The Lies That Bind

by Lisa Roecker

  “I have no idea. But that’s exactly what we’re gonna find out,” I said, bending to grab my bag.

  • • •

  After a lengthy strategy session that took the better part of first and second periods, Taylor and I decided that rather than risk confronting Ben at school, it would be smarter to go to his house. I’d go in alone with the excuse that I had some Chemistry questions, and Taylor would wait outside as backup. Despite my deceptively tough exterior, my stomach had flip-flopped when the bell signaled the end of second period, or more specifically the end of the second class I’d cut.

  When Taylor whipped out a very organized folder of crisp, signed late passes, I caught a glimpse of just what the societies had to offer and exactly how deep their connections ran at Pemberly Brown. And they weren’t even operating on all four cylinders anymore. I couldn’t imagine what life must have been like for the Sisterhood when they controlled the tunnels and their posh headquarters held pretty much every vital piece of information Pemberly Brown had to offer. No doubt membership had its perks.

  After school, we drove to Taylor’s house in her convertible, and I was mentally brainstorming excuses for my parents as to why I’d need another entire evening out. Ignoring six phone calls the night before hadn’t done much for the trusting parent-daughter relationship we were all trying so hard to fake. I pressed “Mom Work” on my phone at least five times, hanging up each time before it started ringing. It was going to take more than a flimsy excuse about group projects to convince her that I should be allowed to go out on a school night.

  “Here,” Taylor said, after turning into an empty parking lot. She plucked the phone from my hand and pressed “Mom Work,” letting the phone actually ring this time.

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach.

  “Hi, Mrs. Lowry? No, no, she is fine. This is Taylor Wright, Kate’s classmate at Pemberly Brown. I am the president of Concilium.” She tapped her perfect nails on the leather steering wheel. If I knew my mom like I thought I knew my mom, she was thinking, “That Taylor Wright,” right about now. Even parents weren’t immune to Taylor’s far-reaching charms.

  “I am not sure if Kate warned you, but tonight is the last night of our spring bake-sale fund-raising preparation. We have at least twenty more signs to make, which Kate is helping out with. I could sure use her help tonight, and my parents said it would be fine if she stayed for dinner.” She paused, rolling her eyes. “She is sitting right next to me.”

  “Hi, Mom!” I called, unable to keep the smile from my voice. The girl was really good.

  “We have pizzas for dinner, and we are going to make a night out of it!” Taylor raised her blond eyebrows at me. “Yes, yes. No problem at all. Do not even worry. I will drop her off when we are finished.” She laughed at something obviously lame my mom said and ended the conversation. And that was that.

  But parental consent did absolutely nothing for my nerves. The reality of confronting Ben was starting to hit me, and by the time we pulled into Taylor’s driveway, my stomach was roiling with tension. Her house was set deep in the woods, down a winding driveway off the road. Even though we’d gone to the same school for the past ten years, the only part of her house I’d ever seen was the mailbox. I sat up a little straighter, straining to see out the windows as we carefully maneuvered through the snow and up the driveway. Most of the kids at Pemberly Brown lived in pretty big houses, but Taylor’s was rumored to be obscene.

  As it turns out, “obscene” was the perfect word for it. The Wrights’ home was a modern monstrosity on a street where the money was so old that even the nannies wore Chanel No. 5. The entire exterior was constructed primarily of glass windows, and what wasn’t a window was cream stucco. We walked inside and Taylor spun around, shutting the doors behind her and locking them with a click.

  A wave of uneasiness settled over me as we shut out the world. The thing about locks was that even though you thought you were locking the bad guys out, there was always the possibility that you might be locking one in. “Um, I thought we were going to Ben’s house?”

  “I thought we decided to surprise him,” Taylor said, pulling a bottle of water from her fridge and offering me one.

  I shook my head. “Well, yeah…that’s the idea.”

  “I have it on good authority that his parents will be home until they will be called out for an urgent meeting at the Shaker Nature Center at eight. Would you believe that someone took a chainsaw to the center’s prized rose garden?”

  “But how…”

  Taylor put up a hand to silence my question, and she was right. Did I really want to know how she’d managed to destroy one of our city’s most revered landmarks? Yet another uneasy reminder of the power the Sisterhood still wielded, not only at our school but also in our community.

  The floor-to-ceiling windows might have seemed impressive from the outside, the afternoon sun making them sparkle like enormous diamonds, but from inside they were sort of terrifying. The back of my neck pricked with the sensation that someone was following our journey through the bright white hallway into the even brighter kitchen. The house was bathed in sunlight so bright that I reached my forearm up to shield my eyes.

  The kitchen was all hard edges and clean lines. There weren’t any nooks and crannies or hiding spots. My stomach unclenched a little at the idea that there weren’t very many places for someone to hide.

  “I can’t believe you live here.” The words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I mean, I pictured you living in a typical mansion, you know? Bricks, ivy, traditional.”

  Taylor laughed a little. “Tell me about it. The neighbors tried to sue my father when he tore down the house that used to be here.” Her phone looked out of place on the pristine, white marble countertop. “His company was going green, and he insisted that we live in a house that reflected their priorities. Mother refused to leave the neighborhood, so…” She shrugged.

  “Are you here alone a lot?” The thought of spending the night by myself in this glass monstrosity made me shiver.

  “It depends. When Tinsley and Teagan are home on break, it’s not so bad. And we have Dee here sometimes.” She pushed a series of buttons on a computer monitor, and I heard the shrill beep of an alarm turning on. “I still miss our old house, though.”

  Taylor led me through the foyer, her ballet-slipper flats barely making a sound on the bamboo floors while the heels of my riding boots clicked and left a trail of glimmering footprints in their wake.

  “Oh, crap. I should have taken my shoes off.”

  Taylor waved a hand and kept walking. “Never mind. Dee will take care of it tomorrow.”

  As Taylor led me through the maze of white, I kept catching my reflection in the windows that lined the walls. My blue hair was pulled back into a knot on top of my head, but tiny hairs had escaped during the chaos of the day and now curled around my hairline. I kept doing double takes because the blue-haired girl walking next to the Homecoming queen didn’t look like me. In fact, every time I caught a look at myself I felt like turning on my heel and heading back home to the safety of my medium-sized, non-glass house, complete with my ginger neighbor in the tree house outside.

  Taylor led me into her bedroom. It was huge, but I was prepared for huge. What I wasn’t prepared for was everything else. I guess I’d always assumed that the high priestess of popularity would live in a frilly pink kingdom, complete with a canopy bed and ruffled pink drapes, but I was so wrong. Nothing new there.

  “Wow.” It was the only word I could manage with my jaw hanging so low it practically touched my chest.

  Taylor laughed. It was pretty and tinkling and sounded strange coming from her mouth. I realized that I’d never heard her laugh before. “Is that a good wow or a bad wow?”

  “Um, a good one.” Taylor’s room was amazing. The far wall was a full-sized, black-and-white photograph of a ballerina practicing at her bar. But the wall closest to me was covered with vinyl records sheathed in plastic. S
he had everything from Mozart to the Beatles. I ran my hands over the cover of Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman. “These albums. You must have hundreds. They’re amazing.”

  “Music sounds different on a record player.” She shrugged. “I learned that when I used to dance.”

  The rest of her room was an exercise in contradictions. A rustic-looking, white bed frame covered by a fluorescent pink bedspread over black sheets. A gorgeous vanity that looked like it had been painted with a million different shades of nail polish.

  “I spilled a bottle of Vermillionaire and the rest is history,” she explained as I ran my fingers over the glossy finish.

  But the most amazing part of her room was that there were really only three walls. The fourth was nothing but a huge window overlooking the immense woods that surrounded the estate. In architecture magazines that wall would occupy a full-page spread, light sifting through the glass and spilling onto her dark hardwood floors. But something about the way the afternoon sun bounced off the snow-covered lawn made me feel like an actress overcome with stage fright and stuck in the spotlight. My skin crawled with the uncomfortable feeling of being watched again.

  Taylor caught me staring and laughed. “Don’t worry about the windows. They’re tinted. No one is ever able to see in.”

  I coughed, embarrassed at my transparency. Of course the windows were treated with some million-dollar invisible glass tint. The Wrights probably had an electric fence hidden around the house’s perimeter as well.

  “I am going to change.” She gestured at her Pemberly Brown uniform. “Not exactly getaway gear.”

  As soon as I heard the bathroom door click shut, I pushed a few buttons on the wall, attempting to lower the shades. It didn’t matter how many times she mentioned tinted windows, I still heard my mom bitching and moaning that if I didn’t close the shades to my room, the entire neighborhood would see me. The overhead light turned on, a fan, some music, but no shades. I walked back to the window, praying that I was just being paranoid about someone being out there.

  Someone watching.

  Instead, I tried to enjoy the view. Hundreds of towering trees hugged the property, and if I looked hard enough I could see shining water, a creek that cut the woods in half. I even saw a family of deer gathered around something that still managed to be green in the dead of winter. Taylor must have loved looking out that window. It was so peaceful and quiet, like a page from National Geographic. The only things that were out there belonged.

  But then I saw one of the deer lift its head, the others following suit and standing stock-still. I tried to remember what preyed on deer, but all I could think of were cars and hunters. It’s not like we had wolves roaming the woods in Cleveland. At least I hoped not. I wasn’t in the mood to see some sort of deer ambush.

  But then I caught movement. A hand reaching out to move away brush.

  Then the flash of skin, a face maybe.

  My arms and legs went numb and jittery with adrenaline. We weren’t alone. People were out there watching and I didn’t think they were hunters. I scrambled down the length of the window, hitting the wood floor hard and flattening out on my belly to watch. The forms huddled close together and then broke apart, bending close to the ground every few steps in unison. They wore dark clothes, blending into trees.

  The Brotherhood.

  “Taylor!” I whisper-shouted, my voice cracking in the middle. But it was useless. I could hear the water running in the bathroom. I needed to call the police. My phone was on the bed where I’d left it, and Taylor’s cordless was farther off on the nightstand, but I lay transfixed at the window, unable to take my eyes off the shadowy figures in the woods.

  Their movements were picking up now, closing in, and I thought back to Maddie’s humiliation. The Brotherhood was taking this too far. Pemberly Brown’s campus was one thing, but Taylor’s personal property? As I watched them circle, I wondered what it all meant. Who were they sacrificing this time?

  But I already knew. Bethany.

  “Taylor!” I shouted again, louder this time. Nothing.

  The harder I stared, the harder they were to see. The sunlight was playing tricks on my eyes, so I looked slightly to one figure’s right, hoping that would help. There were two, closing in on Taylor’s house with each step. The wind bent the trees, blowing harder this time, rustling what was left of the leaves and blowing back the hood one of the Brothers had pulled over his head. And before he reached up to replace it, I caught a glimpse of unmistakable red hair.

  Chapter 23

  What the hell was Seth doing at Taylor’s house? I smacked my forehead against the glass when I noticed his partner in crime. The better question was what the hell was my boyfriend doing with him?

  By the time Taylor disarmed the security system and pulled the heavy front doors open, Seth was standing in front of the gate, bent in half, hands on his knees, chest heaving, back rising and falling like he’d just finished some sort of street race. And behind him stood Liam.

  “What the hell are you guys doing here?” I called, narrowing my eyes just to be sure I was seeing who I thought I was seeing. Not only was it surreal to be spending time with Taylor Wright, but now my worlds were colliding.

  “I found him running down Courtland,” Liam said, nodding toward the semi-main road. “I was afraid he’d get hit by a car or something.”

  “I couldn’t”—heave, heave—“take the van”—gasp—“my mom’s at the store.”

  A sheen of sweat covered Seth’s pale skin despite the cold, and I noticed that he’d taken extra care in selecting some Under Armour lounge clothes that matched his running shoes. I would have thought biking or even taking a bus would have been a better option, but that was kind of irrelevant at this point. “When you weren’t on the bus, I was worried. I used the GPS on your phone to track you here.”

  “You installed a GPS tracker on my phone? Seriously?” I was equal parts impressed and horrified. Apparently Seth’s obsession with my whereabouts knew no bounds.

  “You’re always running off and getting trapped in dangerous situations. I installed it when we drove Maddie home the other night.” Seth’s voice cracked, and his face was roughly the same color as his red sweatshirt.

  “Good lord, just get it off my phone, okay? The last thing I need is you following me around.”

  Seth looked wounded and I immediately felt guilty. The thing about Seth was that in spite of his early attempts to convince me to make out with him, he’d turned into a really amazing friend. And as sketchy as the GPS tracker might have been, he did sort of have a point.

  Just as I was about to apologize and send the boys packing, Taylor shoved past me and yanked them both into the house. She slammed the door behind her and pressed a button to arm the security system.

  Welcome to the house party of awkward.

  “Actually we could use your help.” I looked over at Taylor in confusion after she said the words. She was kidding. She had to be kidding. Taylor, of course, was dead serious. Seth stopped mid-turn.

  “We’re not here to help. We’re here to bring Kate home. Whatever you’ve got her involved in, she wants no part of it.” Liam had kept completely quiet up until this point, and he managed to keep his tone light, but there was nothing light about the way the tendons in his neck strained against the collar of his fleece.

  “Kate is fine right where she is.” Jesus, now he had me talking in the third person. “Why don’t you go plan another humiliation ceremony?”

  Taylor ignored me completely and addressed Liam. “What have you heard?”

  Liam’s eyes were on fire and seemed to be aimed primarily at me. “What the hell? I told you. I had no idea they were going to do that to Maddie. I just got this stupid text to show up at the auditorium, and after you ran out of open, I figured something was up so I showed up and…”

  Taylor reduced the space between them in record time. I was starting to think that there was a ninja underneath all that pretty blond hair. Her f
ace stopped just an inch from his. “You are one of them now? Where is she? What did you do to her?”

  Liam jerked away, stumbling under his feet. The circular entry table wobbled as Liam bumped into it, a gigantic arrangement of flowers vibrating beneath the movement. A few petals rained down. I threw my arms into the air like some sort of deranged crossing guard and screamed.

  “Stop!”

  It worked.

  Despite looking like he could take off at any second, Liam was still, every muscle in his body tensed and ready for a fight. Taylor looked like she was ready to pounce, but she’d twisted her head around. I could see the veins in her neck pulsating from where I stood. Seth, who had magically produced a bag of Cheetos, presumably from somewhere in his coat, stood with his mouth hanging open, a fresh Cheeto poised near his lips.

  “He”—I nodded at Liam—“is not a member of the Brotherhood. I followed Maddie out of the house that night because I thought she might know something, but instead the Brotherhood held some sort of humiliation ceremony in her honor. I was pissed because Liam was there.” As the words came out, I realized how angry I still was. Yeah, he wasn’t in the Brotherhood, but he had been there. It was almost worse.

  “Kate, I tried to tell you. I had no idea what was going on. I just got a text and showed up.” He tossed his too-long hair out of his eyes and snorted. “If anyone should be pissed it’s me. I mean what were you doing there? I thought you were done with this. With her.” He jerked an arm angrily in Taylor’s direction.

  Ah, the classic defense mechanism. Liam loved deflecting the blame, especially when it had to do with me investigating anything involving the ’hoods.

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Taylor beat me to it.

  “As riveting as your relationship issues are, I would like to get back to my missing best friend.” Her voice started out steely but cracked on the word “missing.” It felt strange to hear her say it out loud, especially with other people in the room. I guess we were officially letting Seth and Liam in.