by Eileen Cook
I sat up. I’d missed something, although I would have sworn I caught every word.
“What did she say?” I whispered to Jamail, sitting next to me.
“Shhh,” he said.
Martina had finished her talk and was already walking back to her seat. I shifted again.
They started calling our names. When we practiced, they told us not to call out or applaud when anyone’s name was announced, but of course people still did.
Center of our social orbit. A star. I turned the words over in my head, trying to figure out what it was about them that bothered me. The words were like burrs stuck in my brain, digging their way in, catching.
Drew crossed the stage for her diploma. I heard her brother let out a whoop, and she pumped her fist in the air before she came down the stairs. Her hair was starting to frizz in the heat.
The row in front of me stood and shuffled to the side of the stage to wait for their names. Our row got up and stepped toward the stage. Once I was up, I couldn’t help but see the empty seat for Paige a few rows behind mine.
Center of the universe. Star. Planets. The words tumbled around in my head and then fell into place, like puzzle pieces clicking together.
My lungs locked, refusing to do their job. I tried to suck in a breath, but it kept hitching in my chest.
Jamail nudged me in the back, and I half tripped up the steps. I was breathing now, but too quickly. Black dots danced in the corner of my vision. I wanted to turn and bolt, but I couldn’t run away. The truth was inside my head, slamming around, trying to get out.
“Relax,” Ms. Hunt, my English lit teacher, said to me. She was standing at the edge of the stage, making sure we didn’t clump up. “Take a deep breath and enjoy this moment,” she whispered.
I didn’t even hear my name called. Ms. Hunt gave me a faint push in the small of my back, and I stumbled across the floor. I took the tiny leather folder that held my diploma from our vice principal and then shook both her and Mr. Boyle’s hands. I walked carefully down the stairs. My hands shook, and the faces around me were blurred. It was too hot in the gym. Sweat trickled down my back. Even more tiny black spots popped up around the edge of my vision, and they started to rush in, filling the space. My ears rang.
There was another teacher standing at the side who stepped forward to direct me back when I’d walked past my row, but I dodged him and kept heading for the exit doors. I heard Drew hiss my name, and someone else mumbled something, but I didn’t turn my focus from the red exit sign at the back. If I looked away for a second, I was sure I wouldn’t make it.
I hit the panic bar and pushed out into the foyer. Now that I was out of the gym, the ringing in my ears was even louder, like a car alarm in my head. I grabbed my bag from the pile in the corner. I started running. The doors to the outside were open, and I flew out as if a killer were on my tail. That thought made me break into hysterical laughter. I tore the flat cap off my head and tossed it aside as I ran through the parking lot. By the time I hit the far side near the playing field, I bent in half, sucking in deep breaths.
Center of the universe.
Planets.
She’d called herself Pluto—for the missing planet. It was a joke.
But you know what else is called Pluto? Disney’s cartoon dog. Disney.
Judge Bonnet hadn’t killed his daughter. My mom had.
Fifty
My mom wove her way through the parking lot toward me. She stopped to pick up my cap. I stood there shaking as she drew closer. There was no point in running.
“Are you okay?” She brushed dust off the cap and handed it back. “Did you get too hot in there?”
“It was you.” In my mind I’d pictured myself yelling out the truth in her face, but the words came out soft and hushed.
Mom sighed, but didn’t respond. She knew I knew.
“You aren’t even going to deny it, are you?”
Mom jerked her head toward the playing field and the empty bleachers. “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”
I laughed. “Are you kidding?”
Mom rolled her eyes, “Candi, there’s no reason to turn this into a drama queen situation.” She walked past me over to the bench seat. She carefully tucked her skirt under her.
I stood there for a beat, staring at her, but she didn’t meet my eyes. I took a few steps back toward school and then stopped. Where I was I going to go? I walked over to her and crossed my arms over my chest. “Why?”
Mom motioned for me to sit, and I sank down on the bench next to her. “Let’s just say I had another vision about Paige, about what happened to her,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”
I wasn’t sure if I did. “Yeah,” I finally croaked.
She looked out over the field. “The . . . person who did this. They didn’t intend for it to happen.”
I focused on breathing in and out. “You’re saying it was an accident?”
“Paige was going to break. No way she would have kept that story going. Once she came back and there was real pressure and questions, she would have given in and left you holding the bag. And if she hadn’t, what was her dad going to do? You think he wasn’t going to want to know where that money went? You would have gotten caught in the fallout.”
Was she trying to tell me she’d done this for me?
“In my vision she said if she went down, so would you.” She looked away.
“So—” My breath caught in my throat, and I had to swallow over and over to get control. “So this . . . person confronted Paige, then killed her to keep her quiet.”
Mom blinked and then shrugged. “I guess they panicked. Things would have happened fast.”
“Detective Jay you said you got the way she died wrong. Why?”
Mom tucked her hair behind her ears. “There’s a line between accurate and too accurate.”
“Paige was innocent; she didn’t deserve to die.”
Mom shook her head, her hair flying back and forth. “Paige was a lot of things, but she wasn’t innocent. She knew what she was doing.”
I pulled off my gown and wadded it up.
Mom grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me so I was facing her. “Stop. I was protecting my daughter. In both our cases, things went farther than we wanted.”
I pulled free of her grasp. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Because you didn’t have to.” Mom pushed the hair out of her eyes. Her hands were shaking. “Paige laughed at you, you know. She had you wrapped around her little finger. You were just a means to her end.”
“I thought—” My voice cracked, and I had to pause to clear it. “I thought maybe you had real abilities.” A bitter laugh came out of my mouth. “How’s that for karma? I made fun of people for believing in me, but I fell for your story.”
Mom wiped her palms. “I heard you on the phone. After you left, I went into your room and found the notes and figured out what happened. I realized then I had to do something, so I drove out there. You wrote down exactly where to find her.”
Guilt dropped heavy onto my chest. I’d basically drawn her a map to Paige. “I believed you.” Tears ran down my face.
“You believed what you wanted. You always have.” Mom reached up and wiped my cheek. “Oh, Skye, baby. We’re going to be okay.”
I pulled away from her. “We are not okay. There is nothing about this situation that is even remotely okay.”
She stood. “Let’s go home.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” Then I turned and ran.
The library was quiet. I went to the bathroom to wash my face. When I closed my eyes, an image of Paige rushed into my head. A hot rush of bile came up, and I spun, slamming the stall door open just in time to vomit the strawberry Pop-Tart I had for breakfast into the toilet. My stomach clenched until there was nothing but sour spit in my mouth. I went back to the sink and splashed more water on my face and swished my mouth out. I threw my cap and gown in the trash and buried them under paper towels. Scr
ew the deposit.
I made it to the reference room by keeping one hand on the wall, as if the library had turned into a boat on storm-tossed waves, but I was the only thing that was unsteady. I sank into a chair and ran my hands over the scarred table. I felt impossibly old. Every joint, bone, and muscle ached. It was as if my entire body were bruised.
I was surrounded by reference books, but there wasn’t anything that could explain how things had gone so fundamentally wrong. I wanted to reach back, step by step, and figure out how I’d found myself here. If I could identify what step had led me to this place, then maybe I could figure out what to do next. It was as if I were in the middle of a minefield. My next move could move me to safety or blow things completely up.
How had I not seen it? She must have always suspected something was off. Deep down, no matter what she said, she always knew I wasn’t psychic. At first she wanted to believe, but she must have wondered what was happening. Then she did what she always did when she didn’t know something—she snooped. I couldn’t be sure when she finally put it all together, but it was likely when Paige wasn’t at the cabin when I’d predicted she would be.
Detective Jay told me that Mom had made a prediction about Disney. She’d left it general. She hadn’t used the word Pluto. She’d seen the notes between Paige and me, overheard our conversations—she would have known the name. She thought of the dog, not the planet. She didn’t know it was an alias that Paige came up with—she thought it was a nickname. That’s why she mentioned it in her vision—she thought it would be an easy hit. She’d found my hiding places before. She’d listened at doors because she liked to know what I was up to, like a nosy sister.
I pulled out my deck of tarot from my purse and shuffled. The sound of the cards whispering as they touched was oddly soothing. I dealt three cards. I closed my eyes and formed the question in my head. What should I do? I flipped the center card.
The Hanging Man. Appropriate. That was me, the hanging girl, always trying to turn things upside down and see them in a new way.
I flipped the card on the left, five of cups. A card for loss and grief.
I stared at the card still lying face-down. Was I prepared to do whatever the card said?
I flipped it quickly as if I wanted to sneak up on my future.
The Wheel of Fortune. Fortune turns—sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.
I tapped the card on the table. It didn’t really tell me much. It was all in the interpretation. If I believed in destiny, then whatever I was going to do had already been decided on a cosmic level. What happened next was already determined and there was no point in being anxious or upset, because whatever I did would still lead me to where I needed to be. What happened next had been set out as my future from the moment my mom pushed me out into the world. Instead of fighting against destiny, perhaps what I needed to do was surrender to the universe. Time to stop sitting on the sidelines and join the action.
Or maybe that was just a cheat. Saying it was destiny was a way to justify my own actions. To give me an excuse to do what I wanted.
Fate and destiny might be what you make of them. And what you’re willing to live with.
Fifty-One
The apartment was silent when I pushed open the door just before five a.m. After the library closed, I walked for hours, ending up in the Pancake Palace nursing a cup of coffee and a greasy breakfast of eggs and veggie sausage until the waitress started giving me dirty looks. I hadn’t wanted to go home, but I couldn’t hide forever.
I stepped into the living room. My mom clicked on a lamp next to her on the floor. I blinked in the sudden light.
“You okay?” she asked. She was bundled up in her worn sleeping bag, surrounded by boxes.
I nodded.
Her gaze traveled over me. “Graduation can be overwhelming,” she said finally.
I nodded again. A tear fell from my eye, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. I stared out over the window into the apartment parking lot. The sky was already growing brighter. “You went through my things.”
“I’ve always kept an eye on you. I’m your mom. When you didn’t talk to me about things, I paid attention. Listened. Looked around.”
I glanced at my mom. “It wasn’t just about me, though, was it? If it hadn’t been for Paige and your . . . visions, you wouldn’t have a book deal or any of it.” There it was. My biggest fear. That she hadn’t done it to protect me and instead to get what she wanted.
She didn’t look away. “And I wouldn’t have been able to offer you the money to go away. We’d still be here.” She waved her hand to the room around us.
“Still, the way things turned out is good for you.”
“Good for us. And this time it went our way; other times it hasn’t. Haven’t you figured out by now that things aren’t fair? Maybe this is just good luck. The wheel of fortune turning in our favor for a change.”
I thought of the tarot cards I’d dealt mere hours ago. Was it that easy? Just choosing which way to read the cards, or the decisions we made. We were still dancing around it. If I asked her straight out if she’d killed Paige, she’d tell me. But she might not be honest about why she’d done it. Maybe she wasn’t even being honest with herself. My mom was great at the reality that served her best. But if I knew the full truth, I’d have to deal with it. “Paige’s dad will go to jail.”
She shrugged. “He’ll get a trial. With his money, there’s a good chance he’ll get off.”
“What if he doesn’t? He could sit in prison for the rest of his life.”
Mom sniffed dismissively. “What happens in the court case is out of my hands. The man’s a pig. He used his daughter. If he wasn’t guilty of this, he had plenty of sins that he was never held accountable for. The idea of him sitting in prison isn’t going to keep me up nights.” She heaved herself up from the floor. “And speaking of nights, this one is pretty much over. I’m going to put these last few boxes in the car. I want to be on the road before traffic gets bad.”
She pulled a fleece top over her T-shirt and yanked her hair into a ponytail. She hefted a box onto her hip and headed for the door. She paused in the doorway. “You gonna help?”
The back seat was packed to the roof. Getting everything in had been a high-tech game of Tetris, putting boxes in different combinations until they all fit. She stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts to buy us each a coffee, and the smell of it filled what space was left. It was still so early that we had the road mostly to ourselves. My eyes were gritty from the all-nighter. She’d insisted she’d drive so I could sleep. She’d even tucked a pillow in the front seat for me. I held it close to my face. It smelled like Febreze.
She pulled the car over in front of the police station. People were already going in and out of the building. The tulips that had been in bloom just days ago were already limp and dying. My mom’s fingers were white where they gripped the steering wheel.
“You have anything you need to say to the detectives before we leave town?” She glanced over quickly and then back out the windshield. “Any unfinished business? Because once we leave town, it will be hard to come back.”
I stared at the door. She was right. There was a limited window of opportunity. Would anything change if I told them what I knew? Paige was still dead. And it was still partly my fault. I could tell myself that I had no idea how things would turn out, but then neither did my mom or her dad. Destiny spun the wheel and did what it wanted, and the rest of us just had to hang on for the ride and do the best we could with the cards we were dealt.
Or maybe that’s what I told myself. That if destiny wasn’t happy with my decisions, karma would find a way to pay me back.
“Nope, I don’t have anything else to say,” I said finally.
Mom took a deep breath and popped the car back into drive. “Well then, let’s hit the road.”
Fifty-Two
I stood in front of the judge’s desk. I could see the top of her head where her hair color was
growing out as she looked over the paperwork. I’d dressed up for the occasion. It wasn’t as if it was going to make any difference, but it seemed respectful to make the effort. Now that I was here, I felt nervous, and I had to focus on not picking at the nail polish on my finally grown-out nails.
We’d only lived in Miami a month, but my skin was already a deep tan. I’d gotten used to going from the swampy heat of outdoors into air-conditioned buildings, but it was so cold in the courthouse it felt like there was a layer of frost building up on the skin of my arms.
The judge looked up at me. “It doesn’t make any difference, but do you mind me asking why?”
“It was never right. I just decided it was time I do something about it.”
She nodded. “Fair enough. Benefits of a free country mean we can all change our names if we feel like it.” She winked. “As long as you fill out the paperwork.” She picked up a thick fountain pen from her desk and scribbled her signature on the bottom of the sheet before passing it over to me. “You’ll need this to apply for a new driver’s license and passport.”
I looked down at the page as we walked from her office. With a swipe of her pen I was no longer Candi Thorn. My new name was Cate. I liked that it was similar to my old name, but more classic and still unique since it started with a C. I practiced saying “Hi, my name’s Cate” inside my head. I stood straighter. A Cate was a different person than a Candi. A Cate could do anything she wanted. Cate Skye Thorn.
Mom linked arms with me as the sound of our heels clicking down the hall echoed off the tile floors. “Let me see,” she said. I held out the form, and she smiled. “Looks good. We can hit the DMV on the way home.”
“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked.
She waved off whatever I was about to say. “Good heavens. I was fifteen when I named you. What did I know? After all, look at the guy I picked to have as your dad, for crying out loud. Clearly making long-term decisions wasn’t my gift. No, Cate suits you. A new you deserves a new name.”