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Kami told herself to get a grip: she was only allowed to be a certain degree of crazy. There were always kids messing around in the woods. These noises were perfectly normal.
Through her connection to Jared she could feel again the chill she’d felt earlier today, the knowledge that he was unhappy. I’ll be intrepid another time, she told him. I was just dreaming about you. How are you doing?
Kami had to reach for him across the boundaries they had built up so they could both have their own lives and not look entirely insane. She only got bits and pieces of what Jared was thinking, especially since the summer before last. She thought of it as their decision: Kami had found it was easier to act like he was real, and they’d both made the rules.
She leaned against the boundaries between them now, venturing into his space a little, and tried to make out his feelings. His weariness dragged at her senses, like holding hands with someone who was walking slowly.
Does it matter? he asked.
Of course it matters, Kami said, and pushed at him, bullying a little. Tell me.
My mother asked me if I still talked to you, said Jared. I said yes.
Neither of them really talked about the other: hearing a voice in your head made you act weirdly enough without discussing the voices. Back when they were kids, when Kami had been young enough to send an English penny to an address she’d made up somewhere in America, their mothers had both been worried. Kami’s mother had been really scared, obviously convinced that Kami might actually be going crazy. Kami had been the only child for years before her brothers arrived. She’d been brought up by young, frantic parents and her grandmother, knowing they all had to work together to make their family work at all. She was supposed to be self-sufficient. She was not supposed to be a problem child who terrified her mother by inventing an entire fantasy life for her imaginary friend.
Her mother’s fear had made Kami scared as well, but not scared enough to give Jared up. She stopped asking Jared questions about his life, though, and she stopped talking about Jared to other people. He was her secret, and that meant she could keep him.
Kami did not feel comfortable talking about Jared’s mother, but she knew they didn’t have a good relationship. She also knew it was irrational and illogical and insane to worry about his family troubles. It was insane to care so much in the first place. He was a voice in her head, after all: she tried not to think about it too much because it made her think she really might be crazy.
Jared filled in the silence. She wants me to stop talking to you.
Kami did not let her dread touch him. And will you stop? she asked, trying to show him nothing but support.
I told her I had to think about it, said Jared wearily.
Kami curled tighter under the covers, feeling cold. Jared said nothing else. There was silence in her head and silence beneath her window, and still she could not sleep.
Chapter Three
The Secret in the Woods
The first issue of The Nosy Parker came out two days later. It was a huge success. Kami was unsurprised, as the entire front page was a certain picture of Angela. Since Angela was wandering around looking like she wanted an excuse to kick someone’s kneecaps, Kami was getting all the compliments.
“I really liked your tell-all article about the cricket camp,” said Holly Prescott, the second-best-looking girl in school. She kept up with Kami as they made their way through the riot that was the hallway at the end of school. “How old were those kids, eleven?”
“Nine,” said Kami. “But old in sin.”
Holly laughed. She’d always been nice to Kami, but since she mostly hung around with a succession of guys, or several guys at once, they never really felt like friends. “I’ve got a few ideas for articles,” Holly offered, to Kami’s surprise.
Kami was struck by the thought of how many copies a picture of Holly’s clear green eyes and clearly dangerous curves would move. “What kind of ideas?” she asked, and smiled.
Holly grinned back and hugged her books to her chest. Ross Phillips stopped in his tracks, obviously wishing he was a biology textbook. “Well, you know I have a motorbike,” Holly said. “I was zipping round past Shepherd’s Corner, by the woods, you know? And there was this dead badger.”
“Animals are always getting knocked down at the Corner,” said Kami, not sure where Holly’s story was going.
“Yeah,” Holly answered. “But this badger hadn’t been hit by a car. I mean, I was on my bike, I didn’t get a good look at it, but I got a better look at it than someone in a car would’ve. It had been cut up.”
Kami recoiled. “Oh my God.”
“I know,” said Holly. “And, I mean, maybe I got it wrong, but it just kept bugging me. I started thinking that if some horrible little kids hurt an animal, it’d be smart to put it at the Corner so it’d get run over by a car and it’d look like that’s why it died.”
Some subtle signal, perhaps the fact that Kami looked like she wanted to be sick, made Holly stop and backpedal. “I’m probably just being paranoid,” she said hurriedly. “God, you must think I’m so strange. Look, forget about it, okay?”
“My house is right next to the woods,” Kami said, thinking out loud. “We keep hearing stuff like yelling at all hours, waking my brothers. I’d been wondering about it. I’ll look into this. Thanks, Holly.”
Holly looked half pleased and half terrified. “No problem,” she murmured. She left Kami at the top of the school steps with a wave, heading for her motorbike.
From her vantage point on the steps, Kami could see Ash Lynburn’s head bent over the exposed engine of a sleek black car, expensive-looking but about twenty years old. It seemed like he was having some issues with it. She went down the steps and came up behind him. “Car trouble?”
