Page 45 of Ward D
EIGHT YEARS EARLIER
It’s nearly midnight when someone taps on my bedroom window.
I’m still awake, of course. I’m still studying, making a desperate attempt to wrangle a passing grade in trig. It’s a lost cause, but at least I’ll know I tried.
When I hear the tapping on my window, I almost don’t turn around. Somebody tapping on my second-floor window at midnight hasgotto be me hallucinating. But when I hear another louder tap, I turn around.
Oh my God, it’sJade. What is Jade doing at my window?
I abandon my trigonometry book and dash over to the window. Jade has grabbed a ladder from our garage and balanced it against the side of our house, and is now standing at the top of it, her nose pressed against the glass of my window. She smiles at me.
I wrench open the window. “Jade, what the…?”
Jade brandishes a sheaf of papers in her right hand. “I did all the problems for you. All you have to do is memorize how to do them. You’rewelcome.”
My mouth drops open. “I told you. I can’t…”
“Oh myGod, Amy.” She shakes her head. “You are, like, so annoying. Trigonometry is so stupid anyway—why shouldn’t you get the answers? Like who cares if you actually know this stuff or not? I’m giving you an easy A! You work so freaking hard all the time. Why don’t you just take the help for once?”
I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not going to cheat on an exam, Jade. I’m not going to do it.”
“You’d rather fail?”
“Yes! I’d rather fail!”
“Then you’re an idiot.” Jade takes the exam paper in her hand and throws it into my room. “Here. Just in case you decide to stop being stupid.”
With those words, she climbs down the ladder. I watch her make her way down into the backyard, then sprint down the street, disappearing around the corner. Our neighborhood isn’t terribly unsafe, but it’s probably not great for her to be all alone at night. My mother would never allow me to be out of the house all by myself at this hour. But Jade’s mother… well, she doesn’t seem to care much about what her daughter does.
I turn away from the window. The exam paper is lying on the floor of my room, the answers to the questions filled in with Jade’s spidery handwriting. How easy would it be to pick up the test and memorize the answers? Then tomorrow, all I would have to do would be to fill them in. Jade is great at math, so I’m sure she got everything right.
But I can’t do that.
I snatch the papers off the floor and deposit them directly in my trash can. There. The decision has been made.
“If you don’t look at that test, you’re going to fail for sure.”
My eyes snap up, but I recognize the voice before I even look. It’s that little girl. The one with the curls and the impractical pink dress. She is standing in the corner of my room, like she was before, her blue eyes on me like a laser beam. She tilts her heart-shaped face up at me.
“Just a peek,” she says. “You won’t be hurting anyone.”
I wipe my hands on the legs of my blue jeans, spreading two sweaty stains on my thighs. “You’re not real,” I say.
She smiles at me. “If I’m not real, then what does that mean for you?”
It means I’m going crazy.
I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can. I count to ten in my head, take a deep breath, then open my eyes again.
The little girl is gone.
I don’t even feel relieved though. She might be gone for now, but I’ve seen her twice just today. She’ll be back for sure. There’s something very wrong with me.
What am I going to do?
26
PRESENT DAY
