believe he was standing there giving me a lecture. What was this, 
school? Hello, get on with the torture already. I swear I'd have rather been 
held down and branded than listen to this dude's random crap much longer.
But unfortunately, he wasn't through.
"Who sent you?" Henderson asked me. "Tell me who you work for. The CIA? FBI? 
Who?"
I burst out laughing, though of course there wasn't anything too funny about the 
situation.
"I don't work for anybody," I said. "I came here for Seth."
Henderson shook his head. "So young," he said. "Yet so full of lies. America 
doesn't belong to people like you, you know," he went on. "America is for 
pioneers like us, people willing to work the land, people who aren't afraid to 
get their hands dirty."
"You certainly proved that," I remarked, "when you killed Nate Thompkins. Can't 
get much dirtier than that."
Henderson smiled. But again, thanks to the crazy eyes, the smile didn't quite 
reach all the way to those baby blues of his.
"The black boy, you mean? Yes, well, it was necessary to leave a warning, in 
case any more people of his persuasion took it into their heads to move to this 
area. You see, it's important for us to keep the land pure for our children, the 
sons and daughters of the True Americans."
"Well, congratulations," I said. "I bet your kids are gonna be real happy about 
what you did to Nate, especially when they're frying your butt for murder up in 
Indianapolis. I know how proud I'd be to have a convicted felon for a dad."
"I don't worry about laws made by man," Mr. Crazy Eyes informed me with a smile. 
"I worry only about divine law, laws handed down by God."
"Huh," I said. "Then you're gonna be in for a surprise. Because I'm pretty sure 
'Thou Shalt Not Kill' came straight from the big guy himself."
But Jim just shook his head. "It's only a sin to kill those God created in his 
own image. In other words, white men," he explained, tiredly. "People like you 
will never understand." He sighed. "Living as you always have in the comforts of 
the city, never knowing what it is to work the soiló"
"I've got news for you," I said. "There are a lot of people I know who don't 
live in town and who've worked the soil plenty but who feel the same way about 
you freaks that I do."
He went on like he hadn't heard me. Who knew? Maybe he hadn't. Clearly Mr. 
Henderson was only hearing what he wanted to hear anyway.
"Americans have always dealt with adversity. From the savages they encountered 
upon their arrival to this great land, and then from foreign influences who 
threatened to destroy them. Pretty ironic, ain't it, that the greatest threat of 
all comes not from forces overseas, but from within the country of America 
itself."
"Whatever," I said. I'd had about as much as I could take. "Are you here to mess 
me up, or what?"
Crazy Eyes finally looked me full in the face.
"You will be disposed of," he said, in a voice as cold as the wind outside. 
"You, your boyfriend, and the Jew will all be disposed of, the same way we 
disposed of the black boy. Your bodies will be left as a warning to any who 
doubt that the new age has arrived, and that the battle has begun. You see, 
someone has got to fight for this great nation. Someone has got to keep America 
safe for our children, prevent it from succumbing to hate and greed. . . ."
The great Jim Henderson broke off as, from outside the ranch house, an enormous 
explosionórather like the kind that might occur if someone threw a lit cigarette 
down a trailer's septic tankórocked the compound.
I smiled sweetly up into Jim Henderson's crazy eyes and said, "Uh, Mr. 
Henderson? Yeah, I think that someone you were talking about, the one who is 
going to make America safe for our children? Yeah. He and his friends just 
arrived. And from the sound of it, you've really pissed them off."
C H A P T E R
15
And then I hauled off and slugged him. Right between those crazy, shifty eyes.
It hurt like hell, because mostly what my knuckles caught was bone. But I didn't 
care. I'd been wanting to punch that guy for a long, long time. The pain was 
totally worth it, especially when, as I'd known he would, Henderson crumpled up 
like a doll, and fell, wailing, to the floor.
"She hit me," he cried. "She hit me! Don't just stand there, Nolan! Do 
something. The bitch hit me!"
Nolanóaka Red Plaid Jacketówas too busy squawking into his Walkie-Talkie however 
to pay attention to his fearless leader. "We got incoming! Do you copy, Blue 
Leader? We are under attack. Do you copy? Do you copy?"
Red Plaid might have been more interested in what was happening to the rest of 
the compound, but that certainly wasn't the case with Kerchief-Head. She was 
pretty hacked that I'd taken a poke at her spiritual guideóhey, for all I know, 
Henderson might even have been her honey. She could easily have been Mrs. 
Henderson.
I was hopping around, waving my sore knuckles, when Kerchief-Head, with a snarl 
that would have put Chigger to shame, launched herself at me.
"Ain't nobody gonna do Jim like that," she declared, as her not-insignificant 
weight struck me full force, and sent me back against the bed, pinned beneath 
her.
Mrs. Hendersonóif that's who she really wasówas a big woman, all right, but she 
had the disadvantage of not having been in many fights before. That was clear 
from the fact that she did not go directly for my eyes, as someone better 
accustomed to confronting adversaries would have.
Plus, for all her doughiness, Mrs. Henderson wasn't very muscular. I easily 
twisted to sink a knee into her stomach, then accompanied that by a quick thrust 
of one elbow into the back of her neck while she was sunk over, clutching her 
gut. And that took care of Kerchief-Head.
Meanwhile, outside, another explosion ripped through the compound.
"Save the children," Kerchief-Head gasped. "Somebody save the children!"
Like Chick and those guys would even be targeting the kids. I am so sure.
"Who do you people think we are?" I demanded. "You?"
Then I reached out, grabbed Seth by the arm, and said, "Come on."
We would have gotten safely out of there, too, if I'd just hit Henderson a 
little harder. Unfortunately, however, he recovered all too quickly from my 
punch Ö or at least quickly enough to reached out and wrap a hand around my 
ankle, just as we were stepping over him.
"You ain't goin' nowhere," Jim Henderson breathed. I was delighted to note that 
blood was streaming from his nose. Not as much blood as had streamed from Rob's 
head, but a fairly satisfying amount, nonetheless.
"It's all over, Mr. Henderson," I said. "You better let go now, or you're going 
to regret it."
"You stupid bitch," Henderson wheezed. He couldn't talk too well, on account of 
the blood and mucous flowing into his mouth thanks to what I'd done to his nose. 
"You have no idea what you've done. You think you've done this country a favor, 
but all you've done is sign its death warrant."
"Hey, Mr. Hendersonó" Seth said.
When the crazy-eyed man looked up at him, the boy brought his foot down with all 
the force he had on the hand that was grasping my ankle.
"óeat my shorts."
Henderson, with another cry of pain, released me at once. And Seth and I took 
off down the hallway.
Red Plaid Jacket, aka Nolan, had disappeared. There were plenty of other people, 
however, creating chaos in the ranch house. Women and children were darting 
around like goldfish in a bowl, calling each other's names and falling over one 
another. I couldn't blame them for panicking, really. The acrid smell of smoke 
was already thick in the air, and it got even thicker when Seth and I finally 
burst outside Ö
Ö to be greeted with the welcome sight of Jim Henderson's barn and meeting house 
in flames.
Both trailers were on fire, as well. All around the snowy yard ran True 
Americans, waving rifles and looking panicked. The panic wasn't just because 
most of their compound was on fire. It was also because extremely large men, 
many of whom were wearing cowboy hats, were whipping back and forth across the 
yard on the backs of snowmobiles. It was a truly magnificent sight, seeing those 
sleek vehicles sailing over the snow in direct pursuit of an overalled True 
American. I saw Red Plaid Jacket try to take aim at one with his rifle. Too bad 
for him that the minute he did, another snowmobiler, yelling, "Yeehaw!" darted 
forward and knocked the gun right out of his hands.
Meanwhile, not far away, another snowmobiler had lassoed an escaping True 
American neatly as if he'd been a fleeing heifer, bringing him down to the snow 
with a satisfying thud. Elsewhere, two snowmobilers had cornered a pair of Jim 
Henderson's followers, and were just gliding around and around them, giving them 
a tiny bit of room to escape, then cutting off that escape route at just the 
last moment, entirely for kicks.
"Whoa," Seth said, his eyes very wide. "Whoare these guys?"
I sighed happily, my heart filled with joy.
"Grits," I said.
And then I remembered Rob. Rob, who, last I'd seen him, had been spread-eagle on 
the floor of the True Americans' meeting house.
Which was now in flames.
I forgot about Seth. I forgot about Jim Henderson and Chick and the True 
Americans. All I thought about was getting to Rob, and as fast as humanly 
possible.
Unfortunately, that meant running across the snow toward a burning building 
while Hell's Angels and truckers on snowmobiles were ripping the place apart. It 
was a wonder I got as far I did. Part of it was due to the fact that Chigger 
appeared from out of nowhere, and, apparently thinking I still had mashed 
potatoes on me that he might be able to score, loped after me.
I didn't recognize him right away, howeveróthere were other dogs running around 
the place, barking their heads off thanks to all the shootingóand I thought he'd 
been trying to bring me down. So I kicked up my heels, let me tell you.
But when I got to the barn doors and peered inside, all I could see were flames. 
The tables were on fire. The rafters were on fire. Even the walls were on fire. 
Though I couldn't lean in very far, due to the extreme heat, I could see that no 
one was inside Ö not even any unconscious motorbike mechanics who happened to be 
on probation.
Then I was suddenly yanked off my feet. Thinking a True American had gotten hold 
of me, I lashed out with my feet and fists. But then a familiar voice went, 
"Simmer down, there, little lady! It's me, old Chick! What choo want to do, 
light your hair on fire? Get away from those flames, they're hot!"
"Chick!" I squirmed around in his arms until I was facing him. He was barely 
recognizable in his winter gear, which included a thick pair of aviation 
goggles. But I didn't care how he looked. I had never been so happy to see 
anyone in my life.
"Chick, have you seen Rob? They got him. The True Americans, I mean. They got 
Rob!"
Chick looked bored. "Wilkins is fine," he said, jerking a thumb at a rusted-out 
pickup sitting half-buried in snow about twenty yards away. "I put 'im in the 
back of that old Chevy. He's still out like a light, but it don't look too bad."
I clung to the front of his leather jacket, hardly daring to believe my ears. 
"But the blood," I said. "There was so much of it. . . ."
"Aw," Chick said, disgustedly. "Wilkins was always one to bleed like a stuck 
pig. Don't worry about him. He's got a head like a rock. He'll be all right, 
after a coupla stitches. Now what about this kid? Where's he?"
I looked around, and saw Seth still standing over by the ranch house door, 
shivering in the winter cold despite the heat from the many fires all around 
him.
"Over there," I said, pointing.
At that moment, a shot rang out. I ducked instinctively, but ended up with my 
face in the snow, thanks to Chick practically throwing me to the ground, then 
trying to shield me with his own body.
"Idiots," he muttered, not seeming the least discomfited by the fact that he was 
laying on top of a girl he hardly knew. "Told those boys we had to take out 
their muni shed first. But they said no way would the fools shoot at us with 
women and children around. They're true Americans, all right. True American 
assholes. Damn! You all right?"
I could barely breathe, he was so heavy. "Fine," I grunted. "Seth. Got to get 
Seth Ö out of range Ö of gunfire."
"I'm on it," Chick said. Then, mercifully, he climbed off me, and back onto his 
snowmobile. "You get on over to Wilkins," he said. "I'll get the kid and meet up 
with you, then we'll figure out a way to get the three of you outta this 
hellhole."
He took off with a spray of snow and gravel. I was still spitting tiny ice 
particles out from between my teeth when I heard a strange noise and looked 
down.
Chigger was still with me, and was doing the exact same thing I wasótrying to 
get rid of all the snow and bits of dirt clinging to his hair.
I had, I realized, a new friend.
"Come on, boy," I said to him, and the two of us raced for the abandoned pickup.
They'd wrapped Rob in something yellow, then laid him out across the bed of the 
pickup. I scrambled up into it, Chigger following close behind. It wasn't so 
easy to see Rob's face in the dark, but there was still enough glow from the 
moonónot to mention the many fires all around usófor me to make out the fact 
that, as Chick had promised, he was still breathing, deeply and regularly. The 
wound on his head had stopped bleeding, and didn't look anywhere as serious as 
it had back in the barn. There it had looked like a hole. Now I could see that 
it was merely a gash, barely an inch wide.
Which was lucky for Mrs. Henderson. Because if she'd given my boyfriend brain 
damage, that would have been the end of her.
"It's okay," I said to Rob, brushing some of his dark hair from his forehead, 
and carefully kissing the place on his face that was the least smeared with 
blood. "I'm here now. Everything's going to be all right."
At least that's what I believed then. That was right before I heard the deep 
rumble in Chigger's throat, and looked up to see a wild man standing beside the 
pickup, his arms raised, and his face hidden by all his long, straggly hair.
Okay, okay. That's just what it looked like at first. I realize there's no such 
thing as wild men, or Sasquatch, or Bigfoot or whatever. But seriously, for a 
minute, that's what I thought this guy was. I mean, he was completely covered in 
snow, and standing there with his arms out like that, what was I supposed to 
think? I screamed my head off.
I think Chigger would have gone for the guy's throat if he hadn't waved the 
hands he had extended toward me and cried, "Jessica! It's me! Dr. Krantz." I 
grabbed hold of Chigger's thick leather collar at the last possible minute and 
kept him from leaping from the cab bed to Cyrus Krantz's neck.
"Jeez!" I said, sinking back onto my heels in relief. "Dr. Krantz, what is wrong 
with you? Don't you know better than to sneak up on people like that?"
Dr. Krantz flipped back his enormous, fur-trimmed hood and blinked at me through 
the fogged-up lenses of his glasses.
"Jessica, are you all right?" he wanted to know. "I was so worried! When these 
animals on the snowmobiles showed up, I thought I'd lost you for sureó"
"Take it easy, Doc," I said. "The guys on the snowmobiles are on our side. What 
are you doing here, anyway? I thought I told you to go home."
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said, severely. "You can't honestly think I would leave 
you out here in the middle of nowhere, can you? Your welfare is extremely 
important to me, Jessica. To the whole Bureau, in fact."
"Uh, yeah, Dr. Krantz," I said. "And that's why you're out here on your own. 
Because the Bureau was so concerned for my welfare, they sent out backup right 
away."
Dr. Krantz pulled a cell phone from his pocket. "I tried to call for help," he 
explained, sheepishly, "but there must not be any relay centers this far into 
the woods. I can't get a signal."
"Huh," I said. "That'll make Jim Henderson happy. He's all against contact with 
the outside world, you know. It infects the youth with liberal ideas."
"This Henderson is an extremely unsavory character, Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. 
"I can't understand why you felt compelled to take him and his lot on all by 
yourself. You could have come to us, you know. We would gladly have helped."
"Well," I said. I didn't mention that I hadn't been too impressed by the way Dr. 
Krantz and his fellow law enforcement officers had handled the True Americans so 
far. "What's done is done. Look, Doc, I gotta get Rob to a hospital. Do you 
think you could help me carry him to your car? I know he's heavy, but I'm 
stronger than I look, and maybe between the two of usó"
But Dr. Krantz was already shaking his head.
"Oh," he said. "But I didn't drive out here, Jessica. It would be quite 
impossible to get an automobile way out here. The way is virtually impassable 
thanks to the snow, and besides, there aren't really any proper roadways to 
speak of. I suppose that is part of the allure of places like these for folks 
like Jim Hendersonó"
"Wait a minute," I said. "If you didn't drive, how did you follow us out here?"
Dr. Krantz, for the first time since I'd met him, actually looked a little 
embarrassed.
"Well, you see, I followed you in my car as far as that extraordinary little bar 
you went to. Chick's, I believe it is called? And then when I saw the two of 
youóyou and Mr. Wilkinsóleave by snowmobile, why, I got my skis out of the trunk 
and followed your tracks."
I stared at him. "Yourwhat ?"
"My skis." Dr. Krantz cleared his throat. "Cross-country skiing is one of the 
finest forms of cardio-vascular exercise, so I always keep my skis with me in 
the winter months, because you never know when an opportunity might arise toó"
"You're telling me," I interrupted, "that you skied all the way here. You. Cyrus 
Krantz. Skied here."
"Well," Dr. Krantz said. "Yes. It wasn't far, really. Only twenty miles or so, 
which is nothing to a well-conditioned skier, which I happen to be. And really, 
I don't think it at all as extraordinary as you're making it out to be. skiing 
is a perfectly viable form of exerciseó"
When the shots rang out, that's what we were doing. Talking about skiing. 
Cross-country skiing, to be exact, and its viability as a form of cardiovascular 
exercise. One minute I was sitting there next to Rob, listening to Dr. Krantz, a 
guy that, it had to be admitted, up until then I really hadn't liked too well.
And the next, I was talking to air, because one of the bullets the True 
Americans sent flying in my direction pierced Dr. Krantz, and sent him flying.
C H A P T E R
16
It was my fault, really. My fault because I'd known people were shooting off 
guns, and I hadn't mentioned anything to Dr. Krantz like, "Oh, by the way, look 
out for flying bullets," or, "Hadn't you better stand behind this truck instead 
of in front of it? It might make better cover."
Nope. I didn't say a word.
And the next thing I knew, the guy was curled up in the snow beside the pickup, 
screaming his head off.
Well, if you'd been shot, you'd have screamed your head off, too.
I was out of the cab bed and into the snow beside him in a split second.
"Let me see," I said. I could tell the bullet had gotten him in the leg, because 
he was clutching it with both hands and rocking back and forth, screaming.
Dr. Krantz didn't let me see, though. He just kept rocking and screaming. 
Meanwhile all these spurts of blood were coming out from between his gloved 
fingers, and hitting the snow all around us, making these designs that were 
actually kind of pretty.
But you know, I took first aid in the sixth grade, and when blood is spurting 
out that hard and that far, it means something is really wrong. Like maybe the 
bullet had hit an artery or whatever.
So I did the only thing I could do, under the circumstances.
I punched Dr. Krantz in the jaw.
I felt pretty bad about it, but what else could I do? The guy was hysterical. He 
wouldn't let me look at the wound. He could have bled to death.
After I hit him, though, he kind of fell back in the snow, and I got a good look 
at the damage the bullet had done. Too good a look, if you ask me. Just as I 
suspected, the bullet had severed an arteryóI can't remember what it's called, 
but it's that one in the thigh. A pretty big one, too.
Fortunately for Dr. Krantz, however, I was on the case.
"Listen," I said, to him, as he lay in the snow, moaning. "You are in luck. I 
did my sixth grade science fair project on tourniquets."
For some reason, this did not seem to reassure Dr. Krantz as it should have. He 
started moaning harder.
"No, really," I told him. I had pulled his coat up, and was undoing the belt to 
his pants. I was relieved to see he was wearing one. I know I sure wasn't. 
Though I could have used one of the laces from my Timberlands in a pinch.
"My best thing," I told him, "was tourniquets made from found objects. You know, 
like if you were out camping, and a big stick went through you, or whatever. You 
know. Maybe you wouldn't have a first aid kit with you." I ducked, and looked 
under the pickup. As I'd hoped, the snow wasn't so deep beneath it. I was able 
to find a good-sized rock Ö not too big, but not too small, either. Artery 
sized. I tried to get the dirt off it as best I could.
"The major thing you have to worry about," I assured Dr. Krantzóit's important 
that you talk to a victim of a major injury like this one, in order to keep him 
from slipping into shockó"isn't secondary infection so much as blood loss. So I 
know this rock looks dirty, butó" I jammed the rock into the wound in Dr. 
Krantz's leg. The blood stopped spurting almost right away. "óit's performing a 
vital function. You know. Keeping your blood in."
I took Dr. Krantz's belt, and looped the other end through the belt buckle, then 
pulled until the belt buckle wedged the rock deeper into the wound. I wasn't too 
thrilled about having to do this, but it didn't help that Dr. Krantz screamed so 
loud. I mean, I felt bad enough. Besides, all the screaming was making Chigger, 
still in the cab bed with Rob, whine nervously.
"There," I said to Dr. Krantz. "That will keep the rock in place. Now we just 
need to find a stick, so we can twist the belt, and cut off the circulationó"
"No," Dr. Krantz said, in what sounded more like his normal voiceóalthough it 
was still ragged with pain. "No stick. For the love of God, no stick."
I looked critically down at my handiwork.
"I don't know," I said. "I mean, we may not be able to save the leg, Dr. Krantz. 
But at least you won't bleed to death."
"No stick," Dr. Krantz gasped. "I'm begging you."
I didn't like it, but I didn't see what else I could do. Fortunately at that 
moment, Chick sped up to us, Seth clinging tightly to his waist.
"What the hell happened?" Chick was down off his snowmobile and into the snow 
beside us in a flash. For a big man, he could move like the wind when he needed 
to. "Christ, I leave you alone for a second, andó"
"Somebody shot him," I said, looking down at Dr. Krantz's leg, which, truth be 
told, looked a lot like a raw hamburger. "He won't let me use a stick."
"No stick," Dr. Krantz hissed, through gritted teeth.
Chick was examining my field tourniquet with interest. "For torsion, you mean?" 
When I nodded, he said, "I don't think you need it. Looks like you've got the 
bleeding stopped for now. Listen, though, we don't have much time. You gotta get 
this guy out of here. Wilkins, too. And the little guy." He nodded his head at 
Seth, who was looking owlishly down at the crazy pattern of blood in the snow, 
as if it were the worst thing he had ever seen. As if what had happened to his 
own hand was just, you know, incidental.
"I know," I said. "But how am I going to do that? Dr. Krantz can't drive a 
snowmobile. Not in his condition. And Rob'd never stay on one. . . ."
"That's whyó" Chick stood up, and started for the front of the pickup. "óyou 
gotta take the truck."
I looked skeptically at the ancient vehicle. "I don't even know if it runs," I 
said. "And even if it does, I don't know where we'd find the keys."
"Don't need keys," Chick said, opening the driver's door, then ducking beneath 
the dash, "when Chick is on the case."
I looked over my shoulder. Up the hill from us, the flames from the barn now 
seemed to be reaching almost to the moon. Thick black smoke trailed into the 
sky, blocking out the cold twinkle of the Milky Way. True Americans were still 
running around, shooting off guns. I could dimly make out the small figure of 
Jim Henderson waving his arms at his brethren. He seemed to be encouraging them 
to fight harder.
Behind me, the pickup suddenly sputtered to life.
"There ya go," Chick said, with a chuckle. He came out from beneath the dash and 
blew on his fingertips before slipping his gloves back on. "Oh, yeah," he said. 
"I still got the touch."
I stared at him, as wide-eyed as poor Seth.
"Wait a minute," I said. "You want me todrive these guys out of here?"
"That's the general idea," Chick said, not looking very perturbed.
"But there's no road!" I burst out. "You told me over and over, there's no road 
to this place."
"Well," Chick said, reaching up to stroke his beard. "No, you got that right. 
There ain't no road, exactly."
"So just howó" I realized Seth, along with Dr. Krantz, was listening to us with 
a great deal of interest. I reached out, grabbed Chick by the arm, and started 
walking him away from the truck, lowering my voice as I continued. "óam I 
supposed to get them back to town, if there's no road?"
It was at that exact moment that something in the barn blew up. I don't know 
what it was exactly, but I had a feeling it was that muni supply Chick had been 
talking about. Suddenly, tiny bits of metal and wood were raining down on us.
Chick let out a stream of very colorful expletives that I was just barely able 
to hear above all the explosions. Then he darted around to the pickup and hauled 
a protesting Dr. Krantz to his one good foot.
"Sorry, girlie," Chick yelled at me, as he dragged Dr. Krantz around the truck 
and started stuffing him into the passenger seat. "But you gotta get these folks 
outta here before all hell breaks loose."
"Before?" I couldn't believe any of this was happening. "Um, correct me if I'm 
wrong, but from the looks of things, I think it already has."
"What?" Chick screamed at me, as the sky was lit a brilliant orange and red.
"Hell," I yelled back. "I think we're already in it!"
"Aw, this is nothing." Chick slammed the door on Dr. Krantz, then hurried around 
to make sure Rob was secure in the cab bed. "Kid," he yelled at Seth. "Get in 
here and make sure this guy don't slide around too much. And shield him from 
that crap flying around, would ya?"
Seth, white-faced but resolute, did as Chick asked without a single question. He 
climbed into the back of the pickup and knelt down beside Rob Ö after giving 
Chigger a few wary looks, that is.
Then, taking me by the elbow, Chick pointed down the hill, into the thick black 
copse of trees that separated Jim Henderson's property from the county road far, 
far below.
"You just head straight down," he yelled, as, up by the ranch house, what I 
could have sworn was machine-gun fire broke out. "So long as you're going down, 
you're headed for the road. Understand?"
I nodded miserably. "But, Chick," I couldn't help adding. "The snowó"
"Right," Chick said, with a nod. "It's gonna be more of a slalom than a drive. 
Just remember, if you get into trouble, pump the brakes. And try not to hit 
anything head on."
"Oh," I said, bitterly. "Thanks for the advice. This may not be the right time 
to bring this up, but you know, I don't even have a driver's license."
"That guy's leg ain't gonna wait," Chick told me. "And Wilkins won't last long 
out here, neither." Then, perhaps noting my nauseous expression, he slapped me 
on the shoulder and said, "You'll be fine. Now get going."
Then he hoisted me in the air and set me down behind the wheel, beside a 
panting, sweating Dr. Krantz.
"Uh," I said, to Dr. Krantz. "How you doin', Doc?"
Dr. Krantz gave a queasy look.
"Oh," he said. "I'm just great."
Chick tapped on the closed window between us. With some effort, I managed to get 
it rolled down.
"One more thing." Chick reached under his leather jacket and drew out a stubby 
black object. It took me a minute to realize what it was. When I did, I nearly 
threw up.
"Oh, no!" I said, putting out both hands, as if to ward him off. "You get that 
thing away from me."
Chick merely stuck his arm through the open window and deposited the object on 
my lap.
"Anyone comes near you or the truck," he said, not loudly enough for Dr. K to 
hear, but loudly enough for me to hear him over the sound of gunfire behind us, 
"you shoot. Understand?"
"Chick," I said, looking down at the gun, and feeling sicker than ever. It had 
been one thing when I'd try to blow Kerchief-Head away. That had been in the 
heat of the moment. But this Ö
"Hey," Chick said. "You think Henderson's the only crazy in these woods? Not by 
a long shot. And he's got a lot of friends. You just drive, you'll be all right. 
Only shoot if you have to."
I nodded. I didn't dare look at Dr. Krantz.
"Remember," Chick said through the driver's side window. "Pump the brakes."
"Sure," I said, still feeling like throwing up.
Chick smacked the rusted hood, knocking off several inches of snow, and said, 
"Get going, then."
Fighting back my nausea, I rolled up the window then glanced through the rear 
windshield and yelled to Seth, "You ready back there?"
Seth, his arms around Rob's shoulders, nodded. Beside him, Chigger sat with his 
tongue lolling, happy to be going for a ride.
"Ready," Seth yelled.
I looked beside me. Dr. Krantz did not look good. For one thing, he was in a 
pretty awkward position, with one leg stretched out at an odd angle in front of 
him. The lenses of his glasses were completely fogged up, he was almost as pale 
as the snow outside his window. But he was still conscious, and I guess that's 
all that mattered.
"Ready, Dr. Krantz?" I asked.
He nodded tensely.
"Just do it," he rasped.
So I put my foot on the gas. . . .
C H A P T E R
17
Once when we were little, Ruth had a birthday party at the Zoom Floom. The Zoom 
Floom was located on the same hillside as Paoli Peaks Ski Resort. It was a water 
slide that only operated in summertime. The way you went down it was, you laid 
down on this rubber mat, and an attendant pushed you off.
Then, suddenly, you were plummeting down a mountain, with about fifty billion 
tons of water pushing you even faster downward, and when you opened your mouth 
to scream, all of that water got into your mouth, and you went around these 
hairpin curves that seemed like they might kill you, and usually your mat 
slipped out from under you and you were skidding down the slide with just your 
suit on. And the surface of the slide was rough enough to take the skin off your 
hipbones, and with every second you were certain you were to going drown or at 
least crack your head open, until at last you plunged into this four-foot-deep 
pool at the bottom and came up choking and gasping for air, only to be hit in 
the head by your mat a moment or two later.
And then you grabbed your mat and started up the stairs to go again. You had to. 
Because it was so freaking fun.
But sliding down the wooded hill from Jim Henderson's militia compound? Yeah, so 
not fun.
And if we lived through itówhich I doubted we would? Yeah, so never doing it 
again.
I realized pretty early on as we plunged straight at the pine trees that formed 
a thick wall around the True Americans' compound that Chick was right about one 
thing: The plows certainly hadn't been near Jim Henderson's place. I found the 
road pretty quicklyóor what passed for a road, apparently, in the opinion of the 
True Americans. It was really just a track between the pine trees, the branches 
of many of which hung so low, they brushed against the top of the cab as we went 
by.
But the snow that lay across the so-called road was thick, and beneath it seemed 
to be a real nice layer of ice. As the truck careened down the hillside path, 
branches whipping against it, causing Seth and Chigger, in the back, to duck 
down low, it took every ounce of strength I had just to control the wheel, to 
keep the front tires from spinning out and sending usóoh, yesóinto the deep 
ravine to my left. A ravine that I was quite sure in summertime made a charming 
fishing and swimming hole, but which now appeared to me, as I barreled alongside 
it, without even a token guardrail between it and me, a pit to hell.
All this, of course, was only visible to me thanks to the moonlight, which was 
fortunately generous. I had the truck's brights on, but in a way that only made 
things worse, because then I could plainly see every near-catastrophe looming 
before us. I probably would have been better off just closing my eyes, for all 
the good my jerking on the wheel and pumping the brakes, as Chick had suggested, 
seemed to be doing me.
None of this was helped by the fact that all the jolting seemed to have brought 
Dr. Krantz out from his state of semi-consciousness. He was awake, all right, 
and hanging on for dear life to the dashboard. There were no seatbelts in the 
cabóapparently, passenger safety was not of primary concern to the True 
Americans. Dr. Krantz was being jounced all over the place, and there wasn't a 
blessed thing I could do about it Ö or about Rob and Seth, in the back, who were 
receiving the same nice treatment.
I have to admit though that Dr. Krantz wasn't helping very much by grabbing his 
leg with the tourniquet on it and sucking air in between his teeth every time we 
passed over a particularly large rock in the road, hidden beneath all that snow. 
I mean, I know it must have hurt and all, but hello, I was driving. I kept 
glancing over to make sure the tourniquet was still tight. I had to, since he 
hadn't let me torque it off.
I was glancing over at Dr. Krantz's leg when I suddenly heard him suck in his 
breath, and not because we'd gone over a bump. I quickly glanced through the 
windshield, but could see nothing more horrifying that what we'd already 
encountered, treacherous drop-offs and looming trees. Then I heard a tap at the 
back window, and turned my head.
Seth, white-faced and panicked-looking, pointed behind him.
"We got company!" he yelled.
I glanced in the rearview mirroróthen realized that, disobeying one of the first 
rules of driving, I had not thought to adjust my mirrors before I put my foot on 
the gas. I couldn't see squat out of them, thanks to their having been tilted 
for a much taller person than me.
Reaching up, I grasped the rearview mirror and tried to adjust it so that I 
could see what was behind us, while at the same time navigating a ten-foot dip 
in the road that sent all of us airborne for a second or two. . . .
And then I saw it. Two True Americans barreling after us in a four by four. A 
pretty new one, too, if you asked me. And these guys seemed to know what they 
were doing. They were gaining on us already, and I hadn't even noticed their 
headlights, which meant they couldn't have been behind us for all that long.
I did the only thing I could, under the circumstances. I floored it.
This strategy, apparently, was not one Dr. Krantz seemed prepared to fully 
embrace.
"For God's sake, Jessica," he said, speaking for the first time since being put 
in the cab. "You're going to kill us all."
"Yeah," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "Well, what do you think these guys 
are going to do to us if they catch us?"
"There's another way," Dr. Krantz said. "Give me that gun."
I nearly cracked up laughing at that one. "No freaking way."
"Jessica." Dr. Krantz sounded mad. "There's no alternative."
"You are not," I said, "starting a shootout with those guys with my boyfriend 
and Seth in the back there, completely unprotected. Sorry."
Dr. Krantz shook his head. "Jessica, I assure you. I am an expert marksman."
"Yeah, but I'll bet they aren't." I nodded toward the rearview mirror. "And if 
they start aiming for you, chances are, they're going to hit me. Or Seth. Or 
Rob. So you can forget"óWe hit a particularly large bump in the road and went 
flying for a second or twoó"about it."
Dr. Krantz, it was clear, wasn't about to forget about it. Fortunately, however, 
that last bump sent him into paroxysms of pain, so he was too busy to think 
about the gun for a little while. . . .
But not too busy to see, as I soon did, the horrifying sight that loomed before 
us. And that was a large portion of the road that had disappeared.
That's right, disappeared, as if it had never been there. It took me a minute or 
two to realize that what it was, in fact, was a small wooden bridge that, 
undoubtedly due to rotting wood, had collapsed under the weight of all that 
snow. Now there was a six-foot-wide gap between this side of the ravine and the 
far side Ö the side to medical care for Rob and Dr. Krantz. And to freedom.
"Slow down!" Dr. Krantz screamed. I swear, if his leg closest to me hadn't been 
all busted up, he would have tried to reach over with it and slam down the 
brakes himself. "Jessica, don't you see it?"
I saw it all right. But what I saw was our one chance to get away from these 
clowns.
Which was why I pressed down on that gas pedal for all I was worth.
"Hang on!" I screamed at Seth.
Dr. Krantz threw his arms out to brace himself against the roof of the cab and 
the dashboard, as the ravine loomed ever closer. "Jessica!" he yelled. "You are 
insaneó"
And then the wheels of the pickup left the ground, and we were flying. Really. 
Just like in dreams. You know the ones, where you dream you can fly? And while 
you're in the air, it's totally quiet, and all you can hear is your heartbeat, 
and you don't even dare breathe because if you do, you might drop down to the 
ground again, and you don't want that to happen because what you are 
experiencing is a miracle, the miracle of flight, and you want to make it last 
as long as you possibly can. . . .
And then, with a crash, we were down again, on the far side of the ravine Ö and 
still going, faster than ever. Only the jolt of our landing had sent all of our 
bones grinding togetheróI know I bit my tongueónot to mention, it seemed to blow 
the shocks out of the truck. It certainly blew something out, since the truck 
shimmied all over, then made a pathetic whining sound. . . .
But it kept going. I kept my foot to that gas pedal, and that truck kept on 
going.
"Oh my God," Dr. Krantz kept saying. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my 
God. . . ."
Cyrus, I knew, was gone. I dared a glance over my shoulder, as the truck ground 
up a steep incline on the far side of the ravine we'd jumped.
"You guys okay back there?" I yelled, and was relieved to see Seth's white face, 
and Chigger's laughing one, right there.
"We lost 'em!" Seth yelled, triumphantly. "Look!"
I looked. And Seth was right. The four by four had tried the same jump we had, 
but hadn't been able to get up as much speed as we had. Now it lay with its 
crumpled nose in the creek bed, the two men inside struggling to get out.
Something burst from within me. Suddenly, I was yelling, "Yeehaw!" like a 
cowboy. I never lifted my foot off the gas, but it was all I could do to stay in 
my seat behind that wheel. I wanted to jump out and kiss everyone in sight. Even 
Dr. Krantz. Even Chigger.
And then, without warning, we were bursting through the trees, and sliding onto 
the main road. Just like that. The moon was shining down hard, reflecting off 
the snow carpeting the barren fields all around us. After being so deep in the 
dark woods, all that light was almost blinding Ö blinding and the most beautiful 
sight I'd ever seen. Even as I was slamming on the brakes and we went sliding 
across the icy highway, I was smiling happily. We'd made it! We'd really made 
it!
When the truck finally slid to a halt, I risked a glance at the wooded hill 
behind us. You couldn't tell, just by looking at it, that it housed a bunch of 
wacko survivalists. It just looked, you know, like a pretty wooded hill.
Except for the smoke pouring from the top of it out into the moonlit sky. 
Really. It kind of looked like pictures I'd seen of Mount St. Helens, right 
before it blew up. Only on a much smaller scale, of course.
I looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't a farmhouse, or 
even a trailer, to be seen. Certainly nowhere I could make a phone call.
Then I remembered Dr. Krantz's cell phone.
I glanced over at him, but the guy was out. I guess that last burst of speed did 
him in. I leaned over and pawed around in his coat for a minute, then finally 
located the phone inside a pocket that also contained a Palm Pilot, a pack of 
Juicy Fruit, and a lot of used-up Kleenex. I helped myself to a piece of the 
Juicy Fruit, then opened up the rear window and passed the pack, along with the 
cell phone, to Seth.
"Here," I said to him, as he took both. "Call your parents to let them know 
you're all right, and that they can pick you up in five minutes at County 
Medical. Then call the cops and tell them what's happening up at Jim Henderson's 
place. If the fire department's going to get up there, they'll need to bring a 
plow." Then I remembered the blown-out bridge. "And maybe a road crew," I added.
Seth, after stuffing the Juicy Fruit in his mouth, eagerly began to dial. I 
turned back to face the road. My arms ached from my battle with the steering 
wheel, and despite the cold, there was a ribbon of sweat running all up and down 
my chest. But we had made it. We had made it.
Almost.
I committed twenty-seven traffic violations getting Rob and Dr. Krantz to the 
hospital. I went thirty miles over the speed limitóforty outside of townówent 
through three stoplights, made an illegal left-hand turn, and went the wrong way 
down a one-way street. Not that it mattered much. There was practically no one 
out on the streets, thanks to all the snow. The only time I ran into traffic was 
outside the Chocolate Moose, where a lot of kids from Ernie Pyle High hang out. 
It was after eleven, so the Moose was closed, but there were still kids around, 
necking in their cars. When I blew past them, I laid on the horn, just for the 
fun of it. I saw a number of startled heads lift up as I flew by. I yelled, 
"Yeehaw," at them, and a couple of irritated jocks yelled, "Grit!" back at me. I 
guess because of the truck. And maybe because of the yeehaw. And quite possibly 
because of Chigger.
But you know what? They couldn't have called me something that filled me with 
more pride.
When I swung around the entrance to the hospital, I saw that I had a choice of 
two entrances: the one for emergency vehicles only, and the one for general 
admittance.
Of course I chose the one for the emergency vehicles. I figured I'd come 
skidding to a halt in front of it, you know, like onThe Dukes of Hazard , and 
all these emergency room personnel would come running out, all concerned about 
hearing the brakes squeal.
Only it didn't happen quite like that, because I guess most emergency vehicles 
don't go skidding into that entrance very much, and even though it had been 
plowed and salted, there was still a lot of ice. So instead of skidding to a 
halt in front of the emergency room doors, I sort of ended up driving through 
them.
But hey. All the emergency room personneldid come running up, just like I'd 
thought they would.
Fortunately the emergency room doors were glass, so crashing into them really 
didn't cause that much damage to my passengers. I mean, once the front wheels 
hit the emergency room floor and got some traction, the brakes worked, so Seth 
and Rob were fine. And Dr. Krantz was unconscious anyway, so when his head hit 
the dashboard, it probably didn't even hurt that much. It was more like a little 
tap. I know that's how it felt when I was flung against the steering wheel. 
Fortunately the truck was so old, it didn't have air bags, so we didn't have to 
deal withthat embarrassment.
Still, the people in the emergency bay were surprisingly unsympathetic to my 
predicament. I mean, you would think that after what I'd been through, they'd be 
a little more understanding, but no. They didn't act at all like the emergency 
room people on that show on TV.
"Are you crazy?" one nurse in blue scrubs was yelling, as I lifted my head from 
the steering wheel.
That made me mad. I mean, all I'd done is gotten a little glass on the floor. It 
wasn't like I'd run over anybody.
"Hey," I said. "There's a guy in the back of this truck with a head injury, and 
this guy next to me is about to lose a leg. Get a couple gurneys, then get off 
my back."
That shut her up, let me tell you. In seconds, it seemed, they'd gotten Dr. 
Krantz out of the cab, then helped me back the truck up so they could get 
outside, and help move Rob. Seth was able to climb down from the cab bed 
unaided, but Chigger didn't seem too pleased to see his rescuers. He did a lot 
of growling and snapping until I told him to knock it off. Then, ever hopeful of 
more mashed potatoes, he leapt from the back of the truck and followed me 
inside, as I trailed after the gurney Rob was on.
"Is he going to be all right?" I kept asking all the people who were working on 
him. But they wouldn't say. They were too busy barking off his vital signs and 
writing them down on charts. The weirdest part was when they unwrapped him, and 
I saw what the yellow thing that had been around him the whole time was.
Oh, just the "Don't Tread On Me" flag from the True Americans' meeting house.
The one with the giant hole in it, from where I'd accidentally blasted it with a 
shotgun.
It was as I was standing there staring at this that I heard a voice call my 
name. I looked around, and saw that Dr. Krantz, who was being worked on over on 
the next gurney, had regained consciousness. He gestured for me to come close. I 
edged in between all the doctors and nurses who were hovering around him and 
leaned down so that he could whisper to me.
"Jessica," he hissed. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, sure," I said, surprised. "I'm fine."
"And Mr. Wilkins?"
"I don't know," I said, throwing a glance over my shoulder. I couldn't see Rob, 
for all the doctors and nurses crowded around him. "I think he's going to be 
okay."
"And Seth?"
"He's fine," I said. "Really, Dr. Krantz, we're okay. You just concentrate on 
getting better, okay?"
But Dr. Krantz wasn't through. He had something else to say to me, something 
that seemed of vital importance for him to get off his chest. He reached out and 
grabbed the front of my coat, and pulled me closer.
"Jessica," he rasped, close to my ear.
I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say, so I tried to head him off at 
the pass.
"Dr. Krantz," I said. "Don't worry about thanking me. Really, it's all right. 
I'd have done the same for anybody. I was happy to do it."
But Dr. Krantz still wouldn't let me go. If anything, his grip on the front of 
my coat tightened.
"Jessica," he breathed, again. I leaned even closer, since he seemed to be 
having trouble making himself heard.
"Yes, Dr. Krantz?" I said.
"You," he rasped, "are the worst driver I have ever seen."
C H A P T E R
18
The county hospital saw a lot of action that night. And that's not even counting 
having a pickup ram through its ambulance-bay doors.
It also admitted forty-eight new patients, seven of them in critical condition. 
Fortunately none of the people listed as critical were friends of mine. No, it 
looked as if most of the damage that was done that night was done to the True 
Americans. As I sat in the waiting roomóthey wouldn't let me in to see Rob once 
he'd been admitted, because I wasn't familyóI saw each person as they were 
wheeled in.
Of course, that didn't start happening for a while, because it took a pretty 
long time for the fire engines and ambulances and police to get out to Jim 
Henderson's place. In fact, merely my explanation ofhow to get out there took a 
while. The police interviewed me for about forty minutes before the first squad 
car even started off in the direction of the True Americans' compound.
And I'm not too sure they believed what I told them. That might be one of the 
reasons they didn't go tearing off right away. I mean, a militia group, under 
attack by a ragtag band of bikers and truck drivers? Fortunately at some point, 
Dr. Krantz regained consciousness, and they were able to go in and confirm 
everything I'd said. He must have been pretty persuasive, too, because when I 
saw the sheriff leaving the examination room Dr. Krantz had been shoved into 
while the hospital staff scrambled to find a surgeon skilled enough to sew his 
leg back together, he looked pretty grim.
For a short while, the only person in the emergency waiting room with me was 
Seth. Well, Seth and Chigger. The hospital people weren't too happy about having 
a dog in their waiting room, but when I explained that I couldn't leave Chigger 
outside in the truck, as he would freeze, seeing as how the truck had no 
heatónor much of a windshield leftóthey relented. And really, once I'd gotten 
him a few packs of peanut-butter Ritz crackers from the snack machine, Chigger 
was fine. He curled up on two of the plastic chairs and went right to sleep, 
worn out from his long ride and all that barking.
Seth's reunion with his parents, which came about ten minutes after our arrival, 
was touching in the extreme. The Blumenthals wept with happiness over seeing 
their son alive and in one piece. When they heard about my part in bringing Seth 
home, they pulled me into their group hug, which was fun, even though I assured 
them that I had, in fact, played only a very small role in the liberation of 
their son from the militia group that had kidnaped him.
But when Seth, while explaining precisely what the True Americans were all 
about, showed his parents the burn on his hand, which I had sort of forgotten 
about, they freaked out, and Seth got whisked off to the burn unit to have the 
wound treated.
So then it was just Chigger and me in the waiting room.
Finally, though, my parents, along with Douglas and Mike and Claire (because the 
two of them are attached at the hip) showed up, and we had our own tearful 
reunion. Well, at least, my mom cried. No one else did, really. And my mom only 
cried because she was so relieved that Great-aunt Rose had been wrong: 
Apparently the whole time I'd been gone, she'd been telling everyone that I had 
probably run off to Vegas to find work as a blackjack dealer. She had seen a 
show about teenage runaway blackjack dealers onOprah .
Great-aunt Rose, my dad said, was leaving on the first bus out of town in the 
morning, whether or not she was ready to go.
It was a little while after this that Mrs. Wilkins showed up. I had called her 
right after I called my parents. But Mrs. Wilkins, being family, was let into 
the room where they were keeping Rob, so it wasn't like we had a chance to visit 
or anything. She only came out once, and that was to tell me that the doctor had 
said Rob was going to be all right. He had a concussion, but the doctor didn't 
think he'd have to stay in the hospital for more than a day or two, so long as 
he regained consciousness by morning. My dad told Mrs. Wilkins not to worry 
about her shifts at the restaurant while Rob was convalescing, so that was all 
right.
One thing my dad didn't askóno one in my family didówas what Rob and I had been 
doing, saving Seth Blumenthal and battling the True Americans together. Mike and 
Claire and Douglas already knew, of course, but it didn't seem to occur to my 
parents to ask. Thank God.
All they wanted to know was was I all right, and would I come home now.
I said I was fine. Only I couldn't come home. Not, I told them, until I'd heard 
that Dr. Krantz was safely out of surgery.
If they thought this was weird, they didn't say so. They just nodded and went to 
get coffee from the machine over by the cafeteria, which, this late at night, 
was unfortunately closed. I was famished on account of having had nothing to eat 
since lunch, so we raided the snack machines some more. I had a pretty good 
dinner of Hostess apple pie and Fritos, some of which Chigger helped me eat. 
Much to my surprise, no one in my family seemed really to like Chigger, who was 
quite charming to all of them, sniffing each one carefully in case he or she had 
food hidden somewhere. My mom looked a little taken aback when I asked if I 
could keep Chigger. But she softened when I explained that the police had told 
me any pets found on seized property would be impounded and probably put down.
Besides, no one could deny Chigger made a very good guard dog. Even the cops had 
given him a pretty wide berth while they were questioning me.
And then, just as I'd suspected, about an hour after this, the first of the 
casualties from the battle of the Grits versus the True Americans began to flood 
the ER. I'm not sure, but I think it was around then that my parents began to 
suspect that my real motivation for staying at the hospital wasn't to find out 
whether or not Dr. Krantz's surgery had been successful. No, it was because I 
wanted to be there when they brought in Jim Henderson. I wanted to be there 
really, really bad.
Not because I had anything to say to him. What can one say to someone like him? 
He is never going to realize that we were right and he was wrong. People like 
Jim Henderson are incapable of changing their ways. They are going to believe in 
their half-assed opinions until the day they die, and nothing and no one is ever 
going to convince them that those beliefs might be mistaken.
No, I wanted to see Jim Henderson because I wanted to make sure they'd gotten 
him. That's all. I wanted to make sure that guy didn't slip away, didn't run off 
deeper into the hills to live in a cave, or escape to Canada. I wanted that guy 
in prison, where he belonged.
Or dead. Dead wouldn't have been too bad, either. Although I didn't think Jim 
Henderson could really ever be dead enough for me. At least in prison, I'd know 
he was suffering. Death seemed like too good a punishment for the likes of him.
And I wouldn't have been too sad to see Mrs. Henderson there in the morgue with 
him.
But though they brought in plenty of people I recognized as True Americansóall 
men, including the two from the four by four that had been chasing us, and Red 
Plaid Jacket, suffering from a bullet wound to the thighónone of them were Jim 
Henderson. This was pretty disappointing, but certainly not unexpected. Of 
course a guy like him would run at the first sign of trouble. He wouldn't get 
far, though. Not with me on the case. I would make it my personal psychic 
business to know where he was and what he was doing at all times. That way I 
could alert the authorities, who would hopefully catch him when he least 
expected it. Like when he was sleeping, or maybe making more baby True 
Americans. Some time when he wasn't likely to be able to reach for a gun.
It was as I was examining the faces of the people being wheeled in, searching 
for Jim Henderson, that I saw one that looked more than a little familiar. I was 
up and out of my plastic seat in no time, and hurrying to the side of the gurney 
he was being wheeled in on.
"Chick," I cried, reaching for his arm, which had already been attached to an IV 
bottle. "Are you okay? What happened?"
Chick smiled wanly up at me.
"Hey, there, little lady," he said. "Glad to see you made it. Wilkins and the 
kid all right? How about the professor?"
"They're all fine," I said. "Or going to be fine, anyway. But what about you? 
What happened?"
"Aw." Chick looked irritably at the nurse who was trying to get a thermometer 
into his mouth. "Stun grenade went off early." He lifted his hands. I gasped at 
how raw and bloody they were.
"Chick!" I cried. "I'm so sorry!"
"Ah," he said, sheepishly. "It was my fault. I shoulda just thrown the stupid 
thing. But then I saw the guy had got all the women and children lined up in 
front of him, and I hesitatedó"
"Jim Henderson, you mean?"
"Yeah," Chick said. "Bastard was using his wives and kids as the old human 
shield."
"Wait." I stared down at him. "Wives?"
"Well, sure," Chick said. "Guy like Jim Henderson's gonna keep God's chosen race 
going, he can't afford to be monogamous. Lady," he said, to the nurse with the 
thermometer, "I ain't got no fever. What I got is burnt-up hands."
The nurse glared at both Chick and me.
"No visitors," she said, pointing imperiously at the plastic chairs, "in the ER. 
Get back to your seat. And keep that dog out of the trash cans!"
I looked and saw that Chigger had his head buried in the ambulance-bay trash 
can.
"But what about him?" I asked Chick, as the nurse, disgusted with me, began 
physically to push me from the crowded ER. "Jim Henderson? Did they catch him?"
"Don't know, honey," Chick called. "Place was a zoo by the time they got me out 
of there, cops and firemen and what alló"
"And stay out," the nurse said, as she closed the ER doors firmly on me.
I walked disconsolately over to Chigger and pulled on his leather studded 
collar, eventually managing to drag him away from the garbage Ö though I had to 
pull his nose out of a Dorito bag. "Bad dog," I said, mostly for my parents' 
benefit, so they could see what an excellent and responsible pet owner I was 
going to make.
It was as I was doing this that I heard my name called softly from behind me. I 
turned around, and there was Dr. Thompkins, in a blood-smeared operating gown.
"Oh," I said, holding onto Chigger's collar. The smell of the blood was making 
him mental. I swear, it was enough to make me think the True Americans never fed 
their dogs. "Hey."
My parents, seeing their neighbor from across the street, got up and came over, 
as well.
"I just operated," Dr. Thompkins said to me, "on the leg of a man who told me he 
had you to thank for keeping him from bleeding to death."
"Oh," I said, brightening. "Dr. Krantz. Is he all right?"
"He's fine," Dr. Thompkins said. "I was able to save the leg. That was certainly 
one of the more Öinteresting tourniquets I've seen applied."
"Yeah," I said, humbly. "Well, I did get an A. In sixth grade first aid."
"Yes," Dr. Thompkins said. "I imagine you did. Well, in any case, Dr. Krantz is 
going to be fine. He also explained to me how he happened to have been shot."
"Oh," I said, not certain where Tasha's dad was going with this part. Like if he 
was going to yell at me for being irresponsible or something. Had someone told 
him it was me who'd rammed a pickup through the ambulance bay doors? I wasn't 
sure. "Well," I said, lamely. "You know."
Dr. Thompkins did a surprising thing. He stuck his right hand out toward me.
"I'd like to thank you, Jessica," he said, "for your part in attempting to bring 
my son's killers to justice."
"Oh." I was a little shocked. Was that what I had done? I guess it was, sort of. 
Too bad I hadn't been able to catch the guy who'd been ultimately responsible. . 
. .
"No problem, Dr. Thompkins," I said, and slipped my hand into Nate's father's.
Just as I did so, yet another ambulance came wailing up to the doors I'd 
smashed. The doors to the back of the vehicle were flung open, and the 
paramedics wheeled out a man who had been severely injured. In fact, he was 
practically holding his intestines in place with one hand. He was still 
conscious, however. Conscious and looking all around him with wild, crazy, blue 
eyes.
"Dr. Thompkins," one of the paramedics cried. "This one's bad. BP a hundred over 
sixty, pulseó"
Jim Henderson. It was Jim Henderson on that gurney, with his guts hanging out.
So they'd got him. They'd got him after all.
"All right," Dr. Thompkins said, looking over the chart the paramedics handed to 
him. "Let's get him upstairs to surgery. Now."
A pair of ER nurses took over from the paramedics, and began wheeling Jim 
Henderson down the hall, toward the elevator. Dr. Thompkins followed them, and I 
followed Dr. Thompkins. Chigger followed me.
"Hey, Mr. Henderson," I said, when the nurses pulled the gurney to a halt 
outside the elevator doors.
Jim Henderson turned his head to look at me. For once, his crazy-eyed gaze 
focused enough to recognize me. I know he did, because I saw fear Ö yes, fear Ö 
in those otherwise vacant orbs of blue.
"Get that dog," one of the nurses said, "away from here. He'll infect the 
patient."
"Jessica," Dr. Thompkins said. The elevator doors opened. "I'll finish talking 
to you later. But right now, I have to operate on this man."
"You hear that, Mr. Henderson?" I asked the man on the gurney. "Dr. Thompkins 
here is going to operate on you. Do you know who Dr. Thompkins is, Mr. 
Henderson?"
Henderson couldn't reply because he had an oxygen mask over his mouth. But that 
was okay. I didn't need an answer from him anyway.
"Dr. Thompkins," I said, "is the father of that boy you left dead in that 
cornfield."
Dr. Thompkins, with a startled look down at his patient, took an involuntary 
step backward.
"Yes," I said to Dr. Thompkins. "That's right. This is the man who killed your 
son. Or at least ordered someone else to do it."
Dr. Thompkins stared down at Jim Henderson, who, it had to be admitted, looked 
pretty pathetic, with his guts out all over the place like that.
"I can't operate on this man," Dr. Thompkins said, his horror-stricken gaze 
never leaving the man on the gurney.
"Dr. Thompkins?" One of the nurses slipped into the elevator and lifted a phone 
from a panel in there. "You want me to page Dr. Levine?"
"Not to mention," I said, "this guy's also the one who kidnapped Seth 
Blumenthal, burned down the synagogue, and knocked over all the headstones in 
the Jewish cemetery."
The nurse hesitated. Dr. Thompkins continued to stare down at Jim Henderson, 
disgust mingling with disbelief on his face.
"How about Dr. Takahashi?" the other ER nurse suggested. "Isn't he on duty 
tonight?"
"Hmmm," I said. "Mr. Henderson doesn't like immigrants very much either. Right, 
Mr. Henderson?" I bent down so that my face was very close to his. "Gosh, this 
must be very upsetting to you. Either a black guy, a Jewish guy, or an immigrant 
is going to end up operating on you. Better hope all those things you've been 
saying about them are wrong. Well, okay, buh-bye, now."
I waved as the two nurses, along with a dazed Dr. Thompkins, stepped onto the 
elevator with Jim Henderson. The last thing I saw of him, he was staring at me 
with those wide, crazy eyes. I can't be sure, but I really do think he was 
reevaluating his whole belief system.
C H A P T E R
19
Jim Henderson didn't die. Not on the operating table, anyway.
Drs. Levine and Takahashi operated on him, in the end. Dr. Thompkins excused 
himself. Which was pretty noble of him, actually. I mean, if it had been me, I 
don't know. I think I would have gone ahead. And let the scalpel slip at a 
crucial moment.
But Jim Henderson lived through his surgery. He owed his life to two people who 
came from religious and ethnic groups he'd been teaching his followers to hate. 
I kind of wondered how he felt about that, but not enough actually to ask him. I 
had way more important things to worry about.
Primarily, Rob.
It wasn't until the next day that Rob finally woke up. I was sitting right there 
when he did it. I did go home right after the thing with Jim Hendersonóactually, 
hospital security came along and threw me out, which is a terrible way, if you 
think about it, to treat a hero. But one of the ER nurses who'd escorted Jim 
Henderson to surgery apparently finked me out, saying I'd "threatened" a 
patient.
Which of course I had. But if you ask me, he fully deserved it.
Anyway, I went home with my parents and brothers and Claire, and got a few hours 
of sleep. I showered and changed and ate and walked Chigger and went a few 
rounds with my parents over him. They were not too thrilled to have a trained 
attack dog living under our roof, but after I explained to them that the cops 
would have sent him to the pound, and that the True Americans were not the 
world's best pet owners, as far as I can see, they came around. They weren't 
exactly thrilled with the way Chigger had chewed through an antique rug while 
we'd all been asleep, but after three or four bowls of Dog Chow, he was fine, so 
I don't see what the problem is. He was justhungry .
It hadn't been much of a surprise to me that on top of everything else, Jim 
Henderson and his followers turned out to be lousy pet owners.
Anyway, I was sitting there flipping through a copy of the local paper, which 
mentioned nothing about me and the important role I'd played in the capture of 
the dangerous and deranged leader of the largest militia group in the southern 
half of the state, when Rob started to come round. I put the paper down and ran 
for his mom, who'd also been waiting for him to wake up. She'd been down the 
hall getting coffee when he finally opened his eyes. She and I both hurried back 
to his room. . . .
But at the door, a voice from across the hall called weakly to me. When I 
turned, I saw Dr. Krantz lying in the bed of the room across from Rob's. 
Gathered around his bed were a number of people I recognized, including Special 
Agents Smith and Johnson, who used to be assigned to my case. Until Dr. Krantz 
fired them from it, that is. It was good to see they could all let bygones be 
bygones and get along.
"Well, well, well," I said, strolling into the crowded room. "What's this? A 
debriefing?"
Dr. Krantz laughed. It was a startling sound. I wasn't used to hearing him 
laugh.
"Jessica," he said. "I'm glad to see you. There are a couple of people here I 
want you to meet."
And then Dr. Krantz, whose leg was in a long sling, with spikes coming out of a 
metal thing around the patched-up wound where I'd stuffed my rock, pointed to 
various people crowded into the small room, and made introductions. One of the 
people was his wife (she lookedexactly like him, except that she had hair). 
Another was a little old lady called Mrs. Pierce, whose name suited her, since 
she had very piercing eyes, as blue as the baby bootie she was industriously 
knitting. The last was a kid about my age, a boy named Malcolm. And of course I 
already knew Special Agents Johnson and Smith.
"That was quite the invasion of the True Americans' Compound you launched, 
Jessica," Special Agent Johnson said.
"Thanks," I said, modestly.
"Jessica's always impressed us," Special Agent Smith said, "with her 
communication skills. She seems to have a real flair for rallying people to her 
cause Ö whatever cause that happens to be."
"I couldn't have done it," I said, humbly, "without the help of many, many 
Grits."
There was an awkward silence after this, probably on account of no one in the 
room knowing what a Grit was, except for me.
"You'll be happy to know," Dr. Krantz said, "that Seth is going to be fine. The 
burn should heal without leaving a scar."
"Cool," I said. I wondered what was happening in Rob's room. He and his mom had 
probably had a nice little reunion by now. When was my turn?
"And the police officer," Dr. Krantz went on, "who was shot should be fine. As 
should all of your, um, friends. Particularly Mr. Chicken."
"Chick," I corrected him. "But that's great, too."
There was another silence. Malcolm, who was sitting over on the windowsill, 
playing with a Gameboy, looked up from it briefly, and said, "Jeez, go on. Ask 
her, already."
Dr. Krantz cleared his throat uncomfortably. Special Agents Johnson and Smith 
exchanged nervous glances.
"Ask me what?" I knew, though. I already knew.
"Jessica," Special Agent Smith said. "We all seem to have gotten off on the 
wrong foot with you. I know how you feel about coming to work for us, but I just 
want you to know, it won't be like it was with Ö well, the first time. Dr. 
Krantz has been doing groundbreaking work with Ö people like yourself. Why, Mrs. 
Pierce and Malcolm here are part of his team."
Mrs. Pierce smiled at me kindly above the baby bootie. "That's right, dear," she 
said.
"It just really seems to me," Special Agent Smith said, reaching up to fiddle 
with her pearl earring, "that you would enjoy the work, Jessica. Especially 
considering your feelings about Mr. Henderson. Those are the kind of people Dr. 
Krantz and his team are after, you know. People like Jim Henderson."
I glanced at Dr. Krantz. He looked a lot less intimidating in his hospital gown 
than he did in his usual garb, a suit and tie.
"It's true, Jessica," he said. "Someone with powers like yours could really be a 
boon to our team. And we wouldn't require anything from you but a few hours a 
week of your time."
I eyed him warily. "Really? I wouldn't have to go live in Washington, or 
anything?"
"Not at all," Dr. Krantz said.
"And I could keep going to school?"
"Of course," Dr. Krantz said.
"And you'd keep it out of the press?" I asked. "I mean, you'd make sure it was a 
secret?"
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "You saved my life. I owe you that much, at least."
I looked at Malcolm. He was absorbed in his video game, but as if he sensed my 
gaze on him, he looked up.
"You work for him?" I asked, gruffly. "You like it?"
Malcolm shrugged, " ís okay," he said. Then he turned back to his game. But I 
could tell by the way color was spreading over his cheeks that working for Dr. 
Krantz was more than just okay. It was a chance for this otherwise 
average-looking kid to make a difference. He'd wanted to seem cool about it in 
front of the others, but you could totally tell: This kid was way psyched about 
his job.
"How about you?" I asked Mrs. Pierce.
"Oh, my dear," the old lady said, with a beatific smile. "Helping to put away 
scumbags like that jerk Henderson is what I live for."
After this surprising remark, she turned back to the baby bootie.
Well.
I looked at Dr. Krantz. "Tell you what," I said. "I'll think about it, okay?"
"Fine," Dr. Krantz said, with a smile. "You do that."
I told him I hoped he felt better soon, said goodbye to the others, and drifted 
back across the hall.
So? Stranger things have happened than me joining an elite team of psychic 
crime-fighters, you know.
And ithad felt pretty good when I'd seen them wheeling Jim Henderson in on that 
gurney. . . .
Inside Rob's room, Mrs. Wilkins had been joined by her brothers and 
Just-Call-Me-Gary.
"Oh," Rob's mom said, as I came in. "Here she is!"
Rob, his hair looking very dark against the whiteness of the bandage around his 
head, and the pillows behind his back, smiled at me wanly. It was the most 
beautiful smile I had ever seen. Instantly, all thoughts of Dr. Krantz and the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation left my head.
"Hi," I said, moving toward the bed. I had, for the occasion, donned a skirt. It 
was no velvet evening gown, but judging by the appreciative way his gray-eyed 
gaze roved over me, he sure thought it was.
"Well," Rob's uncle said. "What say we check out this cafeteria I've heard so 
much about, eh, Mary?"
Mrs. Wilkins said, "Oh, yes, let's." Then she and her brothers and 
Just-Call-Me-Gary left the room.
Hey, it wasn't subtle. But it worked. Rob and I were alone. Finally.
It was a little while later that I lifted my head from his shoulder, where I'd 
been resting it after having become exhausted from so much passionate kissing, 
and said, "Rob, I have to tell you something."
"I didn't ask you," he said, "because I didn't want you getting in trouble with 
your parents."
I looked at him like he was nuts. For a minute, I thought maybe he was. You 
know, that Mrs. Henderson had scrambled his brains with that mashed-potato bowl. 
"What are you talking about?"
"Randy's wedding," Rob said. "It's on Christmas Eve. No way your parents are 
going to let you go out on Christmas Eve. So you'd just have ended up lying to 
them, and getting in trouble, and I don't want that."
I blinked a few times. Sothat was why he hadn't asked me? Because he'd thought 
my parents wouldn't have let me go in the first-place?
Happiness washed over me. But still, he could have just said so, rather than let 
me think he had some other girl in mind he wanted to take instead. . . .
I didn't let my relief show, however.
"Rob," I said. "Get over yourself. That's not what I was going to say."
He looked surprised. "It wasn't? Then what?"
I shook my head. "Besides," I said. "My parents would so totally let me go out 
on Christmas Eve. We don't do anything on Christmas Eve. It's Christmas Day that 
we do church and present opening and a big meal and everything."
"Fine," Rob said. "But don't tell me that you'd tell them the truth. About being 
with me, I mean. Admit it, Mastriani. You're ashamed of me. Because I'm a Grit."
"That isnot true," I said. "You'rethe one who's ashamed of me! Because I'm a 
Townie. And still in high school."
"I will admit," Rob said, "that the fact that you're still in high school kind 
of sucks. I mean, itis a little weird for a guy my age to be going out with a 
sixteen-year-old."
I looked down at him disgustedly. "You're only two years older than me, nimrod."
"Whatever," Rob said. "Look. Do we have to talk about this now? Because in case 
you didn't notice, I've suffered a head injury, and calling me a nimrod is not 
making me feel any better."
"Well," I said, chewing on my lower lip. "What I'm about to say probably isn't 
going to make you feel better."
"What?" Rob said, looking wary.
"Your dad." I figured it was better if I just blurted it all out. "I saw a 
picture of him in your mom's room, and I know where he is."
Rob regarded me calmly. He did not even drop his hands from my arms, which he'd 
reached up to massage.
"Oh," was all he said.
"I didn't mean to pry," I said, quickly. "Really. I mean, I totally didn't do it 
on purpose. It's just, like I said, I saw his picture, and that night I dreamed 
about where he is. And I will totally tell you, if you want to know. But if you 
don't, that's fine, too, I will never say another word about it."
"Mastriani," Rob said, with a chuckle. "I know where he is."
My mouth dropped open. "Youknow ? Youknow where he is?"
"Doing ten to twenty at the Oklahoma Men's State Penitentiary for armed 
robbery," Rob said. "Real swell guy, huh? And I'm just a chip off the old block. 
I bet you're real eager to introduce me to your parents now."
"But that's not what you're on probation for," I said, quickly. "I mean, 
something like armed robbery. You don't get probation for stuff like that, they 
lock you up. So whatever you didó"
"Whatever I did," Rob said, "was a mistake and isn't going to happen again."
But to my dismay, he let go of me, and put his hands behind his head. He wasn't 
chuckling anymore either.
"Rob," I said. "You don't think I care, do you? I mean, about your dad? We can't 
help who are relatives are." I thought about Great-aunt Rose, who'd never 
committed armed robberyóat least so far as I knew. Still, if being unpleasant 
was a crime, she'd have been locked up long ago. "I mean, if I don't care that 
you were arrested once, why would I care aboutó"
"You should care," Rob said. "Okay, Mastriani? Youshould care. And you should be 
going out on Saturday nights to dances, like a normal girl, not sneaking into 
secret militia enclaves and risking your life to stop psychopathic killers. . . 
."
"Yeah?" I said, starting to get pissed. "Well, guess what? I'm not a normal 
girl, am I? I'm about as far from normal as you can get, and you know what? I 
happen tolike who I am. So if you don't, well, you can justó"
Rob took his hands out from behind his head and took hold of my arms again. 
"Mastriani," he said.
"I mean it, Rob," I said, trying to shake him off. "I mean it, if you don't like 
me, you can just go toó"
"Mastriani," he said, again. And this time, instead of letting go of me, he 
dragged me down until my face was just inches from his. "That's the problem. I 
like you too much."
He was proving just how much he liked me when the door to his room swung open, 
and a startled voice went, "Oh! Excuseme! "
We broke apart. I swung around to see my brother Douglas standing there looking 
very red in the face. Beside him stood, of all people, a very abashed Tasha 
Thompkins.
"Oh," I said, casually. "Hey, Douglas. Hey, Tasha."
"Hey," Rob said, sounding a bit weak.
"Hey," Tasha said. She looked like she would have liked to run from the room. 
But my brother put a hand on her slender shoulder. My brother, Douglas, touched 
a girlóand she seemed to regain her composure somewhat.
"Jess," she said. "I just Ö I came to apologize. For what I said the other 
night. My father told me what you didóyou know, about catching the people who 
did Ö that Ö to my brother, and I just Ö"
"It's okay, Tasha," I said. "Believe me."
"Yeah," Rob said. "It was a pleasure. Well, except for the part where I got hit 
with a mixing bowl."
"Mashed potatoes," I said.
"Mashed-potato bowl, I mean," Rob said.
"Really," I said to Tasha, who looked faintly alarmed by our banter. "It's okay, 
Tasha. I hope we can be friends."
"We can," Tasha said, her eyes bright with tears. "At least, I hope we can."
I held out my arms, and she moved into them, hugging me tightly. It was only 
when she got close enough for me to whisper into her ear that I said, softly, 
"You break my brother's heart, I'll break your face, understand?"
Tasha tensed in my arms. Then she released me and straightened. She didn't look 
upset, though. She looked excited and happy.
"Oh," she said, sniffling a little, but still reaching for Douglas's hand. "I 
won't. Don't worry."
Douglas looked alarmed, but not because Tasha had taken his hand.
"You won't what?" he asked. He darted a suspicious look at me. "Jess. What'd you 
say to her?"
"Nothing," I said, innocently, and sat down on Rob's bed.
And then, from behind them, a familiar voice went, "Knock knock," and my mother 
came barreling in, with my dad, Michael, Claire, Ruth, and Skip trailing along 
behind her.
"Just stopped by to see if you wanted to grab a bite over at the restaurant. . . 
." My mom's voice died away as soon as she saw where I was sitting. Or rather, 
who I was sitting so closely beside.
"Mom," I said, with a smile, not getting up. "Dad. Glad you're here. I'd like 
you to meet my boyfriend, Rob."
About the Author
Jenny Carroll
Born in Indiana, Jenny Carroll spent her childhood in pursuit of air 
conditioning - which she found in the public library where she spent most of her 
time. She has lived in California and France and currently resides in New York 
City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta. Jenny Carroll is the 
author of the hugely popular Mediator series as well as the bestselling Princess 
Diaries. Visit Jenny at her website, www.jennycarroll.com