“Did you follow me here?” I finally whispered, my voice shrinking even further at the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside.
“Yes, I followed you,” he said vehemently. “But what I want to know is—”
I shoved him. His back hit the wall, and his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Do you have any idea how important this is?” I hissed. “Do you have any idea what you might have screwed up?”
“Breaking your homicidal maniac of a brother out of prison, where he rightly belongs?”
I saw red. Literally, my vision flashed red. I couldn’t see anything but blood and heat and rage. I might or might not have shoved him again. I couldn’t be held responsible for what the red did. “I don’t want to break him out of prison,” I said, my face so close to his I knew he could feel my breath on his nose, hot and spiteful. “I need to talk to him. He’s planning on talking to the police later today. On telling them the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God.”
Michael was silent for a moment. “He never confessed, did he?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. I knew he didn’t. Otherwise things would have worked out very differently. Otherwise the police actually would have had something to crow about. “I thought he was as good as dead until just a few weeks ago.” Tears sprang to my eyes. “I need to tell him goodbye. Privately.”
Michael sighed. “This is really hard on you, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “What’s really hard on me is having a stalker who followed me here from my house.”
From the shock on his face, you’d think I’d slapped him. “It’s not like that,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I snarled. “Because it looks that way from over here.”
“Listen,” he said heatedly. “Alane called me. She said you were acting really weird and you practically spat in her face. She was worried about you and she asked me to make sure you were okay.
“You know I have study hall first period, so I skipped and went to your house. But as I was going to pull in your driveway, I saw you skulking around in that outfit and getting in the car. I’ve never seen you drive before. What else did you expect me to do?”
“Stay out of this,” I said. That could’ve applied to anything, I thought. To kissing me. To traveling with me to Elkton. To ever speaking to me in the first place. “You would’ve been better off if you’d never gotten tangled with me in the first place. You know what you should do?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “You should turn around and walk away and pretend you never met Julia Vann or Lucy Black or whoever the hell I’ll be tomorrow.”
He grabbed my hands. I tried to pull away, but he kneaded my palms with his thumbs. Despite myself, my shoulders slumped. “Never,” he said. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “I’ll help you, Julia. I’ll help you say goodbye to your brother.” He was speaking so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him, and I wondered, for a moment, if I was imagining it all. “He’s done a terrible thing, but he’s still your brother. If Aria killed someone, I wouldn’t stop loving her.”
Tears choked me. It was a few seconds before I was physically able to speak. “Are you sure?” I asked. “You might end up worse than grounded for life. This is probably illegal. No, this is definitely illegal.”
“I’ve already run off with you, picked my way around dead cops,” he said. “I don’t think anything could be worse than that.”
I had so much to do, and so much to think about, but I was too busy dissolving into a warm glow I thought might be happiness. I wasn’t entirely sure. It had been a while since I’d felt anything but stressed or afraid or tense, and there was so much on the line it felt almost obscene to be happy.
“You have no idea,” I said, but I didn’t have time to talk him out of it. To talk him away from me. My brother would be talking this evening. “My brother is downstairs. How did you get this far, by the way?”
“My dad,” he said. Duh, Julia. “Everybody here knows me. I’ve had the run of the place since I was five. They probably just think I’m stopping in to bring him food or something. He’ll be back at work tonight.” He eyed me up and down. “How did you get in, anyway?”
“I stole an ID and put on a black suit,” I said.
“You stole an ID? From that cop yesterday? Won’t she, like, notice?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “We have to keep going. We have to keep the element of surprise.” The element of surprise. More important than oxygen, or nitrogen, or whatever makes my mother’s pills work so spectacularly quickly.
“Of course,” he said. “He’s just downstairs. You just want to talk to him, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “I only want to talk.”
I eased back into the hallway first, checking to make sure no cops would see Michael and me emerging from the bathroom together. I nodded at one walking back to the office area, steaming cup of coffee in hand, and stretched, killing some time. When the officer was gone, I pulled the door back open, and Michael slipped into the hallway after me.
A stroke of luck: there was nobody in residence in the regular holding cells, and therefore no cops guarding them. A further stroke of luck: Michael knew where the key was, he said, that unlocked the heavy metal door that led down to the secure holding cell. I had assumed the key would be somewhere obvious. But now I was glad he was with me. The retrieval took Michael only a couple of minutes. And there wasn’t supposed to be anyone downstairs; they were short on men as it was, and there was no way out of the basement aside from the one door, so where would my brother go? I slipped through, held the door for Michael, then shut it firmly behind me, resolutely listening for the lock to click shut. It was a heavy door. I hoped it was soundproof.
Now only a flight of stairs and another barred door stood between me and my brother. Emptiness gnawed at my insides. So this was it. I only needed a second or two with him. And then that would be it. There would be no more miraculous escapes, or do-overs.
I cupped Michael’s cheek. His chin was a paradox, rough as sandpaper yet somehow smooth and soft at the same time. I traced his jawline with a finger. “I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet,” I said.
“For what?”
“For loving me,” I said. I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips gently to his. There was no paradox here: they were only smooth and soft, silky against my own. “And for everything that comes along with that.”
His hands held my hips as I lowered myself down. His touch ignited small fires beneath my skin. My one regret: I’d never get to see him naked. I was sure he’d have a beautiful body. Swimmers all had beautiful bodies. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “That’s not what love is.”
Really? A new complication. I would think it would be nice to thank someone for loving you. It wasn’t like they had to, after all. It wasn’t like it was easy to love someone like me. I parted my lips, ready to ask, then clamped them shut. I wouldn’t need to know what love was anymore. “Let’s go,” I said instead.
We went.
I pushed the second door open cautiously, my fingers tense against my holster, into a small, spare room. I took another step in, Michael so close on my rear I could feel the heat of his body radiating into me.
There wasn’t much space to move into. There was only a short hallway, with an empty folding chair propped against the wall, and then the cell door. It looked almost like a movie set’s idea of a jail cell: barred door; long, low cot; combo sink and toilet so shiny silver I could see my reflection in it. And my brother. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, whispering to himself. He lifted his head when I came in and jumped to his feet when he saw it was me. We reached the bars at the same time; I wrapped my fingers around two of them, and he wrapped his fingers around mine.
“Ryan,” I whispered.
“You came.” His hands were firm around mine, strong, even the left one that didn’t close all the way. “I knew you would.”
&nb
sp; My vision shimmered. “Of course I came,” I said. I cleared my throat. “What do they know? What did you tell them?” I jerked my head back at Michael, just slightly, a tiny bit, to remind my brother that we weren’t alone. I didn’t have to remind myself; I could feel Michael’s presence in waves of heat, a being that warped time and space around it. He didn’t belong here, not in the same room as my brother.
Ryan cleared his throat in response. He got it. My heart squeezed, wrung itself out. He got me. Nobody would ever get me like he would. Not even Michael. “Nothing,” he said. “I mean, nothing they didn’t already know. I said some things when I woke up from the coma, but then I…” His face sank. “I talked to Dr. Spence.”
I rubbed his fingers with my thumb. “I know,” I said. “It’s okay. He won’t be talking to anyone.” I smiled tightly at him, trying to look reassuring. “The police were ready to make your recovery public, weren’t they? Bring you to trial? But you talked to Dr. Spence. And he broke you out to give himself time to prove your version of the story.”
“I never meant to hurt you,” Ryan said. His eyes shone. I could see myself mirrored in them, reflecting over and over, Julia into infinity. So many of me. “I would never, ever hurt you, Julia.”
But he did. He did hurt me. He got me into this mess, and he would have to get me out. I released my smile, let it bound free. Let it reassure him. “It’s okay,” I said. “I forgive you, Ryan. I love you.” The words came out without any hesitation. “I love you. You know that, Ryan?”
“I love you, too, Julia.”
I sniffed. Tears were welling over, blurring my vision. “And I promise you I’ll do everything you asked me to,” I said. “I’ll tell the whole truth. I promise you that.”
He smiled. After all this time, it still struck me as guileless, innocent…trusting. He might not have trusted anyone else, but he trusted me. I was his sister, his other half, and if he couldn’t believe in me, then what could he believe in? “Thank you,” he said. “That means everything to me.”
I pulled my hands back, away from his, then pressed my face into the bars. Though Michael was here, I couldn’t stop now; I was past the point of no return. “I love you, Ryan,” I said, and kissed him hard through the bars. I tasted iron. I smelled blood.
He was smiling still, with bliss this time, as I pulled back. “Remember that,” I said tenderly, lowering my hand to my side. “I might not know what love is, but I know I love you.”
“I know,” he said. “I love you, Julia.”
“I love you, Ryan,” I said, and my voice never wavered. “I love you so much.”
I pulled back, wiped the tears from my eyes, and shot him in the head.
Before the dust settled, before the recoil finished shuddering my arm, I whirled around to Michael. “Don’t move,” I said. “If you move, I shoot.”
There didn’t seem to be any danger of Michael moving; he appeared to have turned into a statue, his back melting into the wall, his jaw practically on his chest. His lips were moving, like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. I could see his love for me harden into cracked bits, like drying mud, and fall in a shower to the floor.
I wiped my eyes again, smearing him across the room. “I promised my brother I would tell the whole truth,” I said. “So here it is.”
* * *
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. ATLAS SPENCE
* * *
Re: Ryan Vann, age 17
Noor and I pored over the records of the shooting for three hours last night, side by side in a dim, dusty records room, our eyes straining to read each line of type and examine each model of the room.
Noor was finally convinced of my interpretation. “I have a friend who will help you when you get there,” he said. “Another officer. One who’s not opposed to taking ‘gifts’ in exchange for his help.” I appreciated Noor’s frankness. “His name is Joseph Goodman. I’ll give you his card.”
I went in to see Ryan early this morning, the earliest the police would let me. “I believe you,” I said. “And I’m going to help prove it.”
He sucked a breath through his teeth, like my words had hurt him, but then he nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered, and turned away.
If what I’m beginning to suspect is correct, Ryan Vann is not the most dangerous person in his family.
I need to go to Sunny Vale.
I remember everything.
Once upon a time I got sick of waking up early to take my yappy little dog for walks and of spending half my allowance money to buy its stupid food. When my brother asked if he could take the dog apart to see what it looked like on the inside, I said okay. As long as I got to watch. And when we got caught, he took the blame.
I remember everything.
Once upon another time there was a fire. It wasn’t a big fire, not a house, not a school. It was the tree house of a girl who had made the grievous offense of making fun of how close my brother and I were. I wanted her dead. No, I wanted her to burn.
He lit the match and touched it to the tree, but we stood together to watch it burn. And when the girl’s mother spotted us through the trees, once again, my brother took the blame.
I remember everything.
I haven’t been entirely honest.
Take driving. It is true that I didn’t drive after Aiden’s accident. It is also true that I didn’t drive for a while before that, even though I’d taken driver’s ed and passed the written exam and had done my requisite six hours with an instructor and many other hours with my mom and dad.
The California provisional permit allows you to drive at age fifteen and a half, as long as you’re accompanied by someone twenty-five or older. For my brother and me, that meant we were required, officially, to drive with one of our parents in the car. What that meant, unofficially, was that, starting at age fifteen and a half, we would often just drive, the two of us, one of our parents’ licenses pocketed just in case. We’d switch off and go for long cruises down deserted roads, fantasizing that everybody in the world but us had been cleared out by a plague or a nuclear attack or face-eating aliens. It wasn’t that we wanted anything like that to happen—not exactly, not explicitly. It was more planning for a just-in-case, pondering what might happen if everyone else on the planet should just up and vanish. Not painfully—I can’t stress that enough. Just dissolve into the air, or sink through the ground, or give one last exhale and disappear.
The day it happened was one of those crisp fall days where the air snaps between your teeth and the leaves are such brilliant shades of red and yellow you just want to tell the sunset “Why bother?” I was driving, and Ryan was in the passenger seat, flipping our father’s license over and over between his fingers.
“It was a meteor,” I said, starting our game. The country road ahead stretched long and bright, with no houses to mar the beauty. “It struck in the Midwest, triggering the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Ash blanketed everything from Nevada to New York. This strip of coastline is the only clear place in the US.
“Of course,” I hurried to add once I saw Ryan raise a finger, “the meteor strike and ensuing eruption and all the ash caused a dramatic change in climate. Nobody could buy food. Everybody in the urban areas died or fled overseas or south. Only those of us used to working the land were able to eke out a spare existence.”
Neither of us had ever done so much as water a vegetable plant, but this was all hypothetical. How hard could it be to grow some potatoes or something, anyway? Just enough for the two of us. We had no plans to feed anyone else should this hypothetical world ever actually come to be. “Naturally,” I continued, “once the ash cleared, within a year or two, everything settled down. There was no more humidity and no more fog. It was a balmy seventy-two degrees, dry and warm, every day of the year, in Elkton, California.”
“Seventy-two is too warm,” Ryan said.
“No one cares.”
“You care.”
“Fine, I care. It can be seventy-one.”
>
“Sixty-eight.”
“Seventy, and that’s my final offer.”
“Deal.”
I sighed and focused on driving again, but was immediately distracted by something moving by the side of the road. No, not something. Someone. A runner, spandexed, red-bearded, old. Maybe forty. Panting. “Do you see that?”
Ryan looked. “That guy?”
“Yes, that guy. What else would I be pointing at?” My heart sped up. “He’s ruining everything. How can we live in this empty meteor-world when he’s here, chugging through it?”
Ryan squinted at him. “Go faster,” he suggested. “We can leave him behind and pretend he wasn’t even there.”
My heart sped up again, to the point where it practically vibrated in my chest. “That’s not good enough,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Ryan said. His voice was tense, alert.
I nodded and lifted my hands from the wheel.
Ryan reached over and jerked the wheel. One motion, one second, and our car slid off the side of the road and plowed into the runner with the stomach-turning crack of a butterflied chicken. I didn’t hear the man cry out. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just bounced off the hood of our car, his head twisted in the most wrong kind of way, and slipped bonelessly down the hill beside the road.
I turned to watch, and Ryan jerked the wheel again. “Go, go, go!” he was yelling. With one last glance over my shoulder, I placed my hands back on the wheel and went, my heart pounding against the inside of my ribs with every pump of the gas pedal. I didn’t remember driving home, but somehow we made it without spotlights zeroing in on us from above or sirens wailing behind us. My brother was good with cars, and so as soon as we pulled into the garage he suctioned out the dent in the hood and polished off the drying blood the runner had left behind. The windshield had cracked, but the next day he fixed that, too. I wasn’t sure exactly how. Somehow he was able to fix everything but me.
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