It Wasn't Always Like This by Joy Preble

window, at f irst glance, he looked like Charlie. On closer inspection, he was taller, his nose was not as knife straight, and his skin was lighter and slightly pocked across the cheeks. And when he answered questions, his voice was higher-pitched. His thoughts were not particularly thoughtful.
    And then he was dead, for no reason anyone could think of other than that horrible things sometimes happened, and this time a horrible thing had happened to a boy named Eddie Higgins. None of which would have been Emma’s particular concern except for what happened as she and Sylvie parted ways by the library. Sylvie headed toward the science classes, disappearing around the corner just as a man approached. He wore a brown suit with wide shoulders and cuffed trousers, a dark fedora angled low on his head, and a visitor’s badge pinned to his lapel.
    “We’re interviewing Eddie’s classmates,” he said, homing in on Emma. “I’m with the police. Can I ask you a few questions?”
    Her heart had raced for a few beats. Then she’d told herself to calm down.
    “You’re Emma,” the man in the suit said, scribbling something on a notepad. “Emma O’Neill, correct?”
    Now her heart was thundering. Still, she kept her wits about her enough to study him and tried to remember every detail of his face—square jaw and light gray eyes and silver-streaked hair. He didn’t look unusual or special, just the type of man who’d blend into a crowd.
    “Did Eddie have any enemies?” he asked.
    “I didn’t really know him,” Emma said, surprised that her voice sounded so even, so normal.
    He asked some other things, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she was rapidly calculating how long it would take her to collect her things from the rooming house where she was staying and if there was anything there worth collecting at all.
    “I have study hall now,” she said. “Can I go?”
    He nodded, and she walked off, past the library, and down the hall. Then she bolted around the corner and out a back door. Once outside, she broke into a panicked sprint. Because Emma had not registered at Manley Senior High School as Emma O’Neill. She had registered—in another frivolous but ultimately life-saving choice—as Emma Ryan.
    Eddie’s murder and his resemblance to Charlie had to be connected. They were hunting him, too. Which meant that unlike poor Eddie, he was still alive. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully. She wouldn’t know, couldn’t know, unless and until she saw him with her own eyes. Emma knew only this: they had found her . It would be a long while before she made that mistake again.
    But a new Emma did surface. One who refused to mind her own business even if it put her in danger. Tragedy had given her fuller purpose, though it might take her a while (maybe forever) to understand what that purpose was. She’d learned something else, too: Even if people helped you, came on strong and kind, that didn’t mean they weren’t out for something, weren’t looking to get around you, weren’t perfectly willing to do to you—or to those you cared about—whatever they needed.
    Like Glen Walters. Like his generations of followers.
    Like Kingsley Lloyd, even. He’d wanted something . But what?
    Funny, Kingsley Lloyd. She hadn’t thought about him in any serious way for a long time. But he was, she knew, the one other person besides Charlie and her who could still be out there. Maybe. Doubtful. Very doubtful. Many times, over many years, she had told herself it was impossible.
    Still, she had never stopped thinking that it really wasn’t.
    “PETE,” EMMA HEARD herself say now, “could you do a background check for me on a guy named Kingsley Lloyd?”
    On Pete’s end there was silence. Did he even remember what she’d told him?
    “That guy who told your father about the stream?” Pete said it almost indifferently, as though it were just an everyday thing to know someone who had drunk from a Fountain of Youth.
    “That’s the one,”