Contents
ANNIE: One Month Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
ANNIE: Two Years Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
ANNIE: One Year Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
ANNIE: Ten Months Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
ANNIE: Ten Months Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
ANNIE: Six Weeks Before Keane
FIA: Four Months at Keane
Excerpt from Mind Games
FIA: Seven Years Ago
FIA: Monday Morning
About the Author
Books by Kiersten White
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Copyright
About the Publisher
ANNIE
One Month Before Keane
I CAN FEEL THE FUTURE CLOSING IN AROUND ME, suffocating me. This interview, this school is my last chance. There are no other options, no possibilities. I can hear it in the tone of voice Aunt Ellen uses when she talks to me. I can hear it in the way my teachers say my name. I can hear it in the biting whispers of the students around me.
The car bumps over uneven asphalt and I tug nervously on the hem of my skirt, picking at it until Fia grabs my hand and hisses at me to stop.
“Almost there,” Aunt Ellen says, as nervous as I am.
“Tell her to turn around,” Fia whispers. I elbow her in the stomach.
If I stay here, I will be forever cloaked in rumor and pathetic tragedy. Maybe I deserve that. I was never supposed to see anything. Maybe God made me blind on purpose. Seeing ruined everything, and there’s no way to get any of my life back. No way to get my parents back.
But I want—need—a different future than this. I have to get away from this place. From who I am here. I have to get away from myself. At a new school in a new city, I can be a new Annie.
The Keane School has to take me. It has to. Without it . . .
At least I have Fia. As long as I have her, that’s something. And I know she’ll never leave me.
FIA
Four Months at Keane
“AND YOU’LL NEED A MATCHING SCARF!” EDEN declares, draping one across Annie’s shoulders.
Annie laughs. “Actually, I don’t need matching anything. It doesn’t make a difference to me.”
“What are you even going to do while we’re there?” I mutter, staring at my empty duffel bag. Eden and Annie are packing like it’s a celebration, clothes strewn across Annie’s bed as Eden fusses over what she should bring.
I want to strangle her, I do, I want to crush her vocal cords because Eden keeps giggling like she can’t believe her luck.
I can believe mine: I have none.
“Oh, for the love,” Eden huffs, taking the scarf off Annie and folding it carefully into Annie’s bag. “Will you stop being the black hole of despair? We are going on a ski trip. To a fancy lodge. Who cares what we’re going to do? It’s a ski trip, Fia.”
“Actually, Clarice said they’re bringing in a companion instructor who will take me down the slopes. I guess we’ll use some sort of harness system? So I’ll actually get to ski!” Annie’s smile is both shy and brilliant at the same time, and it stabs right through black-hole me.
“That’s awesome.” I don’t have to smile for Annie, which is a relief. Eden glares at me, and I glare right back, giving off the deadest feelings I can. I know she feels them. She won’t admit it, not yet, but I’ve figured her out.
I’ve figured too much out. Too much, and yet I still know nothing. Except the way I feel all the time, like my skin is too tight, itching, iron bands around my lungs, and everything is wrong all the time. I don’t understand how Eden can’t feel it, feel how wrong this school is.
“Hey, it’s a full week away from classes.” Eden shrugs, gives me a peace offering of a smile. “That’s worth something, right? And maybe there will be boys! Oooh, Annie, what if your instructor is a guy? He’s going to be hot. He’s going to be so blisteringly hot you won’t even need a scarf! Maybe I’ll request a harness ride, too.”
Annie makes a face. “Yeah, because an old dude being into a fourteen-year-old girl is super attractive.”
“You’re almost fifteen, and I’ll be fourteen next month. Besides, I passed for sixteen all the time at home. You’ve never seen my ridiculous rack.”
I pretend to vomit into my duffel bag. So far, imaginary puke is the only thing I’ve packed. Annie laughs, relieved that I am part of this joking around. She always wants me to be part of things, to be involved, to be happy.
There is no room in my head for happy. Ever since we got to the school there’s been a swarm of bees in my head, and they buzz all the time, and they are angry and terrified. They only stop when I’m in the middle of training, when I finally let myself go and stop thinking, stop feeling, do nothing but what they want me to.
And then afterward, the wrong feelings come back so strong I throw up.
I pick things at random and throw them at my bed. The school provided us with snow gear, so all I need are clothes for the evenings. My fingers hesitate over a lacy black camisole tank that I wear underneath my terrible starched school uniform. I don’t need it.
But I need it.
Stupid, stupid. Whatever. I throw it into the bag, along with the push-up bra I know I don’t need but I need anyway.
Annie laughs at something Eden says, and unlike Eden’s stabby laugh, Annie’s fills me with a sudden desperate hope. Maybe this will be fun. Maybe away from the school the wrong feeling will stop and I’ll be able to breathe.
Maybe.
ANNIE
Two Years Before Keane
FIA STOMPS ACROSS THE FLOOR ABOVE US. SHE’S NOT very big—it must take her a lot of effort to make that much noise. A door slams, and then, because it wasn’t loud enough the first time, she slams it again.
I am rubbing her toothbrush in soap tonight.
Heather sighs, pauses the movie. “Should I go talk to her?”
“No. She’s been a brat all day. She threw a fit like a baby when my parents were going out. She actually hid my dad’s keys.”
“Is it because she thinks you’re too old for a babysitter?”
“No, no, we like you.” I try to smile, but truth is, it’s starting to bug me that my parents hire a babysitter for us. I’m twelve, Fia’s ten. I can totally handle things.
Something crashes to the floor, and I’m pretty sure it was glass.
Well, usually I can handle Fia. She just gets so moody sometimes, and you can’t talk her out of it.
“Maybe we should—” Heather says, but then her voice disappears and
I can see.
I can see!
I don’t know what’s happening, and my brain feels like it’s going to explode, but I CAN SEE.
There’s so much light and so many colors that I want to close my eyes to process them, but I can’t. It’s like my body isn’t even here, just my eyes—my eyes that can see!
There are two people in front of me in strange seats, and we’re moving. A car! I’m in a car! How did I get in a car? I try to open my mouth to talk, but again I can’t do anything other than look.
The woman laughs and I realize she’s Mom. I remember now what she looks like! But she’s older, and smaller. That must mean the man is Dad, and he looks older and smaller, too, but handsomer than the snatches I remember from before I lost my sight.
I want to cry—I’m so confused and so happy and so overwhelmed—but I have no control.
“ . . . don’t know what’s gotten into the two of them today.”
Dad nods, and I can only see his profile as he stares straight ahead out the windshield. There’s something wrong with outside—not e
nough colors, everything white and fuzzy and moving. It makes me feel sick to watch it.
“We’ll have to ground Fia for hiding my keys.”
“And talk to her about dragging Annie into her little fits. Though I do feel bad we wouldn’t stay home for Fia but we’re heading right home when Annie was upset. Fia has to notice.”
Dad sighs. “We’ll be careful. I worry about—”
Mom screams.
Dad jerks the wheel and everything is spinning around me as I stay in one place, and there is glass and screeching, piercing noise, and then the car tumbles and smashes around me and there is blood and . . .
No one is screaming anymore.
“Annie!”
I open my eyes to the familiar embrace of utter darkness, and the screaming is back.
Heather shakes my shoulders and I realize I am the one screaming.
“What’s wrong with her?” Heather asks, her voice panicked.
“She’s never done this before!” Fia sounds even more worried. “Should I call nine-one-one?”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. My head feels like it’s going to burst. The memory of light makes my eyeballs ache, and the space behind them is a physical pain. “Mom and Dad! I saw them!”
“What?”
“There was an accident! They got in an accident! I think they’re dead.” A low moan forces its way out of my throat and I start sobbing again. They’re dead. I saw it, I was there, they’re dead.
They’re dead.
“I’m going to call your parents,” Heather says. She walks out of the room and I can hear her speaking in hushed tones from the kitchen.
Fia takes my hands and pulls me close, stroking my hair the way I stroked hers when she was little and scared of the dark. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.”
I freeze. I know Fia’s voice better than my own, and I know the tone in it now. I’ve heard her use it on our parents hundreds of times. “Why are you lying to me?”
Heather sounds relieved when she walks back in. “I just talked to your parents. They’re fine. They’re going to head home early instead of going to a movie.”
“They’re okay?” I can’t believe it. I saw it happen. I saw it.
“Yup! Totally fine. Why don’t we turn the TV back on and I’ll make some popcorn.”
My stomach turns and I think I’m going to be sick, but I try to breathe deeply. They’re fine. Heather talked to them.
“I saw it,” I whisper to Fia.
“Maybe you fell asleep and dreamed it.”
“I don’t dream like that.” Until now, I didn’t even have an image for what my mom looks like. She’s only a voice in my dreams. I’ve been blind since I was four. I never see things.
Fia shifts uncomfortably, squirming next to me. “It’s going to be fine.”
She’s lying again.
An hour later I’m nearly asleep on the couch when someone knocks on our door.
“No,” Fia says, her voice so quiet I can barely hear it. “Don’t answer it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.”
“Can I help you, officer?” Heather asks, fear and confusion making her voice higher than normal.
“Is this the Rosen residence?”
“Yes. Is something wrong?”
And then our world ends.
FIA
Four Months at Keane
THE AIR STINGS MY NOSE. I BREATHE IN AS DEEPLY AS I can. It’s bitingly cold, but you can taste that it’s clean. And space! So much space! They hardly ever let us go outside in Chicago, and when we do it’s always supervised field trips in the city. There’s room here, room to think and to feel and to breathe. I could probably even get far enough away that I wouldn’t have to worry about Ms. Robertson listening in on me.
“What was that?” she asks, glaring suspiciously from where she is helping the shuttle driver unload our bags.
Oh crap, I hope she didn’t hear, I think. She didn’t. She has no idea what I’m planning. Don’t think about it, Fia, don’t think about it. She won’t know until it’s too late. I’ll wait until she’s sleeping. Don’t think about it.
Her glare deepens, and I smile innocently. I pick up my bag and Annie’s. Eden is already helping Annie across the heavily salted sidewalk to the lodge. When I walk into the rush of warm air, I let myself laugh. Pretending to be plotting is my new favorite Ms. Robertson game.
It’s not very hard to be creepy in my head.
There’s a room for us to congregate in while we wait for our keys, and it’s already set up with steaming hot chocolate. Everything smells like pine with a hint of dark, bitter coffee, and I’m not at the school, and there’s no training here so no one is going to hit me until I hit back, and maybe, just maybe, my head will be quiet.
Eden looks up at me with a puzzled expression, then raises her eyebrows in an I-told-you-so sort of look. I flip her off.
“Fia.”
Eden snorts and shakes her head, mouthing, “Busted.”
With a sigh I turn around to find Clarice, Annie’s staff mentor and hero. Clarice is teaching Annie about the visions she sometimes sees, helping her with them. Clarice is the best thing that’s happened to Annie in years.
I hate Clarice.
It’s a secret, like most things, but I hate Clarice with a burning intensity that scares me sometimes. I don’t know why. It’s not the same way I hate Ms. Robertson. I can’t help it. It’s like the feeling I get just before something bad happens.
Clarice is that feeling.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Miss Rosen?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
An eyebrow rises, but she ignores my back talk. “In here.”
She leads me across the hall into a small room. There’s a fire in the fireplace, and soft leather couches, but the warmth and the potential of this place is gone now and I know with a sinking dread that the wrong from the school has followed me here.
“I have a project for you.”
“I thought this was a vacation.”
“For the other girls. But surely you know how expensive the instructor we hired for your sister is.”
“We didn’t ask for that. I can ski with her, or hang out with her here.” I step toward the door, desperate to get away from this conversation. “We’ll go back to Chicago. It’s fine.”
Her smile is colder than the air outside. “None of these things are free, Fia. The medical consultations? The private instruction? The specialized technology? Do you think your aunt is paying for any of it? Do you think she would be willing to if the scholarship dried up?”
Mention of Aunt Ellen makes the hollow space in my stomach gnaw at itself angrily. No. Clarice is right—she knows she’s right. No one else will do these things for Annie. No matter how I feel, no matter how awful the school is, Annie loves it and I love Annie.
I hate Clarice. I hate her so much it hurts. I wish she were like Ms. Robertson and could pick the thoughts out of my head, or, better yet, like Eden, so she could feel what I am feeling because I want to hurt her. I want her to feel how she makes me feel.
She sighs, stares distractedly out the window. “They say it’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. But sometimes flies refuse both, so you have to resort to smashing the life out of them.” Her gaze focuses back on me with a chilling intensity. “There’s a man staying here with two teenage sons. I’ll point them out to you tonight at dinner. What we need is simple. At some point in the next two days, you take this,” she holds up a small jump drive, “and upload the contents onto the man’s laptop.”
She hands me the drive and I think it should burn me but it’s lifeless plastic.
“Why?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Well, why have me do it? Why can’t someone else?”
“Because I want to see what you come up with. Think of it as an exercise in practical problem solving. Extra credit. How do you manipulate one adult man and two teenage boys into giv
ing you access to their rooms? More important, how do you do it all with nothing pointing back to you for blame?”
“And if something goes wrong?”
That smile. I want to punch holes in her perfect white teeth because they are wrong, they aren’t what she is really, she’s a monster.
“If I were you, I’d be very careful to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
ANNIE
One Year Before Keane
“—DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS. I FEEL LIKE MY ENTIRE FUTURE has been stripped away, you know? I haven’t even finished my research grant applications, because what’s the point?”
I freeze in the hallway, certain that I am not supposed to be hearing Aunt Ellen’s phone conversation. Ice clinks in her glass, and then she sets it back on the coffee table with a resigned thud.
“No, he’s out of the picture now, too. Turns out neither of us wanted kids, but he had the option to get away. I know I shouldn’t blame my half sister for dying, but seriously, it was really selfish of her.” She laughs bitterly.
I back slowly toward the room I share with Fia, trailing my fingers against the wall even though I know this small apartment well enough by now. Fia stirs in her sleep, whimpering, and I climb up to the top bunk and squeeze in next to her. It’s not enough space for two people.
There’s not enough space for the two of us anywhere, I guess.
“You should totally grow your hair out,” Bella says, tugging on the ends that hit at my shoulders. “It’s super thick and pretty.”
I smile, trying not to blush. “Thanks.”
She sits down next to me as other students pass us on their way to buses or waiting cars. “What are you doing today?”
I shrug, the concrete steps in front of the middle school hard under my tailbone. “Nothing.” I hope I sound casual. Bella’s the first person to really be nice to me since we moved here. I know people are intimidated by my disability. They’re either falsely sweet or just avoid me. Bella is a little too interested in it—constantly asking me questions, being shocked when I can do basic things on my own, going out of her way to “help” me when we’re in crowds—but at least she’s a friend.
Annie and Fia Page 1