Shattered

by Amanda Valentino

  “Plus, who knows?” Callie said. “Maybe this isn’t a travel agency at all. Maybe it’s just supposed to look like one.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, then someone’s doing a convincing job.” I was parking my bike when I noticed something carved into the concrete.

  A serpent with its body wrapped around a bowl. A black onyx had been set into the serpent’s eye.

  My hand clasped over my mouth, I remembered an afternoon shortly before Amanda had gone missing, when she’d asked me to go for a walk through Orion.

  “I realize you’ve lived here longer than I have,” Amanda said, pointing us down Main Street. “But tell me, when was the last time you really looked at the buildings in town—really appreciated them for their architecture?”

  “Hmm . . .” I paused for dramatic effect. “That would be never.” The truth was that while I loved art and all things architectural, I never truly had appreciated those things in a small town like Orion. I suppose you could reasonably say that I ignored the beauty of my own backyard.

  “Exactly.” She laughed. “‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.’”

  “George Orwell,” I said, recognizing the quote.

  “How much do I just love that you love literature almost as much as I do?”

  “I’m guessing a lot.” I smiled, happy to simply spend time with her—be it in Orion or anywhere else.

  It was overcast that day, and Amanda was wrapped in a long pink trench coat with matching rubber boots. Her hair, as well (au naturel for a change, a pretty shade of almond-brown), was slicked back into a runway-model bun.

  She pointed toward the doorway of the old town hall. “The detail is amazing. I keep drawing it in the margins of my notes in school.” She readjusted her non-prescription square black glasses. “I love the archways and columns.”

  We continued up and down streets for several blocks, scoping out ornate window ledges and ivy-covered brick. It was thrilling to see the town like this—through Amanda’s enthusiastic eyes—when all along I’d naively assumed that culture was reserved for places like Paris, Athens, and Rome.

  “Are you interested in pursuing architecture?” I asked her. “In college, I mean?”

  “I’m interested in pursuing everything,” she said, pointing out a snakelike figure carved above the door of the bank. “Have you ever counted up all the bowl-and-serpent markings on the buildings around town?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, mentally preparing myself to be stumped.

  “Don’t even tell me you’ve never stopped to admire all the bowl-and-serpent markings?”

  The truth was that I hadn’t.

  “You do know that there used to be a pharmaceutical college in town, right? Orion College of Pharmaceuticals . . .”

  “I think I may have heard that,” I told her. “The community center is one, I know. Isn’t that where it used to be?”

  “Précisément.” Amanda nodded. She informed me that many of the buildings around town—those with the bowl-and-serpent markings—were once owned by the college and used for various administrative offices and student housing.

  “And now they’re being used for places like banks and bakeries,” I said.

  “But things aren’t always as they appear.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning there’s more to the markings than meets the eye.”

  I looked back at the serpent above the bank door, noticing how its body was enveloping a chalice-like bowl. I knew I’d spotted some of these markings before, but being in a town I believed to be as culturally devoid as Orion, I’d never given them too much thought. “So what am I missing?” I asked.

  “What about the symbolism? Ever heard of the Bowl of Hygieia?”

  “From Greek mythology?”

  “Exactly. Hygieia was the daughter of Asklepios, the god of medicine and healing. Hygieia’s symbol was a bowl full of healing potion—”

  “Which is why she’s referred to as the goddess of health.”

  “I take it you’re a devotee of Greek mythology, too?”

  I nodded. “Ever since the third grade, when we learned about Zeus.”

  “Who was the grandfather of Asklepios,” she added. “Anyway, the bowl and the serpent are seen together as a symbol for healing, which makes perfect sense for a town that once housed a pharmaceutical college, right? That’s what I thought, too. But then I started really looking at the symbols themselves—studying them beyond simple college branding.”

  “And?” I asked, intrigued.

  She turned to face me; her gray-green eyes widened. “There’s something you have to know. Symbols and codes aren’t at all accidental. Everything has a purpose.”

  “To confuse me?” I asked, completely at a loss.

  “I think you’ll understand better if I show you something.” She led me down two blocks and around the corner. We stood in front of another building with yet another serpent-and-bowl marking. “Notice anything different about this one?” she asked.

  I wanted to tell her I did. But I didn’t. It looked exactly the same.

  “Look closer,” she insisted, taking me by the arm and bringing me up the front steps.

  The serpent-and-bowl marking was about four feet tall and ran beside the double set of doors. But I honestly didn’t see anything distinctive about it. I gazed up at the building’s four stories of windows, the ivy that sprawled across the brick, and the old-fashioned fire escape with its iron balcony and staircase. “Is this an apartment building?”

  “Could be.”

  “Well, there’s no sign . . . there’s nothing indicating that this is a business.”

  “But things are not always as they appear, are they?” she reminded me, pointing out the serpent’s eye.

  It was a black onyx.

  “None of the other markings have this,” Amanda explained.

  “And this means . . . ?”

  “So, there’s something going on in there—something that we need to check out.”

  “Because of an onyx eye?”

  “I’ve been following the eye,” she said. “Around town.”

  “It moves around?”

  “Exactly,” Amanda said, as if it all made sense. “When I was counting up all the marked buildings—twenty-three, in case you were curious—I noticed that the serpent marking on Jersey Street, the place with the red door, had the onyx eye.”

  “The shoe repair place?”

  “Except it wasn’t a shoe repair place at the time. It looked more like this one: a building with no signs. But still the onyx eye was there. It wasn’t until after the onyx eye had been removed that the shoe place moved in. The same thing happened with a comic book store on Zephyr Street. When the eye was there, it was just a blank building. But just a few weeks later, the eye was gone and all of a sudden it was a comic shop.”

  “That’s peculiar.”

  “More than peculiar. My bet is that something’s going on inside these buildings,” she said. “Something probably underground and corrupt. Someone is using the onyx eye as a marker for other people to locate them. And people must be closing in, too—people they don’t want to attract, that is—because why else would they keep moving around?”

  “Yes, but what is going on inside?” I asked.

  “Good question.” She smiled. “Care to find out if there’s more than meets the eye?” She nodded to the entrance.

  Part of me wondered if she was perhaps overthinking this whole serpent-and-bowl-onyx-eye business, but I was definitely captivated by the mystery. “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

  Amanda didn’t answer. Instead she slipped on an extra-large pair of sunglasses, despite the drizzly weather, and put up the hood on her raincoat, concealing her hair.

  She tried to open the front door, but it was locked. Not surprising. If this were indeed an apartment building, one would need a key. I was just about to turn away when Amanda touched my shoulder to stop me.

  Th
e door had opened a crack.

  A woman wearing a long white lab coat, with her hair held neatly in a net, looked us over carefully before opening the door wider so that we could go in. “Good afternoon,” she said in a silky-smooth voice.

  I took a step closer, noticing some writing over the breast pocket of her coat. The words ORION COLLEGE OF PHARMACEUTICALS were stitched there in black capital letters.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked.

  A wide smile sprawled across Amanda’s face, undoubtedly because her suspicions had proved correct. “If we could just browse around for a little bit?” she asked.

  The woman nodded and went about her business. Mean-while, we began ours.

  The place had the look of an old apothecary—wooden shelves, old glass bottles, metal stands. It seemed almost from another time except for the products on the shelves. There were aisles and aisles of pharmacy stuff—from bandages and painkillers to cough suppressants and chewing gum. Pharmacists were busy filling prescriptions behind a large counter area, while a customer was getting not only a swab of his saliva but also strands of his wiry gray hair analyzed.

  “Are you okay?” Amanda whispered, probably noticing the shock on my face. I mean, who would have thought she’d be right? What was this place?

  “Are you sure this is your first time in here?” I asked her.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why do you think there is no sign outside indicating that this is a functioning pharmacy?”

  “Like I said, this place is probably a secret. People probably only know about it through word of mouth.” She pointed to the woman mixing flowers in a bowl and adding what appeared to be the entire contents of a bottle of vanilla extract. “Maybe not everything in here is on the up-and-up. Or maybe it’s a front for something else.”

  “And the reason they stay in Orion, housed in the bowl-and-serpent buildings once owned by the college . . .”

  “A girl only knows what’s in front of her nose,” she said, as if this puzzle couldn’t get trickier. “And that’s often the stuff that she does not see.”

  “Clarity, please?” I asked her.

  “Maybe whoever’s spearheading this whole underground organization has some sort of affiliation with the college, or with the person who purchased the properties.” Amanda smiled and picked a handful of honey sticks from a pretty blown-glass jar. “I’m just guessing, of course. Nothing’s set in proverbial stone.”

  “Aside from the onyx eye,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “And even that can change,” she clarified, remaining dead serious. “The eye can be removed. It can be relocated someplace else.”

  “I suppose,” I said, more than eager to leave.

  “Look,” she said, facing me again. “There’s a lot about this town that you don’t know. A lot of scientists. A lot of people experimenting. And a lot of shady business.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just keep your eye on the eye,” she said, ignoring the question.

  At the same moment, a woman whipping up an egg concoction stopped mixing to look at me.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Not yet.” Amanda moved toward a sign that read TEA TREATMENTS.

  While she insisted on staying a few minutes, I exited out the double doors and waited for her outside in the rain.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Are you okay?” Hal asked, pulling me out of my memories. We were still standing in front of the travel agency. I gazed back at the serpent-and-bowl marking, now realizing the connection: the eye on Waverly Valentino’s business card matched the serpent’s eye with the onyx stone.

  “We should go inside now,” Callie said, checking her watch. “Especially since you guys are so pressed for time. We can just pretend we’re booking a trip and see what happens.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, deciding to tell them about the serpent-and-bowl significance later, since we didn’t have any time to waste. “But we really need to exercise caution in there.”

  “Okay, you’re freaking me out a little more so than usual. Because . . . ?” Callie asked, sensing my unease.

  “We’re always careful,” Hal said, before I could answer. “At least we always need to be where Amanda’s involved.”

  “Fine. Let’s go,” I said, passing Hal my bike so he could lock it up with the others.

  We entered the agency. A woman at the front desk hung up her phone. She was probably around twenty years old, with straight orange hair and layers of dark eye makeup. “Can I help you?” she asked, giving us the classic head-to-toe once-over.

  “Yes, hello. We’re interested in a trip,” Hal ventured a little tentatively.

  “I see,” she said, still eyeing all three of us. “And where are you interested in going?”

  We exchanged slightly hesitant looks, but then Callie took over: “Bermuda,” she asserted, gesturing to a sign on the wall. “Daddy says I can have whatever I want for my birthday. And what I want more than anything else is for my friends and I to enjoy a relaxing time away from the everyday hell we call high school.”

  “I see,” she repeated, seemingly unconvinced. “Does your daddy know that that’s going to be a very extravagant birthday present?”

  “Money’s no object. Especially when it comes to me,” Callie lied with aplomb. “Daddy likes to spoil me rotten.”

  Hal almost let out a laugh, but he was able to cover it up with a cough.

  “Well, how about I give you some literature that you can share with your daddy?” the woman said, still chilly.

  “That would be great,” Callie chirped, ignoring the agent’s sarcastic tone.

  While the woman fished inside her drawer for some brochures, I scanned quickly around the place. Despite the hustle and bustle of agents, we were the only customers inside—that is, until a familiar-looking man stomped in wearing a black baseball cap and dark clothing. I knew I’d seen him somewhere before. I recognized the slump of his posture and the lightning-bolt scar on his neck. The man went straight to an empty desk in the corner, opened up a folder he was carrying, and started sifting through the papers inside.

  “Is everything okay?” one of the agents asked him.

  “Just fine,” he said, his voice rusty as nails.

  And that’s when it hit me—exactly where I’d seen him, and where I’d first heard that scratchy voice. The hospital when we went to visit Thornhill. I remembered seeing him talking to Thornhill’s doctor—the same menacing doctor who asked us all those suspicious questions about our search for Amanda.

  “Any deliveries?” he asked the agent.

  The agent nodded toward a closed door at the back of the agency. The man responded by slamming his folder onto the desk. Seemingly preoccupied, he halfheartedly covered it with a couple of travel books. Meanwhile, my heart hammered inside my chest.

  The man headed toward the closed office door, pausing only once to glance back at the folder. He knocked twice, and then three quick times. The office door edged open, enabling him to scoot inside before it shut behind him.

  My opportunity to check things out.

  I went over to the corner desk, feigning interest in some brochures for Caribbean cruises, while Callie continued to query the woman about our fake trip. The man’s folder was in plain sight, sticking out from beneath a copy of Lady Liberty’s Cheap Eats.

  I looked over my shoulder to make sure that no one was watching. Only Hal was. He gave me a confused look, at a loss for my plan. I motioned to the desk.

  Luckily, he got the picture. And turned to reinforce Callie’s battery of new questions to the agent. I could hear him inquiring about vacation resorts in Maui.

  My pulse racing, I peered toward the back of the agency. The office door was still firmly shut.

  In one quick motion, I moved the book and flipped the folder cover open, still leaving everything on the desk.

  The page on top appeared to be a plot plan of some sort. In the bottom corner were the wor
ds Casteel Airstrip, and beneath that was an address, located in Saint Claude, just a few towns away.

  I picked up the page to see more detail. Running my palm over the plan, I could fully envision an airplane hangar in brilliant Technicolor—a giant steel building with two dark blue stripes that ran across the front and sides.

  I glanced back up to check on the agency. Things were still bustling. People were on their phones. Agents were still typing away on their computers.

  No one had noticed me yet.

  While Hal and Callie continued to distract our agent, I grabbed the entire folder and started rifling through it. There were charts, graphs, and coding of all sorts—none of which made any sense. I tried to stuff the entire folder into my bag, which was bursting with books and homework as usual. The inch-thick folder would not fit, so I went to shove it inside my coat, when something fell from it, landing on the floor with a ding—though to my ears it sounded deafening.

  My eyes snapped shut. I could feel my stomach twist. But luckily nobody was looking my way. Cradling the folder in my arms so no one could see, I sunk to the ground, pretending to have dropped something from my bag. I fumbled with the zipper, finally noticing what had fallen.

  A necklace. With an antique key.

  It was Amanda’s necklace. I would know it anywhere. I picked it up and ran my fingers over the teeth. A flurry of images sprinkled across my mind, all related to the key: on a ring amid twenty other odd antique keys; stuffed beneath a mattress; palmed by a woman with brittle hands but perfectly manicured fingernails; inserted into the lock of a Victorian-style armoire with brass fixtures.

  And then I saw an accident. A white car and a trail of blood. The key was clenched in the victim’s hand.

  My head started spinning and I felt myself get dizzy. I dropped the necklace into the pocket of the folder and fumbled to pull myself up. My face was burning and the fluorescent lights overhead stung my eyes. I looked back toward Hal and Callie. Hal was staring straight at me; his lips parted as if he could tell how distraught I felt.

  I stuffed the folder into my coat. At the same moment, Hal tapped Callie on her shoulder and whispered something into her ear. She must have told the agent that we had to go, because the next thing I knew, Callie was shaking the agent’s hand and moving to leave, a wad of brochures clenched in her hand.