The bell rings, startling us both. “I’m sorry; I made you late.”

“Trust me, no one’s going to care,” I say, a lump in my throat.

“Oh yeah,” Linden says, and then is quiet.

“Hey, Linden,” I blurt, as much to change the subject as anything, “do you remember the day in fourth grade when I fell off the monkey bars?”

He grins. “No.” Then he sobers. “I didn’t push you or anything, did I?”

I laugh at the idea. “No, you rescued me.” I shrug. “So, yeah, call me anytime, okay?”

“Thanks,” he says sincerely. “I appreciate it.”

I turn and head toward class, but only until I hear his footsteps heading the other way. Then I pause and look over my shoulder and watch him walk away, a simmer of joy warming me from the inside out. Talk about a roller-coaster day.

That afternoon when I get home, I call out a hello to Mom, then slip quickly into my room and lock the door. I’ve got to get through the rest of the pages on my phone before I can decide whether or not to trust Smith. It’s two hours of squinting before my tired eyes make out the words focus stone. I sit up straight and zoom in on the scrawled paragraph.

Though the ability to enter the supernatural plane exists within all Oracles, the use of a focus stone will almost certainly be required to invoke it.

Focus stone. That’s what Smith called the necklace.

But this part of the book isn’t about revisiting visions, it’s about going to an entirely different place. I’m not even sure if it’s somewhere inside an Oracle’s mind or an actual physical location. The text talks about jumping, but I don’t know how literal that is.

Still, it’s something.

Maybe there really is more to being an Oracle than I ever imagined. Maybe even more than Smith knows.

But does that mean I should use the stone? That I should trust Smith? Ultimately even if I found a full explanation in this text of everything Smith talked about, that wouldn’t tell me whether or not I should trust him.

I have to decide that on my own.

I rub my tired eyes and turn off my phone, even though I’ve only managed to get through a few pages. I’m exhausted and starving and that’s having some severe consequences on my attention span. I wander out to grab a soda and then head into Mom’s office.

“Hey, Beautiful,” Mom says. “Have a seat; I’m just wrapping things up.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes before I say, “Linden’s been talking to me.”

Mom’s hand pauses. “Linden Linden?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles. “Still head over heels for him?”

I shrug.

“Then this is a good thing, right?”

“I think so. He was close friends with the girl who died and maybe he just wants to distance himself from that. I don’t really have any connection to her.”

She shrugs. “Friendships have certainly had worse beginnings.”

“I just wish he liked me for me.”

“You don’t know that he doesn’t.”

“I guess not,” I murmur. “But—”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re very good at that.”

I let a few more minutes go by in silence. “What if he doesn’t call?” It feels a bit silly to be thinking so far ahead—I mean, he only got my number this morning. But this is the first good thing that’s happened to me in weeks. So I’m already overanalyzing it. Of course.

Mom turns to look at me squarely now. “Then you’re no worse off than you are now.”

“But I’d be so disappointed.”

“Is he worth the risk?”

“Duh,” I say with a grin.

“Charlotte, we never know what’s going to happen in the future,” my mom says, and I mentally cringe. “Look at me. Even the day before the accident I would never have believed that your dad would be gone and I’d be in a wheelchair.”

The guilt that fills me is like knives slicing my stomach.

“But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

My head jerks up.

“The time we had was worth every second of heartbreak since.” She’s quiet, her eyes unfocused as she loses herself in a memory. When she snaps back to attention, she does that forced smile that tells me she’s trying not to cry. “Some things in this world are so amazing, you have to risk everything to get them.”

I don’t feel like we’re talking about boys anymore.

“Besides,” my mom says, sounding more genuinely cheerful, “even if bad things happen, when the moment comes, you’ll be strong enough to handle it.” She strokes my hair. “You come from good, hardy stock.”

I raise my eyebrow at her, but at that moment I feel the niggle of a vision coming on. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, rising to my feet. “You’re probably right.”

“I’m always right,” she corrects playfully. “Dinner’s in the oven. It’ll be ready in five minutes.”

I nod wordlessly and then retreat back to my bedroom, closing my eyes and flopping down on my bed, hoping it’s something small that passes quickly.

But this one feels really weird. Off, maybe.

It’s only when I find myself standing ankle deep in the snow that I realize why.

It’s my vision of Jesse.

Again.

I’ve never had a vision twice. Something must have changed.