“Mom.” Douglas looked annoyed. “Jessica got Mr. Whitehead to donate three million dollars to—”

“I beg your pardon, Douglas,” Mom said, glaring at him. “But I am speaking to Jessica. Well?” She brushed her hands off on her slacks. “What do you have to say for yourself? Because I had to stand here and try to keep Karen Sue from crying—yes,crying —over how you treated her this morning. I understand that perhaps you had more pressing concerns, but…” Her eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses as she stared at the porch. “What’s going on with you, Jessica? You look…different.”

Maybe because right then, I was thinking about killing her.

“Ma,” Douglas said. “She—”

“Don’t call me Ma,” Mom said automatically. “Jessica, what exactly is going on here? You show up out of the blue, and the next thing I know, you’re involved in some kind of teen runaway porn scandal. You should have seen Mrs. Leskowski’s expression when she came up to me in the Kroger just now to tell me all about it. Butter wouldn’t have melted in that woman’s mouth. It’s almost like she thinks the rest of us don’t remember what Mark did—”

Suddenly Mom whipped off her sunglasses, apparently to get a better look at me.“Jessica. Did you get your powers back?”

Oh, brother.

“I gotta go,” I said, getting up. Because suddenly, I had a burning need to take my bike out for a little spin.

“Wait,” Mom said. “Jessica. Did you? You did, didn’t you? Oh, Jessica.”

“Come on, Mom.” Douglas looked annoyed. “Get with the program. You want to know thereally good news? She got Randy Whitehead to donate three million—”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Jessica?” Mom, ignoring Douglas, asked me. “Does Dr. Krantz know?”

My eyes widened. “God. I hope not.”

“Well, Jessica. You have to tell him. I mean, there are still people out there that I’m sure they’d like to—”

“Mom!” I stared at her. I couldn’t believe this. I really couldn’t. I was so distracted that I found myself slipping Rob’s grandmother’s ring on and off my left middle finger. Then I figured I’d better leave it on, so I wouldn’t lose it. I had to give it back to him, after all.

“You can’t have it both ways,” I said, coming down off the porch steps and heading for Blue Beauty. “You can’t have a daughter who’s normal, like Karen Sue Hankey, and a daughter with psychic powers, like me. You have to decide. You have to decide which one you want.”

Because that’s what my Juilliard scholarship, I knew, represented to my mom—that I was normal. Which is what she’d always wanted—a normal daughter, like Karen Sue Hankey. Not one who wouldn’t put on a dress, loved motorcycles, and could find missing people in her sleep.

Well, she’d gotten her wish. For the entirety of this past year, I’d been the normal daughter Mom had always wanted.

But no more. No more normal for me.

Was she going to be able to deal with that?

WasI ?

“Jessica,” Mom said, stepping in front of me, effectively blocking my path to the garage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Just that maybe if you had ever supported me in anything I ever did—besides going to Juilliard—I might have turned out more the way you wanted me to.”

Mom’s eyebrows went up. WAY up.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “You know your father and I have always supported you, in everything you’ve ever done—”

“Not about Rob, you didn’t,” I said.

Mom looked shocked. “Isthat what this is about? That boy? I can’t believe you’re even giving him a second’s thought, after the way he treated you—”

“He treated me that way because ofyou , Mom. Because of your stupid statutory-rape speech. You totally scared him off—”

“I’m glad I did,” Mom said indignantly. “Jessica, I know you’ve always had self-esteem issues, but believe me, you can do a lot better than a common grease monkey with a criminal record.”

“For swimming after hours at a public pool, Ma,” I said. “That’s what Rob was on probation for. For trespassing.”

Behind me, I heard Douglas burst out laughing. “For real?” he wanted to know. “That’s why he got busted?”

I whirled around to face him. “It’s not funny!” I shrieked. Although, of course, ordinarily I probably would have found it hilarious. All that wondering, all that worrying, for years, and over what? A midnight swim.

I swung back around to face Mom. But before I could get a word out, she was saying, “If he really loved you, Jessica, he’d have waited for you. The fact that he did run away, just because of my little speech…well, that shows you something about him, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said tensely. “It shows me that he loved me enough to respect my parents’ wishes. And do you have any idea what he did while he was waiting for me to turn eighteen, Ma?”

“I’ve told you before,” she said irritably. “Don’t call me Ma.”

“He bought his own business,” I went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And his own house. He’s probably earningmore than a hundred thousand a year, fixing up motorcycles for rich Baby Boomers,and he’s going to college at the same time. What do you think aboutthat , Ma?”

“I think,” Mom said, her mouth flattening to a straight line, “that you’re forgetting one very important thing.”

“What?”

“That you saw him kissing another girl. You’ve never seen Skip kissing another girl, have you?”

I stepped around her and headed to my bike.

“Well?” Mom wanted to know. “Have you? No. You haven’t, have you?”

“Only because no other girl wouldlet Skip kiss her,” Douglas pointed out, causing Tasha to start laughing so hard, she had to slap a hand over her mouth to stifle it.

I pulled my bike from the garage, kicking the doors closed behind me with one booted foot.

“Where are you going?” Mom demanded. “Wait, don’t tell me. You’re going to seehim , aren’t you?”

“No,” I said, lowering my helmet over my head. “I’m going to get away fromyou .”

And then I gunned my engine a few more times than was strictly necessary, just to drown out whatever Mom said next, and drove away.

Nineteen

“Ruth?”

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded groggy. “Jess? Is that you? God, what time is it?”

I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. “Oops,” I said. “It’s one in the morning. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, you woke me up.” Now Ruth sounded less groggy and more alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. I held the cell phone closer to my ear, blinking up at the ceiling in my night-darkened bedroom. After an evening of driving aimlessly around the countryside—then returning home to find Mom still sulking in her room, and Dad working late at the restaurant—I’d amused myself by watching home-improvement shows.

Only all these did was make me think of Rob, who’d done a much better job improving his house than any of the people I saw on TV.

“I mean, nothing’s really wrong,” I said to Ruth. “I just…I really need to talk to you. I think…I think I did something really stupid.”

“What did you do?” Ruth asked, her voice filled with dread.

“I…I think Rob proposed, and I just sort of…walked out.”

“You think Rob proposed?” I could tell Ruth was sitting up, since her voice suddenly got much clearer. “What do you mean, youthink he proposed? Did he give you a ring?”

I gazed at Rob’s grandmother’s ring, still around the third finger on my left hand. It was dark in my room, but I could still make out the diamond in the middle of the band. There were smaller diamonds set all around it, in some curlicue gold stuff. I bet Karen Sue Hankey would know what that curlicue gold stuff was called.

“Well,” I said. “Yes. But—”

“Holy crap,” Ruth said. “Heproposed !”

Which is when a male voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere very close to Ruth, said in the background, “Hewhat ?”

The weird thing was, I could have sworn the voice was Mikey’s.

“Ruth?” I asked in the silence that followed. “Was that—”

“That was Skip,” Ruth said quickly. “He came in here to see who I was talking to.”

“Really,” I said. “Because it sounded like he was in bed with you. And it sounded more like—”

“I can’t believe Rob proposed!” Ruth interrupted. “That is amazing, Jess! I mean, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. He didn’treally propose. He told me he wasgoing to propose when I got back from Afghanistan. But then I—well, you know.”

“Saw him with Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”

“Right. And he seemed to think it would be better if he just let me go through whatever it was he seemed to think I was going through, at the time.”

“Which,” Ruth said, “in retrospect, wasn’t such a bad thing, Jess. I mean, you have to admit, you were a mess back then.”

This was so not what I called her to hear.

“What happened to‘he’s the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most’ ?” I asked indignantly. “Suddenly you’re on his side?”

“Of course not,” Ruth said. “But look how things turned out. You’re a lot better now. And he still gave you the ring. Which means he must still want to. Marry you, I mean.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “He didn’t so much as give me the ring as throw it at me. And I just sort of hung on to it. The thing is, Ruth—” And suddenly I found myself pouring out the whole story—Hannah, and Randy, and the videotapes, and the scrapbook, and the things Rob had told me that afternoon. All of it.

And when I’d finished, Ruth said, “Well, it’s obvious he’s still in love with you. The question is, are you still in love with him? I mean, would you take him back? In spite of Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”