by Clara Kensie
“No way,” Logan said sharply. “Connelly’s killed everyone we’ve asked for help.”
“Because we asked the police and the FBI, and he found out about it,” I said. “This is different. Professor Fielding doesn’t work for the government.”
“Right. So what makes you think this guy could possibly help us?”
“He teaches a class about paranormal abilities,” I said. “He’s got to believe in them. He might have one of his own. Even if he doesn’t, he’ll have connections. Maybe he’ll know other psychics, psychics who can protect us.”
Logan scowled. Jillian stared at the catalog and traced the red circle with her finger.
I tried again but lost confidence with each word. “Dad’s headaches aren’t getting better. And now Jillian’s getting them too. We need to find someone who can help.”
They still didn’t respond. Maybe my plan wasn’t so brilliant after all. “I’m sorry. It was a dumb idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” Jillian said. She stared at me with astonishment mixed with a touch of admiration. “It’s perfect.”
“It is?” Logan and I said at the same time. My tone was hopeful. His was doubtful.
She slapped the catalog on the desk. “This is even better than trying to develop my own mobile eye. That would just help Dad watch for him, and watching him won’t stop him from coming. But Tessa’s plan will get help, so we can stop him. So we can destroy him.”
“Mom and Dad will never let us do this,” Logan said. “It’s too risky. We shouldn’t even be using the internet.”
Jillian switched on the computer monitor. “We can’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re too scared to do anything but hide. Maybe they can spend the rest of their lives hiding, but I can’t.” Her gaze bored into me, and I’d never seen her look so serious. “I’d rather he kill us right now than spend one more day living like this.”
She opened a browser and searched for Hoffman University, then searched for Professor Fielding’s page. A portrait of a portly gentleman appeared on the screen, smiling behind a white mustache and beard. I could imagine him playing Santa Claus for his grandchildren. “He looks nice,” I said.
“You said Connelly was nice too,” Logan said. “Until he dragged you into his car and tried to kill everyone.”
The stench of cherry cigars filled my nose as my hands fluttered to my stomach. “We have to take a chance, Logan.” I’d taken a chance on Tristan, and it paid off. Maybe this one would too.
Jillian tapped her Radical Red fingernail on the mouse. “Logan. Leave her alone and tell us how to send an untraceable email.”
He didn’t move.
“Tessa and I can figure it out on our own,” she said, “but you can do it faster.”
His gaze dashed back and forth between Jillian and me.
“Just imagine, Logan.” She whirled around in her chair to face him. “We can live our lives the way we were meant to live them. No more running. No more aliases.”
“Dad can write his column again,” I said. “Mom can plan parties for a fancy hotel again.”
“We can go away to college,” Jillian said. “I can be a cardiologist. You can be a composer and conduct orchestras at Carnegie Hall. Tessa can be...well, whatever it is she wants to be.”
I’d never thought about a career before. If my plan worked, I could be anything. A chef, maybe, with my own little bistro. Or a party planner, like my mom. We could work together at the hotel. Or I could be an artist. A painter. I could paint murals that covered entire walls, even. Suddenly the possibilities seemed endless.
And I would never have to leave Tristan.
Joy bubbled up inside of me until it spilled over with a laugh. “Carnegie Hall, Logan! I can just see you conducting a huge orchestra, waving that stick in the air!”
“It’s called a baton.” He covered his smile with his hand.
“Come on, Maestro,” Jillian said. “If Tessa has the guts to do this, you should too.”
He let out a slow breath. “Okay. Let’s do it before I change my mind.”
It only took a few minutes. Logan scanned some websites with his palm and quickly learned how to send an untraceable email. Then Jillian wrote the message. Four simple sentences, and an image of a red star.
Professor Fielding,
Our family has paranormal abilities and we are in trouble. If you can help us, copy and paste this star onto your webpage and we’ll contact you with more details. Please, Professor. You’re our last hope.
She glanced up at me, and I realized she was waiting for my approval.
I gave it to her with a nod.
We all held our breath as she clicked Send.
* * *
We knew Professor Fielding wouldn’t respond right away, but we were still disappointed when we clicked on his webpage the next day and there was no red star.
No red star the following day either.
Or the next.
We each checked every day that week, and the week after that.
There was never a red star.
* * *
By November’s end the trees in Twelve Lakes had shed all their leaves, leaving their branches bare and gray like gnarled claws. In our yard, the dry brown leaves littered the lawn and clumped under the bushes. To keep us from waking our napping father one Saturday afternoon, Mom sent Jillian, Logan and me to clean up the yard while she busied herself inside, scrubbing the floor under the kitchen appliances.
Logan grabbed a rake, and Jillian followed him around with a yard waste bag. I pulled the dead leaves from under the bushes lining the front of the house. Jillian brought the waste bag over and held it open, shivering as I dumped an armful of leaves in. She dropped the bag and zipped her jacket up to the top.
“Where’s your scarf?” I asked. Our mother had bought us winter gear just the week before.
She shrugged. “Left it somewhere, maybe.” When I wouldn’t stop staring at her, she snapped, “What?”
“It’s weird, that’s all. I lost my Civics notebook. You lost your hair clips at Homecoming. Logan lost his reeds. And now your scarf.”
“So? People lose things.”
“Not us. We don’t leave anything personal behind.”
She gave a forced chuckle. “Don’t be so paranoid.”
I glanced at the front window. A tiny bit of the handprint Logan and I had seen a few weeks ago was still there, smeared in the bottom corner. “Maybe we should tell Mom and Dad.”
Stepping toward me, she spoke from behind clenched teeth. “You kept your mouth shut about my training sessions, and Professor Fielding, and Ethan’s party. But now you want to ruin everything by telling them we lost stuff?”
A clump of leaves at her feet shot up like a geyser. “If you say anything, you know what’ll happen? We’ll run. Is that what you want? To leave Twelve Lakes? You want to leave Tristan?”
Swallowing hard, I gripped my blue cell phone through my sweater. “No.”
“Professor Fielding will put that red star on his website any day now, and soon you won’t have to worry that a lost scarf is anything more than a lost scarf.”
We turned at the sound of crunching leaves. A grinning Logan made his way over with the rake. “Remember how Mom and Dad would make a big pile of leaves for us to jump in?”
The memory made both Jillian and me smile. We’d had over a dozen maple trees in the yard of our house in Kitteridge, Virginia. Each fall, their leaves turned a brilliant scarlet and tumble-fluttered to the ground. Like millions of red stars.
Now we only needed one.
Chapter Twenty
Bundled up in my thick white mittens and blue jacket, I kept my eyes on the path as I hustled home through the park to avoid any branches that had fallen from the trees. A heavy wind had b
een blowing since yesterday, bringing in the first snow of the season later this evening.
I’d spent the afternoon across the park at Vanessa’s house, studying for a Spanish test. Tristan was watching a basketball game at Chad’s. Tonight the four of us were going out for dinner at a non-crowded restaurant and then bowling. Vanessa and I had wrapped up early so we’d have extra time to get ready.
Tiny snowflakes whipped through the air, stinging my cheeks. From far away, I heard a low shout, but the wind carried the sound away. I hoped it would snow a lot tonight. Then tomorrow—if I was still in town—I could take Tristan to the park for a winter rendezvous. We’d bring a Thermos of hot chocolate and build a snowman.
A rhythmic plodding came from behind me. Footsteps, echoing my own. A die-hard runner, maybe. I loved jogging too, though not on a day as cold as this one. Bracing myself against the wind, I accelerated, enjoying the icy air frosting my lungs.
A groaning creak came from the trees, and suddenly that runner was right behind me, his steps urgent. Frantic. Shouting. Before I could move out of his way he grabbed me, pushed me, tackled me to the ground with a thunderous crash—
—oh God oh God oh God Dennis Connelly he’s here he found me can’t move can’t breathe can’t see can’t scream—
“Tessa!”
I heaved a breathless sob, waiting for him to strike, to slice me open.
He lifted himself off me. “Tessa,” he panted, “it’s me.”
Dennis Connelly sounded just like Tristan.
How was that possible?
“Tessa,” he said again. “Hey. Clockwise.”
A small handful of people called me Tessa—my family, Tristan, Dennis Connelly. But only one person called me Clockwise.
I forced myself to turn my head, peek open one eye.
Tristan’s face was inches from mine. “I am so sorry.” He was out of breath. “I got you out of the way in time, but I knocked you down pretty hard.” He sucked in another deep lungful of air. “Does anything hurt? Your neck? Your head?”
Through the heavy fog that had settled over the woods, I saw a thick tree trunk lying behind us, where I’d been running just moments before. Scattered around us, whipping about in the wind, were hundreds of broken branches, twigs, dead leaves.
Stiffly, I turned over and sat up. Tristan swept the leaves and twigs from my jacket, lifted my hair off my face, and inspected my forehead. He pulled off my torn mittens, then pressed the cuffs of his sweatshirt on my scraped palms to blot off the speckles of blood. My left collarbone hurt a little. My jeans had ripped at the knees, revealing more scrapes and more blood. My hip bones hurt.
Tristan’s hoodie was torn at the elbows. “You’re bleeding,” I said dully.
“I’m fine.” He rotated his shoulders and winced. “Didn’t you hear me shouting for you?”
I blinked at him.
“I called you too.” He plucked the phone from my waistband and read the display. “Two missed calls. Why is your phone on silent?”
I blinked at him again. My black phone was on the loudest setting. The phone Tristan gave me was on silent so my parents wouldn’t hear it ring. “It’s foggy,” I said.
“That’s not fog. It’s snow.” He cupped my chin in his hand. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?”
He pointed to some charred bark at the jagged end of the tree trunk lying across the path. “Looks like the tree was struck by lightning at some point, and today the wind knocked it down.” He flicked the trunk with his finger and some burned bark chipped off. I followed it with my eyes as the wind carried it into a pile of broken branches and leaves. He pushed the trunk, and it didn’t budge. “You would’ve been killed if this landed on you.”
I nodded as if I understood.
Tristan gingerly helped me up, supporting me as we walked down the path. “Does it hurt to walk? Should I carry you?”
After a few seconds, I realized he was talking to me. “What?”
He frowned, then picked me up, one arm under my shoulders, the other under my knees. “I’m taking you to my house. My aunt is there. She’s a nurse.”
Tristan’s aunt was a nurse. I knew that. She wore pink scrubs with Scooby-Doo on them.
Wait. Why would I need a nurse? “Am I hurt?”
“I tackled you really hard. I think you’re confused.”
That’s right. Tristan knocked me down. Not Dennis Connelly. “I thought you were—” I stopped myself. Even in my foggy daze I knew I couldn’t say his name.
But it wasn’t Dennis Connelly trying to kill me. It was Tristan trying to save me.
Tristan had pushed me from the path of a falling tree.
Huh.
“Tristan? How did you know—”
“Shh. I need to get you to my aunt.”
* * *
“Aunt Melissa!” Tristan called for his aunt the moment he got me inside his house, his voice cracking with alarm.
Through the haze, I looked down at myself. A few aches and scrapes, but nothing too bad. Why was he so scared?
Melissa rushed into the foyer. “What’s wrong?”
I held out my hands, palms up, so she could see the scrapes. “Tristan saved me,” I said. “See?”
She examined my palms. “Saved you from what?”
My first impulse was to answer, Dennis Connelly. But I couldn’t say that. So, instead, I said, “A tree.” My head began to clear, and I realized how ridiculous that sounded. I clamped my hands over my mouth and giggled until tears came to my eyes.
She sighed. “Tristan, why don’t you explain?”
He pulled his hand through his hair. “She’s right. A tree almost fell on her, and I pushed her out of the way. But she landed pretty hard, and I landed right on top of her.”
“Well,” she said, “come on in the kitchen, Sarah. Let’s take a look at you.”
“Tristan too,” I insisted. “He’s hurt too.”
He sheepishly held up his elbows. “I’m fine.” He took my arm and led me to the kitchen.
“Sit on the table,” Melissa said. She helped me take off my coat, then asked me to follow her finger with my eyes as she moved it back and forth.
As I moved my eyes to the left, I saw Philip peeking in the kitchen. Sweet Philip. So worried about me. I gave him a goofy grin and a wave as Melissa gently pressed her hands on my head, feeling for bumps. “You didn’t hit your head,” she said with surprise.
“No, not my head. My hips and my collarbone...my Borderline,” I said, and burst out laughing.
An embarrassed smile flashed across Tristan’s lips. “Sarah. Stop. This is serious.”
I bit my lips to keep the giggles corked as Melissa felt my hip bones. “You’ll have some bruising here. Can you take off your shirt?” she asked. “I want to see your clavicle.”
“Um...” If I took off my top, they’d see my scars. I stretched the neck of my sweater to expose my collarbone. “It’s fine.” I shifted my shoulder up and down and tried not to wince. “See?”
Perhaps mistaking my reluctance for modesty, she nodded. She lifted my arm up and down, then lightly touched her fingertips to my collarbone. I smiled at Tristan to show him I wasn’t in any pain.
“You’re right,” she announced. “Nothing’s broken.” She brought me a bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water. “All you need is acetaminophen and rest. If anything starts to hurt, I want to you to tell me right away.”
I nodded dutifully and swallowed two pills. But when she came at me with a handful of Band-Aids, I jumped off the table. “Tristan needs those more than me.”
Tristan rolled his eyes but humored me. He peeled off his hoodie, and I couldn’t help staring at his strong, broad chest. I had to hold myself back from running my hands across it.
&nbs
p; “It’s almost dark,” I told him. “My parents are expecting me home.”
He looked at Melissa, who nodded as she applied antiseptic to the scrapes on his elbows. “She’s fine,” she said. “Stop worrying.”
“I am fine. I’m great.” I twirled for him to prove it.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
“Um.” I didn’t want my parents to think I was lying to them, and they would find it suspicious to see me with Tristan after I’d told them I was at Vanessa’s. And if they thought he had anything to do with my scrapes and bruises, our shaky truce would crumble completely, and they wouldn’t let me see him anymore.
Also, there was something I needed to think about. Something I needed to figure out. “I should walk,” I said.
“Sarah.” He casually brought his finger to his lips, then took it away.
He didn’t want my parents to know he’d saved me from the falling tree either.
I wasn’t surprised.
I shook my head slightly, in a silent reply: I won’t tell.
“I’ll pick you up at six,” he said.
Hands jammed deep in my coat pockets, I walked the two blocks home through the wind and snowflakes. Thinking. Remembering. No other trees had fallen to the ground, but I stepped over plenty of fallen branches. I sensed Tristan trailing me, making sure I made it home okay.
My mother noticed the rips in my jeans right away. I told her I’d tripped over a branch on my way home from Vanessa’s. She smoothed antiseptic gel on my scrapes and chastised me to be more careful next time.
I ignored the almost audible plink of another weight being added to my scale of lies.
Chapter Twenty-One
Since Melissa wanted me to take it easy that night, Tristan and I canceled our plans with Vanessa and Chad and hung out at his house instead. Melissa and Philip stayed home too, and ordered a pizza for the four of us. Melissa examined my collarbone and checked my bruises again, and asked me lots of questions to make sure I was no longer confused. I was in no pain, and my head was perfectly clear now—perfectly clear—but the three of them kept a casual eye on me all evening.