The Safest Lies

by Megan Miranda

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Megan Miranda

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Getty/Valentin Casarsa

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Miranda, Megan.

  Title: The safest lies / Megan Miranda.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Crown Books for Young Readers, [2016]

  Summary: “When Kelsey’s agoraphobic mother disappears after years of claiming the kidnappers she escaped from were coming back for her, Kelsey quickly discovers that her mother isn’t who she thought she was—and she’s not the abductor’s only target”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015024031 | ISBN 978-0-553-53751-2 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-553-53753-6 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Fear—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M67352 Saf 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  eBook ISBN 9780553537536

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOR LUIS

  The black iron gates used to be my favorite thing about the house.

  Back when I was younger, they reminded me of secret gardens and hidden treasures, all the great mysteries I had read about in children’s books.

  This was the setting of fairy tales. The vegetation creeping upward in places, ivy and weeds tangling with the bars, and the way they’d light up in a storm, encircling the house—a stark surprise against the darkness.

  And we were on the inside.

  It was better to see it from this direction, on the way out. It looked different as I grew older. From the other side, through a different filter. A glance over my shoulder as I walked away, and all I could see were the cameras over the entrances. The sterile, boxed walls of the house beyond. The shadow behind the tinted window.

  I didn’t realize, for a long time, that this was the secret.

  Still, there was a familiarity to the iron gates, and I couldn’t help tapping them as I passed each morning, a routine goodbye as I left for the day. In the summer, the bars would be hot from the sun. And in the winter, when I was bundled up in wool, sometimes I’d feel a spark underneath the cold, like I could sense the current of electricity that was running through the top.

  Mostly, though, they felt like home.

  Today, my palm came away damp, coated with morning dew. Everything glistened in the mountain sunrise.

  Now that I was beyond the gates, and because I saw my mother’s shadow, there was a routine I was supposed to stick to:

  Check the backseat through the windows before unlocking the car door.

  Start the car and count to twenty so the engine had time to settle.

  Wave to my mother, watching from the front window.

  Two hands on the wheel as I navigated the unpaved driveway made of gravel, and then the winding mountain roads on the way to school.

  The rest of the day was a tally of hours, a routine I knew by heart. Swap this Wednesday for any other Wednesday and nobody would notice. My mother said there’s a safety to routine, but I didn’t exactly agree. Routines could be learned. Routines could be predicted. But it would be a mistake to say that. Honestly, it was a mistake to even think that.

  Here was the rest of my Wednesday routine:

  Arrive at school early enough to get a parking spot near a streetlight, since I’d be leaving late. Avoid the crowded hallway, hope Mr. Graham opened his classroom early. Claim my seat in the back of math class, and coast through the day, mostly unnoticed.

  Mostly.

  —

  My books were already out and I’d just about finished the morning problems when Ryan Baker swept into class.

  “Hey, Kelsey,” he said as he slid into his seat, just as the bell rang.

  “Hi, Ryan,” I said. This was also part of the routine. Ryan looked the way Ryan always looked, which was: brown hair that never fell the same way twice; legs too long for the desk beneath him, so they stretched under the seat in front or to the aisle between us (today: aisle); jeans, brown lace-up boots, T-shirt. Autumn in Vermont meant a sweatshirt for me, but apparently Ryan hadn’t gotten there yet.

  Today he was wearing a dark blue shirt that said VOLUNTEER, and he caught me staring. I didn’t know if it was supposed to be ironic or not.

  His fingers drummed on the desk. His knee bounced in the aisle.

  I almost asked him, on impulse, but then Mr. Graham called me up to the board for a problem, and Ryan started drawing on his wrist with blue ink, and by the time I returned to my seat, the moment had passed.

  First period was mostly quiet and mostly still. People yawned, people stretched, occasionally someone rested their head on their desk and hoped Mr. Graham didn’t notice. Everyone slowly came to life over the span of ninety minutes.

  But Ryan always seemed the opposite—all coiled energy, even at eight a.m. Rushing into class, his leg bouncing under his desk, his hands continually drawing patterns. His energy was contagious. So by the time the bell rang, I was the one coiled to jump. I’d spring from my seat, wave goodbye, head down the hall toward English, and pretend we hadn’t once shared the most embarrassing conversation of my life.

  The rest of the daily routine: English, lunch, science, history. Faces I’d grown accustomed to seeing over the last two years. Names I knew well, people I knew casually. The day passing by in a comfortable string of sameness. Blink too long and you might miss it.

  Wednesday also meant tutoring after school to meet the volunteer component for graduation. Since I was a year ahead of most everyone in my grade, taking mostly senior classes, this was the easiest way to fulfill it.

  Today I was scheduled to start with Leo Johnson, a senior taking sophomore science who I kind of knew from the Lodge. Kind of knew because (a) Leo was the type of person that everyone kind of knew, and (b) Ryan and I shared a shift at
the Lodge twice a week over the summer, and they were friends. Which meant when Leo came in, he would occasionally nod at me, and even less occasionally mention me by name.

  He dropped his notebook on the table across from me. “Hi, my name is Leo, and I’m failing.” He flashed me a smile.

  “Yeah, hi, we know each other already.”

  He slouched, narrowing his eyes. “Yes, but did you also know I was failing?”

  “Seeing as you’re assigned to be here after school on a Wednesday, I kind of assumed. Even more telling that you didn’t bring any books.”

  He tipped his head to the side and scrunched up his mouth like he was thinking something through.

  I looked at the clock. Only two minutes had passed. He didn’t even have a pencil. “Look, I get credit whether I help you or we just sit here staring at each other. Just let me know which you prefer.”

  He stifled a laugh. “Okay, Kelsey Thomas,” he said. “I get it now.” He gestured to my stack of textbooks. “Let’s do this. I’m told I do need to pass this class for graduation.”

  Leo turned out not to be the worst student in the world, though he was possibly the most easily distracted. He paused to talk to any person walking by the library entrance, and he checked the clock every five minutes or so.

  His head shot up again an hour into our session when he heard footsteps in the hall, and he called, “Hey, Baker!” even though it was the library and he echoed. Leo was the type who didn’t mind the attention—good or bad.

  Ryan slowed at the library entrance but didn’t quite stop. “Gotta run. Later, man.” Then his eye caught mine, and he lifted his hand in a half wave. “Bye, Kelsey.”

  I half raised my hand in response.

  Leo laughed under his breath. When I looked back at him, he was still grinning.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I felt my face heating up. I gripped the pencil harder and jabbed it at the paper, waiting for Leo to refocus on the problem.

  Thanks to my mother, I was way ahead in terms of school material. But I was too far behind in everything else. I assumed this was how Leo must’ve felt, staring at these problems like they were written in a code he’d never seen before.

  This was the code of high school. I had yet to crack it.

  —

  Leo and I both got our credit forms signed by the librarian, who took off just as fast as we did, locking up behind us.

  “Been a pleasure, Kelsey,” Leo said as he flew by, a gust of wind as I rifled through my purse for my phone.

  The evening routine: call my mom, grab a soda, drive straight home.

  “On my way,” I said when she picked up.

  “See you soon,” she said. Her voice was like music. A homing device. I heard dishes in the background and knew she had already started dinner. This was her routine, too.

  I hung up, and Leo was gone. The librarian was gone. The halls were silent and empty, except for the hum of the vending machines tucked into the corner. I slid a crisp dollar from my wallet, fed it to the machine. The gears churned, and in the emptiness, I started imagining all the things I could not see.

  I felt myself taking note of the exits, an old habit: the front double doors through the lobby, the fire exits at the end of each hall, the windows off any classroom that had been left unlocked….

  I shook the thought, grabbed the soda, and jogged out the double front doors, my steps echoing, my keys jangling in my purse. I kept jogging until I made it to the ring of light around my car in the nearly empty lot.

  It was twilight, and there was a breeze kicking in through the mountains, and the shadows of the surrounding trees within the overhead lights looked a lot like the shadows of the black metal gates at home, when they were lit up in a thunderstorm.

  I ran through the morning routine again, in reverse: check the backseat, start the engine, let it warm up. My phone in my bag, my bag beside me, nothing but gnats and mist caught in the headlights.

  This was a good day. This was a normal day. A blur in a string of others, passing in typical fashion.

  The reflectors on the double yellow line caught my headlights on the drive with a predictable regularity, almost hypnotic.

  October came with a chill at night, and I wished I’d brought my coat. I leaned forward, turned the dial to hot, pressed the on button, and listened to the rush of air surging toward the vents as I leaned back in my seat.

  —

  A burst of heat.

  A flash of light.

  The world in motion.

  —

  I didn’t know the air could scream.

  Don’t be afraid.

  The voice sounded far away, like it had to travel through water, or glass, before it reached me. And then there was that static—a radio? White noise, crackling like electricity, singeing my nerves.

  You’re okay.

  Warm fingers at my neck, and the voice, getting sharper. My limbs were too heavy, like I’d fallen asleep with an arm and a leg hanging off the edge of my bed, and now everything tingled with pins and needles—sluggish and removed—as I tried to shift positions. My eyelids fluttered as I searched for the muted walls of my room.

  “Can you hear me?” A voice that was not mine, not my mother’s, not Jan’s—but familiar nonetheless. A guy’s voice. Not my bedroom.

  I opened my eyes, and nothing made sense—not the feeling of blood rushing in the wrong direction, or the lack of gravity where it should’ve been, or my dark hair, falling in a cascade across my face. Not the sound of my own breathing echoing inside my head, or the scent of burning rubber, or the dull thudding behind my eyelids, which I’d opted to close again.

  But.

  Don’t be afraid. You’re okay.

  Okay.

  “Hey, I’m going to get you out of here. Everything’s fine.”

  Everything’s fine. I repeated it to myself, like my mother would do. But even as I let the words roll through my mind, like soft blankets tucked up to my chin, I felt the fear starting up, creeping slowly inside.

  “Where am I?” I asked. There was a pressure in my head, a stiffness through my neck and shoulders, a subtle throbbing in my joints as my limbs were coming back to life.

  “Thank God.” The voice was coming from behind me somewhere. Vaguely familiar. But before I could latch on to it, something mechanical and high-pitched started whirring in the distance. The static—sharper now, and clearer.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You’re okay. Don’t panic.”

  Which meant that (a) I probably was not okay, and (b) I probably had reason to panic.

  I attempted to twist around, but a strap cut across my lap and my chest, and metal pressed painfully up against my side, and when I attempted to push my hair out of my face, I could only see white billowing in front of my face, like a sheet. I was trapped.

  Not okay.

  Reason to panic.

  Out. Get out.

  I pushed against the metal for leverage as my breath started coming too fast.

  The other person sucked in a breath, wrapped an arm around the seat to still me. “Also,” he said, “don’t move.”

  His arm was shaking. I was shaking.

  There were other voices now, farther away, and the humming of the equipment grew louder. “Coming down,” someone called.

  “Okay,” the voice called back. And then to me, “Listen, you’re okay, you’ve been in an accident, but we’re going to get you out now. It’ll be a little loud is all.”

  I was in an accident? The bend of the road and the reflectors in the double yellow line. Headlights, and I cut the wheel, and the sound of metal—

  Oh God, how long had I been here? Had my mom tried to call? Was she panicking already, unable to reach me? I pushed my hair aside again, tucking it into my collar. I moved my arms around, feeling for my bag. Best I could tell, I was hanging—kind of diagonally and forward, and my purse had been on the seat beside me. So that would mean…


  I reached my arms over my head, but the metal was too close, warped and bent, and I couldn’t feel any bag. “Really,” he said. “Don’t. Move.”

  “I need my purse. I need my phone. I need to call my mom.” My breath hitched. He didn’t understand. I had to tell her I was okay. You’re okay.

  “We’ll call her in a few minutes. But you need to keep still for now. What’s your name?”

  “Kelsey,” I said.

  A pause, and then, “Kelsey Thomas?”

  “Yes.” Someone who knew me, then. Must be someone from school. Or the Lodge, or the neighborhood, maybe. I strained to look in the rearview mirror, which was closer to me than it should’ve been. The world appeared disjointed.

  The mirror was cracked and askew—I could see branches, the rock making up the wall in the side of the mountain, but not my rescuer’s face. “Ryan,” he said, as if he understood I was grasping for something. “Baker,” he added.

  “Ryan from my math class?” I asked, which was only one of the many things I could’ve said, but it was the first in my head, and the first out of my mouth.

  A slow, steady breath. “Yeah. Ryan from your math class.”

  I was surrounded by metal and white pillows, and I was presumably upside down, but I could wiggle my toes, and I could breathe, and I could think, and I was having a conversation with Ryan Baker from my math class, so I tallied off the things I was not: paralyzed; suffocating; unconscious; dead. My mother said it made her feel better to list the things she was—always starting with safe—but I preferred to carve out my safety with a process of elimination.

  “The other car?” I asked.

  He sucked in a breath. “Kelsey, I’m going to cut you out of your seat belt, but not until they remove the back panel. It’ll just take a minute.”