Her eyes narrow.
“Ah, okay. Well, sorry about that. But look!” I raise both hands in the air and smile at her. “No chairs!”
I tap tap tap tap my foot on the floor. Calm. I am calm. I am calm and bored. I am the ocean. I am the yacht in the middle of the ocean. I am nothing.
I am flames.
Not yet. Not yet.
“Get to work,” she snarls.
The first sheet is handwritten, dated almost three years ago. Something about the writing feels familiar.
“What is this?” I ask, trying to buy time, needing to calm myself down. The ocean. The ocean. The ocean. Nothing.
“We found them cleaning out storage bins at the school.” The Feeler smiles, and I am glad I can’t feel what she is feeling right now. “Clarice’s notes on visions she had for potential students. A bit of a treasure trove.”
I let a giddy burst of something twisted flare up as I laugh, my smile broken glass. “Awesome. How great. Clarice comes back from the dead to help us out! That’s just like her. She was always so thoughtful.”
I tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap on the paper. James says it’s okay to give them reactions they expect. It’d be okay for me to feel disturbed, or guilty, or sad about this reminder of Clarice.
If I start that, I can never, ever stop.
So instead I wash it all away and just read. Most of it is incomprehensible. I scowl, flipping through pages describing locations and people without names. “Seers are useless,” I mutter, tossing away a page describing, at length, a woman’s color of nail polish as she waves good-bye from the back of an unidentifiable bus.
I blink, eyes frozen to the next page and the name on it.
Sadie.
“I thought we wrote off Sadie as lost after what happened in Des Moines?” I say as casually as I can manage. It’s okay to feel anxious about that name. There’s a lot of baggage. I can feel a little anxious.
I can still hear Clarice, the way her mouth twisted into a smile around Sadie’s name as she recommended that I do something to make sure the girl’s family wouldn’t come looking for her. I can still remember how in control I felt as I said no, how sure I was that they could never make me do anything like that again.
I can still remember what it felt like to go out a month ago to bring Sadie in, making Clarice’s death even more pointless. I can still remember the blood on my hands from that trip. The look on Annie’s face. No. Annie is dead. The look on Eden’s face, horrified, judging me.
I hated Eden.
“Turn the page. There are additions. We’ve got a new location that a Seer found yesterday.” The Feeler is staring intently at me, feeling everything I feel. I am sad. I am tired. I am lost. This is all wrong, every bit of it, everything. I am wrong.
I am not any of those things. I am fine. They found Sadie again. I am excited. See how excited I am? “Let’s bring her in.”
ANNIE
Six Weeks Before
A GIRL, TWIRLING IN A DRESS, THE LIGHT SPINNING around her as she laughs. She stops, staggers to the side, dazed.
Then she’s older, and Fia is walking with her down a hall, talking and smiling and nodding.
The hall they’re in is at the school.
Another girl, hair in hundreds of intricate braids, sitting next to a crashed bike, crying. But she isn’t hurt, her friend is, skinned knees raw and bleeding. The girl with the braids keeps crying.
Then she’s older, and Fia is sitting in a small room on a couch across from her and an older man, nodding and smiling and drinking tea. Fia’s wearing a dress jacket and a skirt, and she looks false, she looks so false I want to scream, want to tell them that it’s a lie. This Fia is a lie.
Another girl, dressed all in black, hands pulled into her sleeves, sitting curled in a ball in the corner of the couch. An older woman who looks tired and drawn signs a paper, her eyes devoid of hope. James and Eden, older than she was when I saw her in a vision years ago, watch. Fia leans against the wall, staring out the window, then turns and smiles at the girl. She taps on her leg, tap tap taps, but no one notices. “You’re going to love the school,” Fia says. There is something wary and terrified in Fia’s eyes.
Another girl, tiny, barely to Fia’s shoulder, looking at her with hope and desperation. Fia smiles, but there’s no life in her face. “It’ll get better now, Amanda,” she says. James pats the girl on the head. “She’s going to love it there, Ms. Lafayette,” he says. A woman hugs the girl, crying, and the girl starts crying, too, looking at Fia like Fia can make it stop. Fia nods.
And then another girl.
Another girl.
Another girl.
Another girl.
So many girls.
Girl after girl after girl, following Fia, because Fia instantly understands what to say, what to feel, how to act to get them to want to come. She’s leading them to the school, and they want it, and she knows. She knows what she’s doing.
I want to scream but I can’t. I can do nothing but watch. I watch and watch until the colors and lights bleed into one constant swirl I can no longer understand, and I miss the darkness but the light won’t stop.
“Annie? I think she’s waking up.”
I open my eyes and I’m so relieved to see nothing, I burst into tears.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to sit up, but my muscles tremble and shake, and I feel like I haven’t eaten in three days. I’m dizzy and light-headed and everything hurts. I’m going to throw up. “Bathroom,” I gasp, putting my hands over my mouth.
Someone picks me up and runs, then sets me down on a tile floor and I hug the toilet like it can save me.
My hair is pulled back gently from my face and held at the base of my neck. A cold sweat has broken out on my body and I’m still shaking, but the nausea passes and I think I’ll be okay.
I try to stand and that’s when my stomach decides it is not okay. Vomiting until there’s nothing left, my stomach muscles cramped with spasms, I finally lean to the side, hitting the bathtub and sitting against it.
“Here,” Cole says, handing me a washcloth, damp with cool water. I wipe my mouth, too wrung out and hollowed to be embarrassed that it was him holding my hair back while I puked. He takes the washcloth and then hands me a small towel, also cool and damp, and I put it against my forehead, wipe the back of my neck, rest my cheek on it.
The last time someone held my hair for me while I puked, I had the stomach flu and Eden stayed with me. I know my old life was a lie, but it was a nice lie, and I miss the ease of false security.
“You had a seizure,” he says, sitting next to me.
I take a deep breath, even my lungs sore. “How long did it last?”
“Ten minutes,” Adam says, taking my wrist to feel my pulse. “That’s bad, Annie. You’re hitting oxygen deprivation danger if it goes much longer than that. Brain damage.”
“I was only out for ten minutes?”
“No,” Cole says. “You’ve been asleep for almost four hours. You didn’t wake up after the seizure ended. We were about to take you to the hospital.”
“Can’t go to the hospital. We don’t have the right documents. I’ll be okay.”
“Why would you risk that?” Cole’s voice is hard, and I flinch, turning my head away from him. “What could possibly be worth risking your life for?”
“I didn’t know it was so risky.”
“Because you didn’t ask us about it! I could have told you what it did to Sarah! I can’t believe Rafael gave you the drugs.”
“Did she have seizures, too?”
“No. But she hasn’t been sleeping. She barely eats. Isn’t it enough that you two have these visions take over and intrude on your brains, without forcing your bodies to do more?”
I lean my head on the bathtub. The rounded edge fits against my skull and I feel like I could fall asleep here. “It worked,” I whisper.
“No, it didn’t.”
“It did. I saw her. Fia. Ove
r and over again. With girls. She’s—” I swallow hard, reminding myself that there’s nothing left in my stomach to lose. “She’s finding girls for the school. She’s recruiting.”
“How can you trust what you saw? You were on drugs.”
I shake my head, back and forth along the bath, then let it drift and rest against Cole’s shoulder. “Maybe. You’re right. You have to be right. She wouldn’t do that. Why would she do that?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Think,” Sarah says, her voice over the phone soft but insistent. She sounds exhausted. I want to ask if she’s been able to sleep yet, if she’s gone off the Adderall. What she’s seen. “Details. We need details. Names, locations, anything that sticks out enough for us to be able to find these girls. We only need one to confirm whether or not what you saw was real.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my head throbbing. This headache has lasted for two days now, and I think I’ll go mad if it doesn’t stop soon. “Amanda. Fia called one of the girls Amanda. And James said . . .” I play it over in my head, trying to isolate that single thread, but there are so many, so many faces and scenes and images. “Ms. Lafayette! He called her mom Ms. Lafayette.”
“Okay. You keep thinking and pulling out any more details you can. Rafael and I will find Amanda, if she exists.”
“But it worked for you, didn’t it? The pills. You’ve been seeing more.”
There’s a long pause, and when Sarah finally answers, she sounds haunted. “Yes. I’ve been seeing more.”
“So it works.”
Her laugh is bitter and harsh and nothing like the Sarah I’ve known. “Yeah, it works. I’ll call you when we know something.”
She hangs up, and I sit, holding the phone in my hand, hoping against hope that there is no Amanda Lafayette in the world. Please, please let her not be real.
Let it not be real.
FIA
Nineteen Hours Before
“WE’RE LIKE THE WORST COMIC BOOK EVER,” PIXIE says, scowling behind massive round sunglasses. Palm trees reflect from their lenses, the Tampa sunshine brutal and heavy. We’re sitting outside a café, though anyone with a brain would be inside with air-conditioning. Not us. We have to watch for a teenage girl whose life needs ruining.
Again.
“The Adventures of Sullen and Psycho. It has a nice ring to it.” I bounce my legs, buzz buzz buzz buzzing with energy. Not the good kind. The kind that warns I am too close to the edge, too far down the slope, in danger of sliding off and away and being lost forever. Oh, this is wrong, this is all wrong, everything is wrong so wrong.
“We should leave, then,” Pixie whispers.
I imagine invisible fishing lines, hooking the corners of my mouth and tearing at the skin there, pulling my lips back into a simulation of a smile. The same threads connected to my arms and legs, jerking me like a gangly marionette. Go here. Do this. Smile. Ignore the wrong. Make it work. Make it work.
“No, we have to do this.” They put me on a private plane with Pixie as soon as I said Sadie was viable. Sadie, Sadie, slipped through the cracks in the aftermath of Clarice’s murder. (Ha ha ha ha, tap tap tap tap, Clarice’s murder, I can think that like it was an episode on Law and Order, something that sometimes airs on cable channels and you think “Oh, I remember that, it was the innocent-looking teenager” right before you switch to something else, something safe, but nothing is safe not ever safe nothing is ever safe.) Then we found Sadie and then we lost her and now we’ve found her again.
Sadie. I hate her. I have never even seen her and because of her I am twice steeped in blood, like one of Annie’s teas, a rich dark red steaming into my face, bathing me in blood, always blood, and I can’t stop holding the cup, and—
“Fia,” Pixie says, her mouth twisted up. “What is your brain doing right now?”
Backtrack the thoughts. Slipped through the cracks. Sadie slipped through the cracks twice. But no one can avoid fate. I am fate. I am the pale, horrible hands of fate, and now I’ve come for Sadie again, and it’s wrong to be here but it’s wrong to be everywhere, so here is fine.
Pixie rubs her temples. Am I giving you a headache? I think.
“You are a headache.”
I grin. Lean back in my chair. It’s okay. This is fine. Just one more step, one more thing to do, I can turn it off, turn it all off. This has to be done. I think about James, instead, think about his lips to drown out the constant ringing of wrong in my ears, to reset my equilibrium. James said to do whatever they asked me to. I love James.
I love him.
We’ll make everything right.
Pixie mimes vomiting into the planter next to our table. “Please go back to the crazy-train thoughts. I can’t stomach hearing someone think about him that way.”
“Jealous.”
“Yes, please, someone get me my own sociopathic, sex-obsessed slimeball! How can I go on without a man like that in my life?”
“You don’t know him,” I snap, surprised by how much her criticism of him stings. Is it because we’re friends now? I think Pixie is my only friend in the whole world besides James. And I’ve known her all of two days? Three? I don’t know her. And she’s dangerous, I keep forgetting.
I drain the rest of my smoothie, then look at her. “The last time I came to find Sadie, a girl ended up dead.” Tap tap tap TAP. I hate that TAP. I hate it I hate it so much so much.
Her shoulders sink, and she leans over to me, nudging my arm. “I know about Eden. They told me. I’m sorry, Fia.”
She smiles, but the smile is a lie, a preamble to what is coming next. The ice in my stomach from the smoothie spreads outward and I don’t want to hear her anymore.
“Have you ever asked James about his . . . particular life ambitions?” Her voice is as casual as a knife in the gut.
I scowl, tug on my boot top, and wish I’d worn sandals. “What ambitions would a sociopathic sex-obsessed slimeball possibly need?”
“He’s got a lot of plans,” she says, watching me closely. “I care about you, Fia, and I’m not trying to drive you away from him. I don’t understand it, but I know you need him. I’ve seen your thoughts when you’ve been away from him for too long. But you have to have your eyes open. You have to have enough information to make decisions.”
I throw my cup. It sails through the air and lands in the trash can without touching the sides. “I never need information to make decisions. There’s Sadie.” Now we have something to do and I can stop thinking and start doing.
It’s strange, finally seeing her as more than a photo. I never actually saw her in Iowa. My heart flutters. Maybe this is what it’s like to see a movie star in real life, this strange slowing and stopping of time, the recognition of knowing someone you don’t actually know. Sadie’s done so much to my life for never having been in it.
Her long hair is pulled into a ponytail at the base of her neck. She’s aggressively plain—no makeup, clothes dark and baggy. In spite of the weather she’s wearing a collared shirt, buttoned all the way up, and over that a hoodie jacket, with her hands shoved into the pockets. She trudges by, purse slung across her body. Her shoulders are turned in, her eyes on the ground.
Everything about her pleads to be ignored. I’m so sorry, Sadie.
“What do you know about her?” Pixie asks.
“Seer. She’s been flagged before, but she was nabbed by Lerner and we lost her. Either she’s broken with Lerner or they screwed up, because someone picked up her trail again yesterday. And here we are.”
“She doesn’t want to come with us, then.”
“It’s not really up to her.” One way or another, Sadie is going to the school.
I slide unnoticed onto the sidewalk behind her and watch as she navigates the space. There’s an almost dance to the way she twists and turns to avoid other people, the intense focus it must take to remain untouched moving through a crowd.
Pixie swears. “You’re right. She’s thinking, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, d
on’t touch me.’ It’s like being in your head—she’s adamant, obsessive about it. I doubt if she even knows she’s thinking it, but she’s not thinking anything else. Just that, over and over again.”
We keep following, watching her move with a runner’s grace belied by her horrible posture.
Pixie shakes her head, piercings glinting in the sun as she raises an eyebrow. “Maybe she was . . . maybe someone . . . hurt her. In a . . . way.” Pixie looks at me helplessly.
It isn’t that simple. Not that there would be anything simple about a situation like that, but it would be its own tragedy. Not one that would have put her in Keane’s Seers’ line of sight so many times. “We need to touch her, see what happens.”
That’s the key, I know it is, because when I think about touching her, everything in me screams to stop, to stay away, to avoid doing exactly that. I can listen to the directions of wrong as well as right. Pick the one thing you shouldn’t do, and do it. That’s how I became a model employee. That’s how I filled the school with the most promising new students they’ve ever had.
Maybe that’s what went wrong when I saved Phillip Keane’s life.
“So, what, run up and bump into her?” Pixie asks.
I narrow my eyes, take in all of Sadie. We don’t know where she’s staying. All we knew was that she’d walk by this café in the afternoon. Stupid Seers. But the strip malls have turned into residential streets, so we must be getting close.
“I don’t think that’d work. Look at the way she’s dressed—maximum skin coverage.”
“Oh, so just run up to her and casually stroke her cheek! No biggie, then.” Pixie huffs, digging a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket. “I have to do everything. Hey!”
Sadie doesn’t turn around, and Pixie jogs to close the gap between them. “Hey, you dropped this.”
Sadie barely looks up, keeps walking. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you dropped it back there. Here.” Pixie holds it out, walking backward in front of Sadie, smiling.
Sadie shrugs, leaving her hands in her pockets. “Keep it.” She turns to look over her shoulder, and our eyes meet.
Perfect Lies Page 9