"You'd think so," Skip said.

"Yes," I said, thoughtfully. "Wouldn't you?"



C H A P T E R

5

They held Amber Mackey's memorial service later that day. Instead of having it in a church or a funeral home or whatever, they had it in the gym.

That's right. The gym of Ernest Pyle High School.

And they had it during seventh period. Attendance was mandatory. The only person who was not there, actually, was Amber. I guess Principal Feeney drew the line at letting Amber's parents drag her coffin out in front of all two thousand of their daughter's peers.

The band played a slowed-down rendition of the school song, I guess so it would sound sad. Then Principal Feeney got up and talked about what a great person Amber had been. I doubt he had ever even met her, but whatever. He looked good in the dark gray suit he'd donned for the occasion.

When the principal was done talking, Coach Albright came out and said a few words. Coach Albright is not known for his eloquence as a speaker, so fortunately he didn't say much. He just announced that his players would be wearing black armbands on their uniforms for the season in honor of Amber. Never having been to a sporting event at my school, I had no idea what he was talking about until Ruth explained it to me.

Then Mrs. Tidd, the cheerleading coach, got up and said a bunch of stuff about how much they were going to miss Amber, especially when it came to her ability to do standing back tucks. Then she said that, in honor of Amber, both the varsity and junior varsity cheerleading squads had put together an interpretive dance.

Then—and I kid you not—the cheerleaders and Pompettes did this dance, in the middle of the gym floor, to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," from Titanic.

And people cried during it. I swear. I looked around, and people were totally crying.

It was a good dance and all. You could tell they'd worked totally hard on it. And they'd only had like two days or something to memorize it.

Still, it didn't make me feel like crying. Seriously. And I don't think I'm like a hardened person or anything. I just hope that when I die, nobody does an interpretive dance at my memorial service. I can't stand that kind of thing.

I can tell you what did make me feel like crying, though. The fact that, as the dance was going on, some people walked into the gym. I was sitting midway up the bleachers—Ruth wanted to make sure we could see everything, and she hadn't even known, at the time, that there was going to be an interpretive dance—but I could still make out their features. Well enough to know they weren't high-school students.

They weren't high-school teachers, either.

What they were was Feds.

Seriously. And not just any Feds, either, but my old friends Special Agents Johnson and Smith.

You would think that, by now, they'd have given up. I mean, they've been following me around since May, and they still don't have anything solid to pin on me. Not like what I'm doing is even wrong. I mean, okay, yeah, I help reunite missing kids with their families. Oooh, lock me up. I'm a dangerous criminal.

Except of course they don't want to lock me up. They want me to work for them.

But I have a real problem with working for an institution that routinely railroads people who might conceivably be innocent of the crimes with which they've been accused, just like The Fugitive....

And apparently it wasn't enough, my telling them I no longer had the power to find missing people. Oh, no. They have to tap my phone, and read my mail, and follow me all the way to Lake Wawasee.

And now they have the nerve to show up at a memorial service for one of my dead friends....

And yeah, okay, Amber wasn't really my friend, but I sat behind her for like half an hour every single weekday for six years. That has to count for something, right?

"I'm outta here," I said to Ruth as I started gathering up my things.

"What do you mean, you're outta here?" Ruth demanded, looking alarmed. "You can't leave. It's an assembly."

"Watch me," I said.

"They've got student council members posted at all the exits," Ruth whispered.

"That's not all they got posted by the exits," I said, and pointed at Special Agents Johnson and Smith, who were talking to Principal Feeney off to one side of the gym.

"Oh, God," Ruth breathed, when she saw them. "Not again."

"Oh, yes," I said. "And if you think I'm sticking around here to get the third degree about Courtney Hwang, which is for sure why they're here, you got another think coming, sister. See you around."

Without another word, I inched my way over to the far end of the bleacher—past a number of people who gave me dirty looks as I went by, though because I'd stepped on their toes, not because they were mad at me about Amber—until I'd reached the gap between the bleachers and the wall. This I slithered through without any major difficulty—although my landing, in my platform espadrilles, was no ten-pointer, let me tell you. After that, it was an easy stroll beneath the bleachers to the nearest door, where I planned to fake an illness and be given leave to make my way to the nurse's office....

Except of course when I emerged from beneath the bleachers and saw the student council member guarding that particular exit, I knew I wouldn't have to fake an illness.

No, I felt pretty genuinely sick.

"Jessica," Karen Sue Hankey said, clutching the pile of Remember Amber booklets she'd handed out to each of us as we filed in. The booklet, four pages long, had color copies of photos of Amber in various cheerleader poses, interposed with the printed lyrics to "My Heart Will Go On." Most people, I'd noticed as I'd made my way beneath the bleachers, had dropped theirs.

"What are you doing?" Karen Sue hissed. "Get back to your seat. It's not over yet."

I clutched my stomach. Not enough to draw attention to myself. The last thing I wanted was for Special Agents Johnson and Smith to notice me. But enough to get the point across.

"Karen Sue," I hiccuped. "I think I'm going to—"

I stumbled past her and dove through the doors. They let out into the music wing. Free. I was free! Now all I had to do was make my way to the student parking lot, and wait for Ruth to get to her car when they let everybody out. I might even get a chance to stretch out on her hood and work on my tan.

Except that Karen Sue followed me into the hallway, throwing a definite crimp in my plans.

"You are not sick, Jessica Mastriani," she said firmly. "You are faking it. You do the exact same thing in PE every time Mrs. Tidd announces the Presidential Fitness tests."

I couldn't believe this. It's not enough she has to go around outing me as a psychic to everyone. No, Karen Sue has to bar my escape from the Feds who are after me, too.

But I was not about to let my anger get the best of me. No way. I'd turned over a new leaf. It was already day two of the new school year, and guess what? I did not have detention.

And I was not going to ruin this excellent record by letting Karen Sue Hankey get under my skin.

"Karen Sue," I said, straightening up. "You're right. I'm not sick. But there are some people out there I don't want to see, if it's all the same to you. So could you please be a human being"—I barely restrained myself from adding, for once in your life—"and let me go?"

"Who do you not want to see?" Karen Sue wanted to know.

"Some Feds, if you must know. You see, I've had a lot of problems with people thinking I still have psychic powers, when in fact"—I added this last part with all the emphasis I could muster—"I do not."

"You are such a liar, Jess," Karen Sue said, shaking her head so that her honey-blonde hair, the ends of which curled into perfect flips just above her shoulders, swung. "You know you found that Shane kid at camp this summer, when he got lost inside that cave."

"Yeah, I found him," I said. "But not because I'd had a psychic vision he was there or anything. Just because I had a hunch he'd been in there. That's all."

"Is that so?" Karen Sue looked prim. "Well, what you call a hunch, I call ESP. You have a gift from God, Jessica Mastriani, and that makes it a sin for you to try to deny it."

The problem, of course, is that Karen Sue goes to my church. She's been in my Sunday school class since forever.

The other problem is that Karen Sue is a goody-two-shoes suck-up we used to lock in the janitor's closet whenever the Sunday school teacher didn't show up on time. Which happened quite often, actually.

"Look, Karen Sue," I said. It was getting harder to repress my urge to knock those booklets out of her arms and grind her face into them. "I appreciate everything you've tried to do for me, in the name of the Lord and all, but could you just once try that whole turning-the-other-cheek thing—turn it toward the wall so you don't see me while I get the hell out of here? That way, if anyone asks, you won't be lying when you say you didn't see where I went."

Karen Sue looked at me sadly. "No," she said, and started for the door, clearly to seek the aid of someone larger than she was in detaining me.

I grabbed her wrist. But I wasn't going to hurt her. I swear I wasn't. I'd turned over a new leaf. I was in a brand new crocheted sweater set and espadrilles. I had on cherry Chap Stick. Girls dressed like me do not get into fights. Girls dressed like me reason with one another, in a friendly manner.

"Karen Sue," I said. "The thing is, the whole thing with the psychic power and all, it really upsets my brother Douglas, you know? I mean, the reporters coming around the house and calling and all of that. So you can see why I want to kind of keep it a secret, right? I mean, because of my brother."