I’ve discovered hiding things from Mom and Dad never turns out well, so I confess as soon as I get home. After a long talk about ignoring pushy reporters and following the guidelines set up by the FBI for my protection, they make me call Agent Klein, who gives me another excruciating lecture before finally telling me Captain McCoy already alerted her anyway. Lucky me: scolded by my parents and the government. We watch the ten o’clock news, anxious to see Greta Barren’s piece, but it doesn’t happen. She’s not rushing it, I guess.
On Sunday, I call Art so we can finish our conversation about his time travel theories, and he can give me more details about Dr. Greaves and Dr. Rozanov’s time travel paper. Art was studying physics before he dropped out of college, so most of what he says goes over my head, but it’s okay. As much as I’d like to understand why we’re in a different century, at the moment I’m more concerned about what the PATROL people are up to. I sense more of a story there.
During the five o’clock news, Greta Barren’s piece finally airs, and I give her points for not sensationalizing it. Interestingly, she followed up on my PATROL question—framing it like she’d already been investigating them. It turns out Dr. Greaves’s husband is the president of a major life insurance company that paid out policies on twenty-two passengers. He’s not an official member of PATROL, but it’s a definite connection. The story proves Greta Barren isn’t a total hack of a journalist, but I still don’t trust her. I am worried she’ll scoop me now that she’s investigating PATROL too. Her story runs again at six and ten.
The atmosphere at school is different the moment I step inside the next day.
“Hey, Jenny!” says a girl I’ve never spoken to before. “Saw you on TV yesterday!”
“I knew you weren’t a clone,” says Caleb (now confirmed) when I enter English.
“I’m so relieved. I bet your spidey senses told you, huh?” I manage to conceal my smirk until I’m facing the front of the room.
By the time I get to lunch, more people have slapped my back and held out their fists for me to (awkwardly) bump than in the whole time I’ve attended Parkwood. It’s better than last week, but I really prefer my life before, when I was an above-average student who achieved notice sometimes for my Parkwood Press articles instead of for being accosted by a reporter at what should have been a private meeting.
I aim for a table in the corner. I still like the windows, but I don’t sit at my old table, since it “belongs” to Ashling’s crew. Although Mom drove me to school, I’m not deliberately avoiding Dylan, but I haven’t seen him yet. I spot JoJo across the room and return her glower. I’m positive she made sure everyone at school knew about the book.
Whatever. I’m not wasting time on her.
The chairs around me fill up as soon as I sit. They introduce themselves, and I nod, but I don’t internalize their names. They’re not really interested in being my friends.
“Jenny, what was it like meeting Greta Barren?” a brown-skinned girl with blue-framed glasses asks. Actually, I recognize her. She’s in my journalism class, so her question probably goes beyond you-met-a-locally-famous-person-and-I-want-to-hear-all-about-it. “Was she nice?”
I swallow my bite of ham-and-cheese sandwich and consider how to answer, especially in light of how my classmates view me. I decide to be New Jenny. I might be physically sitting in a corner, but that doesn’t mean I’m hiding.
“She insinuated I was a clone and pried into my personal business, so not particularly, no.” I wipe my hands on a napkin. “I’m all for someone getting their story”—I eye the girl in my journalism class, like you know what I mean—“but there’s a point where it veers into sensationalism. I mean, a clone?”
I shrug to show how ridiculous this idea is, and the people at the table laugh around me. Okay, new plan to go with New Jenny: embrace notoriety. “And have you heard the one about me being a cyborg?”
The pale boy with the unfortunate acne issue next to me chuckles nervously.
I tip my face toward the ceiling. “Gosh, I wish!”
Blue glasses girl smiles. “Why?”
I lean forward. “Think about it. I could store everything in my computer brain”—I tap my temple—“and never study again.”
I collapse back in my chair. Everyone’s nodding along with me like I’m brilliant. New Jenny is working!
“What’s that Art guy like?” The redheaded girl across the table lasers me with startling green eyes. “He seems pretty cool. Are you guys, like, together?”
“Me? With Art?” I squeak. I know he’s not that much older than us, but it’s weird to think about us as a potential couple. Even though we share the Flight 237 experience, I just can’t imagine him as anything other than a friend. He’s just too … Art. “Definitely not.”
“Jenny!”
As one, my new friends turn their attention to a spot over my shoulder.
Dylan bends down between me and the pale boy. “I need to talk to you.”
Old Jenny returns, unprepared to confront Dylan. “No.”
Dylan glances around the table at my new fans. He nods as if he’s made an important decision. “I can just say it here …”
I push back, bumping him with my chair. “Oof!”
I scoop the remains of my lunch into my sack and smile at the table. “I’ll see you guys later.”
They stare at us with wide eyes. “’Bye, Jenny,” says blue glasses girl.
I really should’ve paid attention to names when they all introduced themselves. Bad call on my part when they first sat down. Even worse call on blue glasses girl. She’s on my staff, so I should already know.
I follow Dylan through the cafeteria, not surprised he accosted me here. I retrieved my phone from the office this morning, and I had a ton of texts from him, starting Friday after school and continuing all through Saturday. Messages asking if I was okay. Messages saying he was sorry. Messages pleading with me to let him come over so we could talk. Followed by silence yesterday. Either he figured out I didn’t have my phone or someone told him to give up.
With each step, heat builds under my skin. Because, yes, Angie wrote the book about me, and I’m still sure JoJo ensured my classmates went out and read it. But Dylan, he’s been my only … friend here. And he didn’t tell me. He let me find out from Ashling.
By the time we reach the same stairwell we chatted in before, all my senses are tingling. If I were violent, I might even punch him. I really wish I knew how to punch someone, but I’d probably break my knuckles. Instead I shove the stairwell door, but it has some sort of automatic thing on it that prevents slamming it, and it whooshes shut slowly, completely ruining my moment. I glare at it for good measure.
When I turn to face Dylan, he’s smirking, and that’s just too much. I march forward and shove him. “You think that’s funny?”
He raises his hands in surrender, his mouth a serious line. “What are you so angry about?”
“What am I so—are you kidding me? After all those text messages you sent me?” I’m in his face, my nostrils flared. I’m sure every freckle on my nose is standing out in sharp relief.
He backs away. “Um … no?”
“You’ve been lying to me from the moment I met you!”
He waves the hands he still has up, like he wants to make sure I can see them. What?
I point at him. “What are you so worried about? I’m not some karate expert. If I were, you would know about it. You and the rest of the world. Thanks to your mom.”
I spit the last two words out like a curse.
He lets his hands fall to his sides, like this is now a sign of peace. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. I could have told you about the book. But can you try to see it from my side? Like you said, she’s my mom. She didn’t just ask me not to tell you; she pretty much commanded it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. My heartbeat is slowing down, and I don’t feel so flushed anymore. “So you were just following her orders?”
Dylan huffs. “This is so messed up. I can’t believe she let it go on this long. I tried to come by on Saturday, to explain the whole thing, but you weren’t home.”
He did? Huh.
“Messed up is an understatement. Do you know how I found out?” I recap Friday’s journalism class. “It was horrible! And then I got ambushed by that reporter.”
“Hey,” Dylan says. “On the bright side, at least you found out before you were on camera.”
My jaw drops. “I can’t believe you just made a joke about it.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Sorry. Can’t help it sometimes.”
I’ve noticed that, how joking is his default mode. It’s why I can’t get a solid read on his signals.
“You’re right, though.” If I had found out from Greta Barren … I shudder. I would’ve made a complete fool of myself on TV. I wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to make a decent statement.
Dylan steps forward, his expression earnest. “But, Jenny, did you mean what you said on TV?”
I stiffen. I see where he’s going with this, and I won’t be pushed. News flash, Dylan: you can’t believe everything you see on TV.
“About my mom?” he continues. “That you know she wrote it as a tribute and she loves you? Because that’s all true,” he rushes to add.
I lower my chin. “Do I look like I’m all, ‘Hey, Angie, let’s put this misunderstanding behind us and skip happily through a daisy meadow. So what that you aired all my personal business to the entire world, including these brand-new classmates who can now giggle behind my back about bird sex? No big deal!’?”
“Uh … no.” Dylan looks as if I just socked him, and I realize that I do, in fact, know how to punch. It’s just with words instead of my fist.
“Did you read the book?” I tighten my arms and tap my foot.
“Yes.” A flush creeps up his neck. “I mean”—he tugs the collar of his T-shirt, which today has a huge Snoopy on it—“my mom wrote it, and I like to read, so sure I read it a couple of years ago, before I knew you.”
He’s read it. I’ve read it. We could have a Jenny and Me book club.
Oh my gosh, there probably already was one.
I’ll think about that later. For now, I need to wrap this up with Dylan before the lunch crowd takes over the stairwell. “So you know she shared private conversations. How would you feel if your best friend put your private conversations in a book for the whole world to read?”
He opens his mouth like he’s about to argue, then deflates. “I’d be pissed.”
I start nodding, and he adds, “Did you know as soon as she found out you were alive, she called her publisher and said all future royalties should be sent to you for your college fund?”
I recoil. “I don’t want money from that book.” But this explains her comment that day we went shopping, about me being fine financially. It had nothing to do with my parents.
“She doesn’t either. But it’s started climbing up the bestseller list again.”
Ouch. So even more people are reading it.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” he says, almost pleading, “but you have to admit these circumstances are unique, and you should give Mom a chance to explain.”
Argh! Every time. “I can’t get away from those ‘unique circumstances,’ like the fact I disappeared and was presumed dead gives her a screw-Jenny-over-for-free card.”
Dylan bites his lip. “It’s a pretty good excuse.”
“What?” Crap. I didn’t mean to say the second thing out loud. At least I managed to control my tongue last night, when it really mattered.
Dylan steps up so he’s in front of me again and gently takes hold of my wrist. “Whatever happens with my mom, I care most about you and me. Because I know you’re real, not some memory written in the pages of a book or an alien planted in our midst to spy for an invasion or whatever else people say. You’re the girl who argues Shakespeare’s the best writer of all time even when you know it’s lame. The girl who comes into my room asking about my Ozzie Smith ball even when you’re freaking out because you have no idea what’s going on in the part of the world that’s most important to you. You think the way my mom wrote about you makes you sound weak, but you’re strong because you stand up for what you believe in, even when it isn’t popular. I know who you are, Jenny Waters, and I hope you’ll forgive me for letting you down.”
My pulse is jumping beneath his thumb; I resist the urge to jerk my arm back before he notices how he affects me. “That was … maybe the best speech anyone’s ever given me. But you had all weekend to practice it. How am I supposed to trust you?”
He keeps his eyes on mine, not even a flicker left or right. “Because even though you’re right—I did practice—it was because I didn’t want to mess it up. There were so many moments I wanted to tell you about that stupid book, from the very first day I met you. I asked Mom more than once to tell you, but it wasn’t my call. From now on, I don’t have anyone else’s secrets to keep. So you can count on me.”
I look up into his brown eyes, and I want to. Why am I such a sucker? Probably because in many ways, he’s as much a victim in this situation as I am.
“Please, Jenny.”
The bell rings, and a stampede begins outside the doors, the perfect excuse to pull away. As I start upstairs, I call back, “I’ll think about it.”