I shot her a dismayed look. Did she really think that halfhearted attempt would stop Tristen Hyde from doing anything?
“This will just take a minute.” Tristen overrode her, continuing to cross the room, stepping around students who watched his progress with wary interest, moving aside if he came too close.
“Tristen, go, please,” I hissed when he reached me.
He didn’t listen to me, either, and tried to take my arm. “Jill—”
I pulled away, warning, “Don’t touch me.”
“Fine,” he agreed, crossing his arms. “As you wish.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, focusing on my canvas, where the innocent girl I’d been the previous year was smiling her not-quite-right smile. “What do you want?”
“The contest,” he said.
I actually laughed a little. “There’s no contest. That’s over, Tristen.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Miss Lampley had stepped closer, monitoring him. I also saw Tristen turn slightly to face her for a second.
She took a step back, and Tristen turned back to me.
“No matter how you feel about me,” he said, “you need the money, and we know our experiment works. We could still win.”
“I don’t care about the money,” I lied, even though I was still paying the bills late.
“We could start working during the day,” he added. “You wouldn’t have to be alone with me.”
I choked a little, and turned my face more squarely away from him. I wanted to be alone with him . . . But I didn’t want that at all. “It doesn’t matter, Tristen,” I said. “We’re not doing the contest.”
“Jill.” He spoke my name so firmly that, although I didn’t want to look at him, I did.
“What?”
“I made a bargain with you,” he reminded me. “You helped me; now I will hold up my end of the deal.”
“Tristen, we haven’t even thought about the presentation,” I said, voice cracking, and not because I was sad about the pathetic state of our abandoned project. “How would we present what we learned in public?” And it wasn’t exactly the contest entry I was talking about when I concluded, near tears, “We have nothing, Tristen.”
Even though I’d told him not to touch me, he clasped my upper arm and leaned closer. “We can do this, Jill,” he said. “You know we can.” He squeezed my arm. “We can beat Darcy and everyone else. You and I are smart enough to use what we’ve learned and win.”
I should have yanked my arm away again, but I didn’t. Darcy . . . I wanted to beat her. And I did still want the money.
And I did want to win.
“All right,” I agreed, pulling away from him then, decisively. “But we’ll work during school hours, and this time I’ll be in charge, because it’s my money. You said so.”
“I don’t want or need the cash,” he replied, crossing his arms again. “I will honor that part of the bargain, too.”
I took a second to consider what Tristen was offering.
“Let me help you win,” he said again so quietly that even I barely heard. “Let me make what’s left of my existence worthwhile.”
My heart, which I wanted to close off to him, nonetheless sank when he said that. His father . . . He knew his father would come back for him. I tried not to look at the gash across Tristen’s cheek but couldn’t stop myself. One of them might very well kill the other before long.
“Please,” Tristen said. “Let me keep my bargain with you.”
I couldn’t imagine working closely with him. It hurt just to stand next to him for a few minutes. But if Tristen Hyde felt that helping me would somehow serve as redemption, somehow help pay for the human life he’d taken, then I would help him ease his conscience. Especially since I knew then what it was like to lose control under the influence of the formula my ancestor had created and that had corrupted him.
“We’ll start this afternoon,” I said, picking up my paintbrush, signaling that he should go. Go, Tristen. Please, just go . . .
He left without another word, and I didn’t watch him walk out like the rest of the class. I just kept studying my self-portrait, darting glances back and forth between my photo and the face on the canvas until I was dizzy from comparing the two. It was almost like the girl in the photograph was blurry and vanishing and the girl I was trying to capture on the canvas was an unknown quantity, too.
How could I not know my own eyes?
Still clutching my brush empty of paint, I thought back to the night Tristen had played our old Steinway and I’d glimpsed that dark place in his eyes, heard it expressed in his music. I’d wondered then if that was what had been missing in my art.
But I’d been wrong. That wasn’t me. I would never be like Tristen.
I wiped my free hand across my mouth, which suddenly tasted metallic, like the formula I’d drunk just the night before.
The rage I’d felt toward my father, the clothes I’d hidden, an arm sliced to the bone, and blood on white sheets and white paper . . .
No! That wasn’t me.
Hand not quite steady, I jabbed my brush into a glob of pure white and painted over my eyes with broad, reckless strokes, thinking I had to start again from nothing. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t even figure out how to begin.
It was a relief when Miss Lampley finally told us to clean up, and when the bell rang, I walked into the hall, glad to be headed toward sociology, where all I had to do was listen and take notes.
As I slid into my seat, I felt somebody staring at me, and I turned around to see Todd Flick, who sat near the back of the class, glaring at me. And then he mouthed the word “bitch.”
I slid back around, mortified and shaken, not sure what I’d done to earn such naked hatred, not to mention a name I’d never been called before.
Not . . . me.
Chapter 63
Jill
“I’M SO GLAD you two decided to enter, and with such a compelling project,” Mr. Messerschmidt gushed, rubbing his hands together and beaming at me, Tristen, and the stack of old documents on the lab table before us. “To think, recreating such a famous experiment from the original notes! It’s tremendous. Astonishing, even!”
Mr. Messerschmidt started to reach out like he was going to touch the notes, and I slid them closer to myself, out of his reach. Something about my teacher’s enthusiasm for the partnership of Tristen and me still seemed strange to me, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at the documents. It wasn’t like I thought Mr. Messerschmidt would steal my family’s stuff, but still . . . he was almost drooling. “These are kind of fragile,” I said, resting my fingers lightly on the yellowed papers. “It’s not good to handle them a lot.”
“Of course,” Mr. Messerschmidt agreed, withdrawing his hand. But he frowned at me. “Jill, why didn’t you come forward with this before when I urged you to enter the contest? You need to present in less than two weeks!”
“I don’t know,” I lied, spreading my fingers wider, like I was hiding the notes from everybody. “I just didn’t think about it, I guess.”
“You didn’t think about this?” Mr. Messerschmidt laughed, gesturing to the papers again. “That’s hard to believe!”
“Not just hard to believe but total bull,” Darcy interrupted from the front of the room, where she and Todd were working at their usual lab station: number one. She didn’t bother to apologize for eavesdropping. “They’ve been collaborating for weeks.”
“Is planning quietly against the rules?” Tristen asked rhetorically. As if he cared about rules. “Must we all make a big show of everything we do? Some of us are mainly concerned with results, Darcy.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “Or else you’re cheating—”
Tristen laughed. “You’re the one who boasted that you’re working alone. And yet I see you have a collaborator. Who, I ask, is bending the rules?”
“Todd is an assistant,” she clarified, voice rising. “He’s not a collaborator. He just does what
I tell him. Grunt work.”
“Jeez, Darce,” Todd snapped as he rinsed some beakers in the sink. “Thanks a lot.”
Tearing my eyes away from the curled, stained papers, I saw that Todd’s ears were red. “You’re so mean, Darcy,” I said. “You even treat your boyfriend like a slave.”
I’d barely even realized I’d said that out loud until everybody turned to look at me. My first instinct was to blush, but I controlled it and forced myself to look them all right in the eye, one by one. Darcy was mean, and I had a right to say it.
Mr. Messerschmidt seemed hesitant, as usual.
Darcy looked shocked and angry.
Tristen nodded, eyes twinkling with bemused approval.
And when I locked eyes with Todd, I saw that he was furious and sheepish at the same time, like my defense had hurt his pride. What had happened, or what was happening between us?
Mr. Messerschmidt cleared his throat in a weak attempt to restore order. “Now, kids—”
“We’ll need lab rats as soon as possible,” Tristen interrupted, addressing our teacher. “I’ll need you to get about twenty from the school’s supplier. The school will pay, right?”
“I suppose so,” Mr. Messerschmidt mused.
“See that it does,” Tristen directed.
Me, I started staring at the old documents again. The formula lurked in there. The dangerous, exhilarating formula. The papers should be hidden . . .
Tristen tapped my shoulder. “Jill, are you all right?”
I tore my eyes away from the notes and realized that Mr. Messerschmidt had meandered off to Darcy’s station. “Yes, sure. I’m fine.”
“What do you want to do first?” Tristen asked.
“What?” Tristen Hyde had never asked for instruction before. Maybe not in his entire life. And certainly not from me.
“This is your experiment,” he reminded me. “You’re in charge.”
Yes, we’d agreed on that, but I hadn’t really expected him to give me control. “Um . . . do you think we should . . . ?”
“Jill.” He gave me a level, encouraging stare. “I trust your judgment.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. We need to start at the beginning. We haven’t even developed a solid hypothesis.”
“I’ll get a notebook,” Tristen said. He glanced to the front of the room, where Mr. Messerschmidt was sitting at his desk watching us all work. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, though, I want to make sure Messerschmidt gets that order for rats underway. He’s not being very proactive, given how soon we need them.”
“Okay,” I agreed, following him with my eyes as he walked to the front of the room, broken but with his usual confident gait. How could Tristen still make my heart race, and calm me, and make me want to laugh and cry and throw myself into his arms when I knew what he was? How was it that the more battered, the more terrible he became in my eyes, the more I seemed drawn to him? What did that say about me? What was wrong with me?
“Hey, Jekel.”
I’d been so focused on Tristen that I hadn’t noticed Todd sidling up next to me. I wheeled around, heart pounding with alarm. “What?”
“I didn’t like that shit you said about me in the coffee shop,” he hissed.
“What?” I repeated, struggling to maintain my composure. I’d been in a coffee shop? With Todd?
“If you ever want to find out what it’s like to be with a real man just call me,” he continued in a low snarl. But his eyes darted to Tristen, nervously, before he added, “I’ll show you who has the bigger one, bitch.”
“I don’t . . .” What had I said to him?
“Oh, not so tough today, are you?” Flick sneered. “Or maybe now that I’ve called your bluff, you’re afraid that you really can’t handle what I can deliver.”
“I . . .” Was he offering to have sex with me?
He gave me an evil grin and made a motion of raising a phone to his face as he walked away. “If you ever have the guts, Jekel, call me.”
I waited until I could control my shaking legs before I walked, with as much composure as I could muster, to the door, avoiding Tristen, who was still talking with Mr. Messerschmidt. Then I hurried to the girls’ bathroom, where I leaned against the cool tile wall, avoiding the mirror, afraid to see my own face.
What had I done?
I was still fighting to remember when the door burst open and in marched Tristen, without bothering to knock or announce himself.
Chapter 64
Jill
“WHAT HAPPENED BACK THERE?” Tristen demanded. “What did Flick say to you?”
“Nothing.” I tried to edge past him toward the door. “It was nothing.”
He moved, too, blocking my path. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll get it out of him, by force if necessary. He will not upset you, not for as long as I’m around.”
“No, Tristen,” I snapped, yelling suddenly. My voice echoed against the pink walls. “No more violence! I’m so sick of violence!”
“Jill . . .” Tristen seemed surprised, and chastised. “You’re right,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to protect you. But you’re right. My way isn’t the right way, and you probably handled it much better on your own, anyhow.”
I stared at Tristen, who looked so out of place surrounded by pink tile, and suddenly the whole world seemed as topsy-turvy as a boy in the girls’ room. I saw everything from a distance, like I was a character in a movie filled with ambiguous heroes and unexpected villains.
The most gallant, self-sacrificing guy in school was a murderer. The hottest, most popular stud had just propositioned the plainest, least popular virgin. The virgin became some sort of crazy slut when night fell. Fathers stole from daughters and attacked their sons. Mothers were too damaged and preoccupied to hold their own children. Teachers heeded their students, and shy girls snapped at dominant bitches. Chemistry, where I’d once found order in the universe, wreaked havoc on souls.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I blurted, burying my face in my hands. “I’m confused, Tristen . . . Nothing seems clear anymore.”
I think I expected Tristen, my guardian, to reach out and hold me like he’d done in the past. That was his role, wasn’t it? But I stood there alone, and when I pulled my hands away from my face, I saw that he had his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said with almost pained sympathy. “I’m sorry that you’re confused. I wish I could help, beyond winning you a scholarship so you can have a better future. But I’m afraid I’m just not the right man to do more.”
I knew then that when I’d pushed him away in art class, I’d severed something between us. He would still defend me against bullies. That was just his nature, and he probably would have risen to protect any weak creature. But he wouldn’t fold me against himself again. He would respect the distance I’d put between us.
“Let’s go,” he said, moving toward the door. “We don’t have time to waste standing around in here. I’ve an appointment in an hour.”
I followed him, and of course Tristen, always a gentleman when not wielding a butcher knife, held the door for me with his bloodstained hand.
I really, really wanted to ask him who he was going to meet, but I had a feeling that I didn’t have a right anymore.
Chapter 65
Tristen
“HOW MUCH WILL YOU give me for it?” I asked as one of our school’s most dismal miscreants, Mick Soder, ran his dirty paw down the side of my Honda.
“It runs good?” he asked, continuing to caress the car.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “It’s fine. How much?”
Mick shrugged, squinting. “I don’t know. Three hundred?”
“Are you insane?” I snapped. “It’s worth more than a thousand.”
“You gonna do a title transfer?” he noted, smirking. “You want to get the authorities involved?”
Dammit. He had me there. The title was in my father’s name. I just needed to
unload the car as quickly and quietly as possible. My ATM and credit cards had been canceled, leaving me with about thirty dollars that I’d scrounged from the pockets of unwashed pants. Apparently the beast was first attempting to starve me into compliance. “Four hundred,” I offered.
“Three fifty.”
I stuck out my hand. “Deal.”
Mick had apparently come prepared to buy. He dug into jeans that were even dirtier than mine and pulled out a wad of cash, counting some out and handing it over.
I counted, too, before giving him the keys.
“That must have been a helluva fight,” Mick noted, nodding at my bandaged wrist. “What happened?”
I jammed the cash into my pocket. “The other guy was better armed.”
Mick nodded, as if armed combat was a regular part of his life. “Give me back twenty bucks, and I’ll get you a blade that will mess up a guy so bad . . . well, he’ll look worse than you, and that’s saying something.”
I kept my tone noncommittal. “I’m listening.”
Mick held his hands about four inches apart. “It’s only this big. The blade flips out and the guy’ll never know you have it. Until it’s too late.”
I still kept my tone neutral. “When could I get it?”
“Tonight if you want.”
I took a moment to weigh the deal. Then I handed over the requested sum, not even bothering to negotiate.
Chapter 66
Jill
WHEN I GOT HOME from school, I lugged my portfolio up the stairs to my bedroom, got my easel, propped my canvas on it, and clipped on the school portrait, determined to buckle down and finish my painting. The assignment was due in less than a week, and my eyes were still a blank slash of white, which would guarantee me a failing grade.
And yet, I didn’t start working right away. I didn’t even unpack my oils from the box where I kept them neatly assembled like a rainbow. Instead, feeling restless and out of sorts, I wandered around my room, tidying up, telling myself that I wasn’t stalling. I was straightening. Keeping order.