I looked down at our entwined hands. How could I tell him about Talbot now?

“Trenton applications are due in a month,” Daniel said. “Have you even looked at yours?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve been too busy …” With everything he thought I shouldn’t be doing.

Daniel let go of my hand. He brushed my cheek with his fingers and then drew my face closer to his. He touched our foreheads together. “Will you do this for me, Grace? Can you forget about all this hero stuff before you get hurt? Let your dad and Gabriel be the ones who look for Jude? And let me help you get your Trenton application together?” He shifted his head slightly and brushed his lips against mine. His touch was as intoxicating as always. “Please, Gracie,” he whispered against my mouth. “My future means nothing without you.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you know I don’t make promises.”

Daniel laughed slightly. “Yes, I know. But I’ll settle for your ‘okay.’ ”

I found myself clutching my moonstone necklace as his lips melted against mine. His kiss made my legs ache like they did when I needed a good run. Every tingling cell in my body wanted me to climb onto Daniel’s lap on that bike, but he pulled away after a moment.

“I should go,” he said. “I’ve got homework and stuff.” He really was taking this college thing seriously. “At least look over that application tonight, okay?”

I nodded. I watched from the porch as he drove away, and then I went into the house.

LATER THAT NIGHT

I sat at the kitchen table with a plate of untouched leftovers pushed aside and my Trenton application spread out in front of me. I’d dug it out of my backpack, where it had been since I’d gotten it from Barlow last week, and broken the seal on the envelope. Mom’s evening-news ritual played out in the background as I looked over the requirements: portfolio of twenty-one works in at least three different mediums, two letters of recommendation, an application that would span the length of Dad’s car if you lined the papers up end to end, and two essays.

“Ah, Trenton,” Dad said as he came up to the table. “Application time already, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Dad picked up a page of the application and scanned through it. He made a low whistling noise. “Tuition has really gone up, hasn’t it?”

I nodded. “There’s something about financial-aid forms on their website. Daniel for sure qualifies, but I don’t think I do.”

“Hmm.” Dad put down the application. “We’ll figure something out. Your mom used to save part of her paycheck each month for you kids. We’ve had to dip into it a bit lately, but with Jude gone …”

Mom clicked up the TV’s volume. Apparently, we were being too loud for her.

Dad leaned in close to my ear. “Was she like this the whole time I was gone?”

“On and off,” I said. “Worse sometimes. At least she ate some of her dinner tonight.”

“Might be time to consult Dr. Connors again.”

The TV volume went up another couple of decibels. I rubbed behind one of my ears.

“Make sure you don’t leave those essays until the last minute. They’re the hardest part, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said, and picked up the form with the essay questions.

Dad stroked his hand over my hair and then squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t know how we’ll manage without you here.” He picked up his planner from the kitchen counter and headed to his study.

I glanced over the essay questions. The first was the less difficult of the two: “Which artist has influenced your work the most, and why?” I could easily write up an essay on Renoir or Cassatt—if I could pick between the two. But the second question made me pause. Stumped me, actually. “How will you use your talents to make the world a better place?”

I was still mulling over the question when my ears pricked up at the mention of something on TV. I stood up from the table to see the screen better. A reporter interviewed a woman in a torn red shirt who looked vaguely familiar.

“I would have died,” the woman said. “The man with the gun said he was going to kill me. But then there was this rush of movement, and this other guy came out of nowhere and pulled the masked man off me. He told me to run, so I did. There may have been a girl there with him. I didn’t get a good look at either of them, but they saved my life.”

The camera cut back to a reporter standing in front of a news van parked outside that alley on Tidwell Street. “After being saved by an unknown person or persons, Ms. Taylor ran all the way to the police station. When authorities arrived on the scene, they found one of the alleged attackers tied up and unconscious beside a Dumpster. Authorities have not yet been able to identify or question the man, but they hope to interrogate him about a series of similar attacks in the city over the last few weeks. Police think he may have been involved with the murder of Leanne Greenwood, the waitress who was found dead near this same area last month. Although only one of Ms. Taylor’s alleged assailants was apprehended, city police are relieved that at least one dangerous criminal is off the streets tonight.”

The camera cut to an anchorman—the same one with the poufy hair from the other night. “Thank you, Carlos. And it sounds like we may have a Good Samaritan or two to thank for this arrest?”

“Yes,” the reporter in front of the van said. “Captain Morris said that this isn’t the first report of an unknown citizen helping to stop a crime in the past few weeks. Perhaps there is hope that the crime wave that has the city gripped by fear has an end in sight.”

“That is good news, Carlos,” the anchor said, and then the station cut to a commercial.

A warm feeling rushed through me. My fingers trembled as I gathered up my application papers from the table. I looked over the second essay question one more time before I slipped the forms back into the envelope.

How am I going to use my talents to make the world a better place?

I carried the packet up to my room and placed it on my desk next to my more-than-ancient computer. I pulled the khakis I’d been wearing earlier in the day off my chair and stuck my hand in the front pocket. My hands still shook as I dug out the crumpled slip of paper and dialed the number written there into my cell phone.

It rang four times and then someone picked up.