Almost four. Crap on a cracker. I’d been sleeping for over two hours. Classes would be over and the halls would be empty. “Do you know any bodyguards who might see us to our room?” I asked her.

She stared at me, her jaw set, her shoulders square. “Safety is not a privilege. It is our right as law-abiding, taxpaying citizens!”

AIM HERE

I was beginning to regret my decision to show Crystal the note as we headed back to the dorm rooms. I had to think. To plan. If someone was going to kill me, I needed to know who. And how to stop him. And Crystal’s ranting about our constitutional rights was not helping, no matter how entertaining.

A sickly weakness spread throughout my body as though I were a doe in the forest, standing in the crosshairs of a hunter’s rifle, only it was night and I had a neon sign on my back that read AIM HERE. Picasso knew who I was, but I had no clue who he was. The kid who left the note was just that. A kid. Like every other kid who went to Bedford Fields. If he’d been different, if he hadn’t belonged here, wouldn’t others have turned to look at him as he walked past? All I saw was the back of his head, but no one spared him a glance. Then again, I could have been looking at the wrong head.

Vulnerability washed over me again. A neon target. That was me.

We’d left the nurse’s office without telling her. Mostly because she’d been in and out all afternoon, and when we left, she was out. But surely she didn’t mean for me to lie there all evening. The halls were empty save for a custodian on the second floor. I almost asked him to escort us back to our dorm but thought better of it. He might have to tell the headmaster. I was a tad intimated by the headmaster and wanted to avoid contact with him as much as possible.

“Oh, some people came by to see you,” Crystal said, carving some time out of her busy rant schedule to let me know. “A couple.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised, then realized it must have been the Hamptons, the couple who’d brought me here. Dropped me off at the school. Told me to find their son, Paul. Promised he’d keep an eye out for me, too, but in my entire six weeks at the stuffy institution, I had yet to meet a kid named Paul.

I hadn’t asked any questions about him, either. At the time, I was numb. In shock. They’d been the last leg of the three-day journey across country that started in New Mexico and ended in Maine. I’d wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back home. But my despair wasn’t their fault. They were part of the Order of Sanctity, a group that followed and believed in the teachings and prophecies of Arabeth and her descendants. They were believers. In me and my part in all of this, the part I was destined to play in the end times.

When they first laid eyes on me, they seemed starstruck. They’d been hearing about me since my birth, the first female to be born in the line of Arabeth’s descendants in over five centuries. Apparently my birth meant the prophecies were coming true, the end of times was growing near, but their reverence made me uncomfortable. It prickled down my spine. In a way, I felt bad for them. Sorry. And my sorrow was full of resentment and anger. I’d had to leave everything I’d ever known, ever loved, for these people and others like them. Because they believed in me. What a crock.

But when I looked at things from their vantage point, I could almost understand their reverence in a small, vexatious way. In their world, I was like a rock star, the subject of all those prophecies that had been passed down from generation to generation. I tried to see things from their point of view. And in the day I’d spent with them, I grew to like the Hamptons very much. They were a young couple—too young to have a kid in high school, in my limited opinion—and they were full of ideas on how they were going to change the world. After I saved it, naturally.

They meant well, and I did my best to stow my doubts and try to appreciate all that they were doing for me. It wasn’t their fault any more than it was mine. We’d all been dragged into a catastrophic chain of events that would either end humanity or restore the balance. If that outcome depended on me, we were all in a world of trouble. I wasn’t nearly so confident in our odds as the Hamptons were.

After they showed me into the headmaster’s office the night we arrived, Mrs. Hampton pulled me into her arms and hugged me as though I were her own child, and I was beginning to see a pattern. All the people along the journey treated me similarly. As though I were theirs. I realized they probably saw me that way. They’d heard about me for years. Had hoped for me even longer. How could I resent that? How could I throw their hope back at them and rant and scream and pout? Their faith in me was humbling, their faith in God inspirational. I decided to see it as a benefit instead of a burden.

“Hey, do you know a Paul Hampton?” I asked Crystal. “I was supposed to keep an eye out for him.”

“Not really. What grade is he in?”

I tended to forget Crystal was only in the eighth grade. She wouldn’t have any classes with Paul. Then again, I had no idea what grade Paul was in. “You know, I’m not sure. I just assumed he was older, but I never actually asked.”

“We can ask Wade at dinner,” she offered.

“Ask Wade what?”

We turned to see Wade jogging up behind us. He was my only other friend at Bedford Fields. He was a nice kid. One of the few who stayed nice after my shiny newness wore off. His dark hair fell into disarray as he stopped beside us.

Crystal obliged him. “If you know a Paul Hampton.”

His forehead crinkled. “Sure I do. Everyone does. He’s been coming to school here forever.”