“She’ll pass by there on the way home from the hospital anyway,” he informed me. “Who were you talking to this morning?”
I gulped down some coffee to hide my surprise at his question. Whenever I was chatting with Henry, I tried to keep my voice down so that Dad and Rhonda couldn’t hear me because the walls in their condo were thin. “Just a friend from home,” I answered honestly.
“When it’s six o’clock here, it’s five o’clock in Wisconsin,” he reminded me, as if I wasn’t aware of the time difference. “Kinda early to be talking to someone back at home.”
“He’s not in Wisconsin,” I clarified. “Sometimes I talk to Olivia’s brother. He’s taking the semester off from school to teach tennis in France.” There was no point in lying. I’d only been allowed to have a phone again because both my mom and dad had access to everything, including passwords to all of my accounts. If he wanted to know who I was speaking with every morning, it wouldn’t take him long to find out. Henry, Mischa, and even Cheryl knew better than to ever put anything in writing that they wouldn’t want my parents to read.
Dad crossed his arms over his chest as he swished coffee around in the mug he held. “Hmm. That Richmond kid, huh? The one who was at the ski lodge with you?”
I hurriedly clarified (not for the first time) that Henry had not been at the ski lodge with me and Trey, which was the story we’d all been telling for months, and I dashed out the back door to begin my walk to school. Since the end of January, I’d been evading questions from both of my parents about why I’d escaped from the boarding school where I’d been sent in the fall, and how Trey and I had ended up in Michigan to meet up with our former classmates during their ski trip. There was no way I could tell them any of it without sounding like a maniac—that we had to stop Violet before a bunch of people whose deaths she’d predicted were expected to die. I guess I just had to accept that no matter how much time passed, my dad was never going to let it go.
It was barely six thirty in the morning when I reached our corner, and the humidity was already at 70 percent.
My high school in Tampa was a lot larger than Willow High School, with nearly three times as many students. You might think it would be hard to avoid making friends while surrounded by so many people, but I was finding it easy to go unnoticed. Teachers didn’t make a big deal on my first day about introducing me. My chemistry partner, Alianne, was nice enough, correctly read my disengaged vibe, and politely ignored me in the cafeteria at lunchtime. No one encouraged me to join clubs or sports teams.
During study hall, I took my usual seat on the red couch in Ms. Hernández’s office and we went through our routine, which, at this point, going into my tenth week at Hyde Park High, was becoming rote.
“How are things with your stepmother?” she asked.
“Fine,” I replied. I’d made the mistake during my first social work session at school of describing Rhonda as very young and pretty, and had mistakenly given Ms. Hernández the notion that all of my erratic behavior since the fall could be explained by some kind of issue I had with her.
“Has she laid off on the prom pressure?”
“Yes,” I said. “For now.” Rhonda had read in an e-mail sent out to parents by the principal’s office that junior prom would be held in mid-May, and she’d immediately suggested that we go shopping for a dress. It broke my heart a little to tell her that I had no interest in going to a dance in Hyde Park with a bunch of people I barely knew. Even though she wasn’t old enough to be my mom, she was really trying hard to fill the role, or at least qualify as world’s coolest stepmom.
“What about the boyfriend? How’s he doing?” Ms. Hernández asked. She never failed to ask me about Trey during every single one of our sessions, even though I’d never mentioned him.
“As well as can be expected,” I replied. The bitter reality was that I didn’t know how Trey really was. The one phone call per week I was allowed to have with him was monitored by the administration at his military-style school. Weekly, he told me in a cool, emotionless voice not to worry about him, because everything there was great. This made me suspect that things were far from “great,” but there was nothing either of us could do about that until he turned eighteen and was free to leave.
Investing as little energy as possible, I moved through the rest of my classes that day. A surge of joy rose within my chest when the final bell rang. As I stuffed my bag at my locker, I tried to ignore people around me talking about either band practice or a concert that night at the Amalie Arena. Back at the start of the school year in Willow, I’d had a packed calendar too. But there was no point in lamenting the time when I’d been involved in student government and been excited about things like yearbook committee and live music. Those days were over.
Oscawana Pavilion Assisted Living Facility was only about sixteen blocks away from my high school, but it was hot enough when school let out that I’d show up drenched in perspiration if I didn’t just wait for the bus. So I popped my earbuds in my ears and tried to remain patient. I was starting to feel anxious and felt the urge to walk to the next stop, assuming I could beat the bus, but I knew I’d never make it in time.
By the time the bus arrived, my scalp had broken out into a rush of tingles. I knew that this was Jennie’s way of wanting to initiate contact with me, and since I’d been home in Willow over Christmas break, the tingles had become an increasingly frequent sensation. As always, the physical sensation of being lightly jabbed by needles was accompanied by a potent mixture of emotions that never failed to nauseate me a little. The thrill of being contacted by my twin sister swirled around with panic that I was either going insane—or veering off into a strange lifestyle of having paranormal powers that was going to result in my being considered a total freak by other people.
Even though I’d been finding all sorts of new ways to receive her messages (with varying degrees of effectiveness), Jennie had a way of reaching out to me at moments when it was extremely inconvenient for me to try to respond. Like when I was hanging on for dear life to a pole on a crowded bus. I’d run out of patience for the pendulum; asking Jennie yes-and-no questions could be extremely time-consuming, and I couldn’t exactly whip it out in public places.
I did my best to try to ignore the tingles. Whatever it was that Jennie was trying to communicate didn’t matter; I had to be at work in fifteen minutes to clock in.
The moment I stepped into the assisted living facility, I was grateful for its excessive air-conditioning. I passed through the lobby, where an elderly man was playing the grand piano for the amusement of several women, some of whom were playing mah-jongg. The lobby had several enormous fish tanks, which were among my favorite things about working there. I tended to take my fifteen-minute break in the lobby just to stare at the fish.
On my way to the bathroom to change into my scrubs, I was greeted by Luis, my manager. “Slight change to your rounds today, honey,” he said. I might have taken offense to my boss calling me “honey” except that Luis referred to everyone as “honey.” He was an overweight gay man in his forties who seemed to have gotten to know every single resident in the home personally, which endeared him to me. “We’ve got a new resident in the Daytona wing. Her name is Mrs. Robinson. If she hasn’t already placed a dinner order with the kitchen by the time you check in on her, could you walk her through the process?”