= PRETTY MUCH THE PERFECT RECIPE FOR INSOMNIA

I tried watching TV for a while in hopes of getting sleepy, but the only thing on was the local news. They kept showing live updates about the warehouse fire that had now spread to the abandoned train station and threatened other buildings on the block. They cut in with occasional reports on Dad’s medical status (still critical). And the only other story they seemed to have to run with was the death of Pete Bradshaw. The phone started ringing so I hit the Off button on the remote just as a reporter shoved a microphone into poor Ann Bradshaw’s face just outside her house.

I looked at the caller ID on the wireless handset.

Aunt Carol.

I’d found a long piece of string in the utility drawer in the kitchen and had used it to hang the moonstone around my neck as a pendant. I clutched at it now for strength as I answered the phone.

Aunt Carol immediately laid me flat with a lecture about how I should have called her right away and not let her find out about my father from the evening news—apparently, the story about the explosion was being reported as far away as Cincinnati. But then whatever latent motherly instinct was buried inside my aunt must have surfaced, because the next thing I knew I was insisting that she didn’t need to drive all the way out here with Charity and James to be with me.

“I’m fine. And the ICU won’t let James and Charity visit because they’re both under thirteen, so I think it’s better if they stay out there. I don’t think they’d be able to handle being this close without being allowed to see him.” I knew that reasoning probably wouldn’t keep my sister away, and I contemplated asking Aunt Carol to keep the news from Charity all together. But I knew how pissed I’d be if I were her when I eventually did find out. It’s just that the last thing I needed was the three of them coming here, with so many dangers looming and so many secrets that could be exposed. I’d promised James once that I’d keep him safe, and the best way to do that right now was to keep him away.

Aunt Carol definitely wasn’t keeping mum on the subject, because it was only five minutes after I’d hung up with her that I had to field a call from Grandma Kramer in Florida. If it weren’t for my grandfather’s recent health problems, I knew I would have ended up with them on the doorstep pretty soon, too.

Once phone calls were finished, I was even less sleepy and I couldn’t shake the need to feel somewhat productive—so I went upstairs and started in on some of my homework, and attempted to finish a stack of Daniel’s missed assignments, too. All the while, I cursed the fact that Daniel and I had only three classes together. I was at a total loss when it came to his calculus homework, and the one assignment we did have in common—tracking the upcoming eclipse for our astronomy class—couldn’t be done until the lunar eclipse on Saturday. I tucked that worksheet back into my backpack, where I found Mr. Barlow’s letters of recommendation for Trenton.

I slid open my desk drawer and pulled out the large white envelope that contained my Trenton application. I’d looked at it only once since I’d gotten it, and I remembered feeling overwhelmed—now I had two to tackle by Friday. It might seem like a trivial thing to be worried about at a time like this, but Trenton was what Daniel had always wanted, and Dad was right: I needed to make sure Daniel had a future to come back to.

The actual application part would be easy, yet time-consuming, to fill out for Daniel. However, it was the essays that scared me. I mean, I barely knew the answers to the questions for myself, let alone how to answer them on someone else’s behalf. I stared at the broken blue seal on the envelope for a long time and then stuck it back in my drawer.

Later, I thought and went back to homework.

I picked up Daniel’s chem book and settled onto my bed, thinking that if anything were going to help me fall asleep, it would be chemistry. Besides, I figured I could successfully tackle a few of those assignments since I’d had that class last year. The only problem was that as soon as I flipped the book open to chapter ten, the memory of studying this assignment with Pete Bradshaw at the library last year overtook my thoughts.

I’d all but forgotten that Pete and I had not only been chem lab partners, but also friends, before things changed between us. Before I realized what kind of violent person lurked under his letterman’s jacket and that “triple-threat smile.” Before he agreed to help Jude try to turn me against Daniel. Before the night my car broke down in the city and he tried to trick me into thinking I was being stalked by the Markham Street Monster—just so he could pretend to be my hero. Before he attacked me in the alley between the school and parish the night of the Christmas dance.

But it wasn’t my fault he’d lost control. I wasn’t the one who made him an entitled jerk who thought he could have whatever—or whoever—he wanted. I wasn’t the one who made him get drunk and attack me the night of the Christmas dance.… And he obviously hadn’t learned his lesson very well. He and his friends had jumped Daniel a couple of weeks ago. And who knows what he would have tried to do to me that night I ran into him at the Depot.

The night he was later brutally beaten into a coma.

But he deserved it.

“No,” I told the wolf’s voice. There had been a moment when the wolf had succeeded in convincing me that what had happened to Pete was perfectly deserved. But it was the same afternoon that I had almost lost complete control myself—when the wolf in my head propelled me to Daniel’s doorstep and I practically attacked him in my frenzy.

You’re no better than Pete. Daniel should hate you for what you almost did to him. No wonder he wants to leave you.

The wolf was overwhelming sometimes in how quickly it could change its tactics, glomming onto any doubt that flitted through my mind. Clawing me apart from the inside.

Pete and I are different, I tried to tell myself. I’d almost lost control because there was a beast inside my head driving me to hurt the ones I love. Pete didn’t have that excuse. He was perfectly human.

Yet he was still a monster.

The image of Pete lying on that hospital bed, being jolted with electricity by the doctor, flashed in my head. His face had looked so different today. Like a distorted mask of who he used to be. So lifeless and pale. Pete did the things he did of his own accord, but he still didn’t deserve to die. For the last year, I’d told myself that I had forgiven him for all the things he’d done to me, but had I really?