Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  “She’s been pretty wound up, sort of on edge,” Richard says, handing me the now-warm coffee. “But she always is during finals. Why do you ask?”

  “She just seems . . . different. Like she’s hiding something.” I don’t know why I’m saying any of this, but I guess I just need someone to commiserate with.

  “She’s been a bit more worried about you lately, I know,” Richard says. He sits down across from me again. “And not just her dreams about losing you with her keys again. Like waking up in the middle of the night declaring you can no longer do the dishes because you might cut your hand off in the garbage disposal.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

  “And to think that all of this time I’ve been at risk for hand mutilation,” I say. “Well, that’s what I must have noticed.” I stand and pick up my backpack, sure I’m not going to learn anything new about Mom from Richard. If she actually stole state secrets, she wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. “Bedtime for Bonzo.”

  “You’ve barely had a sip of your decaf,” Richard says.

  I pick up the cup and take a long gulp. “Mmm. All the flavor, none of the punch.” I head up the stairs, cup in hand. “Night.”

  “Night, kiddo.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the morning, everyone’s gone when I wake up, and we’re out of coffee. I’ve got a few minutes to spare before I catch the bus, so I hustle out of the house and stop by the American Dream Diner on the way to work. Even though it makes me sad I’m not meeting Charlie here, the coffee is good, and Sylvester always cheers me up.

  “Hiya, girl,” Sylvester says as I walk in, the bell jingling behind me. He’s not wearing an apron today, and as he gets to his feet behind the counter, I see the bright colors of the Ugandan flag on his T-shirt.

  “Hey Sylvester,” I say, walking up to the counter. “Rockin’ the homeland today?”

  “American diner, Ugandan heart,” he says. “Miss the bus?”

  “Not yet.” I shake my head. “Just a coffee to go.”

  “Eat something,” he says. “I’ll make it real quick. I don’t want your mama saying I don’t feed you.”

  “Okay.” I smile. “I’ll have a breakfast bagel, no meat, no egg, just cheese.”

  “So a cheese sandwich,” Sylvester says. “Coming right up.” He walks into the kitchen, propping the door open so I can see him. “Where’s Charlie boy?” he asks.

  I pull out a stool and sit at the counter. “We kind of broke up.”

  Sylvester presses a spatula onto the cheese bagel on the skillet. “You’ve been together too long for that,” he says, leaning his head back to see me. “I had a bet you two were gonna get married.”

  “Me too,” I sigh. “You win or lose the bet?”

  “Lost. Leroy said the world would end first, though, so I didn’t totally lose.”

  “Where’s Leroy been, anyway?”

  “Called me from Mexico last week, talking loony, as usual,” Sylvester says, pouring a cup of coffee in a to-go mug. “Something about a great flood coming so suddenly—”

  “One shall not have place or land to attach,” I interrupt, recognizing the line the crazy guy on the bus said.

  Sylvester raises his eyebrows as he dishes the cheesy bagel into a white paper bag. “How did you know that?” he asks. “Been talking to Leroy lately?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve heard it around,” I respond, remembering how both the homeless man at the pier and the crazy guy on the bus were ranting about a flood coming. “All the crazies are saying the same thing,” I add.

  “They always do.”

  I put a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Thanks for the coffee,” I call behind me, as I open the door and walk out.

  “A great flood shall come so suddenly, one shall not have place or land to attach,” I say aloud. The bus pulls up at the end of the street, and I jog toward the stop, my coffee spilling over my hand. The bus driver sees me and waits until I get on the bus and sit down, breathing hard.

  I pull out my phone and type in the lines, and a quote from Nostradamus, the ancient psychic, comes up. There are several theories on what Nostradamus meant, but everyone agrees that the other two lines in the prophecy, including something about a guy named Jason and a specific mountain, refers to a great flood happening when an asteroid hits the ocean.

  A flood that destroys most of Greece.

  Even though I stopped by the diner, I still beat Indigo to the office today. It’s never happened before. He’s usually waiting in the staff room, a cup of coffee in his hand, or he’s pacing the recovery room floor, or setting up the viewing room with pen, a stack of blank paper, and a new envelope. Never to waste a minute. But today, I’m the one pacing the recovery room floor. I’ve already laid out the paper and pen in the viewing room and dimmed the lights. I’ve also drunk the coffee Sylvester made for me, eaten the lukewarm cheesy bagel, and then made myself more coffee. I’m about to give up on Indigo when he hustles in, his hair popping out of his ponytail and his tie skewed across his white work shirt.

  “I can’t talk about it, not yet,” Indigo says before I can ask him anything. I follow him into the viewing room. “The info’s under lock and key at the CIA, and I don’t have permission to talk to anyone until they give the go-ahead.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Can’t tell you. Like I said lock and key.” I start to protest, but he adds, “I haven’t got a lot of time today, so let’s get to work.”

  “But I have something important—”

  “It can wait,” he says.

  Normally I would fight him on it, but since what I’m about to tell him could ruin our relationship forever, as well as make both me and Jasper lose our jobs, and if I’m not careful, expose my mom as a traitor, I am eager to put it off. Besides, I tell myself, who knows what I could find out in this upcoming session?

  We take our places in the viewing room—me on the couch, him in the chair—and I promise myself that I’ll tell him everything after our session.

  “Focus, Callie,” I hear Indigo say, his voice impatient.

  The first thing I see when I get into my vision is the man lying facedown on a pile of broken glass, in the shade of a large building. He’s wearing a black hoodie, the hood pulled over his head. Above him, the air is thick with red smoke. I get a nervous, gnawing feeling in my stomach, like I haven’t eaten in days. There’s something about him, something I can’t put my finger on. I want him to move, to show me he’s still alive, but except for his right arm twitching, he’s completely still. Then slowly, his right arm moves to one side of his body, and then his left arm, getting ready to push himself up. On his left hand, I see the star-shaped tattoo.

  “What are you seeing?” Indigo asks over my vision.

  I focus on the man as he pushes himself onto his knees under the layer of red smoke, and then raises his face to the sky. His hood falls back, revealing his face, and my throat feels like it’s being squeezed by a giant fist.

  It’s Charlie’s who’s trapped under the radiation.

  It can’t be him! My mind screams over and over. Charlie doesn’t have a tattoo.

  But it is him. It’s his copper eyes staring up at the building above him, and his lips mouthing words I can’t hear. At this moment, all I know is that I have to stop this from happening to Charlie before it happens, although I don’t know where, and I don’t know when.

  “What are you doing?” Indigo asks.

  Behind my closed eyelids I see Charlie again. He’s fighting to get to his feet, red smoke pressing in all around him.

  “I just saw Charlie—” I start, but then I hear another voice, one I’ve never heard in this office before.

  “Calm down, Mr. Starr,” the voice says.

  I open my eyes, and a few feet from me, Indigo is struggling between two security guards, both wearing T-shirts that say Shady Hills.

  “I’m not
going anywhere,” Indigo says, but they’re not listening. They move him out of his chair and across the room in one fluid motion.

  “What’s going on?” I demand.

  “Answer the girl!” Indigo says, but his order is met by complete silence. I’ve never seen Indigo so angry. His face is this crazy pink color and he’s spitting out obscene words as the security guards finally lug him out of the viewing room. “That son of a bitch,” Indigo shouts as they drag him past the recovery room’s pale blue couches. I jump up and stumble out of the viewing room after him, noticing how Indigo’s voice is alternating between whiny and deep, like maybe he is a little crazy. “He did this!”

  “Who are you talking about?” I ask, but Indigo can’t hear me over his roaring voice.

  “Where’s Anthony?” Indigo demands. He looks wildly around the room, as if expecting Anthony to jump out and knock the men out at any moment.

  “This is above his pay grade,” one of the guards says.

  “You can’t just take him!” I yell. “This can’t be legal!”

  The guards just sneer at me as they continue to pull Indigo toward the door.

  “I’m not the first,” Indigo warns, wrenching his body around to stare at me, “and I won’t be the last.”

  One of the guards reaches for the door handle, but it opens before he gets to it. Jasper strolls in, motorcycle helmet hanging from his hand. He stops and stares at Indigo, the two guards, and me. “What going on?”

  “Get out of the way, kid,” a guard says.

  Jasper blocks the doorway leading out to the hall. His arms are crossed and there’s an angry scowl on his face. “You’re not taking him anywhere.”

  “Move before you get hurt, Jasper. You can’t help me,” Indigo says, and then he looks at me. “You have to stop it.”

  “Stop what?” I ask.

  “We are under orders to take him, by force if necessary,” a guard says to Jasper, who still hasn’t moved. He pushes Jasper from the doorway as the other guard leads a hysterical Indigo out into the hallway.

  “Stop Operation Firepoker,” Indigo says. He wrenches his neck around to look at me as the guards push him into the elevator and press the close button.

  “What is that?” I ask Indigo as the elevator door closes between us. “What is Operation Firepoker?” I yell through the elevator door.

  “Callie, wait!” Jasper says, but I’m already racing to the stairwell and down two flights of stairs. As I run through the lobby, Anthony steps out from behind the front desk, and I run right into him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Move,” I say, shoving him out of the way. “Please.”

  I dash outside, and next to the waiting van, Indigo’s head is ripped back, and his eyes are wilder than I’ve ever seen him. He’s roaring, his arms spread out like wings, and the two guards grapple to maintain hold of him.

  “They need me here!” Indigo yells, squeaking on the word need.

  Yes, we do. I need you. I run up to the van just as a guard lowers Indigo’s head and shoves him into the backseat. The guard slams the door and turns around to face me.

  “Back up,” he says. I step forward anyway and yank on the door handle, but it’s locked. The guard stares at me in amusement, and then he walks around the van and joins the other guard in the front.

  I push my face against the window to try to see Indigo, but the glass is too dark, so I just place my hand against the cold glass as if I could reach him. Then the engine starts, and the van begins to move. Jasper is suddenly beside me, touching my arm gently, guiding me backward with only his fingertips.

  “Don’t, Callie,” Jasper says. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  The van slips out from beneath my palm and drives away, taking Indigo with it. I want to run after it, but I know that Jasper’s half-right: there’s nothing I can do right now.

  But I can, and will, find a way to help him. “Indigo is not crazy,” I say to Jasper. “Someone made him look that way.”

  Around us, the students in the quad have dropped their books and Frisbees and are watching us with curious eyes.

  “It must be a mistake,” Jasper says. “Paperwork or something.”

  “I don’t think so,” I respond, trying to ignore their stares. “You didn’t hear what Indigo said this morning when he got here. He knew something,” I add, turning my back to the students. “And he was in a hurry, like he knew they were coming for him.”

  “Who would want Indigo locked up?” Jasper asks.

  When I think about it, names scroll through my head faster than I can count. There are hundreds of people who could want Indigo locked up. He could be the target of any of the criminals who Branch 13 has managed to stop. The thought makes me shiver.

  “At least we know he’s somewhere safe,” Jasper continues. “If there’s a good side to this, it’s that Shady Hills is a treatment center, not some criminal’s basement.”

  I reluctantly agree, but I’m still upset that Indigo is being held anywhere against his will. “Let’s go to Shady Hills and demand an explanation,” I say. “See if we can get him out of there.”

  “At the risk of sounding insensitive, we have no grounds to stand on: we’re not family, and officially, we have no ties to him. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve never met Indigo Starr.”

  “Maybe I’m his long-lost niece, then,” I respond. Jasper starts to argue, but I interrupt. “Are you going to take me there or not?”

  “I know you’ll go there with or without me,” Jasper says, “and I don’t want you going to that place alone.”

  I smile at him gratefully, but the grin quickly fades off my face when I remember how Indigo was forced into the back of the van like an animal. “You get your bike, I’ll find out the visiting hours.” Jasper nods and jogs off in the direction of the parking lot.

  I pull my phone out and search for Shady Hills Treatment Center. On the About page, it says that the visiting hours are between eight and ten every morning, and it’s around nine now. “Absolutely no visitors outside of visiting hours,” the website says. We can make it if we hurry.

  Getting to Shady Hills takes almost thirty minutes, and we wouldn’t have made it without Jasper’s insane (but not blindfolded) maneuvering through traffic. But since Shady Hills is all the way across the city in the Tenderloin neighborhood, which is scary at the best of times, I’m glad I didn’t come alone. The way Jasper is nervously looking around as we drive up, he’s probably doubting his decision to drive me here.

  “Stop here,” I say, and Jasper stops the bike in front of a neon cross that says Jesus Saves. Underneath the cross, there are two dark glass doors with no sign. I glance at the GPS on my phone.

  “It says it’s here,” I say.

  “I don’t see it—”

  “There,” I say, pointing to a small sign that says SHTC. “That was on the side of the van. Shady Hills Treatment Center.”

  “Or Shit Happens Take Cover,” Jasper jokes.

  I scowl at him. Who can joke at a time like this?

  “I’m going in alone,” I say. “They might believe I’m Indigo’s long-lost niece, but niece and nephew, who are almost the same age, but look nothing alike? That’s pushing it.”

  Jasper sighs. “Fine. I’ll wait for you out here.”

  “Just drive around the block a few times,” I say. “Don’t sit here like you’re waiting to get shot.” Jasper nods, and I get off the bike and walk to the door. I don’t hear him drive away until the doors are shutting behind me.

  Inside, the cold is oppressive. It’s a squeaky-clean type of cold, impressed further by the glossy white marble floors. A matching white desk lines the wall opposite the doors in the empty lobby. Behind the desk, a secretary chews on the end of her blue pen, and I can hear the plastic breaking on her upper molars.

  “Oh,” she mutters when she sees me, and pulls the pen out of her mouth. She lays it beside the neat pile of lined paper on the desk before her, and folds her hand ov
er the pen. “Are you here to see somebody?” she asks brightly.

  “Um, I’m here to see my uncle,” I say, then clear my throat. “Indigo Starr. Your staff picked him up this morning.”

  The secretary squints at me suspiciously. I think she’s going to ask me to leave, but she doesn’t. “Let me look him up for you,” she says, typing something on the keyboard. She clicks through computer screens, her finger moving quickly across the mouse. “There were no pick-ups today,” she says. “Could he have been picked up yesterday?”

  I shake my head. “Your van showed up at his office an hour ago.”

  She taps her pen against her desk, considers chewing it again, but lies it down. Her expression is puzzled. “We don’t have a van. We have a bus.” She points outside to the handicapped-accessible bus parked on the street.

  Horror washes through me. Oh my god. Where is Indigo? If Shady Hills didn’t pick him up, then who did?

  “Could your uncle have checked in under a different name?” the secretary asks.

  I shake my head. “Thank you,” I say, but as I turn to leave, I remember something: Michael lives here. He spends a lot of time with Indigo, and he sometimes still works for us. He might know something about who could have taken Indigo, or even about Operation Firepoker. “Wait,” I say, quickly turning around. “Do you know all of the patients in this facility?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m new here. Why?”

  “My uncle might have checked in under the name Michael. Michael Ferrara.” She looks at me strangely, so I add, “That’s his legal name. Indigo Starr is just his pen name. He’s a writer.”

  The secretary nods in acceptance, which makes me think that maybe there are a lot of writers locked up in here. She clicks her way through several computer screens, and then she picks up the phone and says: “Guard needed at the front.”

  A minute later, a uniformed guard leads me through the facility door and down the empty hallway into a large circular room. Here, people in wheelchairs are gathered around the television, moving their mouths with the Dean Martin song the man is singing on TV, but no sound comes out. A nervous giggle escapes me, but it dies quickly in my throat when I see Michael. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, a few inches from the TV screen. Under his stringy brown hair and his wandering lazy eye, he’s mouthing the words to the song.