How a countdown factors into a UIED is relatively easy to deduce. The countdown is a timer for some kind of explosive. But what it has to do with the bodies and the radiation is well beyond me.
“Where did you find an unidentified explosive device?” I ask. “Is it a bomb?” I grab the report back from him and flip through it.
“San Diego PD followed a lead and found it in an abandoned motel room after the first crime scene two months ago. They called in the bomb squad and us.”
“And?” But I’m still flipping through the report, and one line catches my eye.
So far all attempts to stop the countdown have been unsuccessful.
“This thing isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” my dad says, but it’s clear from his quiet, distant tone that he’s talking to himself. Then he sees the look on my face and adds, “The bodies and the UIED might not be connected,” but I can tell he doesn’t believe that.
I gesture to the countdown on the photographs. “You’re keeping track of how it relates to these deaths. How does it?” He must at least think it does, if he’s gone to the trouble to cross-reference them down to the second of the countdown. But even with my photographic memory and affinity for numbers, I don’t see an obvious connection. “Is there some kind of pattern?” If there is, I don’t see it.
My dad shakes his head, and for a minute I think he’s going to tell me—to say something else about the case. But instead he nods toward the door. “Go on, go back to bed.”
My skin itches—or rather, something underneath my skin itches—everywhere.
“You have to be exhausted, J-baby,” my dad says. “Don’t worry about this one. You know I’ll figure it out.”
I nod and leave the room, even though I’m not convinced the way I usually am.
I was exhausted. But now I’m not. Because I have the same feeling I did when I watched Ben Michaels ride his bike up Highway 101. Deep-seated conviction. A feeling of absolute certainty I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to.
I glance at my watch and hope being resurrected from the dead didn’t affect my ability to do math in my head. Based on the time stamps of the photographs, we’re at twenty-one days, seventeen hours, thirty-nine minutes, seventeen seconds. And counting.
But the first person I see when I get out of Nick’s car in Eastview’s student lot is Ben Michaels.
He looks exactly like the Ben Michaels I would have pictured before: standing with a group of other nondescript stoners, all wearing similar dark hoodies and grungy, no-name-band T-shirts, most of them smoking something more than conventional cigarettes, some of them drinking something more than water from a water bottle. Elijah Palma and Reid Suitor stand in the center of the group; Ben’s on the outskirts, shoulders slumped and his hands buried deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans while he half leans against some rich kid’s SUV. I can’t see his eyes under the mess of dark brown curls, but I wonder if he’s staring back at me.
And I feel like my forehead—the exact spot where his cool lips brushed my skin—is on fire, and I have this crazy urge to reach up and somehow wipe his touch away.
“Janelle, c’mon!”
Jared and Nick are a car’s length away from me, walking toward the school. I shift my bag and follow them, ignoring Nick’s raised eyebrow and the flood of heat rushing to my face.
Just like I ignore the stares from half the senior class when Nick puts his arm around my shoulder and we walk through the front gate.
Normally I’d be driving myself and getting to school early but I’m not allowed to drive. Once you have a seizure, even if it’s just one, you’re marked as a possible epileptic. Not that I don’t get it, I do. I’m just not a fan of this rule when it applies to me.
This means I’ve missed two days of school. Thursday Struz took me to see a specialist. She ran some tests, and hopefully she’ll clear me to drive when the results come back. And it’s not like anything ever happens on the first day of school anyway.
I missed an AP diagnostic and listening to the teacher read the syllabus? Oh, too bad. Friday my mother couldn’t stop throwing up, and even though I think she’s been taking all her meds, on days when her body has a physical manifestation of her depression, someone needs to keep an eye on her. And it’s not like my dad can do it.
“So, Bread Bites for lunch?” Nick asks when we’re standing outside my homeroom.
“I can’t,” I say, thankful for a legit excuse. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with him—I do. I just hate that suddenly because I was injured he’s gone from goofy, immature, half-brained Nick to this skittish, hovering, insecure woodland creature who wants to attach himself to me at all times.
But Nick just looks at me, and he doesn’t jump to the obvious conclusion.
“Juniors don’t get off-campus lunches.”
A smile sweeps over his face, and he nods. “I can get you off campus for lunch. Or we can order delivery.”
And with that, the irritable, bitchy edge I’ve been walking around with the past few days melts away. Staying on campus for lunch as a senior is social suicide, and he’s risking it for me?
“It was awesome of you to bring Jared pizza, but you don’t need to worry about me like that.” Not that Nick’s popularity is going to suffer, but he never struck me as the kind of guy who’d forgo bullshitting with the boys to hang out with a girl. And I don’t need him to do that for me.
“Don’t look so surprised.” He laughs as he leans in and kisses the skin just beneath my ear.
Feeling his lips against my skin, I’m a little short of breath, and the smile on his face when he pulls back is almost enough to turn me into most girls.
Until I see Reid Suitor walk past us with his head down as he ducks into our homeroom. I don’t know exactly what I plan to say to him. But I know he was there when I died. He must know something.
“Gotta go,” I say to Nick before following Reid. He and I have been in Dockery’s homeroom since freshman year, and just like every other year, her walls are covered with old history posters—facts about US presidents, magazine collages about momentous dates or events. The only thing worse would be, of course, if the walls peeking out from behind the posters were painted something like a stifling bright orange. Oh wait, they are.
Per usual, Dockery’s animated face shines through her pile of platinum-blond hair, and she’s lost in a story about something embarrassing that happened to her while she was driving— seriously, her license should be revoked, not mine—but I wait, watching Reid, who’s perfectly in my line of sight.
He’s found the other two stoners in our homeroom, and the three of them are huddled together in the back corner as far away from Dockery as they can get.
I’ve never for the life of me understood Reid Suitor. Outwardly he doesn’t look like he’d have anything in common with Ben. His jeans seem like they fit, and he’s wearing a blue collared shirt and a gray V-neck sweater, which would look nerdy on most guys, but somehow it manages to look alternative on him. He’s always been cute—Kate’s probably still a little in love with him—and he’s got these bright blue eyes, eyelashes