Perfect Lies

by Kiersten White

  Then she raises the gun and

  She shoots Sadie in the head

  Or

  She shoots Phillip Keane in the head

  It changes—shifts back and forth between the two realities so quickly I can’t figure out which happens, which will happen, which did happen. It is all a blur of heads and bullets and dying.

  But the ending is always the same.

  She puts the still-smoking gun under her own chin and pulls the trigger again. Darkness returning brings no relief. My head is buried in Cole’s chest, and he strokes my hair, telling me it will be okay.

  It won’t.

  “We’re there,” I sob. “We try to stop it and it doesn’t change anything.”

  “We still have to try,” he says.

  And he’s right. This is the tragedy of knowing my fate: I have seen how it ends, and I will walk right into it, and nothing will change.

  FIA

  Six Minutes Before

  ONCE UPON A TIME, I WAS A LITTLE GIRL WITH A MOM and a dad and a sister, and the only monsters in the world were imaginary.

  Then I became one of the monsters.

  Once upon a time I thought I had done enough to keep Annie safe. I thought that if she was gone, if we were separated, we would finally be free to make our own choices.

  But I was wrong. She was still in danger. She was always in danger. We had it backward. I’m the problem. As long as I’m alive, Annie isn’t safe. As long as I’m alive, no one who should be is.

  One more. One more thing. I’ll do one more terrible thing, one last terrible thing to keep her safe.

  And I won’t think beyond that.

  ANNIE

  Ten Minutes Before

  I BLINK AWAY THE LIGHT, TREMBLING AND SHAKING.

  “Again?” Cole asks, his voice soft. I’ve had the vision four more times on the way here. It doesn’t change.

  It never changes.

  Cars honk behind us, the city louder than I could have imagined. We’re outside the building where Keane’s offices are on the top floor. I feel like we’re on the edge of a cliff, and I know we’ll fall, and I know exactly what the impact at the bottom will feel like.

  I can’t save Fia. I can’t even protect Sadie.

  “Are you ready for this?” Eden asks, her voice falsely bright with bravado. “Because I’m down for kicking some serious Keane butt.”

  “You’re never there,” I say. “In the room.”

  “Well, we’re going to change that, aren’t we. We’re going to change all of it.”

  I wipe under my eyes and nod, but I don’t feel it. Nothing is going to change. I push my sunglasses back over my face and hold out my hand. We’ve agreed it’s best to avoid being recognized for as long as possible. I have to pretend to be sighted.

  I’m expecting Eden’s hand, but it’s Cole’s fingers that twine with mine. I let out a breath of exhausted laughter.

  “What?” he asks.

  It’s his hand. There’s no doubt. I don’t know how there ever was any. “In case it changes, or we all die or something, I want you to know that I’m going to fall in love with you.”

  He’s quiet, and I wonder how I can worry about something this silly right now, but I’m afraid he’ll take his hand back. “Sorry. Was that weird?” I try to smile, but Cole’s right. I can’t smile when I don’t mean it.

  He squeezes my fingers and traces his thumb along mine. “Actually, it’s a relief. Now I know you won’t knee me for doing this.”

  He leans in and brushes his lips against mine. It’s not as desperate as the kiss on the bed. It’s a feather of a kiss, a promise of a kiss, and I hope with everything in me that it’s a promise we’ll be able to keep. I just don’t see how there is a future in which that will be possible now.

  “Well then,” Eden says. “If no one’s going to kiss me, let’s get this show on the road.”

  We walk through a door into the odorless air of a lobby. Cole doesn’t pause, walks confidently, and I do my best to match his pace.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  I nearly freeze, but Cole pulls my hand, insistent and steady. I don’t stop.

  “Yes?” Eden asks, and her voice is farther behind us than it should be.

  “I’m going to need to see your ID.” The guy talking sounds apologetic.

  “What for? I’ve never had to show it before.”

  “Sorry. I don’t make the rules, I’m just the security guy.”

  “So, what, you’re supposed to stop every black person that walks through here, because we couldn’t possibly belong in a fancy building? Could you be any more racist?”

  “No, that’s not it at all! I only—”

  “I want to speak to your supervisor.”

  Cole stops, and then there’s a light ding. We step over the threshold of the elevator.

  Eden isn’t with us.

  Just like I knew she wouldn’t be.

  The elevator slows and I take a deep breath—then there are lights, no, no, not again!

  By the time Fia kills herself, I am leaning against Cole, barely standing.

  “What are you doing here?” a voice hisses. I know this voice.

  Cole speaks. “We’re here with Mr. Marino. It’s urgent.”

  “You can’t lie to me! I know Annie.”

  Please, Mae, I think. Fia’s going to die.

  “Oh, no,” she whispers. There’s a buzz and a click. “Come on!”

  Cole grabs my hand and runs forward. I’m dragged behind, trying my hardest to match his pace.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” I know this voice, too. Nathan. “You can’t go back there!”

  “Mae, what’s going on?” another man asks.

  “It’s a setup! Rafael Marino is after Mr. Keane,” Mae says.

  “Is that true?”

  “No!” Nathan shouts.

  Cole lets go of my hand and I back up until I hit the wall.

  “We have a situation!” the Keane security guy says, met by crackling static. There’s the meaty sound of a fist connecting with a face, and he cries out.

  Someone hits the wall next to me. I know by his cologne that it’s not Cole. I jump on Nathan, throwing my arms around his neck and wrapping my legs around his torso.

  “Go!” I scream.

  I hear Cole run. I can feel a gun beneath my thigh, where it hits Nathan’s hip. I let go of his neck and grab the gun as he slams me into the wall and I drop to the ground. The vibrations of his feet pounding the floor follow Cole. Someone fires a shot. The security guy shouts, Mae screams, and I hear bodies slam into a wall. Then the sound of a door opening.

  I stand, the gun heavy and cold in my hand. I know what it looks like. I’ve seen it so many times now. I know I will get into the room without being stopped.

  I know my part.

  I walk toward the end.

  FIA

  Two Minutes Before

  PIXIE LOOKS UP AS JAMES AND I WALK BY.

  “Fia, wait. Can I talk to you? Please?”

  I don’t think anything at her. I don’t think anything at all.

  Left foot, right foot, James’s hand on my shoulder, guiding me. Left foot, right foot, so much can be accomplished without active thought. We pass through the doorway. I see Sandy blond with a gun, standing sentry in the hall with one of our security guards.

  Ours.

  Keane’s. Ours. Mine. Doesn’t matter.

  Outside the room James stops, squeezes my shoulder but I don’t feel it, not like I ought to, I don’t feel anything. I’m a not-person. Not not not not. Tap tap tap tap.

  Tap.

  His father joins us. James opens the door and walks in, his posture perfect and his steps confident and his smile his very best, most assured lie. Rafael and the girl are waiting.

  I follow, sliding along the wall, because I am a not-person and not-people take up no space in rooms.

  I look at Phillip Keane, but he doesn’t look at me, because he already knows I’m a not-person, h
e’s known all along. He made me this way. I look at the girl on the couch, but can’t keep looking at her, because if I keep looking at her, the girl on the couch will be a real person, and even not-person me can’t kill a real person.

  There is a strange sound that wants to escape from my mouth. Can’t let that sound out. Teeth against knuckles to keep the sound in.

  Something slams into the wall, and then the door bursts open, and two more people (not-people? Who can say anymore) tumble into the room, fighting. Cole and Sandy blond. I have fought both of them before. Cole should go after his knee. It’s probably not fully healed yet. But who should I want to win? I cannot sort through anything to tell what will happen, what should happen, if I should make something happen. I have fallen into a black hole of wrong and there is no feeling here.

  And then Annie follows them, a gun in her shaking hand.

  “No,” I say, and it makes me a person again but

  no

  no

  no

  Annie is a person. She’s the only person, the only real person in the whole world, and now everything is over forever, no matter what, because she’s here now and Phillip Keane is staring at her and he knows, he knows what I did, I’m a person again, I’m a dead person and it doesn’t matter

  nothing matters

  nothing matters anymore, there is no safe, there is no way to fix this, I do what James wants and Annie is dead, I do what Rafael wants and James hates me forever, either way, either way I lose. I’ll pick an ending and then I’ll be done.

  I put my hand on Annie’s shoulder and reach for the gun she’s pointing at nothing, because the gun is an ending. It’s a fast ending.

  Annie’s shoulders droop, but then steel runs through them and she elbows me in the stomach. I jerk backward, shocked and hurt and—she hurt me?

  “No,” she says, her voice soft but made of the same steel that took over her shoulders, and I don’t know this Annie. This is not the Annie from my dreams, the young and innocent Annie among the flames of my destruction.

  “You don’t get that future, Fia,” she says.

  She moves the gun from pointing at nothing to pointing directly at Phillip Keane. He does not have time to look surprised before she pulls the trigger and with a deafening pop Annie creates an end.

  James cries out. Phillip Keane is on the floor with a hole in his head.

  I am still here. I didn’t do any of this.

  Annie did.

  ANNIE

  After

  MY HAND HURTS, BOTH FROM THE WEIGHT OF THE gun and the force of the recoil. “Nobody move,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I thought it would. “I know where everyone in this room is.”

  I’ve certainly seen it enough times. But not this part. This part is new. I made this part.

  “Cole, did I kill Mr. Keane?”

  “Yes.” His voice is even and I hope he doesn’t hate me now. But I don’t regret what I did. Maybe I will, but not today, because I protected Sadie and I saved Fia. They needed me, so I did it. And Fia needs more saving.

  I swing the gun to where I know Rafael is sitting on the couch. If I knew for certain that he was going to hurt me or Fia again, I’d shoot him. I wouldn’t hesitate. But I don’t have that guarantee, and I can’t justify it. “You. Leave. If you ever come near me or my sister—or Sadie—again, you’re a dead man.”

  “Annie,” he says, “we’re on the same side. Now that—”

  “You set this up. You set us all up. We are not on the same side. Don’t think I will ever forget that you were willing to destroy my sister. Get out.”

  I hear the creak of leather as Rafael stands.

  “This isn’t over.” James’s voice surprises me. It’s tortured, strained, full of more honest emotion that I’ve ever heard from him.

  “Far from it,” Rafael answers. I hear someone else stand and leave the room, and that’s when I remember Cole was fighting with Nathan. I had completely forgotten to take Nathan into account. But I didn’t need to. Cole was with me.

  I reach my free hand back until I find Fia’s. It feels small and cold, and I wrap it in mine, tug her gently forward until I can feel her body at my side.

  “May I get up and see if my father still has a pulse, or will you shoot me, too?” James snarls.

  I lower the gun, feel James walk in front of me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. “It had to be done.”

  It did. I am as certain of that as I have ever been of anything. So many deaths—too many deaths—because of this man. He can’t hurt us anymore.

  “You’re ruined now, too.” Fia’s voice is sad, so sad. “I couldn’t save you.”

  I lean my head against her shoulder. “This was my choice, Fia. I made the right choice so you didn’t have to make a wrong one. I saved you.”

  “What now?” she whispers.

  “I honestly have no idea.” The only future I’d seen is gone now.

  “You could have stopped this,” James says, dazed and lost.

  Fia leans closer to me.

  “She couldn’t have,” I say. I changed everything. I took what fate had laid out for us, and I made a different choice.

  “No one’s going to kill me.” Sadie’s voice is relieved and puzzled, and very, very small. James clears his throat of a strangled sob. Fia drifts in his direction, then stops, tethered by my hand.

  James sounds exhausted, but there is that edge of anger to his voice, the edge that has always been there. It sounds hardened, now, baked in a fire to a razor-sharp sheen. “I wasn’t lying, Fia. We were almost there. I was so close.” He stands, his voice getting distant. I imagine him looking out the window, back turned to us all. Fia lets out a strangled, lonely sound, and I squeeze her hand tighter.

  James continues. “My father killed himself. He discovered his accounts were drained almost dry, that another company had bought controlling shares in all his endeavors, and that there was a whistle-blower whose information would have sent him to prison. I’m going to find his body in here in a few minutes, along with a note.”

  “We’ll be leaving, then,” I say, relieved. But it also makes me wonder—how had Fia never questioned James’s comfort level with disposing of bodies? “Come on, Sadie.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” His change in tone freezes me in place. “You have powder residue on your fingers, you are on all our security footage, I have multiple witnesses putting you in the building. You leave. I never want to see you again. As far as I’m concerned from this time forward you really are dead. Sadie stays with Fia and me.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I can,” he snaps. “Unless you want to shoot me, too, and figure out how to get out of this mess on your own. Be my guest, Annie. Blow my brains out.”

  I stutter, my mind skipping through ways around his demands, but . . . I have nothing. I have no leverage. I saved Fia for now, but I didn’t save Sadie.

  “No?” James asks, mocking me. “Then get out of my building before I call security.”

  “You have no money,” Fia says, sad.

  “What are you talking about?” He takes a breath, then sounds kinder. “Come here, Fia. It’s okay. I’ll let Annie go. My father—I—” His voice catches and I wonder if it’s an act or if it’s real. “I didn’t want this. But it’s done, and you’re safe, and we can move on now. Everything he had is mine. We can finally move on.”

  “Everything you had is mine,” she says. She moves closer to me, and I realize someone is standing on her other side. A low murmur lets me know that it’s Mae.

  “I don’t understand,” James says.

  “All the accounts. All the money. I hid it.”

  I don’t know whether he sounds angrier or sadder. “Why would you do that?”

  I feel her shoulder move in a shrug next to me. “Just felt like I should. Been doing it for months.”

  “Fia.” Her name is a growl coming from deep in his throat. “I know this isn’t what you had pla
nned. And I’m sorry I let you think we were going to destroy everything and then walk away. But I can’t. We can’t. I owe it to my mother to see to her legacy. People know girls like you, like Sadie, exist now. They’re not safe. If we’re here, if we’re in control, then we are the most powerful and we can keep them safe. Together.”

  “I love you. But I can’t—” Her voice changes; she’s turned her head away, toward the window. “I can’t stay. I can’t live with what you wanted me to do.” Another small shrug, like she’s trying to shake something off her shoulders. “What I would have done.”

  Mae chimes in. “Annie gets the school, and oversight into everything you do with the girls in your networks.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I hear Fia whispering beneath her breath, “A Keane is a Keane is a Keane, my Keane. I’m going to burn the school to the ground.”

  “You have no choice.” Mae sounds matter-of-fact, like a teacher explaining the rules on the first day of class. “If you don’t do what Fia says, you’ll have nothing left. She’s listing account numbers in her head right now. She had access to everything, and you never checked up on her. I’m sorry, sir.” The sarcasm positively drips from her voice. “She never thought about this around me. Otherwise I definitely would have reported it to you like a loyal employee.”

  “Secrets,” Fia says, and I can hear the smile on her voice but it doesn’t sound like a happy smile. “Even from you, James. Especially from you.”

  “Fine.” His teeth strain the sounds of the words. “We’ll talk about this at home. There’s no reason to make a decision now. I have a dead father to take care of.”

  “I’m not going home,” Fia says.

  Fia is pulled away from me. “I’m sorry,” James says. “I’m sorry for everything. I shouldn’t have asked you to do this. I was scared, and desperate. I thought we could handle it together, like we’ve always done. This doesn’t have to—this isn’t the end. This is the beginning. You and me. I love you. I can’t lose you. Not now.”

  “I love you, too. But that doesn’t make it right. I can feel that now, I think.” Fia takes my hand again, turns me around.