by ID Johnson
“Thanks?” I said, not sure that was a compliment, though I think she meant it to be. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re not going out or anything. I’ve just helped him with his homework a few times.” I took my phone back and put it in my back pocket.
“Still… he’s dreamy.”
My eyes rolled so far back into my head, I could practically see my brain. “What about you?” I asked, turning the tables. “You seeing anyone?”
I expected her to give her usual, “I don’t have time for that answer,” but instead my sister’s face turned a slight shade of pink. “No,” she said, and I knew immediately that wasn’t the full answer.
“Do you have a crush on someone?”
“No.” Cadence is much better at keeping her lips sealed than I am. I can never force any information out of her. I wondered if it was one of the guys whose names had recently come up, although it seemed like there were so many, I didn’t even know where to begin guessing. “How’s algebra going, anyway?” she asked, successfully changing the subject to one that would not make her face look like she’d been out in the sun too long. “You have Mr. James, right?” She made a “bluck” face, and I agreed with her. He was not my favorite teacher.
“Yeah, I do. The work isn’t too hard, but he is so boring!”
“I know!” Cadence agreed, slamming her face down into the pillow. After a moment, I realized she was laughing. She lifted her head. “You should see Jack’s impression of him. It’s so funny.” In a very monotone, old-man voice, she started reciting Mr. James’s typical greeting, “Okay… class… let’s… get… out… our… textbooks….” We both started laughing hysterically because her impression was so awful, but I could still tell it was supposed to be my boring teacher. “Jack’s is so much better,” she said between gulps of air.
“I didn’t know Jack did impressions.” I couldn’t imagine mild-mannered Jack making fun of an instructor.
She shrugged, finally regaining her composure. “I mean, not like Jon does, but sometimes.” She grew more solemn, like thinking of Jack made her sad for some reason. Or maybe she was thinking of Drew, although I’m sure Drew was definitely not in Cadence’s algebra class since she was a year younger than my sister.
I decided to change the subject myself this time. “Have you seen that new superhero movie yet?” I asked, thinking it would be best to keep the topic light. Despite my suspicions that something totally weird was going on with my sister, she was still one of the most important people in the world to me, and I hated seeing her upset. Besides, this entire conversation had been so normal, I was beginning to think I’d lost my mind before, when I thought she was transforming into some creature I wouldn’t recognize.
We continued to chat for another hour or so before Cadence yawned and said she was tired. I was sure that she must be exhausted. Even if she hadn’t had any procedure that transformed her into a lightning quick being, I’m certain she had spent many hours crying about the loss of Drew and her life as she’d known it before that terrible festival. She might have still been keeping everything from me, but I loved her just the same. When she stood to go, I climbed to my feet and gave her a long hug. My big sister was the best sibling anyone could ever ask for, and I hated that she was going through all of this; I hated that I was still on the outside, and she didn’t feel like she could share it with me.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said quietly, and I let go of her and nodded. The funeral was the next day. I didn’t know if Cadence had ever even been to one before. I hadn’t. I thought they must be awful.
My sister left, and I heard her turning on the shower a few minutes later. I decided I was pretty tired, too, and flipped my light switch off, thinking I’d check my phone and then try to go to sleep, even though it was just a little past 9:00. I shut my laptop, turning off the music. With a sigh, I leaned back against my pillows. I didn’t think I’d really garnered any new information to jot down or share with my friends from our discussion. Cadence was very careful not to mention anything that she didn’t already know my parents had told me, which was smart on her part. I wasn’t surprised; she’s always been almost as smart as I am.
I did have several texts, though, and while they were interesting to read, my friends were mostly speculating. Milo and Wes had also sent me texts to check on me and my sister. And Milo mentioned he’d been keeping Jack’s house under surveillance to see if anyone really was spying on his neighbor, which I thought was odd since that was exactly what Jack was worried about. Was Milo’s watching him what was making him so nervous?
I heard an odd noise in my sister’s room and froze. It wasn’t loud, so I’m not even sure why it caught my attention, but I could still hear the water running in her shower, even though it was faint because the bathroom is on the other side of her room (I think a pipe runs through the ceiling over my bed or something), but I got the impression that something strange was happening again.
Lying as still as I possibly could, I strained to hear what was happening next door. I heard Cadence’s water switch off but didn’t hear anything else for a while. I assumed she was still in the bathroom, drying off, etc. Just when I was beginning to think I was imagining everything, the bathroom door opened, and I heard my sister shriek. It wasn’t a scream—like she was in pain or something was attacking her—it was more like the sound someone might make at a surprise party. However, it was enough for me to know I wasn’t losing my mind.
It was muffled but distinct enough that I could make out every word. “What are you doing in my bedroom again?” my sister shouted.
Before he even spoke, I knew who she was speaking to. “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” I heard Aaron say. His voice was becoming too familiar to me. “I just climbed in the window…. I had no idea you were in the shower. If I had known, I wouldn’t have come in.”
I knew that wasn’t true. He hadn’t just climbed in the window. He’d been in there a few minutes, and he had to have known she was in the shower—he would’ve heard the water. Why would he lie about that? Maybe he didn’t want her to know that he was sitting there waiting for her to come out? What kind of a sicko was this guy?
My sister’s response was squeaky at best, and I wasn’t sure exactly what she’d said, but I heard, “…climbing in my bedroom window!” and then the sound of her footsteps as she angrily crossed the room to my side, where her closet and dresser were located. I assumed she was looking for clothing and must have had her towel wrapped around her and clenched in one fist.
Aaron’s voice sounded different, like he was embarrassed. It was always a bit quieter than most men I know, but this time it was unusual altogether. I could make out every few words, enough to know he was making excuses for why he was there. The last part sounded really odd to me, as I had no idea what it could mean—or maybe I had misheard it. “You don’t have your IAC yet.”
What the crap was an IAC?
My sister’s response came from right on the other side of the wall it seemed. She was rattling off all the other ways he could’ve gotten ahold of her, other than an IAC, whatever that was. He sounded apologetic as he agreed that she was right and it wouldn’t happen again.
Cadence’s bathroom door slammed. A few long seconds later, she shouted, “I’ll be out in a second!” like she was afraid he might leave while she was in there. Was she now okay that he’d snuck into her room?
I waited to hear if Aaron would make a hasty retreat out the window, but I didn’t hear anything at all. He was good at sitting still, if he was sitting. The floorboards didn’t creak either, so he wasn’t pacing. The more interaction (or covert interaction) I had with this man, the stranger he seemed. I wondered what he was exactly; I had a pretty good idea he was not a human.
Alien? Superhero? Doubtful. Genetic mutation? I had no idea.
A few minutes later, my sister’s bathroom door creaked open and I heard her crossing the room. I think she was headed toward one of the two chairs that sit next to the windows in her roo
m, the same one Aaron thought was his personal entrance.
I could hear them talking but barely a word was discernible, and it was driving me crazy. My sister’s tone sounded much more pleasant now than it had a few minutes ago. I guess she’d gotten over the initial shock that there was an uninvited man in her bedroom. I knew that she’d had Jack over to study lots of times and my parents hadn’t minded when they went in her room. They trusted my sister completely. Kash and Jon had been in there plenty of times, too, but this was different. My parents might’ve known Aaron, but they didn’t know he was in her room, and I wondered what they would think if they knew he was here. He was older than Cadence, by his own admission. Was there something going on between them?
He didn’t seem like my sister’s type. Don’t get me wrong. Aaron is super attractive. Like I said earlier, he has stunning blue eyes and looks like he could be a model if he wanted to be. He’s nice enough, but there’s just something rigid about him. I could hear his soft laughter through the wall every once in a while, but it wasn’t the kind of easy-going laugh I’d heard from Jack. Aaron seems a little too polished for my sister, too, like the kind of guy who might get a manicure on a regular basis. He could easily be one of those guys all the girls desperately wish was straight, like Matt Bomer, but when you find out he’s gay, it’s not a huge shock.
My sister continued her conversation for a lot longer than I expected her to. If I hadn’t been straining so hard to try to hear what they were saying, I might’ve fallen asleep. But no matter how hard I concentrated, I only picked up a stray word here and there.
I heard the name Eliza again, but I still had no context for her. At this point, I thought that had to be the girl with the purple hair that had both taken my sister and brought her back. I also heard Christian again. And I’m pretty sure the term “IAC” came up again when they were talking about this fellow. I’d have to Google that and see if I could figure out what the heck an IAC could possibly be.
About an hour or so after he’d arrived, I heard Aaron say he needed to go. It wasn’t even 11:00 yet, but he probably knew what my sister had going on the next day. I wondered if these people would be at Drew’s funeral. They seemed to know her, somehow.
The springs in one of my sister’s chairs croaked as one of them stood up. Their voices were so quiet now, I couldn’t really even tell if they were talking or whispering. Then the window opened. I wouldn’t have even caught the noise, it was so fast, but I knew exactly what to listen for. I wished I’d been over by my own window so I could see if Aaron was still just a disturbance in the air as he leapt to the yard. Only a few seconds passed before I heard a motorcycle engine several blocks away. There was no way he could’ve gotten there that quickly if he was a regular human person like the rest of us. But then, at that point in my life, I was beginning to wonder who was human and who wasn’t. And the people who weren’t, like my sister, what were they?
Chapter 13
Staying at home by myself while my sister and parents went to the funeral wasn’t an option, so I was at Lucy’s house. It was fine, better, probably, than staying at home alone, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk anymore about what was going on with my sister. It was all Lucy wanted to talk about.
Emma was there, too, but she seemed indifferent. We decided to set up in Lucy’s bedroom so that when the rest of her family came back from the funeral we wouldn’t be overheard. The more Lucy went over what we knew and what we didn’t know, the more I wanted to shout for her to just stop. Somehow, it felt wrong talking about my sister’s problems—or whatever they were—while Drew was lying in a casket somewhere, being sunk beneath the earth, and covered with dirt.
Lucy didn’t seem to see it that way. She’d made a Wiki about what we’d found out so far. She drilled me about my conversation with Jack and what I’d talked about with Cadence. She was intrigued by Aaron’s appearance again the night before, and when I told them my Matt Bomer theory, she begged me to take a picture of him. I tried to explain I wasn’t saying he looked like the actor, I just thought he might be deceptively handsome to women. She still wanted a picture. I couldn’t blame her, I guess. If her sister had a super-hot guy sneaking into her room in the middle of the night, I’d wonder what he looked like, too, although it did no good to think about such things since neither Lucy nor Emma had a sister, and if a guy was sneaking into Daniel’s room to talk to him in the middle of the night, well, we could be back to the Matt Bomer thing, I guess.
“Aaron McReynolds has no social media presence,” Emma declared, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “But here’s something slightly interesting. I did a search using the key terms ‘Eliza’ and ‘purple hair’ and I got something.”
“Huh?” I asked, a little surprised, although, I thought there had to be more than one woman in the world named Eliza who happened to have purple hair, didn’t there?
“What makes you think that you found this elusive woman who drives a Lamborghini through a Google search?” Lucy’s words mirrored my own inquiry.
“Do you know how many Lamborghini Aventadors are in existence?” Emma asked in her matter-of-fact voice.
“Not so many?” Lucy inquired. Like me, she must think the number had to be low to beg the question.
“Less than 5000 per production year, and they haven’t been around that long.”
I was sure Emma knew the exact numbers, but sometimes she liked to be less strict with her quantitative evaluations so as to be a bit more relatable.
“’Kay,” Lucy said. “So… what does this have to do with whatever you found?”
Rather than answer, Emma turned her laptop around so the two of us, who were also sitting on Lucy’s bed rather than the sitting area in an alcove, which would’ve made more sense, could see it.
I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. Emma’s Google search had produced a picture of the woman I’d seen. I was sure of it. She was wearing all black leather from head to toe, leaning back against the Aventador, her arms crossed and a cocky smile on her face. Her short hair was a dark purple, almost burgundy color in the direct sunlight. She wasn’t as tall as my sister, and I remembered thinking that when I’d first seen her out my bedroom window. The picture was a post from a social media site, and the caption read, “The company car is pretty rad.” The name on the account was @ElizaWrath.
“I take it that’s her,” Lucy said, her voice very quiet.
Without replying, I picked up my notebook and started writing. It was starting to get a little full now since I’d decided to go ahead and record my discussion with Cadence and the little I’d picked up from listening in on her late-night discussion with Aaron. (A Google search for IAC had not turned up much.) I needed to write this down so I could collect my thoughts.
“Is there any other info on her profile that might be helpful?” Lucy asked.
“Not that I could find,” Emma shrugged. “Of course, I don’t really know what I’m looking for.” She adjusted her glasses and turned her laptop back around. “I guess we could check all of her friends’ profile pictures and see if any of them match the people you’ve seen, Cass.”
Something told me Aaron was not the kind of guy who had time for social media. Elliott—maybe? “Check and see if she has any friends named Jamie or Christian,” I said.
“Or maybe something with a doctor name?” Lucy asked, and we both nodded.
I had finished my notes and set my notebook aside. While I had been hesitant to dig into all of this while the funeral was going on, seeing Eliza Wrath’s picture had sent chills down my spine. It was one thing to see the woman outside of my bedroom window from a distance but something else entirely to see that she really did exist in real life. Every time something proved that what was happening with my sister was real, I found it harder to accept.
I picked up my own laptop and went to the same website Emma was on, finding Eliza’s profile quickly now that I knew what I was looking for. The girl was pretty. She looked a lot like Ashley Green
e, only with purple, curly hair. And taller.
Thinking of Ashley Greene led down a rapid chain of thoughts that had me slamming my laptop closed. My mouth hung open, and my heart began to race. “Oh, my God,” I said quietly. The thoughts that had entered my head seemed so completely impossible, but then, with the things I’d seen recently, anything was possible, wasn’t it? Apparently, even the laws of physics weren’t exactly what we’d thought they’d been. Neither was gravity the old friend I’d thought I understood for all these years.
“What is it, Cass?” Lucy’s voice sounded haunted, as if she, too, were on the edge of a discovery that would shake her from what was left of the normal world.
I was having trouble even formulating what had entered my head into a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. I managed to croak, “Water,” and gestured for the bottle I’d left on Lucy’s nightstand.
Emma looked at Lucy, her eyes wider than normal behind her glasses, took the lid off of the bottle and handed it to me. I nodded my thanks and swallowed about half of the contents before handing it back to her and taking a few deep breaths. The water helped loosen my tongue, but I still didn’t know how I was going to say what I was thinking.
I slowly turned so that I was facing them both. “Okay—so here’s the deal,” I began. “You guys prepare to tell me that I’m nuts. Okay?”
“No problem.” Emma’s response was serious, and I knew she wouldn’t hesitate. It would’ve made me laugh if I wasn’t freaking out.
“Eliza Wrath looks like Ashley Greene.” I looked from one pair of eyes to the other to see if they were following me. They both looked lost. “The actress who played Alice on Twilight.”
“Right,” Lucy said, nodding.
“What’s Twilight?” Emma asked.
“It’s a movie,” Lucy replied, barely glancing at her and then back at me.
“I gathered that,” Emma shot back. “But what movie?”
I needed to continue before I lost the nerve or my train of thought. I stuck up a finger to still Emma. I didn’t think she’d get what I was trying to say anyway, but I thought Lucy might. “Seeing her picture made me think about what I’ve seen. People who move very quickly, who can jump from great heights and not get hurt. They drive expensive vehicles. Jack was so cold when I touched him. I don’t know if he’s part of this or if that was just a clue. They’re all pretending to be something they aren’t. My sister said she couldn’t talk about her new job but it was security related—which I doubt. Some of them are very attractive, more so than normal people.” That wasn’t necessarily the case for Dr. Sanderson, but Aaron and Eliza were above average for certain. So was my sister. “Lucy,” I said, slowly, “do you think….” I couldn’t finish the sentence.