Chapter 43
T here’s no chance of going back to sleep, so I might as well get my questions answered.
I march over to Jade’s room. I pound on the door with the palm of my hand. I have to pound on it quite a few times before Jade finally pulls the door open. She has an amused look on her face. I try not to picture the way my reflection looked in the mirror.
“Hello, Amy,” she says. “What brings you to the neighborhood?”
I push past her into her room without asking permission, but she’s the one who closes the door behind me. She still has that amused twist on her lips, although most of her makeup has rubbed off by now.
“You never told me Will was your boyfriend,” I say.
For a moment, she stands there in stunned silence. Then she laughs, throwing her head back so that I can see the fillings in the back of her mouth. Jade never got through a dentist appointment without needing a cavity filled. “Oh, Amy…”
“Don’t deny it.” I put my hands on my hips. “He is, isn’t he?”
She smiles and shrugs. “What can I say? You figured out my little secret. But it would have been hilarious if we had a double date and I brought him along.”
I grimace. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“And he’s cute, isn’t he?”
“He’s troubled .” I frown. “Will not taking his medications—is that your doing?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Why should he take them? He’s so much more fun off the medications.”
“So he’s better off hearing voices telling him to kill people?”
“Oh, come on! He’s not actually going to do it.”
“You don’t know that.”
In fact, it’s hard not to look at Will differently now that I know he’s not taking the pills that keep him from hallucinating. Without those pills, what is he capable of? He told me he heard Cameron scream and then he disappeared. But I can’t take anything he says at face value.
What if he’s the one who made Cameron disappear?
“Maybe you should be careful around Will,” I say. “People who hear voices… You can’t trust people like that.”
“You should know, shouldn’t you?”
Jade is staring at me, that same sneer still on her lips. She’s never going to listen to anything I have to say. She wouldn’t listen when we were sixteen, and she won’t now. Jade never wanted to be helped. She never believed she had a problem, and that’s why she never wanted to get better.
“I think Will might be extremely dangerous,” I say. “I think we all might be in danger tonight. But if you don’t want to listen, that’s up to you.”
For a split second, Jade’s composure slips. “You… you really think he could be dangerous?”
“I really do.”
She looks like she’s thinking about it. “I don’t believe that.”
“Just be careful around him, Jade,” I say. “Okay?”
Her eyes drop. “You should go, Amy.”
Even though I’m worried about Jade, I do what she asks of me. After all, I’m not going to convince her right now. Eventually, she might realize I’m right.
I only hope she realizes it in time to save her life.