Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  The darkness inside the telescope feels smothering, so I try to focus on the steps Michael drew for me, and slowly, the pictures become instructions in my mind. Twist the metal frame of the large lens until it faces another direction, adjust the lens’s new angle, rotate the tube . . . In this complete blackness, I imagine bending the metal gears that I saw in Michael’s sketches, feeling their shapes meld in other directions. Once I can fully picture it, I try to recall how I felt on that night a year and a half ago when I accidentally bent the metal spoon, before I ever met Indigo, and it seems like a lifetime since then.

  I remember I had just finished finals, so I had all of Christmas break ahead of me. Mom was talking to Charlie about college, and I was holding my coffee spoon after swirling in loads of creamer and honey. I was studying myself in it, how my face contorted in its silver surface, and feeling that day like I could do anything, that there were no limits to my life. It’s like the world cracked open and showed me all the pathways I could take to get wherever I wanted.

  I remember the intense energy of possibility that trembled through my body, until I felt all shaky and hyped up, and then my upper arms started to tingle. Heat coursed down my arms, through my wrists, into my fingers, and then, without moving my hand, the metal spoon was bending.

  I have to do it again.

  I funnel all of my thoughts about what my life could be—both normal and exceptional—into the metal gears. I think about going to New York with Charlie, attending college, living a normal life, but also one with a purpose, stopping people like Monty—and my arms slowly grow warm. But then I imagine trying to balance it all, and leaving home, and my doubt weighs on my mind, and my arms get cool again . . .

  Focus, Callie, focus! The possibilities funnel through me, burning all of my edges, and although none of the options for my life are exactly normal, I’m okay with that, because maybe Mom’s right and normal is boring—

  —and then my future seems to crack open and show me everything I could do and be, taking my breath away. The swirling mass of emotions slowly becomes an intense tunnel of energy, and I can feel it project out of me and move objects as if I’m bending them with my own hands.

  I envision the machine parts in Michael’s drawings and let the arrows guide me through the steps. Heat races down my arms, through my wrists, and, as my fingers pulse with heat, my tension is replaced by this unearthly calm—and I can almost hear the screech of metal bending.

  I first twist the metal-rimmed lens and bend it forward to change the angle, and then adjust the tube that looks like a black light. Each movement sends heat waves down my arms and through the tips of my fingers. The last three steps—bending the metal frame of the smaller lens, turning it back on itself, and tilting the bigger lens again—are slow going, and I have to keep focused on the feeling that the world has broken open and showed me all of my possible paths.

  I imagine that the bending metal is screeching louder and louder, each millimeter twist a nearly blinding noise. In my head, it sounds like two cars slamming into each other, the crushing of steel against steel.

  My fingertips feel like they’re on fire, and the veins running up the insides of my wrists are pulsing with heat, until I’m sure I’m going to burn alive. . . . But then I feel the heat fading out of my arms, and the screeching winding down to a low whine, until it stops completely.

  Moments later, my mind still focused on the broken telescope, I view the laser beams shooting from Earth. They travel across the dark sky for several seconds, until they merge at the satellite. As they funnel into the telescope, I hold my breath, hoping that I bent the metal far enough.

  Then, as 9:02 turns into 9:03, the laser beams bounce against the mirrors and shoot off in all different directions into the dark universe, like falling stars.

  In that second, I know that somewhere in the distance, the asteroid is passing Earth and disappearing into the solar system, and across the world, a dark-eyed little boy is still alive. Then my mind lets go, every part of it burned to ash, and I sink into the floor, exhausted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Heavy. Unbearably heavy.

  Who knew skin could be so heavy?

  There are weights in each part of my body, disguising themselves as bones. I am pinned to Earth by my body mass. But even though all of my muscles ache from the effort it took to bend the telescope, my head doesn’t hurt, and more importantly, it’s all mine. With my eyes still tightly closed, I start to hear sounds outside of my own head. First there’s a loud, repetitive pounding, and then the pounding gives way to a sharp splintering sound.

  When I finally wrench my eyes open, it takes inhuman strength, but it’s worth it to see Charlie breaking through the door with an ax.

  I feel a grin creep over my face. “You found me.”

  “You’re a hard girl to find,” he says through the broken slats of wood.

  “The worst,” I agree.

  “I missed you,” he says, slamming the ax into the door, “in my head.” Charlie slams the ax into the door again, and another piece of wood splinters off. He peeks through the broken slats, and his gaze immediately flicks over to Indigo lying unconscious on the floor. A worried look crosses his face. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shake my head. “That’s my boss.”

  “Your boss?” he asks as he chops through the last piece of wood. It clatters to the floor, and Charlie leans down to get through the broken door. “What happened to your head?”

  I wipe the blood from my forehead with my sleeve. “I’ll tell you everything later,” I promise.

  Charlie steps through the broken wood slats, and runs across the room to me. He pulls me to my feet and wraps me into the tightest hug I’ve ever felt, one I had forgotten the exact taste of. I feel myself relaxing, muscle by muscle, because even though I’m still in this room in this horrible warehouse, Charlie’s here. He’s like a rock that the stream goes around but never pushes over.

  “You made it,” I whisper.

  His hands rub up and down my arms, as if trying to reassure himself that I’m really here. “Was there ever a doubt?”

  “No.” His breath is warm on the top of my head. I lean my head back so I can look into his eyes. There are tears slipping out of the corners. I kiss each tear off his face, until I reach his lips.

  There’s nothing in the world like Charlie’s kiss.

  It’s as warm as sunshine, cashmere blankets, and hot vanilla tea, all rolled into one. It’s the kiss I live for, and would die for.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, my lips hovering an inch from his. “That kiss with Jasper, it never meant anything. Honestly. It was always you.” Our lips touch again, and I feel sparks down to my toes.

  “And I’m sorry too,” Charlie says, “about bringing Amber to our place.”

  “Forgiven,” we say at the same time.

  Some minutes last hours, or months or years. Our minute lasts decades. The wind whistles through the barred window, carrying with it the smell of salt and the promise that somewhere outside this room, this world is waiting for Charlie and me.

  “Let’s get you home,” he whispers in my ear, and I know at that moment that Charlie is home. He always has been.

  “Help me get him out of here?” I ask, gesturing toward Indigo.

  Charlie nods, already moving over to where Indigo is lying on the floor. He bends down and grabs Indigo’s ankles, and I grab his wrists. Between the two of us, we lift him up and half drag him through the broken shards of door. In the hallway, Charlie hoists Indigo up and arranges him around his shoulders in the fireman’s carry Richard taught him. “I got him from here,” he says.

  Charlie slowly follows me to the end of the long, twisted hallway to the elevator. We get in and press the button for the first floor, and the door closes us in.

  “I’m not sure if he’s still here, but we need to get out of here fast,” I whisper, and then I flinch as my words are covered by the deafening squeak of the elevator.

  �
��Whoever you’re talking about,” Charlie pants, his breath coming fast under Indigo’s added weight, “I think they know we’re coming.”

  The elevator stops with a bone-shaking jolt at the first floor. Charlie almost drops Indigo, but he grips Indigo tighter around the knees and widens his stance to keep his balance.

  “Let me help.”

  “Got him,” Charlie says. “Just get us out of here.”

  The doors open, and I peek my head out and look around. “I don’t see anyone,” I whisper. Charlie nods, readjusts Indigo on his shoulders, and follows me out of the elevator into the last row of supplies. I feel much safer in here than in the exposed warehouse. Even though Monty could be hiding anywhere in these aisles, the tall shelves of emergency supplies make me feel hidden.

  “This looks familiar,” Charlie says.

  We walk through the canned food aisle, and then sneak down the rescue signal device aisle and pop out into the first aid aisle. As hard as we try to be quiet, our shoes keep squeaking across the concrete floor.

  “Just a sec,” Charlie says. He stops in front of a shelf stocked with oversized bandages, and sorts through the stuff with one hand while balancing Indigo on his shoulders with the other. When he finds a box of extra-large Band-Aids, he slides his finger into the box and pulls out a Wonder Woman bandage. “Hold still,” he says, but I shake my head. “Don’t tell me you don’t like Wonder Woman.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I ask. “But we have to hurry.”

  “And you have to stop bleeding.” Charlie rips the backing off and sticks the bandage onto my forehead.

  “Thanks. Seriously.” I throw him a quick smile before moving down the aisle.

  Charlie drops the bandage backing on the floor, grabs onto Indigo with both hands again, and hurries to keep up with me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about being psychic,” Charlie whispers. “There’s no reason you’d lie to me about something like that.”

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back. I peek my head out of the end of the row, nod once, and we scurry across the aisle into the next row of shelves. “It’s kind of hard to swallow.”

  “But I should’ve listened,” he says. “When I told Colin that we fought again because you lied to me, he started peppering me with questions, like he was suddenly the expert on lying.” He imitates Colin’s voice. “‘Were Callie’s eyebrows raised? Did she touch her nose? Were there wrinkles across her forehead?’” He laughs quietly. “I guess he’d heard a Radioman show about these little expressions that give everything away in, like, less than a second.”

  “Microexpressions,” I say. “In one one-hundred-twenty-fifth of a second.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. And when I answered no to all those questions, he told me you weren’t lying.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Charlie peeks out of the second to last row and nods, and we quickly cross the aisle into the last row, which is filled with thousands of gas cans. At the end of the aisle is the back door. “Not at first,” Charlie says. “But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you’d have no reason to lie to me about something like that,” he continues. “So I went to your house to apologize, and I found a pros and cons list of whether to tell me the truth. I couldn’t believe it, so I googled the Bernsteins in Oakland, and they don’t exist, not with a little girl named Emma, anyway.”

  Charlie turns to look at me, and when he does, he rotates Indigo’s body too, and Indigo’s foot smacks into a gas can. It falls to the ground, and its loud thump echoes through the warehouse. We stop moving immediately, but nobody comes down the aisle to find us. After several seconds, we start walking again, talking more quietly this time.

  “So I put the pieces together,” Charlie whispers. “End of story: I believe you.”

  “That means more to me than I can say,” I respond. I’d say more but there’s this big lump in my throat, like I swallowed my heart.

  We reach the back door at the same time. Charlie tugs on the handle, but it doesn’t budge. “Locked,” he says.

  “Then the front door is our only option.”

  We tiptoe back through the aisles and emerge into the main section of the warehouse. Here, the ceiling rises at least forty feet above us, crisscrossed with metal beams. Scattered across the floor are random boxes of emergency supplies, some dented like they’ve been kicked in, others cut open and overflowing with canned food.

  “That’s where we need to go,” I whisper, pointing to the far end of the warehouse, where the EXIT sign glows above the front door. Between the front door and where we are, standing just on the edge of the aisles, there’s enough room for two city buses, nose to tail. There is no sign of the two guards, and the room’s practically empty, except for the white van. It’s parked halfway across the space, directly in front of the glass-walled office, where Finn is sitting with his head in his hands.

  Charlie hikes Indigo up on his shoulders again and peers across the space. “Should we make a run for it?”

  Footsteps pound past us down the next row, and we leap back into the last aisle, grateful that there’s a wall of boxes between us. Still, the person can’t be more than twenty feet away. I listen to the footsteps getting farther away from us, and Monty pops out at the end of the aisle. He storms across the warehouse, his face steaming red with anger. In the office, Finn springs to his feet.

  “Let’s go while Monty’s distracted,” I whisper to Charlie. “But make sure he doesn’t see you.”

  Charlie points at Monty, disbelief crossing his face. “Is that Montgomery Cooper, Junior? The billionaire?”

  “The billionaire psycho.” I glance at Monty as he passes the white van, and then back at Charlie. “Tell you later. Let’s just get outta here.”

  Charlie nods. We step carefully out of the last aisle and tiptoe across the warehouse, every squeak of our feet strumming my nerves with fear. Across the warehouse, Monty reaches the office and steps into the open doorway. Finn, cowering a few feet away, strokes his red beard nervously. Both of them are so focused on each other that they don’t notice us inching our way across the warehouse.

  “Fifty-three years!” Monty shrieks as he steps through the doorway.

  Charlie glances at me, and I point to the white van. “Hide there,” I mouth, and he nods. He readjusts Indigo’s body on his shoulders, and even though he hasn’t said anything, I can tell that he’s getting tired. With his back starting to bow from Indigo’s weight, Charlie follows me toward the white van.

  “If it stays on its current trajectory,” Finn responds, “It’ll return to earth by then. Otherwise—”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.” Monty punches his left fist into his right palm once, and then again, and again. Each time, the smack of his fist gets louder.

  Finn’s glasses slip down his nose, and he quickly pushes them back up. “Sorry. I don’t know what happened this time. The lasers just didn’t merge.”

  “This time?” Monty spits on the floor. “This was the only time I had!”

  Charlie and I duck behind the white van before they see us. We’re halfway across the warehouse now, and as long as Monty doesn’t turn around, we should be able to get past them and out the front door in less than a minute.

  “Like I told you, I don’t know why it didn’t work,” Finn says. He opens the laptop and starts punching buttons on the keyboard. “But the asteroid will be back in only—”

  “Fifty-three years,” Monty repeats. “When I’m over eighty years old.” He kicks the trash can by the office door, and it crashes onto its side and spills out the plastic remains of what looks like several frozen dinners.

  Finn picks up a plastic plate and places it back in the trash can. “That was unnecessary,” he says.

  “Unnecessary?” Monty yells. He storms into the room, pushes Finn out of the way, and shoves the laptop off the table. Finn leaps for it, but the laptop hits the floor with a loud crash. “So is waiting fifty-three more years!”

&nb
sp; Finn falls to his knees, picks the laptop up, and cradles it like a baby. Behind his large circular glasses, his eyes gleam with anger. “I’ll add this to your bill.”

  “You want me to pay for your stupid computer?” Monty says. “And who’s going to pay for this, now that all of this is useless?” He shoves the table toward Finn, but he rolls out of the way and the table smacks into the floor. “And this?” Monty adds, kicking a chair toward Finn, who leaps to his feet. “And what about this?” Monty shoves the edge of a computer screen toward Finn, and Finn recoils just as it shatters across the floor where he was standing.

  Charlie taps my shoulder, and we both duck our heads back behind the van. “Let’s go,” Charlie says, and he nods to Indigo’s unconscious body across his shoulders. “We’ve gotta get him out of here.”

  I hold my index finger up. “Just a sec.”

  We poke our heads out from behind the van again and peer into the destroyed office. Monty is pacing back and forth now, kicking everything in his way. Finn is staring at Monty with pity, as if he’s watching a spoiled child’s temper tantrum.

  “Look, I did everything you asked,” Finn says patiently. “If you want to go ahead and destroy everything you have, do it, but I’m leaving.” He hugs his laptop close to his chest and tries to step around Monty, but Monty blocks him from leaving the room. Finn steps in the other direction, and so does Monty. “Very funny,” Finn says. “Now let me go. I expect that money in my account today.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Monty growls. He pulls his gun out of his jacket and points it at Finn. Finn immediately throws his hands up and backs up into the room. The laptop clatters to the floor once again.

  “Don’t do it,” Finn says. His voice is steady, but I can tell he’s fighting to stay calm. “It won’t prove anything.”

  “What do you know about it?” Monty shouts. “Get back!”

  Finn backs up against the computer bank, his hands in the air; and I immediately recognize this moment: I saw this in my vision, when Monty shot Finn. A shiver courses through my body when I see it. It’s startling coming face to face with your own precognition: it’s like having a déjà vu, but it hasn’t happened yet.