"Like you haven't done the same thing to me," Will replied heatedly.
"First you send me racing up the ridge to save Ivy's life. I let you take over. I go along with you and do just what you say, and I find Ivy with a bag over her head. Gregory's mere with a strange excuse, but you won't tell me a thing about what's going on."
Will set down the canister and walked up and down the narrow room, picking up and putting down filters, markers, boxes of paper. "You get me to speak for you. You get me to dance with her and warn her and tell her you love her." Will's voice trembled a little. "But you don't tell me anything to explain why this is happening."
Ivy won't let me, Tristan thought, but he knew that wasn't the only reason. He resented the fact that he needed Will, and he didn't like the way Will was calling some of the shots now.
"I don't like this mind-control stuff," Will went on angrily. "I don't like your trying to read my mind. If there's something you want to know, ask it."
"What I want to know," Tristan said, "is how I'm supposed to trust you.
You're Gregory's friend-" "Oh, grow up, you two!" Lacey interrupted. "I don't like mind control.
How can I trust you?" she mimicked. "Puh-lease, don't bore me with the rest of your excuses. You're both in love with Ivy, and you're jealous of each other, and that's why you're keeping your little secrets and squabbling like two kindergarten kids."
"Are you in love with her, Will?" Tristan asked quickly.
He felt Will thinking, he felt Will dodging him.
Will picked up the film canister again and shifted it from hand to hand.
"I'm trying to do what's best for her," he said at last.
"You didn't answer my question."
"I don't see why it matters," Will argued. "You were there when I danced with her. You heard what Ivy said. We both know she'll never love anyone the way she loves you."
"We both know you hope it's not true," Tristan replied.
†Will slammed the canister down on the table. "I've got work to do."
"So do I," Tristan said, and slipped out of Will before he could be thrown out.
He knew that Ivy would love someone else someday and that that person might be Will. Well, if he had to leave her in Will's hands, he was going to check him out thoroughly first.
As Tristan left the darkroom he heard Lacey's soap opera voice. "And so our two heroes part," she said, "blinded by love, neither of them listening to the wise and beautiful Lacey"-she hummed a little-"who, by the way, is getting a broken heart of her own. But who cares about Lacey?" she asked sadly. "Who cares about Lacey?"
Ivy sat at the kitchen table glancing over legal forms that she had just pulled out of a manila envelopePhilip's adoption papers. Across from her, her brother and his best friend Sammy dug spoons into a peanut butter jar.
Sammy was a short, funny-looking kid whose hair stood straight up from his head like bristly red grass. Ivy saw him eyeing her. He nudged Philip. "Ask her. Ask her."
"Ask me what?"
"Sammy wants to meet Tristan," Philip said. "But I can't get him to come.
Do you know where he is?"
Ivy instinctively glanced over her shoulder, but Philip assured her, "It's okay. Mom's upstairs, and Gregory likes to hear about angels now."
"He does?" Ivy asked with surprise.
Philip nodded.
"I really want to see an angel," Sammy said, pulling a little camera out of his grubby school pack.
Ivy smiled. "I think Tristan's resting now," she said, then she turned to Philip. "What kind of angel things have you and Gregory been talking about?"
"He asked me about Tristan."
"What exactly did he want to know?" Ivy asked.
She had suspected that the train incident haunted Gregory. After all, there was no way Philip could have gotten to the station that quickly without help from someone. Did Gregory guess that he was up against more than herself, more than just a person?
"He asked me what Tristan looked like," Philip told her. "And how I know when he's there."
"And how to get him to come," Sammy said. "Remember, he asked that."
"He wanted to know if you ever talked to Tristan," Philip added.
Ivy tapped the manila envelope against the table. "When did you talk about all this?"
"Last night," her brother replied, "when we were playing in the tree house."
Ivy frowned. She didn't like the idea of Gregory's playing with Philip up in the tree house, where one accident had already occurred during the summer.
She glanced down at the adoption forms. Andrew hadn't told Gregory that he was about to make Philip his legal son. Ivy wondered if Andrew had the same kind of fears that she did.
"When will Tristan be finished with his nap?" Sammy asked.
"I don't really know," Ivy replied.
"I have a flashlight, in case I see him at night," he told her.
"Good idea," Ivy said with a smile. She watched as the two boys licked the last bit of peanut butter off their spoons and ran outside.
Since Saturday night, she too had been trying to reach Tristan. Rumors about the party were flying at school. Gregory and she had managed to avoid each other in the halls. So had she and Suzanne, but while Gregory slipped past Ivy, Suzanne dramatically played out each snub. Her anger at Ivy was obvious to everyone.
Ivy was relieved when Beth had told her that Gregory and Suzanne were going to the football game that afternoon. Having slept little in the past two nights, she could finally rest, knowing that Gregory wouldn't walk in on her. Even though she locked her bedroom door now, she never really felt safe.
Ivy slipped the envelope and forms in her stack of schoolbooks and was about to head upstairs when she heard a car pull up behind the house. It sounded like Gregory's BMW. Her first instinct was to rush up to her room, but she didn't want Gregory to think she was afraid of him. Sitting back down, she opened the newspaper and hunched over the table, pretending to read. The kitchen door was pushed open, band instantly Ivy smelled the perfume. "Suzanne."
Suzanne responded with a sullen look.
"Hi," Gregory said. His tone of voice was neither warm nor cold, and his face was expressionless-though ready to flash into a smile if anyone else happened to walk into the kitchen. Suzanne continued to look at Ivy with pouting lips.
"This is a surprise," Ivy said. "Beth said you were going to the football game."