rats in the Nutcracker’s world. Rats, rats, rats. I definitely smell one. Something pungent and wrong that summons a spark of hope all the same. If something at the hospital did this to me and Jesse, then there’s a chance it can be undone. If we can find out the cause, maybe we can find the cure.
I’ve never dreamt there could be a cure, that there might be a chance I could put Rachel behind me and know she was never, ever coming back. The thought makes me smile. Jesse smiles back, the curve of his lips transforming him into something truly magnificent. My breath rushes out and I forget how to pull another back in.
When he glares, Jesse is the ultimate gorgeous bad boy. But when he smiles, he is … breathtaking. “You should smile more often.”
“Maybe I will.” His smile glows even brighter before it suddenly fades, vanishing as if someone slapped it away. “Dani … I … I think I should … ”
“Should what?”
“I … ” He scowls and drops his gaze to the ground with a sigh. “I just want to help keep you safe.”
I squeeze the hand still in mine. “Me too. I mean … you.” I blush, and hope the cold air will explain the pink in my cheeks. “Maybe my dad can help us. He’s a doctor. Well, a scientist really. He works at North Corp doing research, but he helped with my treatment at Baptist when I was little and he knows lots of people. If we talk to him together, he might actually listen.”
Or not. More likely, he’ll think the boy I’ve brought home is on drugs and I’m out of my mind again. But my father’s sharp, disapproving eyes don’t seem as scary right now. Not when I’m holding Jesse’s hand and know—for the first time in my entire life, beyond any shadow of a doubt—that I’m not alone.
Jesse
For a rich girl, Dani lives pretty close to the wrong side of the tracks. Her house is less than a ten-minute walk from the seedy diner at the edge of town, and only half a dozen long blocks from my own home-sweet-slum. The difference is that her street is a private drive that curves up into the hills, away from the depressed area below, round and round, past a locked gate where Dani has to punch in an access code, and then up another hundred feet. At the top of the hill, the dense woods thin away, revealing … a castle.
No, not a castle, but the closest thing I’ve ever seen to one. The house is three stories in some places, four in others, with dark gingerbread-looking wood and glass everywhere. There’s an octagon-shaped tower room on one side. On the other, the roof turns into a giant deck that pokes up through the trees. I catch sight of the edges of what look like deck chairs and suspect there might be a pool up there.
A pool on her roof . I am … I have no idea what to say.
“This is it.” Dani squeezes my hand. She hasn’t let me go, not even when she punched in the code to the gate.
It makes me stupidly happy. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. It hasn’t been since I was a kid, and maybe not even then. I have a hard time remembering much about my life with my birth mom except for that last year, when she met Neil, and me and my little sister became even more of a pain in her ass than we were before. It was the year she taught us the real meaning of neglect.
“I know it’s awful. I’m sorry,” Dani says. I see the worried expression on her face and realize I’ve been scowling.
I make an effort to relax, to stop thinking about things that aren’t worth thinking about anyway. “No, it’s fine. It’s nice.”
“It’s too much. It’s actually Penny’s house. She’s got a lot of money.”
“Is she a trust-fund baby or something?”
“No, she was a freelance linguistic specialist for the FBI.” Dani leads me across the gray cobblestones toward the front door. “She speaks five or six languages and developed this software that helped the spies spy better. Or something. She doesn’t really talk about it much. She quit after she
I’ve never dreamt there could be a cure, that there might be a chance I could put Rachel behind me and know she was never, ever coming back. The thought makes me smile. Jesse smiles back, the curve of his lips transforming him into something truly magnificent. My breath rushes out and I forget how to pull another back in.
When he glares, Jesse is the ultimate gorgeous bad boy. But when he smiles, he is … breathtaking. “You should smile more often.”
“Maybe I will.” His smile glows even brighter before it suddenly fades, vanishing as if someone slapped it away. “Dani … I … I think I should … ”
“Should what?”
“I … ” He scowls and drops his gaze to the ground with a sigh. “I just want to help keep you safe.”
I squeeze the hand still in mine. “Me too. I mean … you.” I blush, and hope the cold air will explain the pink in my cheeks. “Maybe my dad can help us. He’s a doctor. Well, a scientist really. He works at North Corp doing research, but he helped with my treatment at Baptist when I was little and he knows lots of people. If we talk to him together, he might actually listen.”
Or not. More likely, he’ll think the boy I’ve brought home is on drugs and I’m out of my mind again. But my father’s sharp, disapproving eyes don’t seem as scary right now. Not when I’m holding Jesse’s hand and know—for the first time in my entire life, beyond any shadow of a doubt—that I’m not alone.
Jesse
For a rich girl, Dani lives pretty close to the wrong side of the tracks. Her house is less than a ten-minute walk from the seedy diner at the edge of town, and only half a dozen long blocks from my own home-sweet-slum. The difference is that her street is a private drive that curves up into the hills, away from the depressed area below, round and round, past a locked gate where Dani has to punch in an access code, and then up another hundred feet. At the top of the hill, the dense woods thin away, revealing … a castle.
No, not a castle, but the closest thing I’ve ever seen to one. The house is three stories in some places, four in others, with dark gingerbread-looking wood and glass everywhere. There’s an octagon-shaped tower room on one side. On the other, the roof turns into a giant deck that pokes up through the trees. I catch sight of the edges of what look like deck chairs and suspect there might be a pool up there.
A pool on her roof . I am … I have no idea what to say.
“This is it.” Dani squeezes my hand. She hasn’t let me go, not even when she punched in the code to the gate.
It makes me stupidly happy. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. It hasn’t been since I was a kid, and maybe not even then. I have a hard time remembering much about my life with my birth mom except for that last year, when she met Neil, and me and my little sister became even more of a pain in her ass than we were before. It was the year she taught us the real meaning of neglect.
“I know it’s awful. I’m sorry,” Dani says. I see the worried expression on her face and realize I’ve been scowling.
I make an effort to relax, to stop thinking about things that aren’t worth thinking about anyway. “No, it’s fine. It’s nice.”
“It’s too much. It’s actually Penny’s house. She’s got a lot of money.”
“Is she a trust-fund baby or something?”
“No, she was a freelance linguistic specialist for the FBI.” Dani leads me across the gray cobblestones toward the front door. “She speaks five or six languages and developed this software that helped the spies spy better. Or something. She doesn’t really talk about it much. She quit after she
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