“During those days before the girl from the lake was finally buried in her hometown, Jay had been the one who kept Violet sane. He slipped candy bars into her backpack for her to find and left little notes in her locker just to let her know he was thinking about her. She leaned on him every step of the way, and he never once complained. And afterward, when she felt back to her old self again, at least mostly anyway, he was still there.She wondered what she’d done to deserve a friend like him, someone who never wavered and never questioned. Someone who was always there . . . being supportive, and funny, and thoughtful.Violet stood in the hallway and watched him. He was digging through his locker looking for his math book, and even though she knew it wasn’t there, Violet just let him search, smiling to herself. Crumpled wads of paper fell out onto the floor at his feet.He seemed to sense that she was staring and he looked back at her. “What?” he asked.“Nothing,” she responded, the smile finding her lips.He narrowed his eyes, realizing that he was the butt of some private joke. “What?”She sighed and kicked a toe at his backpack, which was lying crookedly against the wall of lockers. “Your book’s in your bag, dumbass,” she announced as she turned away and started walking toward class.She heard him groan, followed by the sound of his locket slamming, before he finally caught up with her.“Why didn’t you say anything? Sometimes you really piss me off.”It was easy to ignore the harsh words when his tone was anything but scolding.She shrugged. “It’s fun to watch you scramble.”“Yeah, fun. That’s what I was thinking.”

“They got to the classroom she and Jay shared this period, but it wasn’t Grady’s class. Instead of walking on, Grady paused.“Violet, can I talk to you for a minute?” His deep voice surprised her again.“Yeah, okay,” Violet agreed, curious about what he might have to say to her.Jay stopped and waited too, but when Grady didn’t say anything, it became clear that he’d meant he wanted to talk to her . . . alone.Jay suddenly seemed uncomfortable and tried to excuse himself as casually as he could. “I’ll see you inside,” he finally said to Violet.She nodded to him as he left.Violet was a little worried that the bell was going to ring and she’d be tardy again, but her curiosity had kicked up a notch when she realized that Grady didn’t want Jay to hear what he had to say, and that far outweighed her concern for late slips.When they were alone, and Grady didn’t start talking right away, Violet prompted him. “What’s going on?”She watched him swallow, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down along the length of his throat. It was strange to see her old guy friends in this new light. He’d always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked like a man . . . even though he still acted like a boy. He shifted back and forth, and if she had taken the time to think about it, she would have realized that he was nervous.But she misread his discomfort altogether. She thought that, like her, he was worried about being late. “Do you want to talk after school? I could meet you in the parking lot.”“No. No. Now’s good.” He ran his hand through his hair in a discouraged gesture. He took a deep breath, but his voice was still shaking when he spoke. “I . . . I was wondering . . .” He looked Violet right in the eye now, and suddenly she felt very nervous about where this might be going. She was desperately wishing she hadn’t let Jay leave her here alone. “I was wondering if you’re planning to go to Homecoming,” Grady finally blurted out.She stood there, looking at him, feeling trapped by the question and not sure what she was going to say.The bell rang, and both of them jumped.Violet was grateful for the excuse, and she clung to it like a life preserver. Her eyes were wide, and she pointed to the door behind her. “I gotta . . . can we . . .” She pointed again, and she knew she looked and sounded like an idiot, incapable of coherent speech. “Can we talk after school?”Grady seemed relieved to have been let off the hook for the moment. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll talk to you after school.”He left without saying good-bye, and Violet, thankful herself, tried to slip into her classroom unnoticed.But she had no such luck. The teacher marked her tardy, and everyone in class watched as she made her way to her seat beside Jay’s. Her face felt flushed and hot.“What was that all about?” Jay asked in a loud whisper.She still felt like her head was reeling. She had no idea what she was going to say to Grady when school was out. “I think Grady just asked me to Homecoming,” she announced to Jay.He looked at her suspiciously. “The game?”Violet cocked her head to the side and gave him a look that told him to be serious.“No, I’m pretty sure he meant the dance,” Violet clarified, exasperated by the obtuse question.Jay frowned at her. “What did you say?”“I didn’t say anything. The bell rang and I told him we’d have to talk later.”The teacher glanced their way, and they pretended not to be talking to each other.”

“Jay came over as soon as Violet called him; she didn’t even have to give him a reason. He was there in less than ten minutes.Of course, he’d heard about what had happened to Hailey. Everyone had. Buckley was a small town, and news traveled fast . . . especially bad news.When he got there she told him what she was thinking about doing. It was nothing dangerous, at least as far as she was concerned, and she hadn’t expected Jay to disagree with her about it. So when he did, she was more than a little bit surprised by his stubborn reaction.“No way,” he insisted, and his voice left little room for argument. “There is no way you’re going to go around looking for this guy.”Violet was shocked by the tone of his voice, and by the harsh look he shot at her. She thought maybe he misunderstood her plan, so she tried to explain it to him again. “Jay, I’m only going to public places, like malls and parks, to see if I can get a feeling for who this guy is. Who knows, maybe he goes to places like that to find them, maybe he hands out there waiting to pick out a girl to . . . you know, kidnap.” She tried to make her argument sound logical, but there was a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not going out alone . . . you can go with me. We’ll just hang out at different places to see if we can find him. And if we do, we’ll call my uncle. It’s not like we’d do anything stupid.”“’Anything stupid’ would be going out to look for a killer. I won’t let you go looking for trouble, Violet. This guy is dangerous, and you need to leave it to the cops. They know what they’re doing. And they’re armed.” He sounded like he thought she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had, but she had already made her decision.“Look, I’m doing this. I was just asking you to come along with me.”“You’re not,” he insisted. “Even if I have to tell your uncle and your parents what you’re planning. I promise you, you’re not doing it.”She could feel her temper flaring. “You can’t stop me, Jay. If you tell on me, then I’ll lie. I’ll bat my eyes innocently and promise not to go looking for this guy. But I swear to you that every chance I get, even if I have to sneak out of the house to do it, I will be trying to find him.” She stood up, meaning to glare back at him, but instead found herself craning her neck just so she could see his face. The awkward position didn’t steal nay of her thunder. She refused to back down. “I mean it, Jay. You can’t stop me.”Jay glared incredulously back at her. Emotions ranging from disbelief to frustration and back to disbelief again flashed darkly across his face. He seemed to be fighting with himself now. But when she heard him sigh, and then saw him raking his hand restlessly through his hair, she knew she’d won. His icy determination seemed to melt right before her eyes.“Damn it, Violet.” He sighed brusquely, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “What choice do I have?” he asked as he practically squeezed the life out of her.She wasn’t sure how to react to him now. It definitely wasn’t a tender hug, but the close contact made her undisclosed desires stir all the same. She couldn’t help wondering if he felt even a fraction of what she did.His arms were strong, and she felt safe in the circle of them. She’d never imaged that she could feel so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time. She waited within the space of his embrace to see where this was going.“So, how is this going to work?” he demanded roughly against the top of her head.”

“Jay insisted on carrying her up the back steps and into the kitchen, and this time Violet didn’t complain when he lifted her. He set her down gently on the kitchen counter, and then he rummaged through the cupboard while Violet told him where the Band-Aids were. He came with bandages, gauze, cotton balls, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. It seemed like overkill to Violet, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what he planned to do.“Okay, this is probably gonna sting,” he warned as he leaned over and began cleaning her wounds.It did sting, more than Violet let on, and she had to bite her lip as the tears came back all over again. But she let him keep working without even flinching, which was no small feat as he stripped away the layers of dirt from her skin.The wounds were big, and round, and raw. She thought she looked like a little kid with the giant scrapes on her knees, and she imagined that they were going to scab over and possibly even scar. She felt like such an idiot for falling over her own two clumsy feet.But Jay was gentle, and he took his time, being careful not to hurt her. She admired his patience and took perverse pleasure in his touch. He didn’t look up to see how she was doing; he just kept working until he was satisfied that her scrapes were cleaned out. And then he picked up the antibacterial wash and some cotton balls.Violet sucked in her breath when he brushed the soaked cotton ball against the angry red abrasions. Jay looked up at her but didn’t stop dabbing at them. Instead he blew on her knees as he labored over them, just like her mother used to do when Violet was a little girl. She thought it was sweet, and she swore that she was even more attracted to him than ever in that tender moment.When he finished with the wash, he gingerly patted an antibiotic ointment on her knees before covering them with bandages.“There,” he said, admiring his own handiwork. “Good as new.”Violent glanced at the ridiculously huge Band-Aids on her knees and looking at him doubtfully. “You really think so? ‘Good as new’?” He smiled. “I think I did pretty good. It’s not my fault you can’t walk.”

“I like new-Jay,” Chelsea finally announced, as though she was making a simple observation rather than trying to pry information out of her friend.“Shut up.” Violet groaned, unable to completely hide her smile at Chelsea’s absurd comment. Still, she didn’t feel inclined to share her problems with Chelsea.“Don’t get me wrong, Vi. I still like old-Jay better; I’m just saying that new-Jay’s not so bad. Plus, at least he had the balls to ask you to the dance. That’s something that old-Jay couldn’t seem to manage.”“He’s not new-Jay,” Violet insisted, stopping at her locker to grab her notebook. “Jay’s just pissed off at me right now. He’ll get over it. Besides, I already told you that we’re just friends.”“Which one? New-Jay or old-Jay?”Violet rolled her eyes as she slammed the metal door shut. “Both.” She turned on her feel and left Chelsea standing alone by the row of lockers. And then she called back over her shoulder. “Besides . . . there is no new-Jay.”It took Violet only a moment to register the fact that Jay was standing right there in the hallway, just a few feet away from her and within earshot of her entire conversation with Chelsea, although she couldn’t be sure how long he’d been standing there. Still, she was mortified that he’d caught her talking about him at all.She ignored the blazing look he flashed in her direction as she hurried past him, escaping to her next class . . . and trying to ignore the fact that he would be sitting right next to her.”

“In the meantime, she and Jay sat shoulder to shoulder throughout the movie, and the warmth of his pressed up against her made it difficult for Violet to concentrate. She tried to remember when exactly he’d started to smell so good to her, or when his touch had become like a mood-altering narcotic.She glanced sideways to see if she could tell what he was thinking, if their casual contact was affecting him the way it was her, but his face was blank, completely unreadable, as he watched the action on the oversized screen.She leaned toward him and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom.”She stood up to go. And so did he.She gave him a questioning look. “I’ll be right back,” she said quietly.He followed right behind her.“What are you doing?” She was starting to get irritated.“I’m going with you.”“Yeah, I got that,” she said, her voice getting louder now. “Why?”He pushed her along from behind until they were out of the darkened theater and standing in the dimly lit hallway.“I can go to the bathroom by myself,” she insisted, putting her hands on her hips and cocking her head to the side.“No, Violet. You can’t. I told your parents I wouldn’t let you out of my sight, and I meant it. Besides, until you decide to stop hunting for this guy, I’m not letting you do anything by yourself.” That stubborn set to his jaw was back. “Now, hurry up,” he said as he leaned casually against the wall outside the ladies’ room.Violet didn’t want to water her time arguing, so she just shook her head as she opened the door. “You’re crazy! You know that, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she disappeared into the empty bathroom, but she swore she heard the sound of his laughter following her inside.”

“Jay glanced up at Violet, and there was something about the expression on his face that made her pause. He gave her a look that told her, without saying a single word, that he wasn’t at all happy about what she’d done, and that he had plenty to say to her once he got her alone.And there was something else.It happened just as he was turning his head back toward her father: Violet could have sworn—and she would have bet money on it—that she saw Jay smile. Just a little one . . . almost unnoticeable, maybe completely imperceptible to anyone but her. She was sure that her dad had missed it entirely, as he continued his discussion without taking a breath.”