Fractured
Page 10
But a new kind of life was just about to begin.
34
Bobby
Sunday: 11:25 AM
“You fucking bastard,” I said.
Jeremy Glass shrugged. When he’d glided in like a ballroom dancer, I knew something was up. They’d bought him off with a new leg, and who knew what else.
“Jeremy made the best decision for his future, Bobby,” Agent Reston said. “Psychic phenomena often occur after physical trauma. Jeremy’s abilities manifested after his accident. The agency finds them quite useful for our purposes.”
“But not,” she added, turning to face me straight on, “as useful as yours.”
“You’ve proven yourself to be a highly valuable operative, Bobby,” Agent Strauss said. “One we can’t let slip out of our hands.”
His last sentence rang like an organ chord in my ears.
“You can walk away, Bobby,” Agent Reston said, “and take your chances that another event won’t materialize. But keep in mind that without our treatment, you’d currently be hospitalized, most likely locked inside your own body in a minimally aware vegetative state. You’d deteriorate rapidly, your vitals failing. Until it would be lights out. Forever.”
Jeremy looked at the floor, cheeks flushed, unable to meet my gaze.
“You’ve got a flair for the dramatic, Maura,” I said.
Her brows lifted above her dark glasses, but she only smiled.
“I like the fire in you, kid,” Agent Strauss said. “I like that you think for yourself.”
“Once you sign with us, we’ll implant a monitoring device that will permanently allow you to manage your visions,” Maura Reston said. “But you won’t be permitted to sign until your eighteenth birthday next month.”
“And if I don’t agree to sign?”
“As a kindness, we’ll administer enough treatment to get you to your eighteenth birthday. After that, you’d better hope like hell your life will be perfectly ordinary.”
I balled my hands into fists and banged the glass tabletop. “So you’re saying that if I don’t sign, once I turn eighteen I’ll have no way to survive these visions without your help?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
I swallowed and then looked at Jeremy, who still stared down at his feet. Memories of the horrors I’d faced when I’d tracked down a serial killer in my hometown swirled in my head. Of the memories of the enormous warehouse filled with crime evidence I could barely see, and mostly feel. There was no end in sight.
If I signed, I’d be their tool for life. They’d own me, body and soul.
“Then I think I’ll take my chances on ordinary,” I said.
35
Ella
Sunday: 7:48 PM
I couldn’t believe my good luck that the hospital guards had left their posts.
This was it. My only chance to make a statement. Show him who, in the end, was really the boss of my life.
My life. What life? I didn’t remember a life, only snippets of moments when I was allowed to feel joy, before the cold hard hand squeezed the happiness out of me.
Paranoid schizophrenia was the diagnosis. They’d tried every treatment under the sun, but none of the meds worked on me. I’d be fine for a while, but then the crazy violent urges would come back to enslave me.
Yet my mind worked clearly now. And I knew I wanted to live. To explain why and how I’m innocent. That I’m not a killer.
Instead, my fingers continued to deftly tear the bed sheet into thin strips and secure them with strong knots. I tried to think of Ellis. And hoped he was having a better time of it.
I doubted it. I’d always been the stronger one.
The occurrence of fraternal twins with the same mental illness was extremely rare. I was the darling of the psychiatric researchers who’d all published papers at her expense.
I’d fought as hard as I could.
But there was no fight left in me.
I looked up to where I thought the monitor might be, and hoped maybe it was just a ruse. But I knew. I’d tried to escape, tried to fight, and lost. It was over.
I sorted through the few precious memories I possessed, like treasures—the two of us scampering along the beach, the salt wind in Ellis’s long hair. A few paces behind, Mother smiled at Daddy.
From across the hall, I felt Ellis’s jagged emotions. We’d always had that connection between us when we were in extreme distress, not words. Just intense feelings and sensations. He was still alive.
Then, I felt the sharp jab of the IV needle where Ellis had pulled it free, stabbed it into his wrist, and opened a vein.
Our connection faded, then went dark.
I sat in silence for a minute, probing the emptiness. Then I tied the bed sheet noose to the top light fixture over my bed. I roped it over my head and let my weight sag.
36
Brendan
Sunday: 9:00 PM
On the second floor study of his brownstone on Riverside Drive, Brendan Wavestone sat in his leather recliner, puffed on his favorite pipe, and sipped the brandy from a crystal snifter. The news of the day blared in razor-sharp high definition on his seventy-five-inch retractable TV.
A ticker along the bottom of the screen read: Breaking news: The two criminally insane offspring of Brendan Wavestone and Mallory Taylor Wavestone, both in custody for a string of murders and rapes that had the city terrorized for months, have simultaneously killed themselves while being treated for their injuries.
Brendan smiled and looked at the smaller monitors recessed into his coffee table. The heirloom ring the Pendell kid had returned to him sat glinting there, now restored to its original high shine. Let Pendell and Glass think the girl was spared by chance—until the time was right.
Moments before their deaths, his two least agreeable children out of twelve from various marriages and mistresses had frowned angrily up at him from the small screens.
Then, as if linked, they had each carried out their beautifully synchronized suicides.
Brendan Wavestone sat back in his chair, took another puff of his pipe, and smiled. His plans were back on track, despite the ungrateful brats’ attempts to derail them.
It was a very good day indeed.
The End
Liked Bobby? Check out Vision
Love to hate Jeremy? Check out Breaking Glass
She doesn’t just play; she kills it. Watch out for Until Beth, coming this September.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to all the people who loved Breaking Glass and did not want to let go of Jeremy. Also, thank you to my agent, Shannon Hassan, and the ace crew at Spencer Hill Press: my editors, Vikki Ciaffone and Laura Ownbey, and of course, The Closer, Rich Storrs. Special thanks to The Multi-Talented One, the amazing Errick Nunnally, for laying out the ebook. Huge thanks to the new Big Cheese, Jessica Porteous; the former Big Cheese, now a happy little cheese, Kate Kaynak; and my publicist, part-time therapist, and muse, Brooke DelVecchio. Also thanks to the people at Beaufort Press.
Lisa Amowitz was born in Queens and raised in the wilds of Long Island, New York, where she climbed trees, thought small creatures lived under rocks, and studied ant hills. And drew. A lot. She is a professor of Graphic Design at her beloved Bronx Community College, where she has been tormenting and cajoling students for nearly twenty years. She started writing originally because she wanted something to illustrate, but somehow, instead ended up writing YA. Probably because her mind is too dark and twisted for small children. Lisa is represented by Shannon Hassan of MarsalLyon Literary Agency, shannon@marsallyonliteraryagency.com
BREAKING GLASS, released in July, 2013 from Spencer Hill Press, is her first published work. VISION, the first of the Finder series, was released September, 2014. FRACTURED, a novella combining the worlds of BREAKING GLASS and VISION, releases as an ebook only, June 7, 2015. UNTIL BETH, the first in the Life and Beth trilogy, will be released September 2015. She is currently working on a sequel to the acclaimed BREAKING GLASS, due
out in 2016.
For more info, visit Lisa at
lisaamowitz.com
lisa-amowitzya.blogspot.com
facebook.com/AuthorLisaAmowitz
twitter.com/lisa_amowitz