Second Thoughts

by Cara Bertrand

  But he was wrong. As soon as I said it, and meant it, the vision returned.

  Except this time it was complete.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I was surprisingly used to watching people die. I had no choice. I saw them all the time.

  They just weren’t usually me.

  More terrible than knowing you’re going to die, than even knowing someone you love will have a part in it, was watching it happen. A tragic silent movie of the worst possible horrors, starring a heroine unwilling, a hero unwitting, and a villain hidden safely offscreen.

  I’d seen how I was going to die. I knew where, I knew how, and thanks to a lucky tidbit of information from Carter, I even knew when.

  There was no time stamp on my visions, which would have made this gift/curse of mine so much more useful, but just before I left for curfew, after Carter gave me one final, reluctant kiss goodbye, he said, “Hey, did I tell you my uncle’s coming to graduation this year? It’s supposed to be a surprise, but I figured he wouldn’t mind if I told you.”

  Actually, he probably would.

  I could have guessed anyway, but it was helpful to have confirmation. Since the beginning of the year, even if it was unspoken, I’d known the deadline for my answer—join the Perceptum or not—coincided with graduation.

  Now I was pretty sure I wouldn’t even make it to graduation.

  The thing I couldn’t figure out was why. I mean, the fact that I knew the secret of Mark Penrose was probably good enough reason for Senator Astor to decide once and for all to eliminate me too, but I didn’t think that was it. He didn’t know I knew, and I’d decided not to tell. Not yet. My gift would have told me the moment I touched Carter whether just the knowledge of his father’s murder would lead to mine. But it didn’t.

  The vision hadn’t returned until I’d definitively chosen Boston.

  What was so important about Boston? And why was the vision complete this time? I couldn’t understand the nuances of what I’d done or hadn’t done that brought me to this. Maybe because knowing what I knew, I was also certain I’d never join the Perceptum. That made some sense. If that was it, I wondered a little why my refusal to work for the Perceptum hadn’t maintained the vision all along. Maybe before now I hadn’t believed it enough. Maybe Senator Astor didn’t.

  Ultimately, though, whatever it was, the why didn’t matter. I didn’t understand this compulsion, why he’d want to kill anyone, including me, and I might never. All that mattered was this:

  I was going to die, and I had a plan to save myself.

  I had a lot of work to do before graduation and not a lot of time.

  SOME OF THAT work was to make things right with my best friend. I was angry at her, and at myself, but most of all, I missed her. But I’d never been in a fight like this before and I had no idea how to end it.

  So I did it by accident. I came into our room to find my once perpetually happy roommate sobbing at her desk.

  “Hey,” I said gently, rushing over and ignoring the fact that we weren’t speaking. Her head was down, face buried in her folded arms, and her body shook with crying. I brushed my fingers through her soft curls without thinking. It always made me feel better when Carter did that to me. “What’s the matter?”

  She stiffened when I touched her but then only sobbed harder before finally wailing, “I hate Iowa!”

  Er. Iowa? It wasn’t the answer I expected for her level of sorrow. I’d barely ever thought about Iowa, let alone generated any emotion over it, but I’d go with it. This was probably the most we’d said to each other in weeks. “What has Iowa done to make you hate it so much you’re crying?” I probably should have known the answer.

  “Caleb is going to Iowa for college. Iowa! Where the population ratio is forty cornstalks to one. I thought…I thought he’d go to UMass.”

  I thought he would too. They’d been recruiting him for the baseball team and his brother was there. The main campus wasn’t that far from Northbrook, actually. But more importantly, it was only a few hours from Boston. Iowa, on the other hand…well, I wasn’t even sure there were daily flights to Iowa. I hadn’t realized he was seriously considering it.

  Once Amy started talking, she didn’t want to stop. Her eyes were swollen and red, ringed by pools of mascara, and her clothes truly did not fit. She’d lost even more weight without my noticing. I stepped back and sat quietly on my bed to listen while she moved as she rambled, pulling at her hair and kicking pillows. “It’s my fault, I know it. If it weren’t for, just, everything, he wouldn’t have…he wouldn’t…I mean, Iowa. I-oh-wa. It’s nowhere. It’s, it’s a freaking red state—”

  “Actually, I think it’s a swing—”

  “—and I don’t understand how he could go there. Without me,” she added very, very softly before she slumped onto her own bed.

  She paused long enough for me to ask, “Why is he going there?”

  “Full scholarship.” Her voice was barely louder than before and she tossed one of her smaller pillows up and down over her head.

  “And baseball?” She nodded and her pillow thumped into the wall. “Well…that sounds hard to turn down.”

  She sighed. “I think…I think I should just break up with him.”

  “What?”

  “It’s, just, it’ll hurt less now, I think. Be easier. Iowa is so far and I…I can’t even deal with him being around a freaking eighth grader while I’m here. I don’t think I can do it, long distance, and I don’t want to wait until summer.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  I’d forgotten for a moment we were still in a fight, that anything I said would cut deeper than usual. But Amy hadn’t. She exploded, sitting up on her bed and spearing me with narrowed eyes that filled with angry tears. “I’m crazy? What the hell would you know about it, you and your perfect relationship? Your boyfriend is ready to follow you anywhere. You have no idea, Lane. No idea.”

  No idea? Who the hell was she? I had every idea and then some. Amy was shouting, her words no doubt echoing through the building, and I should have known better. I should have stopped myself and not let her get to me and been the bigger person. Whatever. I should have done a million other things besides what I did next.

  “Perfect relationship?!” I shouted back. “You’ve got the perfect relationship and don’t even realize it! I’d love your new biggest problem—your boyfriend’s going to be a few hours’ plane ride away. Oh, how tough. You poor thing. At least he’s not going to kill you. Try dealing with that!”

  Amy’s sniffling stopped abruptly. “What?”

  Oh. Shit. “Nothing. I was just joking.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  “I—”

  “You’re the worst liar in the world, Lane. Your cheeks give you away every time. What the hell are you talking about? You said kill you.”

  “You’re right. I did say that.”

  She’d shifted on the bed and sat on the edge, looking at me with a baldly worried expression—completely the opposite of only a few seconds ago. “Someone…someone’s. Is someone threatening you? What’s going on?!”

  I was so sick of everything. Of lying, of discretion, of choosing between my friends and my heredity and having it be my heredity that was winning. Sick of secrets. The only person I trusted more than Amy was Carter, and he was scheduled to kill me.

  To hell with it all.

  With a sigh, I said, “Are you sitting down?” despite that I was looking right at her. When I realized I was standing, I sat down myself.

  Her eyes were wide and dry now. “If I could sit down any more than I am, I get the impression I probably should. Is someone threatening you, Lane? Is it—is it Carter? Is he…is that why you always seem so secret-secret together? Why you, no offense, kind of look like shit lately?”

  “No!” I whipped my head back and forth. “It’s—No. Carter’s not…you’ll understand in a second. And no one’s threatening me. No, wait. That’s not even true. Mandi Worthington”—Amy’s eye
s narrowed again—“is sort of threatening me, but she—” doesn’t even matter, I was going to stay, which wasn’t just insensitive, it was wrong. Completely, utterly wrong.

  It finally dawned on me what Mandi was really doing and she did matter. A whole lot. She was ruining Amy’s relationship. On purpose. On purpose on purpose. Not just because she was a Siren, but because it was also destabilizing me and our relationship. Alienating me and my best friend and pushing me toward making a choice. In a flash, I remembered the art unveiling, pictured the arm around her shoulder and her beaming smile up at her family’s old friend.

  Jesus. Where did the manipulations end? Everything Brooke had said made sense now.

  “Lane? I’m getting scared here. I need you to talk to me.”

  “You’re right,” I said, looking straight into her pretty brown eyes, which were round with fear but still determined. “I’m so sorry,” is how I started.

  And then I told her.

  SHE LISTENED. I have no idea how long I talked, but it was a long time. By the end, I’d wrapped pieces of my hair around my finger enough times that it was curling. My throat was dry and I wished I had a glass of water. And a shot of something stronger. I was exhausted by the telling, but felt better, lighter than I had in…a really long time. Possibly since the day so long ago when I first glimpsed Ashley Thayer’s death.

  After some creative cursing, some scientific questions I really couldn’t answer, and a few assurances that no, I wasn’t kidding, she said, “So let me get this straight: Carter Penrose is, somehow, going to kill you, and you’re still not only dating him, but sleeping with him on a regular basis. He’s either the best lover ever or you’re crazy.”

  “It can’t be both?”

  “Yeah, actually, it can totally be both. Wow. This is like…Romeo and Juliet, who I thought were idiots, except you’re the idiot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “It’s not as simple as leaving him. Besides which, I don’t want to.”

  “I rest my case.”

  I didn’t tell her everything, not about Senator Astor or Mark Penrose or the specifics of my impending death, but pretty much everything else. It was a lot to take in, far more than I’d had to deal with, but, “You’re really taking this…well. Like, unnaturally well.”

  Amy came to sit next to me. “Honestly Lane, I’ve always known you’re different, and this school and Carter were…something else, so. This maybe isn’t as surprising as you think. Plus, you forget I’m amazing.”

  I looked at her for a moment and then, tentatively, hugged her. When she embraced me back, I told her, “I never forgot.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she replied.

  We stayed like that for a while, hanging on to each other and letting the wounds we’d caused heal themselves. After a while I said, “You kind of look like shit lately too, you know.”

  Amy drew back and smiled at me. Genuinely smiled at me. She did still look pretty bad, what with the crying and confessing and the burdensome story I’d just told her, but her smile was the nicest thing I’d seen in a while. “Yeah, I know. Finally lost ten pounds though! And you know what? I feel better now. I’m not crazy. That stupid little Sententia bi—”

  “Don’t say it out loud! Jesus, Amy.”

  “I say ‘bitch’ all the time.”

  “We’re in enough trouble as it is, if Dr. Stewart ever finds out everything I just told you and she probably will!”

  I stared at her until she relented. “Okay, I get it. Don’t talk about Fight Club.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But seriously?” She got up and went to her dresser, picking up her hairbrush to run it slowly through her hair. “I wish you’d told me sooner.”

  I sighed. “So do I. But I…hope you understand. Why I didn’t. I still shouldn’t have.”

  “I know. ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’ or some shit. Prince Hal was kind of dink, you know? You should get a better motto.”

  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  She brushed her hair a few more times and stopped. “I’m going to bust her pretty little nose.”

  “Please don’t. Or wait until after graduation.”

  “She’s probably with my boyfriend right now.”

  “I’m sorry.” And I was. I told her how I’d warned him, and Carter had too, as best we could.

  “He’s such an idiot.”

  “He’s human.”

  She paused to look at me. “Are you?”

  “As far as I know. It’s just genetics, plus a little bit of help from God or the Universe or whoever.”

  We were quiet for a few moments, me toying with the laces of my sneakers I still hadn’t taken off and trying to figure out just how much trouble I would get in for this, Amy probably thinking about how gratifying it would feel to break Mandi Worthington’s bones. When that got old, Amy grabbed her desk chair and sat backwards on it in front of me.

  “Tell me again about the dying, if you would. Because I don’t want that to happen.”

  I told her how soon it was, and Amy put her fingers to her lips and looked away. After a deep breath she said, “So why don’t you just not do whatever it is that’s going to make that happen? It must be some kind of accident, right? Cater would never…”

  I shook my head. “It’s more complex than that.”

  “You really think you can…change it? When it’s happening?”

  “We did it once before, over the summer.” I told her the story.

  “Really? When was that?”

  “The day we went to the beach.” Her expression told me what a terrible and obvious answer that was. I cleared my throat. “The night we almost…”

  She laughed. “Ah ha. That explains the red cheeks. And the very un-Lainey-like recklessness you exhibited. Don’t you wish you’d just, you know, done it then?”

  No, I didn’t wish that, not really. Well, kind of. But mostly: “It wasn’t how I wanted it to happen, so, no.”

  After another while of sitting next to each other with the comfort we hadn’t shared in weeks, Amy broke the silence again. “Lane?”

  “Yeah?”

  “So you did that to Ferny?” We both looked at the plant, who was denuded to an alarming degree and looked rather pathetic in his corner. Despite the damage I continued to inflict on him, he was still hanging on.

  “I’m sorry,” I said for about the thousandth time of the night, though I meant every one of them.

  She nodded. “At least that wasn’t my fault. I take care of my boy. But I thought maybe he was just…reflecting my mood.” With barely a moment’s hesitation, she held out her hand, letting it hang in the space between us. “Try it on me. Your idea. Instead of killing my plant some more and not really testing it.”

  “Amy—”

  “Just do it, Lane. I trust you.”

  No matter what she’d said before, she was crazy. I didn’t trust myself. Her mind, maybe her life, was at stake. I’d told her about my theory, even about how her relationship, Mandi’s meddling and something Caleb had said, was instrumental in my figuring it out, but I wasn’t ready to test it. I wasn’t sure I—

  She interrupted my thinking before I could hyperventilate. “Listen. I get the risks, but you need a human subject and I trust you. I know you, too. This is a thing you’ve never done before. You’ll never try it unless I make you. Do it.”

  She shook her hand at me and I reached forward, grasping her around the wrist, where I could feel her pulse beating behind my fingers. I was shaking, but I held on.

  It was the determination in Amy’s eyes that did it. Excitement might have been a better word. She wanted to be part of this. I could see it. It was easy to forget that she was a genius, and a huge science nerd, and this was her passion. She was about to become a catalyst, Subject 1 in an experiment that had never been attempted before. And because it was Amy, I could not fail.

  I licked my lips. “Ask me about a secret you’d li
ke to know. Any secret.”

  She grinned wickedly before asking exactly what I knew she would and I told her.

  A second later, I made her forget.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Unfortunately, it would take more than one Thought to undo all the damage between Amy and Caleb. I wasn’t honestly sure they could. Amy was trying again, coming back to herself more every day. But it wasn’t something that could happen overnight, and was made more difficult by the restrictions she was still under.

  And also by the continued presence of Mandi Worthington. She had no interest in going away, and poor, beleaguered Caleb didn’t necessarily want her to. He was under her spell, but worse, he’d fallen out of Amy’s. It was a new game I played, keeping Amy away from Mandi with the threat of the Honor Board’s warnings my constant refrain.

  Spring break came and went, and Amy and Caleb didn’t speak the entire time. My roommate was despondent by the time we returned to campus, sinking back into the bitter abyss she’d only recently started to pull herself out of.

  “I’m telling him tomorrow,” she announced. She lugged her bag of fresh laundry up the stairs in front of me, with her graduation dress in its garment bag thrown too casually on top of it.

  “You can’t.”

  “This isn’t even my secret and it’s ruining my life! I’m telling him.”

  We argued our way into our room, where I closed the door behind us and rounded on her. I wanted to tell her that one boy wasn’t her whole life, but who was I to talk? Instead, I said, “That’s not fair.”

  “Yeah?” Amy hung her dress in the closet with enough force to remove the wrinkles she’d created on the way from the car. “Well, life’s not fair! Heard that one?”

  I stared at her. “You’re kidding me, right?” My life was, as she knew, approaching its possible end.

  “Shit.” She looked at her feet and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. But I have to tell him. I can’t let it end like this.”

  “It’s not over yet.”