“Oh, really,” I replied flatly to suggest that I got the message that something else was happening. “I wonder where you might have picked up a case of the sniffles.”

“How about you? Have you been feeling blue?” he asked.

I waited a beat before responding. We often used “blue” and “purple” to refer to Violet, and I was tempted to reply that I had indeed been feeling a little blue. But knowing that Trey—one way or another—had landed himself in need of some kind of medical care made me a lot less eager to burden him with an update about evil happenings back in Willow. Nothing frustrated Trey more than being closely handled by authority figures, so if this infirmary business had anything to do with that, he was probably already in a volatile state of mind. The last thing I wanted to do was tell him something that might serve as a catalyst for him to mouth off to a guard or lash out at a fellow student.

For a second, I considered telling him about Dad and Rhonda’s big news, but even that seemed too personal to share on a monitored phone call. “All good,” I lied.

After we said our good-byes for the week, a lump formed in my throat. Something was wrong, I was sure of it, and there was no way for him to communicate what it was.

Even though I knew that tinkering around with my pendulum while I felt like Mischa and I were in danger wasn’t a great idea, I couldn’t resist the urge. By nothing short of a miracle, it had still been in my pillowcase atop my bed when Mom and I had driven up to Sheridan in February to collect the handful of belongings I’d left behind there.

I snuck downstairs to the kitchen carrying my last stick of palo santo, lit it with a safety match from the box that Dad kept over the sink, and carefully carried it back up to my room, cupping the glowing end of it with my hand to avoid setting off any smoke detectors. The small stick of soft wood burned for only a few seconds before the ember died off. But the scent of it in my room made me feel a little more secure about withdrawing my pendulum from my sock drawer, where I kept it hidden.

“Pendulum,” I asked. “Is Trey in trouble?”

Yes.

“Does the trouble he’s in have something to do with Violet?”

The pendulum rotated clockwise twice—yes—but then wobbled and dangled from my fingers without moving in any particular direction. “Does that mean… maybe?” I asked in confusion.

Yes.

Great. Frustrated, I sighed. I was going to have to insist that Mrs. Robinson teach me how to reach out to Jennie the next day. Maybe even explain to her why it was so urgent. Mischa and I couldn’t afford to be taking actions based on assumptions any longer, and if Trey was in serious jeopardy, then I needed detailed guidance. Getting real answers out of the pendulum took too long, and I could never be sure if yes or no was the complete answer to my question, or just a response to part of it.