The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  Amos only smiled. “I could care less about the Rover. Look at her.” Gillian turned, a smile on her face, her short hair sticking up in porcupine spikes. “They make her act like the girl she used to be.”

  “I know, Amos.” Charlie tried to say more, but there was a lump in his throat. How many times had he sat with his old friend after hours, drinking a beer, watching their daughters play? Who would have guessed that those children would grow up overnight? He set his bottle on the armrest of his Adirondack chair. “How’s she doing?”

  Amos took a pull of his beer and grimaced. “She goes to the appointments with Dr. Horowitz and sometimes it makes her cry, sometimes it makes her angry, sometimes it makes her just want to be alone. She still has nightmares.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” Amos looked at his daughter. “Every night.”

  “It must be hard on you, too. Having to deal with this all by yourself.”

  “No, I thank God that Sharon died before she had to see this happen. This would have killed her if the breast cancer hadn’t. I mean, Christ, Charlie. I’m her father. I’m supposed to love her and watch over her. So how could I have let this happen?” Blowing softly over the lip of the bottle, he made it sing like an oboe. “I would trade every cent I have,” Amos said quietly, “for a chance to make her mine again.”

  Gilly had grabbed the hose now and was launching an attack on her friends. She laughed, showering the others until they were soaked from head to toe. In that moment, she looked like any teenager.

  Charlie rubbed his thumbnail along a hairline crack in the green paint of his chair. “Do you ever wonder if there’s someone up there keeping count, Amos?” he asked softly. “You know . . . if you wind up getting what’s coming to you?”

  Amos frowned. “Gillian didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

  “No,” Charlie murmured, staring at him. “Not Gilly.”

  Selena figured it was like this: A girl who lied to her daddy about sneaking out of the house was probably hiding other things from him, too. And a girl whose daddy was the richest guy in town probably had been given a charge card billed to that same daddy sometime in the vicinity of her sixteenth birthday.

  Hacking was illegal, but investigators knew how to bend laws to suit their needs. The first step, of course, was to make sure your uptight attorney was out for the night, and it didn’t hurt to know his son had gone on a date, either. The second step was to mentally gather together everything you’d learned in years of investigative work . . . such as the fact that the average person’s passwords were not nearly as complex as they ought to be. Selena guessed that Gillian’s birthdate, in some permutation, was the key to her America Online account, and after three tries, she got it right. It was a little trickier to find her most recent online purchases—Selena abortively tried Amazon.com and Reel.com before finding a CD store with an account set up in Gilly’s name. Breaking through the encryption in their secure ordering system took another ten minutes, and finally Selena had an American Express number.

  She called the customer service line, and gave Amos Duncan’s mother’s maiden name when prompted—something she’d traced through public records.

  “Yes, Gillian,” the representative said. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Well, there’s a problem on my bill.” Selena pretended to be searching for a moment. “On April twenty-fifth, for $25.60 at the Gap?”

  Because Selena was spouting all this off the top of her head, it was no surprise when the representative didn’t find the purchase. “On April twenty-fifth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see two charges listed for April twenty-fifth—one for $47.75 at the Wiccan Read and one for $10.70 at CVS. Nothing from the Gap. Are you sure you’re looking at the right month’s billing statement?”

  Selena was furiously scribbling on the corner of Jordan’s newspaper. “Oh, God, I feel like such a loser. This is my MasterCard,” she said, and giggled. “Like, duh.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Not today. Sorry about that,” Selena added, and hung up. CVS—not an extraordinary place to spend ten bucks. A nail polish, Kit Kat bar, and pack of gum probably cost that much. Or even, perhaps, a pack of condoms.

  The Wiccan Read was a bigger mystery. “Wiccan,” Selena said aloud, meandering into Thomas’s room, where the big Webster’s dictionary was kept for homework assistance. She scanned the W’s, but found nothing. Wicked was the closest, and although that might have described Gillian Duncan, it wasn’t what Selena was looking for.

  But she’d heard the word before; Selena would have bet on it. She logged onto the computer again, this time as herself, and settled into a search engine.

  Wiccan, she typed.

  After a moment, the first five hits of 153,995 came up.

  Pagan and Wiccan Sites. The Wiccan and Faerie Grimoire of Francesca Celestia. How to Contact a Local Coven. Bright Blessings—the Awesomest Teen Wiccan Home Page.

  And one that caught Selena’s eye: Why are we afraid of witches?

  Now Selena remembered where she’d heard the word. “Why, Miss Gillian,” she murmured, clicking on the site to find a graphic of a cauldron, fathomless and bubbling black. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  Thomas had his hand up Chelsea Abram’s shirt and was thinking of British monarchs. James I, Charles I, the Cromwells . . . Charles II, James II, William and Mary. It was the most boring thing he could call to mind, thanks to a class in European history—God knew if he thought of the softness of Chelsea’s skin or the scent that rose from it, he was going to come right then and there and have to suffer the humiliation of explaining the wet spot on the front of his pants.

  She knew how to kiss. Boy, did she know. Her tongue curled into his mouth, dancing and retreating until he could not believe that an hour before, he’d never tasted this ambrosia. Who would have guessed that Thomas would get to second base with a girl two years older than he was? Who would have guessed that this girl would have even agreed to go out on a date?

  They were underneath the bleachers at the football field, a long-established makeout place for Salem Falls High. Because Thomas didn’t even have a learner’s permit, Chelsea had picked him up in her parents’ car. They’d gone to a movie, and out for coffee after that—Thomas paying, as if that might make them both forget that she was older than he was. Now, they were stretched beneath a stadium bench, mapping each other’s bodies with the slow and wondrous discovery that comes only the first time you touch someone. “Thomas,” she breathed, “like this.” Reaching up between her breasts, she unclasped her bra.

  Oh, Jesus. Anne and George I and II and hell, all the Georges and William IV and Victoria . . .

  Suddenly Chelsea drew back. Could a girl get shy when she was only half dressed? “Do you . . . do you want to stop?” Thomas choked out, although he thought he might fling himself off the nearest cliff if she said yes.

  “Do you?”

  He couldn’t see her eyes in the dark. Was she nervous . . . or did she think he was? “Chels,” he said with absolute candor, “I’d like to keep doing this for my next three lifetimes.”

  Her smile caught the light of the moon. “Only three?” she whispered, and her breasts spilled, soft as snow, into his hands.

  Oh my God, Thomas thought. Chelsea tugged his shirt off and pressed against him, a line of fire licking their bodies where skin met skin. She bit his ear. “Who are George and Elizabeth?”

  “Good friends,” Thomas gasped, as she rolled him onto his back. A medallion that hung between her breasts swayed over his face. He reached for it.

  “Leave it,” Chelsea said.

  But it swung and clicked against his teeth, just when he was hoping to connect with something softer, pinker. Thomas held it up and squinted. “Pretty,” he said. “A Jewish star?”

  “Those have six points. This has five,” Chelsea said. And then, “Do you really want to talk about it?”

&nbs