Karyn wasn't sleeping well any more.
During the day, with school, her family, hanging out with Taylor, homework, and getting ready for the SAT, she had more than enough to keep her mind away from worrying. Only someone who knew her well -- someone like Jon, really -- would be able to tell that there was something a little frazzled in her laugh, something amiss in how she would occasionally check over her shoulder in a head-whipping move when few people were nearby.
It had gotten better the last couple of weeks, to the point where she could even get four or five hours of sleep at night without bolting awake at the thought of men in gray suits grabbing her without warning.
It had started when Zelda and the principal had disappeared not long after Zelda had pulled up Taylor's profile. Karyn didn't know that Zelda had used the principal's login, so from her perspective, the Punishment enforcers were sterilizing at random around Zelda. If Zelda had told them that she'd talked to Karyn...
...they'd have picked her up by now. So she started to relax.
In the wake of the principal's disappearance, things had settled back to a kind of normal. Principal Casey had transferred to the high school from the elementary school, a Mr. Maley had transferred from out-of-district to replace her, and school life had continued as before.
Karyn had fallen into a routine with Taylor, who'd come out of her shell a bit. She was still a stereotypical, sullen teen in some ways, but she'd found a kindred spirit in Karyn, and had started to smile a little more and wear those damned earbuds less. Despite Zelda's hurried report, Karyn had started to accept Taylor as a younger, cool friend in her own right -- as someone who was not Jon -- and had started to move past her grief over Jon's disappearance.
Until yesterday.
Karyn and Taylor had been walking home from school, enjoying the spring weather and just chatting, when they'd run into Jay Duncan. Jay was a nice guy, more Jon's friend than Karyn's, but they got along well.
Jay and Taylor, however, should have just gone and gotten a room.
While Jay was awkwardly flirting with Taylor, and Taylor was tucking her hair behind her ear and flirting with Jay, Taylor had smiled.
She'd smiled in the Jon Way -- that shy, tilt-the-head, look-out-the-corner-of-the-eye way Karyn had always thought of Jon's.
That smile hit Karyn like a thunderbolt: Not only was that smile unique to Jon, Karyn realized that the smile, which he'd always saved for her, was saved for someone special.
Karyn had been numb the whole way home, talking and smiling by rote. She'd begged off hanging out this afternoon, walked into her house without saying a word to her mom, marched up the stairs, shut her door, sat down on her bed, and sobbed.
Taylor was Jon. Jon had loved her, and now he was a girl with no memory of her more than a couple of months old.
She was sure of it. Because she didn't know Jon had inherited that smile from his mother -- who'd displayed it when she first met his father -- she'd have sworn before all of Creation that only Jon smiled that way.
She had to do something, but what? And how could she do anything and not get caught like poor Zelda?
