LITMIR.BIZ

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with cash.

      There was a soft knock on my door frame. Deirdre, her copper hair falling over a sweatshirt painted with little upside-down handprints. In childish writing it read, Best Teacher Hands Down!

      “Tessa, can I talk to you?” she asked. “Alone?”

      I shot Tristan a message—what’s this about?—but he just shrugged. He gathered his notes and laptop, and kissed me before departing to his room. Mac padded after him, and Marmalade jumped onto the bed and mewed.

      Deirdre sat next to me, and I tried not to stiffen when she tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. But she must have noticed, because she sighed and pulled away. “When you got back from North Dakota this morning, you asked if I was going to kick you out. Do you really think I would do that?”

      “I did for a second,” I admitted.

      She took my chin in her hand and made me look at her. “You will always have a home here, Tessa. Always.”

      “But—”

      “When you find Jillian and Logan, they will have a home here too.”

      “But our parents—”

      “Your parents tried to kill Dennis. They wanted to kill Tristan. They hurt a lot of people.”

      I pulled away, hung my head, but she grabbed my chin again. “Your parents did those things,” she said. “Not you.”

      Logically, I knew that. I understood that. But they were my parents. Their blood pumped through my veins with every beat of my heart. Shame and grief, hurt and despair built up inside me, growing bigger and bigger, heavier and heavier, until it burst out of me with a sob. “I’m just so...ashamed.” The word ripped itself from my throat.

      “That shame is what’s causing your nightmare,” Deirdre said. “A nightmare so strong that some crazy psychic with a knife fed upon it.”

      “But what can I do?” I cried. “How do I get rid of it? I can’t change who my parents are. I can’t change what they did. I can’t change the past.”

      Deirdre sighed. “Oh, Tessa. Sometimes I think the person your parents hurt the most, was you.”

      I lost it then. Sobs tore from my throat, one after another, and I couldn’t see past my tears. I covered my face with my hands and cried, and through my sobs, I told her everything. She already knew it, but I told her anyway. How every word from my parents’ mouths had been a lie. How my entire childhood had been a lie. How they’d allowed my brother and sister and I to live in constant fear. How my mother had flown me into the wall. How she’d sliced me open. How the scars on my stomach were nothing compared to the scars on my soul. How, just as I was ready to accept my mother back into my life, she’d rejected me when I told her I was living with Tristan. And most of all, how on that last night in Twelve Lakes, my parents had instructed Jillian and Logan to run away instead of telling them the truth, costing me the only two people in the world who could possibly understand how it felt to be so betrayed by the people we had trusted the most.

      Deirdre didn’t tell me to stop crying. She didn’t ask questions. She just listened.

      I continued to cry, and with each sob, each tear, I felt lighter, and my blood became cooler. When I finally stopped, exhausted, she wiped my tears. “You can’t change the past,” she said, “but you can let go of it. And Tessa, you can change who your parents are.”

      That was enough to make me sob one last time.

      I lay down, and slowly, put my head on her plump lap. She rested her hand on my head for a moment, then ran her fingers through my hair.

      My parents committed those crimes, not me. They’d hurt me just as much as they’d hurt everyone else. Maybe even more. Deirdre understood that. So did Tristan. And Dennis, and Ember.

      I’d lost so much, but I had gained something too. A new family. I’d started with Tristan, and then I added Dennis and Deirdre and Ember. Once I found Jillian and Logan, my new family would be complete.

      I fell asleep with my head on Deirdre’s lap as she stroked my hair. And when the Nightmare Eyes made their appearance in my dreams that night, they weren’t quite as black.

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

      Dennis and Deirdre insisted that Tristan and I return to school the next day. We’d both missed a lot of school lately, they said, and until there was a lead in the search for Jillian and Logan, they expected us both to go to class every day. Dennis promised he’d continue our efforts to contact car dealerships in North Dakota and call us if he got a hit.

      I didn’t protest—there was something I needed to do at school. Someone I needed to talk to.

      I waited by Melanie’s locker before first period, but she never showed up. In the foreign language hallway before my Spanish class, I asked Ember if she knew where Melanie was. She informed me that Melanie hadn’t been to school since our trip to North Dakota. She’d also quit Lyre, Ember’s band. Poor Melanie was traumatized. I whipped out my phone and texted her my apology, six times throughout the day, but she never replied.

      Nathan ignored me all day. He would lose his job at the APR if he bothered me, so he didn’t even look at me.

      Deirdre had also insisted that straight after school, instead of going home, I go to the APR and meet her in her preschool classroom. She wanted me to start sketching a mural to paint on the classroom walls. She was babysitting me, keeping me from getting into more trouble. But I didn’t mind. If I was at the APR, I could keep my eye on Kellan to see if he’d gotten any leads on Jillian and Logan.

      And also, hanging out with Deirdre sounded kind of nice.

      The preschoolers were gone for the day by the time I got there, so Deirdre sat at one of the little round tables with her curriculum planner, while I took a pencil to the wall near the window. I would paint a mural of a garden, I decided. An oversized flower garden. Soon the walls were covered with my pencil sketches of gigantic wildflowers, an enormous rainbow and whimsical trees. And a pair of Nightmare Eyes, which I quickly turned into two giant sunflowers before they overpowered me.

      “Hey, Deirdre?” I said as the Nightmare Eyes burned into me anyway. “Would you mind if I took a break? Maybe I’ll go upstairs and visit Brinda. I want to see if she’ll make any more drawings for me.”

      “Sure, honey. When you get back, we can swing by Hawthorne’s to pick up dinner.” Humming contentedly, Deirdre resumed her project, and I left the classroom. I passed the lunchroom, where Kellan was sitting at one of the little round tables near the door, peeling an apple. Good. He was here, which meant he didn’t have a lead on Jillian and Logan. I slipped away before he noticed me.

      Upstairs, Brinda and her dad welcomed me to the playroom. Brinda spun around, showing off her new pink dress, which I admired with a silent clap.

      She gestured to her table, inviting me to sit and have tea. I sipped my invisible drink, then placed Jillian’s ballet slipper and Logan’s sheet music on the table, hoping Brinda could squeeze one more prediction from them.

      She didn’t look at them. Instead, she stared at me. Her gaze grew unfocused as Mr. Lakhani lifted the pail of crayons, and she dug through the crayons and pulled one out.

      Silver.

      She covered the entire paper with silver, solid and shiny, and it reflected the lights from above.

      But Deirdre’s dream of a silver-walled house already happened, I wanted to tell her. It’s over. I survived. But I couldn’t speak in here.

      She pointed to the paper and then to me, tilting her head.

      Oh, she was asking if her drawing had happened already. I nodded yes, then smiled to show her I was okay.

      Brinda wiped her forehead with her hand, miming a relieved expression. Then she

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