But he was alive! And he was here! He had come back to save her again! Hope filled her like warm light. Angel almost jumped up to run to his arms.
Wait. Think. There was something wrong with this picture.
She couldn’t get a single thought from his head—it was a gray blank. That had never happened before. Also, he was wearing a white coat. He smelled all antisepticky. The fact that he was here at all. Her brain felt simultaneously hyper and sluggish, and she blinked several times, trying to figure this out, as if it were a two-minute mystery.
Jeb knelt on the wooden floor in front of her. The whitecoats who’d been running the maze melted into the background. Jeb reached back, then held something out to her.
Angel looked at it blankly.
It was a tray of food, lots of delish-looking food, hot and steaming. It smelled so good Angel felt a whimper of longing rise in her throat.
She stared at the tray, her brain crackling with input, and she had a bunch of thoughts all at once.
One, Jeb looked like he was on their side now. An enemy of the flock, like all the other whitecoats at the School.
Two, wait till Max found out about this. Max would be, well, she’d be so mad and so hurt and so upset that Angel couldn’t even imagine it. She didn’t want to imagine it. She didn’t want Max to ever feel that way.
“Angel, aren’t you hungry? You haven’t been getting very much to eat, have you?” Jeb looked concerned. “When they told me what they’d been feeding you—well, they misunderstood, sweetheart. They didn’t know about your appetite.”
He laughed a little, shaking his head. “I remember once we were having hot dogs for lunch. Everyone else had two hot dogs each. But you—you ate four hot dogs by yourself.” He laughed again, looking at her as if he thought she was amazing. “You were three years old. Four hot dogs!”
He leaned forward, gently pushing the food tray nearer so it was right beneath Angel’s nose.
“The thing is, Angel, with your metabolism, and how old you are now, you should be getting about three thousand calories a day. I bet you haven’t been hitting a thousand.” He shook his head again. “That’s going to change now that I’m here. I’ll make sure they treat you right, okay?”
Angel narrowed her eyes. This was a trap. This was exactly the kind of thing Max had warned them all about. Only Max had never guessed it would come from Jeb.
Without saying a word, Angel sat up, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at him the way Max stared at Fang when they were having an argument and she was going to win. Angel made herself not look at the food, not even smell the food. She was so freaked at seeing Jeb here that her stomach was all in knots anyway. The fact that she couldn’t pick up any of his thoughts made him seem weird and dead to her.
Jeb smiled ruefully and patted Angel’s knee. “It’s okay, Angel. Go ahead and eat. You need to. I want you to feel better.”
She tried not to even blink, not to show how upset she was.
Sighing, Jeb unrolled the white paper napkin, took out a fork, and placed the fork right into the food on the plate. All she would have to do is reach down . . . and she was doomed?
“I know this
is all confusing, Angel,” Jeb said gently. “I can’t explain everything now. It will all become clear soon, though, and then you’ll understand.”
“Suurrre.” Angel put every bit of pain at her betrayal into that one word.
“The thing is, Angel,” Jeb went on earnestly, “life itself is a test. It’s all a test. Sometimes you just have to get through it, and then later on everything makes more sense. You’ll see. Now, go ahead and eat. I promise it’s okay. I promise.”
Like she would believe any of his promises.
“I hate you,” she said.
Jeb didn’t look surprised. Maybe a bit sad. “That’s okay too, sweetheart. That’s perfectly okay.”
46
“I. Am. In. Heaven,” I said, inhaling deeply.
Dr. Martinez laughed. “Watched cookies never brown,” she teased me.
To make my Mayberry holiday complete, the three of us had actually made chocolate chip cookies—from scratch—after dinner.
I ate enough raw cookie dough to make myself sick, and then I got high off the fumes of gently baking cookies. I could see the chocolate chips melting through the oven window.