Page 61 of Life and Death

I looked down, frustrated. I unrolled my silverware, picked up my fork,and carefully speared a ravioli. I put it in my mouth slowly, still looking down, chewing while I thought. The mushrooms were good. I swallowed and took a sip of Coke before I looked up.

“Fine, then.” I glared at her, and continued slowly. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that . . . someone . . . could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know—with just a few exceptions.” It sounded so stupid. There was no way, if she wouldn’t comment on the first one . . .

But then she looked at me calmly and said, “Justoneexception. Hypothetically.”

Well, damn.

It took me a minute to recover. She waited patiently.

“Okay.” I worked to sound casual. “Just one exception, then. How would something like that work? What are the limitations? How would . . . that someone . . . find someone else at exactly the right time? How would she even know I was in trouble?” My convoluted questions weren’t making any sense by the end.

“Hypothetically?” she asked.

“Right.”

“Well, if . . . that someone—”

“Call herJane,” I suggested.

She smiled wryly. “If your Hypothetical Jane had been paying better attention, the timing wouldn’t have needed to be quite so exact.” She rolledher eyes. “I’m still not over how this could happen at all. How does anyone get into so much trouble, so consistently, and in such unlikely places? You would have devastated Port Angeles’s crime rate statistics for a decade, you know.”

“I don’t see how this is my fault.”

She stared at me, that familiar frustration in her eyes. “I don’t, either. But I don’t know who to blame.”

“How did you know?”

She locked eyes with me, torn, and I guessed she was wrestling against the desire to just tell me the truth.

“You can trust me, you know,” I whispered. I reached forward slowly, to put my hand on top of hers, but she slid them back an inch, so I let my hand fall empty to the table.

“It’s what Iwantto do,” she admitted, her voice even quieter than mine. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“Please?” I asked.

She hesitated one more second, and then it came out in a rush.

“I followed you to Port Angeles. I’ve never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it’s much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that’s probably just because it’s you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes. I was wrong before, when I said you were a magnet for accidents. That’s not a broad enough classification. You are a magnet fortrouble. If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you.”

It didn’t bother me at all that she was following me; instead I felt a strange surge of pleasure. She was here forme. She stared, waiting for me to react.

I thought about what she’d said—tonight, and before. . . .Do you think I could be scary?

“You put yourself into that category, don’t you?” I guessed.

Her face turned hard, expressionless. “Unequivocally.”

I stretched across the table again, ignoring her when she pulled back slightly once more, and laid my hand on top of hers. She kept them very still. It made them feel like stone—cold, hard, and now motionless. I thought of the statue again.

“That’s twice now,” I said. “Thank you.”

She just stared at me, her mouth twitching into a frown.

I tried to ease the tension, make a joke. “I mean, did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and you’re messing with fate? Like thoseFinal Destinationmovies?”

My joke fell flat. Her frown deepened.

“Edythe?”