“I’m what?” I just stared up at him.

“Developing. The psychokinesis,” Finn said as if it should be obvious. “Trylle have varying degrees of ability. Yours are clearly more advanced.”

“They have abilities?” I swallowed. “Do you have abilities?” Something new occurred to me, twisting my insides. “Can you read my mind?”

“No, I can’t read minds.”

“Are you lying?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Finn promised.

If he hadn’t been so attractive standing in front of me in my bedroom, it would’ve been easier to ignore him. And if I hadn’t felt this ludicrous connection with him, I would’ve thrown him out right away.

As it was, it was hard to look into his eyes and not believe him. But after everything he had been saying, I couldn’t believe him. If I believed him, that meant my mother was right. That I was evil and a monster. I had spent my whole life trying to prove her wrong, trying to be good and do the right things, and I wouldn’t let this be true.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Wendy.” Finn sounded exasperated. “You know I’m not lying.”

“I do.” I nodded. “Not intentionally anyway. But after what I went through with my mother, I’m not ready to let another crazy person into my life. So you have to go.”

“Wendy!” His expression was one of complete disbelief.

“Did you really expect any other reaction from me?” I stood up, keeping my arms crossed firmly in front of me, and I tried to look as confident as I possibly could. “Did you think you could treat me like shit at a dance, then sneak into my room in the middle of the night and tell me that I’m a troll with magical powers, and I’d just be like, yeah, that sounds right?

“And what did you even hope to accomplish with this?” I asked him directly. “What were you trying to get me to do?”

“You’re supposed to come with me back to the compound,” Finn said, defeated.

“And you thought I would just follow you right out?” I smirked to hide the fact that I was really tempted to do that. Even if he was insane.

“They usually do,” Finn replied in a way that completely unnerved me.

Really, that answer was what completely lost me. I might have been willing to follow his delusions because I liked him more than I should, but when he made it sound like there had been lots of other girls willing to do the same thing before me, it really turned me off. Crazy, I could deal with. Slutty, not so much.

“You need to go,” I told him firmly.

“You need to think about this. This is obviously different for you than it is for everyone else, and I understand that. So I’ll give you time to think about it.” He turned and opened the window. “But there is a place where you belong. There is a place where you have family. So just think about it.”

“Definitely.” I gave him a plastic smile.

He started to lean out the window, and I walked closer to him so I’d be able to shut the window behind him. Then he stopped and turned to look at me. He felt dangerously close, his eyes full of something smoldering just below the surface.

When he looked at me like that, he took all the air from my lungs, and I wondered if this was how Patrick felt when I persuaded him.

“I almost forgot,” Finn said softly, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You looked really beautiful tonight.” He stayed that way a moment longer, completely captivating me, then he turned abruptly and climbed out the window.

I stood there, barely remembering to breathe, as I watched him grab a branch of the tree next to my house and swing down to the ground. A cool breeze fluttered in, so I closed the window and pulled my curtains shut tightly.

Feeling dazed, I staggered back to my bed and collapsed on it. I had never felt more bewildered in my entire life.

I barely got any sleep. What little I had was filled with dreams of little green trolls coming to take me away. I lay in bed for a while after I woke up. Everything felt muddled and confusing.

I couldn’t let myself believe that anything Finn had said made sense, but I couldn’t discount how badly I wanted it to be true. I had never felt like I belonged anywhere. Until recently, Matt had been the only person I ever felt any connection with.

Lying in bed at six-thirty in the morning, I could hear the morning birds chirping loudly outside my window. Quietly, I got up and crept downstairs. I didn’t want to wake Matt and Maggie this early. Matt got up early every school day to make sure I didn’t oversleep and then drove me to school, so this was his only time to sleep in.

For some reason, I felt desperate to find something to prove we were family. All my life I had been trying to prove the opposite, but as soon as Finn had mentioned that it might be a real possibility, I felt oddly protective.

Matt and Maggie had sacrificed everything for me. I had never been that good to either of them, yet they still loved me unconditionally. Wasn’t that evidence enough?

I crouched on the floor next to one of the cardboard boxes in the living room. The word “memorabilia” was scrawled across it in Maggie’s pretty cursive.

Underneath Matt’s and Maggie’s diplomas and lots of Matt’s graduation pictures, I found several photo albums. Based on the covers, I could tell which ones had been Maggie’s purchases. Maggie picked albums covered in flowers and polka dots and happy things.

My mother only had one, and it was adorned with a faded brown, nondescript cover. There was also a damaged blue baby book. Carefully, I pulled it out, along with my mom’s photo album.