RJ #2
I cross my room and pull back the curtain. RJ is standing in the bushes below, winding up another pebble. My heart tumbles. What is he doing here! How did he get through the gate? He waves, and panic clamps down on my chest. If my mother sees him—if anyone sees him—he’s dead. Literally dead.
He must be delusional. He must have some fascination with getting in trouble. He must have absolutely zero regard for danger. Nor any care for his safety.
“What are you smiling about?”
I’m smiling?
“This is serious,” she snaps.
I turn away from the window and move toward the door, trying to usher her out, but she’s rambling again.
“Any detail? Any slip? Did you see whispered conversations? Or long dark coats? These kinds of people deal in very seedy matters, Jules.”
“Nothing. Everything was extremely unimpressive and regular.” Except RJ. “I don’t know why construction crews are in and out of that side of Grove. I didn’t get any weird vibes. I bought a cupcake from a nice boy and ate it. That’s it. Am I done now?”
“A nice boy?” My mother’s blue eyes narrow. I inch away from the window. She crosses the room and grabs my jaw, hard. “There is nothing nice about the Vales.” The color in her irises darkens. “The territory lines were drawn by your—”
“Great-great-grandfather. I know.” I pull my face out of her hands.
“In blood.” The vein beside her eye twitches. She storms out, and I race to the window. He is still there. My heart squeezes as I lift the pane.
“What are you doing here?” I say in my loudest whisper.
“I don’t know.” His hands are in his pockets, brown bangs falling into his eyes. He smiles, and it ruins me. “I wanted to hear your thoughts again.”
“RJ, you can’t be here.”
“Then come down.”
“Seriously?” Ugh. My heart flutters. I want to. Why do I want to? I can’t stop smiling. “How?”
He grins and holds out his arms, one side of his smile higher than the other. “I’ll catch you.”
I must be mad. Because I climb onto the ledge, lug my legs over, and jump.
RJ
I completely fail at catching her but manage to throw myself under her just in time to break her fall.
“Ow!” She groans, unwedging her foot from my armpit. She dusts herself off.
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
“Down.” She grabs my arm and drags me into the sculpted hedges lining her estate. “If anyone sees you, you’re dead.”
I wait for her to laugh. But she doesn’t. We duck into the bushes, nestling into a spot between the brambles. She finds a rock. I land in the dirt. The moonlight catches half her face, the rest tucked in shadow. My heart hammers. I focus on the hum in my chest and listen.
Nothing.
“My pulse is even. I can’t hear it anymore.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She turns a green jeweled bracelet on her arm. “If I take this off, any other Whisperborns nearby can hear, too.”
A bracelet? That’s how she does it?
“Yes,” she says. “It’s a Thoughtveil.”
I feel naked, exposed. She can hear my thoughts, but I can’t hear hers.
She slips off the bracelet, smiling at me. “There.”
His eyes are the color of grass with fresh morning dew. My mother will kill us both if she finds us down here.
“I don’t want to get you into any trouble.”
“I told you my name and you came anyway.” She hands me the Thoughtveil. “Try it.”
I take it, unable to look her in the eye. Coming here was reckless. But I needed to see her again. I needed to understand why this strange connection between us exists.
I’m a Vale. It’s obvious. Scruffy dark hair, sharp jaw, prominent nose, and the single jeweled earring in my left lobe.
My entire life is on the east side of Grove.
My family owns the bakery, boba shop, tapas diner, tattoo parlor, used bookstore, a few other holes in the wall—even a bank.
When you’re sixteen, you choose your trade and start your life.
That’s the Vale way—building a business.
I refused. But before I marched into my father’s office to tell him I didn’t want to build a business, Delilah stopped me. She insisted I’d be shipped off to boarding school if I did that. Which was certainly worse than being forced to start a business.
She wanted a bakery and was tired of waiting to be “old enough.” She came up with the entire concept down to the hot pink doilies at the bistro tables and bullied me (under threat of nagging me for the rest of my life) into telling Dad the bakery was my idea.
Now I’m a seventeen-year-old Vale who ices cupcakes three hours a day (six on the weekends) instead of standing up to my family and telling them I don’t want to go into business!
I want to be a writer.
I want to string together letters and make stories. I want to drown myself in vibes and feelings. Aspiring to be a starving artist? Not at all respectable.
Jules smiles at me. I drop my gaze. The bracelet’s in the dirt.
“You heard all that?” I groan. If I was naked before, now I’m just bones.
“You’re turning into a beet.” She laughs. “I don’t like my parents much, either.” She brushes my knee with her fingertips. There’s nothing actually magical about the touch. But somehow, it feels like it. “I like your bakery, for what it’s worth.”
“It’s all Lilah. She’s the brains. I’m just the muscle.”
“Well, the icing on my cupcake was flawless. So flex.”
I fold my arm in, hoping she sees the sparkle in my eyes the way I see it in hers. I hand her the Thoughtveil back, realizing I like my thoughts being heard by her. I like this bare, honest truth.
I push my hair out of my eyes and watch as she fiddles with her Thoughtveil before tossing it aside on the grass.
“So, what’s your parents’ deal? I’ve heard things about the Marlos.”
Extortion. Blackmail. Cyberhacking. I’ve even heard they butcher the bodies of their enemies in their meat market.
“Cyberhacking? No.” She scrunches her nose. “But the rest? All true.” She shrugs like she can’t believe it, either. “They’re trying to rope me into the family business, as they call it, but I’ve stiff-armed it. So far.”
I swallow. I’d hoped the rumors were exaggerated.
“We’re all Whisperborn. Living with that many voices in your head is annoying. But with my mother, it’s absolutely mind-numbing. She—”
A noise from above cuts her off. Her window creaks open wider. She grabs the bracelet and snaps it on.
She presses a finger to my lips. My heart forgets how to beat.
“Jules?” a voice calls.
We don’t move.
“Find your daughter, Stewart. She lacks discipline,” she says, as if it’s Stewart’s fault. “Tell her to answer when I call.”
When the window shuts, I’m soaked in sweat. I didn’t mean to get her in trouble. I didn’t mean to make things harder on her. I stumble for words, but they jumble around in my head faster than any can form in my mouth. Jules grabs my hand, lacing her fingers through mine.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “Just, please—can we meet again?”
I blink. It feels reckless to say yes. But I still want to sit and soak her in like the sun.
I want to know how a girl like her finds her place in a family like hers.
But agreeing to meet again is selfish. It’s wrong.
It’s not safe for her or me. The kindest thing I can do is turn around and never see her again.
But because I’m a fool, I say, “Meet me tomorrow at Mystic Lake. The old maple tree, at sunset.”
Jules
The grass sways in the wind, and it’s RJ calling my name. I run, barefoot, toward him standing on the bank of Mystic Lake, slipping out of his dusty jeans. He dives into the water, and I pick up speed, launching myself in after him. The water hits me in a burst of cold, and it feels like freedom.
The weeks pass like days.
Months like moments.
Picnics beneath the maple tree, watching the sunset, bike rides through the park, kayaks, sand fights, skipping rocks, strolls through the tall grass, crowns made from wildflowers, night sky shimmering on lake water, racing home at breakneck speed before curfew, reaching the town square at Grove Street.
Him going his way and me going mine. Tossing and turning in the covers, dreaming of doing it all again tomorrow.
Reckless.
Risky.
Precious.
Moments.
Sharing secret thoughts. Things we feel deeply but aren’t brave enough to say aloud.
His early interest from out-of-state colleges that he hid from his parents, the future he’s catapulting toward that he doesn’t want, his little sister crying herself to sleep at night for reasons he doesn’t understand, the letter he wrote to his parents telling them the truth of how he feels before burning it in the fireplace, the panic attacks that keep him up at night, the sickening feeling of not fitting in anywhere.
And mine. Late nights drowning my parents’ fighting in my favorite tunes.
The secret meetings my mother holds with people from around town, plotting, scheming, maneuvering.
The police showing up in the middle of the night two years ago to take my brother away.
My mother blaming it on the Vales. My dying orchid.
There are tears.
Laughter.
So much laughter.
This evening, he sits with his legs stretched out, summer wind blowing through his wild hair. His shirt is balled up on the grass, the sun baking his skin. I lie on my back, across his legs, watching the clouds. My fingertips graze his arms.
“At the lake, there are no trees, no wind rustling in the leaves.” RJ glances up at me from his paper, blushing.
“Keep going.”
“There is only my heartbeat drumming in my ears when I look at her.” He balls it up. “It’s dumb.”
“Shut up, your feelings for me are not dumb.” I pinch his nose.
“Who said it’s about you?”
I sit up, grab the Thoughtveil necklace I made for him lying beside us on the ground, and dangle it. “Very funny.”
“Do you ever wonder what would happen if we just never left?” he asks.
“Live here at Mystic?”
He plucks the bouquet of flowers we gathered and begins placing them one by one in my braid. When he finishes, he bundles the rest and offers me a hand. I take it.