“Yuh.” He trembled in my arms.
“It’s okay.” I curled up with him in his tiny bed and brushed my fingers through his brown curls. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ll protect you … I promise.”
James smiled through his tears and patted my face. Within a few minutes his breathing became heavy and deep. His eyes closed, and he fell fast asleep with his fingers wrapped around a fistful of my hair.
I watched his chest rise and fall, thinking about everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, knowing that something terrible was trying to tear apart my little world. The crimes of the city were spreading to my hometown. Jude had been here, staring in at our little brother with his silver, glowing eyes. I didn’t know Jude’s intentions, and I didn’t know how he was connected to what had happened at Day’s or at the school, but all of this made it feel like the sky was about to come crashing down on us at any given moment.
I thought about what Daniel had said about his believing that I could be a hero. And I wished beyond all wishes that he were right—that I had the ability to keep the promise I had just made to James. I wished I really were capable of protecting everyone I loved.
I glanced over at my backpack in the doorway, remembering my Trenton application tucked inside of it. James snored slightly next to me, looking innocent and helpless, but what would he be like if I hadn’t been here to quiet his cries?
And that was when it hit me: even if I beat out April and Katie, even if Trenton decided to let both Daniel and me in, I still couldn’t go.
Any possibility of my going to Trenton, or to college at all, had been destroyed the day Jude ran away. What with my dad always gone looking for him, and Mom’s manic-depressive state. And wouldn’t Mom just get worse when I went off to school? Who would watch over Baby James? A part-time housekeeper wasn’t the same as a mother or a sister. And how could I leave Charity with all this to deal with on her own? She was the smart one in the family—practically all she ever did was homework—and it wouldn’t be fair if I ruined her future by taking off just like Jude.
Trenton was everything Daniel wanted, and everything I couldn’t have.
And I hated Jude for taking it away from me.
CHAPTER SIX
The Way We Were
SATURDAY MORNING
I woke up stiff and sore from a cramped sleep in James’s toddler bed around four thirty in the morning. I slipped out of his room, hoping he’d sleep another couple of hours, and crawled into my own bed. But I tossed and turned, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t block out the dream that had woken me in first place.
What was strange was that I had dreamed of a happy memory: the weekend Daniel, Jude, and I went fishing with my dad at Grandpa Kramer’s cabin about five years ago. Daniel had been living with us at the time, and I dreamed about how he used to tease me, and how I’d eat up every second of his attention. And how Jude had declared that he was happy that Daniel was part of our family now—and how he hoped that was the way it would always be.
It was a dream about the way things were once, and the way they should have always been—but it haunted me like the worst of any nightmare.