I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, to see if Lena was there. But I already knew she wouldn't be. I could feel when she had pul ed away, which was most of the time, lately.

Amma cal ed up the stairs again. "If you're fixin' to be late for your last examination, you'l be sittin' on your sweet corncakes in that room a yours al summer. That's a promise."

Lucil e Bal was staring at me from the foot of my bed, the way she did most mornings now. After Lucil e showed up on our porch, I took her back home to Aunt Mercy, but the next day she was sitting on our porch again. After that, Aunt Prue convinced her sisters that Lucil e was a deserter, and the cat moved in with us. I was pretty surprised when Amma opened the door and let Lucil e wander in, but she had her reasons. "Nothin' wrong with havin' a cat in the house. They can see what most people can't, like the folks in the Otherworld when they cross back over -- the good ones and the bad. And they get rid a mice." I guess you could say Lucil e was the animal kingdom's version of Amma.

By the time I made it into the shower, the hot water rol ed off me, pushing everything away. Everything except the scar. I turned it up even hotter, but I couldn't keep my mind in the shower. It was tangled up in the dreams, the knife, the laughter --

My English final.

Crap.

I'd fal en asleep before I finished studying. If I failed the test, I would fail the class, Good-Eye Side or not. My grades were not stel ar this semester, and by that I mean I was running neck and neck with Link. I wasn't my usual don't-study-and-get-by self. I was already close to failing history, since Lena and I had ditched the mandatory Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hil on her birthday. If I failed English, I'd be spending al summer in a school so old it didn't even have air conditioning, or I'd be looking at sophomore year al over again. It was the particularly penetrating problem a person with a pulse should be prepared to ponder today. Assonance, right? Or was it consonance? I was screwed.

This was day five of supersized breakfasts. We'd had finals al week, and Amma believed there was a direct correlation between how much I ate and how wel I would do. I had eaten my weight in bacon and eggs since Monday. No wonder my stomach was kil ing me and I was having nightmares. Or at least, that's what I tried to tel myself.

I poked at the fried eggs with my fork. "More eggs?"

Amma squinted at me suspiciously. "I don't know what you're up to, but I'm in no mood for it." She slid another egg onto my plate. "Don't try my patience today, Ethan Wate."

I wasn't about to argue with her. I had enough problems of my own.

My dad wandered into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, searching for his Shredded Wheat. "Don't tease Amma. You know she doesn't like it." He looked up at her, shaking his spoon. "That boy of mine is downright S. C. A. B. R. O.

U. S. As in ..."

Amma glared at him, slamming the cupboard doors shut. "Mitchel Wate, I'l give you a scab or two al your own if you don't stop messin' with my pantry." He laughed, and a second later I could have sworn she was smiling, and I watched as my own crazy father started turning Amma back into Amma again. The moment vanished, popping like a soap bubble, but I knew what I'd seen. Things were changing.

I stil wasn't used to the sight of my dad walking around during the day, pouring cereal and making smal talk. It seemed unbelievable that four months ago my aunt had checked him into Blue Horizons. Although he wasn't exactly a new man, as Aunt Caroline professed, I had to admit I barely recognized him. He wasn't making me chicken salad sandwiches, but these days he was out of the study more and more, and sometimes even out of the house. Marian scored my dad a position at the University of Charleston as a guest lecturer in the English department. Even though the bus ride turned a forty-minute commute into two hours, there was no letting my dad operate heavy machinery, not yet. He seemed almost happy. I mean, relatively speaking, for a guy who was previously holed up in his study for months scribbling like a madman. The bar was pretty low.

If things could change that much for my dad, if Amma was smiling, maybe they could change for Lena, too.

Couldn't they?

But the moment was over. Amma was back on the warpath. I could see it in her face. My dad sat down next to me and poured milk over his cereal. Amma wiped her hands on her tool apron. "Mitchel , you best have some a those eggs.

Cereal isn't any kind a breakfast."

"Good morning to you, too, Amma." He smiled at her, the way I bet he did when he was a kid.

She squinted at him and slammed a glass of chocolate milk next to my plate, even though I barely drank it anymore.

"Doesn't look so good to me." She sniffed and started pushing a massive amount of bacon onto my plate. To Amma, I would always be six years old. "You look like the livin' dead. What you need is some brain food, to pass those examinations a yours."

"Yes, ma'am." I chugged the glass of water Amma had poured for my dad. She held up her infamous wooden spoon with the hole in the middle, the One-Eyed Menace -- that's what I cal ed it. When I was a kid, she used to chase me around the house with it if I sassed her, even though she never actual y hit me with it. I ducked, to play along.

"And you better pass every single one. I won't have you hangin' around that school al summer like the Pettys' kids. You're gonna get a job, like you said you would." She sniffed, waving the spoon. "Free time means free trouble, and you got heaps of that already."