Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy by Sarah Rees Brennan

didn’t.”
    Kami suddenly knew how hate like that felt, the cold absoluteness of it. “I believe you,” she said.
    His mother had betrayed him. He’d come back for her, and she’d sent him to a cell. Kami had talked to him when he reached out for her, lonely and desperate, even though she hadn’t known what she was talking him through. He had talked to her the same way when her grandmother died. Even though that had been different, had been an ordinary tragedy, an old woman with a bad heart, and this was a nightmare, she’d meant it when she said she was on his side.
    “Ash isn’t going to turn me against you,” Kami told him. “You can trust me.”
    There was a flicker of warmth between them, like a match lit.
    “Come on, Glass,” said Jared. “I’ll take you home.”
    Kami had told him nothing but the truth. She did believe him. She believed he’d hated his father enough to kill him. And she knew, could feel the wall in his mind, that there was something else he was hiding.

Chapter Eleven
The Haunted River
    T hey had to swing by Jared’s locker so he could grab his jacket. “A leather jacket,” Kami said as he shrugged into it. “Aren’t you trying a little too hard to play into certain bad boy clichés?”
    “Nah,” said Jared. “You’re thinking of black leather. Black leather’s for bad boys. It’s all in the color. You wouldn’t think I was a bad boy if I was wearing a pink leather jacket.”
    “That’s true,” Kami said. “What I would think of you, I do not know. So what does brown leather mean, then?”
    “I’m going for manly,” Jared said. “Maybe a little rugged.”
    “It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.”
    Jared laughed. “Come on, I brought a spare helmet for you,” he said, reaching into his locker again.
    As he spoke, she reached for him in her mind, and felt the pleasure he felt in his motorbike. She could taste some of the thrill, the speed and the danger.
    “Ahahaha!” said Kami. “No, you didn’t. You brought it for someone else, someone who doesn’t know that you have crashed that bike fifty-eight times!”
    “Technically speaking, only fifty-one of those times were my fault.”
    “Technically speaking, you drive like a rabid chicken who has hijacked a tractor.”
    “Like a bat out of hell,” Jared said. “Nice simile. Sounds sort of dangerous and cool. Consider it.”
    “Not a chance. I like my brains the way they are, not lightly scrambled and scattered across a road. And speaking of bad boy clichés, really, a motorcycle?”
    “Again, I say: rugged,” Jared told her. “Manly.”
    “I often see Holly on hers,” Kami said solemnly. “When she stops for traffic, sometimes she puts on some manly lip gloss. I’m not getting on a bike.”
    Jared shrugged. “Okay. So I’ll walk you home.” He shut his locker door, turned, and made his way down the hall.
    Kami felt duty bound to point out, “You can’t keep following me around.”
    Jared frowned. “You don’t—do you mind?”
    “I mean, you can’t,” Kami explained. “You know how Angela moved to town when I was eleven? And you know how girls at that age are joined at the hip and want to do absolutely everything their new best friend in all the world does? Do you remember how long that stage lasted for me and Angela?”
    Jared hesitated. “Well—”
    “Two and a half hours,” Kami told him. “Then Angela collapsed and started to cry. It was the only time I’ve ever seen Angela cry.”
    “Are you implying I won’t be able to keep up with you?”
    Kami pushed open the school door, glanced up, and found him smiling. “I’m not implying so much as just outright saying.”
    “I think I can manage,” Jared told her.
    “You’re welcome to try,” Kami said serenely. “I’m planning to take a shortcut through the woods on our way home.” She sailed down the school steps. He was keeping up with her so far, but then, they had barely started.
    “A shortcut