Covet (Clann)

last year. Which is really saying something, because it was my constant help that turned her C- into a B+.”
    Ron grinned. “That figures. I thought some of her explanations didn’t sound right coming from her. English class was the only time I ever heard her use a four-syllable word.”
    “Yep, that’s our girl.”
    While the teacher explained how to do our first lab experiment, I snuck a couple of glances at Ron’s profile. Like Anne, his eyes, once shiny, now had a certain dullness to them, the skin tight around them as if ready to wince at any second.
    As if he were in physical pain.
    I thought about Anne’s reactions yesterday at lunch, and that flash of longing that had escaped her for a second. Whatever her reasons for breaking up with him, she still deeply cared about him.
    They were being so stupid! How could two people so in love refuse to be together? At least I had a solid reason not to be with Tristan. Anne and Ron, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly have anything that bad keeping them apart. It might even be a simple misunderstanding. Maybe Anne had figured it out already, and that was the real reason she refused to talk about it. She knew she’d made a mistake, but her pride wouldn’t let her admit it to anyone. Better to be in misery than for everyone to know she was wrong.
    Well, I wasn’t going to let her screw up her love life anymore.
    I couldn’t fix Tristan and me. But I could help Anne.
    Ron had always been so quiet at our lunch table last year, so I didn’t know him all that well. If I got to know him better this year, especially with the ESP, I ought to be able to figure out a way to help them fix their issues. They might not get back together. After all, Anne was the single most stubborn person I’d ever known, and I wasn’t a miracle worker. But if I could at least get them to be friends again, it would be better than seeing them stuck in all this endless misery. Then, if they decided not to get romantically involved again, that would be their choice and I would at least have the satisfaction of knowing I had done everything I could to help.
    Happy with my new goal, I focused on the teacher as Mr. Knouse finished going over the lab instructions. Then Ron and I got started on our first lab experiment.
    I watched Ron measure out blue liquid from one beaker into another using a giant dropper, eager to hear his thoughts and hopefully pick up a few clues.
    Too bad there was nothing but science stuff in his head at the moment.
    He noticed my stare. “What? Am I doing it wrong?”
    “You tell me. You’re supposed to be the science expert here.” I smiled. “Actually, I was just trying to figure out why Anne broke up with you.”
    He frowned, possibly in concentration, and added another measure of blue liquid to the beaker. “I told her…something. Something about my family.” Something about black cats running around in the woods, according to his thoughts. “She said she didn’t care, that she was okay with it. But then she got really quiet, and the next thing I knew, every time I called her cell phone she wouldn’t pick up, and every time I called her at home her mom answered and said she either wasn’t home or was in the shower. And then she sent me a text message the following Monday saying she didn’t want to see me anymore and that it just wasn’t working out. And ever since, she won’t talk to me about it.”
    That didn’t sound like Anne at all. She had always been the blunt, take-no-prisoners type. “What the heck did you tell her that freaked her out so badly?”
    I caught only one thought from his mind. Keepers. But Mom said Savannah doesn’t know, so… He shook his head. “I really can’t talk about that. It’s private family stuff. But it’s nothing that would hurt Anne or anything like that.”
    Silently he started humming a song in his head, blocking me from picking up any other thoughts.
    He said the Keepers, whatever they were, weren’t dangerous to Anne. If that was true, then why would she break up with him over it?
    And why had he discussed these Keepers and me with his mom?
    Should I know what Keepers were for some reason?
    By the end of second period, Ron had silently hummed that same darn song over and over so many times I had it stuck in my head too now. And I still didn’t have any possible answers about his breakup with Anne.
    What could he possibly be hiding about his family that would freak Anne out? She was one of the