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“Maddy! There’s Maddy!” someone else screamed. A sudden mob rushed at her, pulling her away from Jacks.
“Wait!” Maddy called frantically. “Jacks!”
But it was impossible to be heard over the bedlam. The crowd closed around her, and Jacks disappeared from her sight. Phones were held high and cameras snapped as the travelers pressed in desperately to get a picture with her. Maddy shoved her way through the mob, trying to get back to Jacks, but the more she struggled, the farther away he became. It was like they were being carried apart on a violent sea.
When she caught a glimpse of him again, Mitch was pulling him away toward their waiting car. Jacks’s face was still shell-shocked. Expressionless. Blank.
Maddy yelled his name over and over, but Jacks was gone. All that was left was an ocean of strangers screaming and reaching for her. Her head snapped back as a hand behind her yanked at her hair.
“I want a picture!” a little girl demanded.
Maddy turned and ran.
She pounded out the tunnel and into the now-empty lobby. Behind her she could hear dozens of feet and glanced over her shoulder to see a literal crowd of people running behind her.
“Wait! We’re your fans!” a middle-aged woman yelled. “Will you sign my T-shirt?!”
Maddy didn’t dare look back again. She pelted out the front entrance and saw Kevin already there, idling at the curb in their station wagon. Maddy said nothing as she tumbled into the passenger seat and closed the door on the horde of people. Kevin quickly put the car in gear and drove away from the station, wordless.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Maddy had thought she would never see her room again, and now here she sat on her bed, back as if nothing had happened at all. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall. She listened to the tick of her old alarm clock on the nightstand. If not for the throbbing in her back and the lingering headache, Maddy might have convinced herself she was dreaming and any moment she would wake, back at the train station. With Jacks.
The drive back had been silent, Kevin looking straight ahead at the traffic while she sat numb and bewildered in the passenger seat. At home she had gone straight upstairs. On her way through the living room she realized the house was much less damaged than she had imagined. It appeared only the windows and the front door had been destroyed beyond repair, along with some picture frames and dishes, and, of course, the old TV, which Maddy was kind of glad had finally been put out of its misery. Otherwise, the house was fine. Kevin must have cleaned up most of the mess in the morning, and some company had already been by to cover the window frames in plastic sheeting in preparation for new glass. In a day or two, the house would be back to the way it had always been. Normal.
Maddy wondered vaguely if that’s what would happen to her too. Kevin and Gwen and maybe even Ethan would clean up the emotional mess, and then the irreparable wounds, the memory of breaking Jacks’s heart at the station, would simply be covered in plastic until the damaged parts could be replaced. Time would do its job eroding the memories, dulling the sharp edges and fading the once-vibrant colors. And pretty soon she would be back to the way she had always been. Habitual, average, routine. It was a terrifying idea, she thought. Some wounds were meant to be remembered. Some scars should never disappear.
After an hour of sitting motionless on the bed, Maddy startled at a knock on the door. It was Kevin, in his plaid robe. He sat on the edge of the bed.
“I ordered a pizza. It’s downstairs if you want some.”
“I’m okay,” Maddy said.
“You did the right thing,” Kevin said after a moment. “I just want you to know that.”
“I do know that.”
He sighed and started to explain something about healing, but Maddy couldn’t focus on the words, and eventually she tuned him out. Her eyes drifted to her book bag on the floor. It was Saturday. Monday would she be expected to go to school like she had almost every morning of her life? She wondered if she really could just get up, work the morning shift, and then go to class like nothing had happened. Was she capable of that?
Suddenly something Kevin said caught her attention, breaking through the thickness of her thoughts.
“What?” Maddy said.
“I’m just saying, I know you think you’re in love with him, but—”
“I’m not in love with him,” Maddy said, quickly defensive. She saw him flinch at her tone and immediately wished she could take it back. He looked at her with helpless eyes, then shrugged.
“Well, like I said, pizza downstairs.” His parenting now done the best he knew how, Kevin got up and shuffled out the door.
His words hung meaningfully in the once-again silent room. In. Love. With. Him.
She knew it was true, despite her knee-jerk rejection to hearing the words out loud. She was in love with him. Could it be possible that she had just made the biggest mistake of her life?
Her gaze drifted around the room, looking for any distraction, any escape, and came to rest on her bedroom window. There to greet her, as always, was the sign. She thought about what Kevin had told her on that first morning of school. That their luck was going to change. He had been right, she reflected bitterly, he just didn’t realize it was going to change for the worse. That’s the funny thing, she thought. You always want things to get better, but you never know how good you already have it. Maddy certainly hadn’t. She hadn’t realized that she was happy, with an uncle who loved her, a loyal best friend, and a chance at a good life. It was more than a lot of people could say.
Before, she hadn’t ever hurt anyone, and she hadn’t known what it was like to care for someone and then have them taken away just as quickly. And she didn’t know anything of her own traumatic past. Would she truly be able to live with the knowledge of who her parents were and what really happened to them? If nothing else, there was some small, bittersweet satisfaction in knowing the truth now. Her hand reached up and felt for her mother’s necklace. When she touched it, she discovered something heavy hanging against her chest, near her heart. She pulled the necklace out from under her shirt.
There, dangling from her neck, was Jacks’s Divine Ring.
