“Not the last time I saw him,” I said. “The last time I saw him, I was spying on him from the back of your car.”

“I meant the time before that,” Ruth said.

“The time before that, I told him we needed to take a break.”

“And,” Ruth said meaningfully.

“And,” I echoed. “And what?”

“And helet you.” She was perched on the end of her mattress, her blond curls framed by the purple sari she’d draped over the head of her bed, to give the room more “elegance.” Though how you could hope to lend elegance to a room that was literally like, six feet by twelve feet, with a single window over which we’d had a metal gate installed so burglars couldn’t get in, and more than its fair share of cockroach sightings, I don’t know.

“He only did what I asked,” I pointed out. “Look, he’s not such a bad guy. I mean, I was head over heels in love with him in high school. He could have taken advantage of that. But he never did.”

“Because he didn’t want to go to jail,” Ruth said.

I grimaced. “Thanks for that.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Jess,” she said. “What do you want me to say? He was a great guy? A perfect catch? He wasn’t. And I don’t care if he owns his own business now. He’s still the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most.”

“He says he tried,” I said. “He says I was like a cactus when I got back, covered in prickles, and wouldn’t let anyone near me. Plus, you know…there was Mom.”

That’s the nice thing about having a best friend. You don’t have to elaborate. Ruth knew exactly what I meant.

“If he really cared about you,” she said, “he wouldn’t have minded the prickles. Or your mom.”

I thought about that. The thing is, I wasn’t sure. Both, I imagined, would have seemed plenty formidable—especially to a guy like Rob, who for so much of his life, didn’t have much of anything…except his pride.

Which I’m pretty sure both my stubborn independence and my mom’s disdain for him had injured…maybe even beyond repair.

Although…

“He saysI ’m the one who’s broken,” I murmured. “He says no one can fix me but myself, because I won’t let anyone rescue me.”

“Oh, so now he’s a psychiatrist? What’she been doing for the past year?” Ruth asked with a sneer. “WatchingOprah ?”

I sighed, then flopped back against my own mattress, which was covered with a nondescript brown bedspread from Third Street Bazaar. I had done nothing to lend more elegance to the room. The part of the wall above my bed was blank. I stared at the cracked, peeling ceiling.

“I just thought,” I said to the cracks in the ceiling more than to Ruth, “that coming here would make me happy.”

“Aren’t you happy?” Ruth asked. “You seemed happy today, when you were showing that kid how to breathe from his diaphragm.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That part makes me happy. But school…” I let my voice trail off.

“No one likes school,” Ruth said.

“You do.”

“Yeah, but I’m a freak. Ask Mike. Well, okay, he’s a freak, too.” I restrained myself from pointing out that Ruth and Mike seemed to have a lot in common these days. I mean, they had both been übergeeks in high school who had “found” themselves—their true selves—in college.

And I would have to have been blind to miss the surreptitious looks I sometimes saw Mike shooting Ruth when she was in a cami and cutoffs, trying to beat the New York heat. Not to mention the looks she sometimes shot him when he came out of the bathroom with just a towel on, or whatever.

It was kind of revolting, actually. I mean, my brother and my best friend. Yuck.

But hey, if it made them happy…

“Skip,” Ruth said brightly. “Hehates school.”

“Because school is just something he has to get through,” I said, “until he can start pulling in that hundred grand a year.”

“True,” Ruth said with a sigh. “But I’m just saying. Most people don’t like school, Jess. It’s a necessary evil you have to live through, to get you where you want to be in life.”

“But that’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know where I want to be. And what little clue I do have…well, it doesn’t involve playing in an orchestra, let’s just say.”

“But you like to teach,” she said. “I know you do, Jess. And having a degree from Juilliard will look a lot better for that than having no degree at all.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I knew she was right. And the fact was, I was living many a musician’s dream. I was in New York City, attending one of the finest music colleges in the world. I had instructors who were internationally famous for their skills. I spent all day immersed in the music I loved, doing what I loved doing best—playing my flute.

Ishould have been happy. I had seized the opportunity when it came along, because I knew it was the kind of opportunity thatshould have made me happy.

So why wasn’t I?

There was a tap on the door, and Ruth said, “Come in.”

Mike poked his head in.

“Is this a private party,” he asked, “or can anybody join?”

Ruth glanced at me. I said, “Come in, stay out, whatever. I don’t care.”

Mike came in. I saw him avert his gaze from Ruth’s jewel-tone bra, which lay draped across the radiator. I saw her notice him notice it, and blush.

Oh, for God’s sake,I wanted to groan.Would you two just Do It already, and spare the rest of us?

“So Skip and I were just talking,” Mike said, and I noticed that Skip had crept in behind him.

“Yeah,” Skip said. “And if you want us to, Jess, we’ll beat him up for you.”

I regarded the two of them from where I was sprawled across my bed.

“You two are volunteering to beat up Rob Wilkins?”

“Yeah,” Skip said.

“Well, not beat him up, exactly,” Mike said, darting a look at Skip. “But have a word with him. Tell him to leave you alone. If you want.”

“That,” I said, touched in spite of myself, “is so sweet, you guys.”

“Are you insane?” Ruth asked both boys. “He could beat the crap out of both of you with one hand tied behind his back.”

“Aw, come on,” Skip said. “He’s notthat tough.”

Ruth said, “Skip, we had to take you to Promptcare once because you got a quarter-inch splinter under your pinkie nail and you wouldn’t stop crying.”

“Come on,” Skip said, looking embarrassed. “I was twelve.”

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “You know what guys like Rob Wilkins were doing when they were twelve? Smashing beer cans against their foreheads, that’s what.”

“Nobody needs to beat anybody up for me,” I said to ward off a sibling-smackdown. “I’m fine. Really. Thanks for the concern.”

“So what are you going to do?” Mike wanted to know.

“About what?” I asked. “Rob?”

He nodded.

I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. I mean, there’s nothing Ican do. I can’t find his sister for him, however much I might want to.”

“How do you know?” Mike asked.

Both Ruth and I turned our heads to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“I’m serious,” he said in a voice that cracked. He cleared it. “I mean, you haven’t tried to find anyone in, what, a year? How do you know you don’t have it back? You’ve been sleeping through the night lately.”

Everyone, including me, looked at the beat-up wood floor. The fact that I woke up everyone in the apartment with shrieks of unmitigated terror on a semi-regular basis was a fact that had always previously gone unmentioned by mutual agreement.

“Well,” Mike said indignantly. “It’s true. You seem to be doing better, since you started working with—”

“Don’t say it,” I interrupted quickly.

Mike looked confused. “Why not? It’s true. Ever since you started—”

“You’ll jinx it,” I said, “if you say it out loud.”

I didn’t know whether or not this was true. But I wasn’t taking the chance. I hadn’t had a nightmare in quite a while. All summer, practically. And I wanted to keep it that way.

“But just because she’s sleeping again doesn’t mean she’s got her you-know-what back,” Skip said.

Ruth looked at him. “Skip,” she said. “Shut up.”

“You know what I mean,” Skip said. “Her powers. You know. To find people.”

“Skip,” Ruth said again.

“And what if she does get it back?” Skip wanted to know. “That means they’ll make her come work for them again, right? The government? Or the FBI, or whoever. Right? And then what’s Ruth supposed to do? Find a new roommate?”

“SKIP!”

“I’m just saying, if she’s got the ability back, why would she even bother with school and stuff when she could be raking in a fortune, hiring herself out as—”

“SHUT UP, SKIP!” Mike and Ruth both shouted together.

Skip shut up but looked defensive about it.

“Come on,” Mike said to him. “CSIis on.”

“I hate that show,” Skip complained. “All we have to do is look out the window, and we canlive that show.”

“Then we’ll watch something else, okay?” Mike shook his head as he steered Skip from our room. “Can’t you tell they want to be alone?”

“Who? Ruth and Jess? What for?”

The door closed, as Mike tried to explain it to Skip. Ruth, meanwhile, looked at me.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, sounding worried.

“I’m sure,” I said, and picked up Hannah’s picture again and gazed at it.

“I can’t believe he had a sister all this time,” Ruth said, “and didn’t even know it. And he really wants to—what? Adopt her?”

“Be her legal guardian,” I said. “I guess her mom’s a crackhead, or something.”

Ruth sighed. “Thank God you guys broke up. Right? Because it sounds to me like he might be in over his head. With a missing teen sister and all. Believe me, Jess, you would not want any part of that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess not.”