“What?” I said, turning back to him.
Isaac’s eyes widened at me—he’d witnessed the exchange too. He tilted his head toward Ms. Ramsey.
“Tell her,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. I had told Isaac what a fake Mae was and how I wanted to expose her—maybe this was my chance.
Isaac urged me on with his eyes.
Ticking back to Mae, I saw she was still rummaging through her bag for the bottle.
“Ms. Ramsey!” I called. She looked up from her stapling.
“We’ll start in a few minutes. I’m almost done, but this thing keeps jamming,” she said, tapping the stapler.
“Actually, I have a question,” I vamped.
She looked at me expectantly.
“It’s—about a passage in the book,” I said, picking up the paperback off my desk.
Unable to resist helping someone, Ms. Ramsey sighed and stepped over in her furry snow boots, which were finally approximate to being weather-appropriate.
As the teacher walked over, Mae pulled her orange pill bottle out of her backpack.
Ms. Ramsey approached my desk. I could hear Mae open the bottle and shake the pills out. I had to get Ms. Ramsey to look at Mae.
“Um.” I leafed to a page, then angled the book out so that she’d have to turn toward Mae’s direction to see it.
“So is Nick Carraway—”
“Excuse me!” Ms. Ramsey demanded. I followed her eyeline to:
Mae, handing pills from her prescription bottle to Jessie and Christine. Jessie was holding a twenty dollar bill.
Mae was caught red-handed.
Ms. Ramsey stared down Mae, who had no idea she’d done anything wrong.
“Principal’s office. Now.”
* * *
I couldn’t believe that I had been called into the school counselor’s office too. What did Mr. Towers need to talk to me for? Mae was the one who had been selling drugs.
Although it was my fault that she’d gotten caught, Mae needed to be exposed for the lying, deceitful hypocrite she was. Maybe then Mom would come to her senses and send Mae away.
Sitting there in the yellow-and-puke-colored waiting room, the thought of Mae leaving made me feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, stepping into Technicolor.
Mae paced out of Mr. Towers’s office. Her black brow furrowed as she glared at me, her green eyes cold.
I couldn’t care less.
I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She continued past me and out of the waiting room.
“Julia?” Mr. Lance Towers, the school counselor, stood in the doorway to his office. He was tall and thin and dressed like he’d lost a bunch of weight but never bothered to buy new clothes.
“Thanks for coming in,” Mr. Towers started, as we settled into his office. His fake leather couch was slippery on my vintage silk pencil skirt.
He glanced down at some notes. “So, you’ve had some—changes in your life recently. Is that correct?”
“Um, yeah. Well, one change,” I amended.
“Mae,” he said.
“Yeah.” Duh.
He looked at me for a moment, then scribbled down some notes in pencil.
“Tell me more about that.”
And I did. I told him how Mae had come into my home, taken the boy I liked, stolen all my mother’s attention. It felt so good to talk to someone about it all. Someone else had to know how much Mae was messing up my life.
He listened to it all intently, carefully taking notes.
I wondered why this was all about me, though.
“But she was selling drugs,” I reminded him. “I’ve seen her do it before.”
Mr. Towers took a deep breath, scratched his pink cheek with the eraser end of his pencil.
“Julia, your teachers have noticed that you’ve been—despondent lately. That you haven’t been giving school your full attention, and your grades are slipping. Now, I know there are things that have changed in your home life—”
“Well, yeah,” I defended myself. “I just told you how Mae messed everything up.”
“I understand,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s why I’d like you to come in for counseling once a week.”
“What?! Why should I get punished for something Mae did?” I could feel my face getting hot.
“It’s not a punishment,” he clarified. “It’s for your own well-being.”
“Is she even getting punished?” I asked.
“That’s being discussed at the administrative level. But she was unaware of the policy.”
Anger rose from the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t stop it from boiling over.
“That’s not fair! She gets away with everything! She barged into my life, she ruined my family, she even stole the boy I like!”
“I understand, Julia,” Mr. Towers responded evenly. I hated when people acted all calm and measured after something emotional happened. It was like they were denying what had just gone on.
“I believe that your actions—”
“My actions?!”
“—are a call for attention. We’ll now have the opportunity to discuss the things that are going on in your life so they don’t build up emotionally. How about Thursdays at three fifteen. Will that interfere with your volleyball practice?”
My plan had completely backfired.
* * *
I got a ride home later with Stacy after our volleyball game. I didn’t even want to play, but if I had skipped the game I would’ve had to ride home with Mom and Mae, and that was something I clearly wanted to avoid. It was just my luck that the coach actually put me in the game. However, I was so angry that I tomahawked the ball right over the net and scored a point.
When I came back to the house, my heart sank as I entered. Mae and my mom were sitting on the couch in the living room, drinking tea.
I started for my room.
“Jules!” Mom called, hurrying over to the stairs. Mae made herself scarce and slunk into the kitchen.
I had made it up the first few steps when Mom put her hand over mine on the banister.
“Why don’t we sit down and talk?”
“What do you care anyway?” I shot back. “You don’t care about anything I do.”
“That’s not true,” she started.
“You don’t care about me anymore! You even missed another volleyball game today!”
“I’m sorry, honey. Mae had to get a checkup at the hospital.”
“Of course she did,” I scowled. I noted that she was wearing the necklace with her half of the heart pendant she’d given me, my half of which Mae still had.
Mom took a deep breath. “Can we please sit down and talk?”
“No,” I hurled back defiantly, even though sitting down with my mother was exactly what I wanted. I just couldn’t admit it in the moment. “Say whatever you have to say to me here.”
She nodded, then put her other hand on top of mine. I steeled myself.
“Jules, I know you’re upset about our trip to Chicago getting canceled. I completely understand that, and I empathize. I will try to make it up to you. I promise. Maybe we can go in the new year.”
I was glad she was making the effort, but she was missing the point.
“It’s not the trip, Mom. It’s her! She’s ruining everything!” I didn’t even care if Mae was hearing me in the next room. “And now I have to see the school counselor because of her!”
“Well, I don’t think that’s a bad thing—”
“You don’t get it!” I screamed.
She was oblivious! She was so enamored with Mae she had no idea how she’d been acting. I couldn’t stand talking to her.
I tore my hand from under hers and bolted up the stairs.
Up in Danielle’s room, I slammed the door behind me. Danielle had been practicing a ballad.
“Get out!” I shouted.
Too surprised to object, Dani obeyed.
CHAPTER 42
“SUZANNE?”
&n
bsp; Hearing her name, Suzanne opened her eyes. It was still dark, and her mind searched for a reason for being woken up in the middle of the night.
A floorboard creaked under the carpet near the door. Suzanne looked over and saw a shadow.
Mae stood in the doorway, wearing the white nightgown Suzanne had bought for her. Her long, dark locks fell past her shoulders, and her face was pale. She looked like a ghost.
“Are you okay?” Suzanne asked, worried that the intrusion might mean something bad.
Mae shook her head. “Sorry,” she apologized quietly, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” Suzanne reassured her, pushing herself up to sitting.
“I just couldn’t sleep.”
Suzanne scooted over so there was room on the bed. Mae padded over and sat down next to Suzanne.
“I had a nightmare,” Mae admitted.
“Again?”
Mae nodded. She picked at a fiber on the bedspread. “I just—feel bad,” she confessed.
“About what?” Suzanne tucked her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees, making her look almost girlish.
“Jules,” Mae answered, distraught. “I know she’s mad at me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Suzanne soothed. “She’s adjusting to a new situation. It’s normal to have a few bumps along the way.”
“I didn’t mean to cause trouble for her. Or you, or your family. I’m so grateful for all you’ve done for me.”
Suzanne shook her head. “No, Mae, I’m sorry Jules has been acting out toward you. You’ve been getting a lot of attention, and she’s jealous. It’s a natural dynamic between siblings. Even though that’s not exactly what you are,” Suzanne amended. “But—you are becoming part of our family.”
Mae looked at Suzanne and smiled. It made her happy to be welcomed into a family who was kind to her—who didn’t want to hurt her.
“I’m really proud of how well you’re doing,” Suzanne complimented her. Mae was surprised.
“Really?”
“You’ve been integrating socially, making friends at school. You even have a boyfriend. I’m very impressed. It’s not easy, what you’re doing.”
“I bet all those things were easy for you.”
“Actually,” Suzanne began, “they weren’t.”
Mae looked at her expectantly.
“When I started at Remingham High,” she went on slowly, “I transferred in freshman year.”
“That’s when you met Peter.”
“Yes. But I used to live a few states over. My family—my mom, my brother, and I—moved. So I started at the high school new, in the middle of the year. I didn’t know anybody. Peter became my first friend.”
Suzanne glanced at the unused end table on Peter’s side of the bed.
“Why did you move?” Mae asked.
Suzanne turned and looked at Mae through the darkness. “Because just like you … I was abused.”
CHAPTER 43
I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF BOMBING MY Social Studies presentation. I could not remember one thing that had to do with Cold War USSR, which was the topic of our presentation. My brain was in Siberia.
Thank goodness Isaac was doing it with me so he could carry the weight, but I knew my individual grade would be crap. I’d been so distracted lately I’d hardly prepared anything.
Then Mr. Towers, the counselor, knocked on the classroom door.
“Sorry to interrupt. If I could just borrow Jules Mathis.” His voice was solemn.
I turned to Mr. Towers, surprised. “Me?”
The Social Studies teacher, who for some reason always smelled like pickles, nodded his approval for me to step out of the class. We went into the hallway and headed toward another classroom.
“Let’s go get your sister,” he told me.
What was going on?
When we reached her classroom Mr. Towers bailed Helen out of her French class.
“There’s been an accident,” he informed us.
“What happened?” Helen asked before I could.
“It’s your mother.”
* * *
Dad left work and picked me and Helen up at school, along with Danielle, and brought us to the hospital.
Mae came too. Mr. Towers had gone back to our Social Studies class and told her, after he’d told me and my sister.
Mom was in the emergency room.
“She was in a car accident,” Dad explained. “Her brakes went out, and she hit a tree.”
Danielle cried the whole way to the hospital, even though Dad told her Mom was going to be okay.
My stomach tumbled as I sat in the back next to Danielle, making her sit between me and Mae. I had been so angry at Mom lately, but the last thing I wanted was for her to get hurt. I hoped she hadn’t been injured too badly.
When we got to the hospital, we all rushed to her room.
Mom was lying back in the bed, her face pale. She had a bandage on her forehead, and her foot was in a cast. An IV dripped into her arm.
Helen, Dani, and I filed in, Dad and Mae following behind. Seeing us, a smile spread across Mom’s face.
“Mommy, are you okay?” Dani reverted to her little-girl self in the wake of seeing our mom like this.
Mom reached for my crying sister and hugged her with her non-IV arm.
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m going to be fine,” she assured Dani. Her words were a little slow, most likely from painkillers.
Mom looked up at Dad, who gave a tight smile. He was still living in the garage, so I knew that they must be keeping up appearances for our benefit, but I could tell he was genuinely upset about Mom’s accident.
“What happened?” I needed to know.
“Yeah, Mom, how did this happen?” Helen chimed in.
Mom’s glassy eyes blinked. “I was driving home from work, and when I got onto the highway, the car felt like it kept accelerating too fast. I couldn’t get it to slow down. I realized that the brakes weren’t working right. So I tried to pull over to the side, but I swerved, trying to avoid the other cars. I went off the road and crashed into a tree. Totaled the car.”
“You could have been killed!” I realized, putting the pieces together of how dangerous this had been.
Mom brushed it off.
“It’s just my ankle,” she explained. “It’s fractured, but other than that I am completely fine,” she slurred.
“What about your head?” Dani looked at the bandage.
“It’s just from getting bumped around.”
Dani looked at our mother with skepticism.
“Seriously, I am going to be just fine. I’ll be on crutches for a few weeks, and then with a little physical therapy, I’ll be good as new!”
She gave us all a wide grin.
“I can cook so you don’t have to,” Mae offered. I’d forgotten that she was there.
“Thank you, Mae,” Mom cooed. “That’s so sweet of you.”
“Yeah, we’ll all help out, Mom, don’t worry about anything,” Helen assured her.
The doctor needed to run some tests, so we filed into the waiting room.
Helen was texting, and Dani and Mae were also on their phones. I’m sure Mae was group texting with Larissa, et cetera. I went over to Dad and sank down next to him. My mind raced as I sat there stewing.
“How exactly did her brakes go out?” I asked him.
Dad took a moment. “I don’t know,” he answered slowly. I could tell he was disturbed by that. He then added, “I’m sure the insurance investigators will look into it.”
I let that sink in: Mom’s brakes mysteriously went out, causing her to get in a dangerous car accident. It was only a few weeks since we’d been here for Dani’s puppy attack incident. And now my mother was injured. Not to mention the fact that I had nearly been kidnapped. Mae had said the cult would come after her to try and get her back. Were they causing all the bad things that were happening to my family?
It was there in the hospital waiting room—staring at Mae
—that I came up with my ultimate plan.
CHAPTER 44
IT TOOK A FEW DAYS TO GET THE timing right. I needed a day when everyone would be out of the house for a while, so I had to wait until Mom was back at work the next week. She still was on crutches and couldn’t drive because of the cast, so a colleague who lived nearby was driving her. I knew Mae was out with Sebastian covering a model UN meeting for the paper, Dani was at rehearsal, and Helen had a game tonight and so was at practice. Dad was at work.
It was also the full moon, which I knew had some significance for Mae.
Tonight was the night.
As I walked into our house, I called out to see if anyone was home, just in case.
Silence.
I slipped into Mae’s room.
Right before this, Isaac had jacked his aunt’s minivan, and I’d skipped volleyball practice and he’d driven me into town. We’d stopped at a shop on the main street. What I’d bought had cost a lot more than I’d expected, but I didn’t care.
Getting my life back was worth it.
Now, moving around my bedroom setting up, I surveyed my things. I’d lived without my stuff for two months already, and I could hardly wait to have my space again. Get back to my normal life. With what I was about to do, that was going to happen once and for all.
After I’d finished my task, I stepped back and looked at what I’d done. Surveying the room, I smiled at the sight of:
Dozens of white roses.
I’d laid them all around the room. On the bed, the desk, the floor, bedside tables. There were so many flowers filling the room, it smelled like a garden.
A garden that would trigger Mae to go back to the cult, and give me back my life.
* * *
“Ahhhhhhh!!”
My mother shrieked from upstairs. I was sitting down in the living room later that night, calmly working through my homework. I’d finished editing my list of questions for this week’s “People You Don’t Know” and sent it off to Sebastian for approval. I assumed he’d dropped Mae home a little while ago after they’d worked together covering the model UN.
I took precautions to go back out of the house after I left the flowers, so that no one would suspect that I had been here, or that I had anything to do with what was happening.
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