by Rachel Caine
Funny how all schools smell the same. I'm instantly thirteen again, and guilty of something.
As I walk into the junior high's administration office, I find Connor slouched in one of the hard-plastic chairs, staring at his shoes.
Called it.
He looks up when the door opens, and I see the relief spread over his sun-browned face. "It wasn't her fault," he says, before I can even say hello. "Mom, it wasn't." He's an earnest eleven now, and his sister is fourteen--tough ages even at the best of times. He looks pale and shaken and worried, which bothers me. I can see that he's been biting his fingernails again. His index finger is bleeding. His voice seems hoarse, as if he's been crying, though his eyes look clear enough. He needs more counseling, I think, but counseling means more in-depth records, and records mean complications we can't afford, not yet. But if he really needs it, if I see signs he's regressing to the state he was in three years ago . . . I'll risk it. Even if that means we are found, and the cycle of names and addresses starts all over again.
"It's going to be okay," I say, and then I draw him into a hug. He lets me, which is unusual, but there are no witnesses here. Even so, he feels tense and solid in my arms, and I let him go quicker than I intended. "You should go on to lunch. I'll take care of your sister now."
"I will," he says. "But I couldn't--" He doesn't finish, but I understand. I couldn't leave her alone, he means. One thing about my kids: they stick together. Always, even while they bicker and fight. They haven't let each other down since the day of The Event. That's how I try to think of it, in capitals and italics: The Event, like it's a scary movie, something removed from our lives that we can forget. Fictional and distant.
Sometimes, it even helps.
"Go on," I tell him gently. "We'll see you tonight."
Connor goes, though not without a glance back over his shoulder. I'm biased, maybe, but I think he's a handsome kid--sparkling amber eyes, brown hair that needs a trim. A sharp, clever face. He's made some friends here at Norton Junior High, which is a relief. They share typical eleven-year-old interests in video games and movies and TV shows and books, and if they're a little nerdy, it's a good kind of nerdy, the kind that comes from rabid enthusiasm and imagination.
Lanny's a bigger problem.
Much bigger.
I take in a deep breath, let it out, and knock on Principal Anne Wilson's door. When I enter, I find Lanny in a chair against the wall. I recognize the cross-armed, head-down posture. Silent, passive resistance.
My daughter has on baggy black pants with chains and straps, and a torn, faded Ramones T-shirt she must have stolen out of my closet. She's let her newly dyed black hair fall loose and ragged around her face. The studded bracelets and dog collar look shiny and sharp. Like the pants, they're new.
"Ms. Proctor," the principal says, motioning me to the padded guest chair in front of the desk. Lanny has one of the hard-plastic ones off to the side--the chair of shame, presumably, worn shiny by dozens, if not hundreds, of militant little asses. "I think you already see part of the problem. I thought we agreed that Atlanta wouldn't wear these kinds of clothes to school anymore. We have a dress code that we have to enforce. I don't like it any more than you do, believe me."
Principal Wilson is a middle-aged African American woman with natural hair and comfortable layers of fat; she's not a bad person, and she isn't making this some kind of moral crusade. She has rules to follow, and Lanny? Well. My daughter isn't good with rules. Or boundaries.
"Goth kids aren't violent assholes," Lanny mutters. "That's some bullshit propaganda, you know."
"Atlanta!" Principal Wilson says sharply. "Language! And I'm speaking to your mother."
Lanny doesn't look up, but I can well imagine the epic eye roll under that curtain of black hair.
I force a smile. "This isn't what she had on when she left this morning. I'm sorry about this."
"Well, I'm not sorry," Lanny says. "It's fucking ridiculous that they can tell me what to wear! What is this, Catholic school?"
Principal Wilson's expression doesn't change. "Also, obviously, there is her attitude."
"You're talking about me like I'm not even here! Like I'm not a person!" Lanny says, raising her head. "I can show you some attitude."
The shock of seeing her face makes me flinch before I can control it. Pale makeup, heavy black eyeliner, corpse-blue lipstick. Skull earrings.
For a moment I can't breathe, because her face morphs from my daughter's to something else, someone else, someone dangling from a thick cable noose, limp hair sticky around her head, eyes bulging, what skin she had left that same shade . . .
Put it in the box. Lock it up. You can't go there. I know damned well Lanny has done this deliberately, and our eyes meet, challenge, hold. She has an eerie ability to find and push my buttons. She got it from her father. I see him in the shape of her eyes, in the tilt of her head.
And that scares me.
"And," Principal Wilson continues, "there's the fight."
I don't look away from my daughter. "Are you hurt?"
Lanny shows me her right fist and raw knuckles. Ouch. She has a shadow of a smirk on her blue lips. "You should see the other girl."
"The other girl," Principal Wilson says, "has a black eye. She also has parents who are the type to have lawyers on speed dial."
We both ignore her, and I nod for Lanny to continue. "She slapped me first, Mom," Lanny says. "Hard. After she shoved me. She said I was looking at her stupid boyfriend, which I wasn't--he's gross, and anyway, he was looking at me. Not my fault."
"Where's the other girl?" I look at Principal Wilson. "Why isn't she here?"
"She was picked up by her parents half an hour ago and taken home. Dahlia Brown is an A student who swears she did nothing to bring it on. She has witnesses to back her up."
There are always witnesses in junior high, and they always say what their friends want them to say. Surely Principal Wilson knows that. She also knows that Lanny is the new kid, the one who doesn't fit in. That's because my daughter has taken up the goth lifestyle in part as a control mechanism: pushing others away before she can be pushed. That, and in some strange way, she's dealing with the secret horror show that is her childhood.
"I didn't start it," Lanny says, and I believe her. I'll probably be the only one. "I hate this fucking school."
I believe that, too.
I turn my attention back to the woman at the desk. "So you're suspending Lanny, but not this other girl, is that right?"
"I really have no option. Between the dress code violation, the fight, and her attitude about the whole incident . . ." Wilson waits, clearly anticipating the argument to come, but I just nod.
"Okay. Does she have her schoolwork?"
Hard to miss the relief that slips over the principal's face, that this parent who reeks of gunpowder isn't going to make a scene. "Yes. I made sure she does. She can come back to classes next week."
"Come on, Lanny," I say, rising. "We'll talk about this at home."
"Mom, I didn't--"
"At home."
Lanny lets out a sigh, grabs her backpack, and slouches out of the office with her dyed-black hair hiding her expression, which surely isn't pleasant.
"Just a moment, please. I'm going to need specific assurances before I let Atlanta back in classes," Wilson says. "We have a no-tolerance policy, and I'm bending it because I know you're a good person and want her to fit in here. But this is the last chance, Mrs. Proctor. The very last chance. I'm so sorry."
"Please don't call me that," I say. "Ms. Proctor will do. Has since the 1970s, I believe." I rise and offer her my hand. Hers is a moderate handshake, businesslike, nothing more. These days, I count merely businesslike as a positive. "We'll talk next week."
Outside, Lanny has chosen the very same chair her brother used; it's probably still warm from his body heat. Do they mean to do it, or is it just instinct? Are they getting too close? Have my paranoia and constant vigilance made them like this?
I draw in a breath and let it go. The last thing I want to do is overanalyze the kids. They've had enough of that.
"Come on," I say. "Let's kick it, as the kids say."
Lanny looks cross. "Ugh. We really don't." She hesitates and looks down at her boots. "You're not mad?"
"Oh, I'm furious. I'm planning to eat all my feelings at Kathy's Kakes. And you're going to eat them with me. Like it or not."
Lanny's reached the age where being enthusiastic about anything, even skipping school to eat ridiculously butter-loaded cake, isn't cool, so she just shrugs. "Whatever. As long as I get out of here."
"Do I even want to ask where you got all this stuff you're wearing?"
"What stuff?"
"Really, kid? That's how you're rolling with it?"
Lanny rolls her eyes. "It's just clothes. I'm pretty sure every girl wears clothes to school."
"Surprisingly few want to join Marilyn Manson's backup band."
"Marilyn who?"
"Thanks for making me feel like a crone. Did you order all this online?"
"So what if I did?"
"You didn't use my credit cards, did you? You know how dangerous that is."
"I'm not an idiot. I saved up and bought a preload, just like you taught me. I had it sent to the PO box in Boston and remailed. Twice."
That eases a dark, anxious knot in my chest, and I nod. "Okay then. Let's discuss it over calories."
We don't discuss anything, really. The cake slices are huge, and delicious, and homemade, and there's no point being mad while eating them. Kathy's Kakes is popular, and there are people all around us enjoying the treats. A dad with three little ones is rubbernecking on his phone, and the kids are taking advantage of his inattention to dump cupcake crumbs everywhere and paint their faces with vivid blue icing. In the corner there's a studious young woman with a tablet computer; as she twists to plug it in, I see a tattoo on her shoulder beneath her tank top. Something colorful. An older couple sits at what looks like formal tea, with fancy china and a round cake tower crammed with tiny bites on the table between them. I wonder if having tea requires you to look like it bores you to death.
Even Lanny eases her attitude by the time we finish eating, and with her corpse-dark lipstick rubbed away, she almost looks normal as we talk, cautiously, about the cake, about the weekend, about books. It isn't until we're on the road, grinding gears back up the trail to Stillhouse Lake, that I am forced to spoil things. "Lanny--look. You're a smart girl. You know if you stand out like this, pictures will get taken and passed around, and you'll get posted on social media. We can't have that."
"Since when is my life a we problem, Mom? Oh, wait. I remember. Since ever."
I'd done my absolute best to shield my kids from the worst of the horrors that had followed The Event, and so had my mother in her turn when I'd been tried as an accessory. I hoped that whatever Lanny remembered, or had learned, it was a shallow trickle instead of the toxic flood I'd been submerged in. My mother had been forced to tell Lanny and Connor--Lily and Brady then--that their father was a murderer, that he was going to trial and then to prison. That he'd killed multiple young women. She hadn't told them the details, and I didn't want the kids to know them. But that was then, and I know I can't keep the worst of it from Lanny for much longer. Fourteen is far too young to comprehend the depravity of Melvin Royal.
"We all have to keep a low profile," I say. "You know this, Lanny. It's for our safety. You understand, don't you?"
"Sure," she says, pointedly looking away. "Because they're always looking for us. These mythical strangers you're so afraid of."
"They aren't--" I take in a breath and remind myself, again, that an argument does neither of us good. "We live by the rules for a reason."
"Your rules. Your reasons." She rests her head against the Jeep's seat, as if too bored to hold it up anymore. "You know, if I go goth, nobody will recognize me anyway. They just look at the makeup, not the face."
Lanny has a clever point. "Maybe not, but here in Norton, it'll get you expelled."
"Homeschooling is still a thing, isn't it?"
And it would have been an easy answer, too. I'd considered it seriously, many times, but the paperwork took ages, and until recently we'd always been on the move. Besides, I want my kids to be socialized. To be part of the normal world. They've had too much unnatural crap in their lives already.
"Maybe there's a compromise," I say. "Mrs. Wilson doesn't object to the hair. Maybe tone down the makeup, lose the accessories, don't go full black on the clothes. You can still be weird. Just not weird."
She momentarily brightens. "Can I finally get an Instagram account, then? And a real phone instead of these stupid flip things?"
"Don't push it."
"Mom. You keep saying you want me to be normal. Everybody has social media. I mean, even Principal Wilson has a lame-ass Facebook page full of stupid cat pictures and weird memes. And she has a Twitter account!"
"Well, you're an antiestablishment rebel; work with that. Be different by refusing to follow the trend."
That wasn't flying, and she gave me a disgusted look. "So you want me to be a complete social leper. Great. There's such a thing as an anonymous handle, you know. Doesn't have to be my name on it. I swear, I'll make sure nobody knows who I am."
"No. Because about two seconds after you open an account, it'll be full of selfies. Location tagged." The toughest thing in this image-obsessed day and age was trying to keep the kids' images off the Internet. There are eyes always searching for us, and those eyes never close. They don't even blink.
"God, you're such a pain in the ass," Lanny mutters. She hunches in on herself to stare out the window at the lake. "And of course we have to live at the ass-crack of nowhere because you're so paranoid. Unless you plan on packing us up and moving us to someplace even more redneck."
I let the paranoid part slide past, because it's true. "You don't think the ass-crack of nowhere is beautiful?"
Lanny says nothing. At least she doesn't have a smart comeback, which is a minor victory. I take every victory I can get these days.
I steer into the gravel driveway and bounce the Jeep up the hill to the cabin, and Lanny is out the passenger side before I've even pulled the parking brake. "The alarm's set!" I shout after her.
"Duh! Isn't it always?"
Lanny's already inside, and I hear the rapid tones of the six-digit code being punched. The interior door slams before I can hear the all-clear signal, but Lanny never gets it wrong. Connor does, sometimes, because he's not as careful about it--always thinking of something else. Funny how the two of them have changed places in four years. Connor's now the one with the rich interior life, always reading, while Lanny lives with her armor bolted proudly on the outside, begging for trouble.
"You're on laundry duty!" I say as I enter after Lanny, who, of course, is already slamming her bedroom door. Emphatically. "And we're going to have to talk about this sooner or later! You know that!"
The surly silence behind the door disagrees. It doesn't matter. I never give up when it's important. Lanny knows that better than anyone.
I reset the alarm and then take a moment to put my stuff away, stash everything in its proper place. I like to have order, so that I never have to waste a moment in an emergency. Sometimes I turn the lights out and run crisis drills. There's a fire in the hall. What's your escape route? Where are your weapons? I know it's obsessive and unhealthy.
It's also practical as hell.
I mentally rehearse what I'd do if an intruder broke in the garage door. Grab knife from block. Rush forward to block him in the door. Stab stab stab. While he's reeling, slice the tendons at the ankles. Down.
Always, in my rehearsals, it's Mel coming for us--Mel, looking exactly the same as he had in the trial, wearing a charcoal-gray suit his lawyer had bought, with a blue silk tie and pocket square that matched his denim-colored eyes. He looks like a well-dressed, normal man, and the disguise is perfect.
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I hadn't been in the crowd at his court appearance, where everyone reported he'd looked like a perfectly innocent man; I'd been locked up, awaiting my own trial. But a photographer had captured him at just the right moment as he turned and looked at the crowd, the victims' families. He still looked the same, but his eyes had gone flat and soulless, and seeing that picture had given me the eerie feeling that something cold and alien was inside of that body, staring out. That creature hadn't felt the need to hide anymore.
When I imagine Mel coming for us, that's what's staring out of his face.
Exercise done, I make sure all the doors are locked. Connor has his own code, and when he comes home, I'll listen for the tones and the reset. I can tell if it's wrong, or if he forgets. The key fob to set the whole system to alert and ring in the Norton Police Department is constantly with me in my pocket. My first action in any emergency.
I sit down at the computer in the bedroom I've made my office. It's a smallish room, with a narrow closet that holds winter clothes and supplies, and it's dominated by a battered, magnificent rolltop desk I rescued from an antiques shop my first day in Norton. The date penciled on the drawer puts it at 1902. It's heavier than my car, and someone had used it as a workbench at some point, but it's so large that it comfortably holds computer, keyboard, and mouse, plus a small printer.
I enter my passcode and hit the target to start the search algorithm running. This is a relatively new computer, bought fresh when I got to Stillhouse Lake, but it's been customized with all manner of black-hat goodies by a hacker who goes by the name Absalom.
In the days and weeks and months after Mel's trial, while I sat in jail and endured my own legal torment, Absalom had been one of a huge baying pack of online abusers to go after me, analyzing every aspect of my life for hints of guilt.
After I was acquitted, though, the firestorm really started.
He'd unearthed every detail of my life and made it available online. He'd organized troll armies to relentlessly attack me, my friends, my neighbors. He'd found even my most distant relatives and doxed their addresses. He'd hounded the two cousins that Mel still had living and driven one of them to the brink of suicide.