Every Stolen Breath

by Kimberly Gabriel

  If I sold out to social media and reporters, things I despise, my reasons wouldn’t be as just. But would it be worth it? Would it distract news feeds or anyone else who thinks I stalk the Death Mob? Are people so desperate for gossip that a ridiculous, pseudo-relationship could accomplish that?

  The music bangs around Cullen’s car, muddling everything. I press my knees together at the thought of Lip Spikes, his eyes flickering up at me, his tongue running along his bottom lip like he’s about to devour me whole.

  Cullen flashes me a picture. The two of us from yesterday. “We’re almost up to eighty-two hundred likes.” He laughs. “That’s nearing celeb status.”

  “A bunch of high school kids fawning over you hardly makes you a celebrity.”

  The car rolls closer to the stop sign. “Doesn’t matter who it is. That’s eighty-two hundred people interested in you, despite your little Swarm fetish. And all they care about is whether I’m driving you to school today. Don’t underestimate the power of that.”

  I turn away, desperate to escape the conversation. I’m nauseous for even considering it. Ryan told me the Swarm didn’t kill my dad sooner because of his high-profile case. Would making myself relevant at least buy some time to figure out my next move? The media and their audience are among the groups I despise most, but the real enemy is the Swarm. Aren’t I willing to do anything to take them down?

  We approach the intersection, where a handful of protestors stand on the corner. High schoolers, I’m guessing. A couple twenty-somethings. They hold poster boards declaring atrocities committed by the Lakefront Project. A girl with tiny french braids swirling in intricate designs around her head shouts, “Save our parks,” most of it drowned out by the chaos coming from the stereo.

  “Don’t encourage them,” Cullen says flatly.

  “Got something against freedom of speech?”

  “I got a thing against people bashing my dad. Maybe you can relate.”

  One protestor nears our window and shoves the sign at the car. “On with the gala!”

  “What gala?”

  “A party set up by self-righteous housewives who need an excuse to get dressed up and have their picture taken in the name of ‘park preservation.’” He rattles it off while scrolling through his phone. The car creeps forward, closing in on the bumper of the car in front of us. “You realize they’re bashing the mayor’s efforts to save the city on sidewalks that were repaved with Lakefront Project funding. This city was billions in debt before my dad took over.” Clearly, he’s had this discussion with his father before.

  He tosses his phone in the cup holder and flashes me a fake smile. “Good stuff for my girlfriend to know.”

  As we inch along, I spot Katie in the back of the protestors, wearing a thick headband and ruffled skirt. She looks empowered as she folds her Save the Parks sign painted in perfect beveled letters and tucks it into her backpack with its trio of buttons. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes ignited. For as quiet as she can be at school, she’s in her element out here, defending a cause she believes in.

  I duck, not knowing how she’d react if she saw me in Cullen’s car. I can’t imagine she approves of any interaction I’ve had with the mayor’s son. What would she think if I went along with this horrific idea and pretended to be his girlfriend?

  Cullen rolls through the stop sign and slams on the gas, cutting off the car to our left who has the actual right-of-way.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “You have about sixty seconds to make up your mind.” Cullen jerks the wheel, and we vault into the school parking lot, packed with students heading toward the building. We drive past them, toward the front line of parking spaces, which by now should be full. Cullen turns right down an open lane, taking the corner much too fast. The car jolts as he slams on the brakes inches away from a girl with cropped black hair and a cropped green jacket.

  My chest bangs against the seat belt again.

  The girl slams her fist on Cullen’s trunk. Her mouth falls open as if to scream at him, but as she looks inside the car, she stops. Her eyes dart back and forth between Cullen and me, making the hairs on my arms and neck bristle. She drops her head, wraps her jacket around her chest, and hurries toward the building. Something about her seems off. And somehow familiar. But just as I’m about to wonder why she’s so afraid of Cullen, I see the camera crews. At the far end of the parking lot camped outside an empty spot.

  “You called them,” I snap, pissed that I got in his car, pissed that I made this so convenient.

  Cullen faces me. Once again, his tone is serious. “I’ll come around and open your door. I’ll stay on your right side. Hold on to my arm, and no one will notice that limp or the puffy eyes you’re trying to hide.”

  Cullen stares at me in a way that, for the first time, doesn’t feel completely smarmy before hitting the gas and speeding toward the cameras like he’s late for school. The crew shuffles aside as Cullen eases up and rolls in. He smiles at the reporter and leans toward me. “Ready?” He kisses me on the cheek.

  I flinch, fighting the impulse to wipe it away, and try to reassure myself that ditching the target on my back is necessary if I want to destroy the Swarm.

  Cullen steps out of the car and flirts with the lead reporter. When he opens my door, light from the camera shines in my face. I grab for Cullen’s arm so at least my wounded foot isn’t plastered all over the station as the next bit of something “newsworthy.”

  I keep my head down—partly in resignation that I’m lowering myself to something so humiliating.

  Cullen does the talking. I tune it all out, forcing myself to smile once or twice and willing myself to hold on to his arm instead of running the other way, far from the absurdity of what I’m doing. I hear Cullen say, “I guess we both lucked out that she ended up on my dock,” and decide to hyperfocus on walking like I don’t have a jolt of pain shooting up my leg. The camera with its glaring light and the reporter with her trivial questions follow us like we’re famous. Before I know it, it’s over, and I feel the need to shower.

  “See? It wasn’t so bad.”

  I can’t look at him. “Sure.” I keep my head down, anxious to put distance between us.

  Cullen chuckles as we go our separate ways.

  The walk to my locker feels extra long, either from the pain in my foot or the general unease that makes my skin itch. I feel disconnected to everyone around me, to what just happened in the parking lot, to the series of terrifying events over the last couple days that have somehow become my life. It isn’t until I get to my locker that I pinpoint exactly why I feel so uneasy.

  The girl with the black cropped hair and the army jacket is the same girl I saw in the Swarm five days ago—right before I jumped off Navy Pier.

  CHAPTER 18

  The blood drains from my face. The hallway chaos of students brushing past each other, shouting to friends, opening and closing locker doors fades into background noise. Someone from the Swarm is at my school.

  And she knows I’m here.

  I stand at my locker, spinning the dial as the white numbers blur together. I can’t remember my combination. What if that girl is here to kill me? Last night’s package wasn’t a warning. It was a way to torture my final days.

  I don’t know where to go, where to hide—whether to stay at school or run for it. I picture her at the pier. She was wearing sunglasses, a stocking cap. Black hair stuck out beneath it. And the way she’d stood, clutching her bag—she had the same posture today. It was undeniably her.

  “I just saw a news reel of you and Cullen Henking walking with his arm around you. I almost threw up my smoothie.”

  I recognize Adam’s voice as he approaches, but I can’t bring myself to look at him.

  He notices my near-catatonic state and drops the sarcasm. “What are you doing?”

  I can’t respond.

  “Lia?”

  Adam grabs the lock from my hands, spins the combination, and opens the locker.
He eases my backpack off my shoulders and starts stacking the books I need for first period.

  “There are worse things than being Cullen Henking’s girlfriend, I’m sure. Nothing comes to mind, but don’t worry, we’ll fix it.”

  “I saw someone,” I whisper, “from the Swarm.” My head and body feel light, like a buoy swaying in water, anchored by my feet.

  “Here?” His voice is urgent. He grabs my arm. “Let’s get you out.” He swipes my bag and tugs me toward the hall, but my feet stay planted. I can’t shake the image of Cropped Hair Girl during the attack. She’d stood along the outskirts of the fight, her distress palpable.

  Katie walks up, clutching her sketchbook. “What’s going on?”

  Her words barely register. I can’t shake Cropped Hair Girl’s reaction to seeing Cullen and me in the car. The second she saw me, she rushed off like she was uncomfortable in her own skin.

  “Lia?” Katie says, but it feels like she’s in another world.

  “She didn’t want me to see her.” Ideas begin to shape themselves. This has nothing to do with the package last night. “She doesn’t want me to identify her.”

  Adam tugs me again. “Who cares. Let’s go.”

  “Who didn’t want you to see her?” Unease escalates in Katie’s voice. “What’s going on?”

  Ryan claimed he doesn’t want to be in the Swarm. If Ryan’s forced to participate like he says . . . I think of the way Cropped Hair Girl looked during the attack—like she didn’t want to be there, like she didn’t belong.

  Adam tugs harder. “She saw someone from the Swarm, and we’re getting out of here.”

  Katie gasps. “Here?”

  I pull away from Adam’s grip.

  “Katie,” I begin.

  Somewhere down the hall a locker door slams shut. Someone screams—a high-pitched cackle. I jump and spin toward the noise. Two students are doubled over, laughing.

  I turn back to Katie. “Do you know anyone with black hair, choppy, just above her chin? She was wearing an army jacket.”

  Katie fumbles. She looks back and forth between Adam and me, unsure of what to do. “There’s”—I can almost hear her mind spinning—“Stella Mangrove? Or . . .” She hugs her sketchbook as if it might shield her. “Sadie Lasky? But they’re not in the Swarm,” she adds with uncertainty. “Are you sure you saw her right? Don’t the Swarm disguise themselves?”

  Adam rubs the back of his neck. “I can’t believe we’re having this discussion. Even I can think of at least three girls that fit that description of the hundred or so people I know by name. But that leaves eleven hundred other students I can’t vouch for who may or may not be here to kill you.”

  I grab my backpack from Adam. “I need you to find her for me.” A game plan begins to take shape. “Take a picture of anyone who might look like that. I need to know who she is.”

  “Maybe Adam’s right . . .”

  I halt. Katie’s light-tan skin blanches. She looks petrified. Even if Cropped Hair Girl is no threat, I can’t involve Katie and risk her becoming a target. My eyes flicker to Adam, hoping he’ll volunteer, but his face is set in pissed-off mode.

  I slip my backpack on one shoulder at a time. “Forget about it.” I shut my locker and start limping away, surprised my foot hurts so much. “See you guys later.”

  “I never said I wouldn’t do it.”

  I turn back to see Katie retrieving her cell phone from her backpack. Her thumb shakes as she types like she’s scheduling “find girl from Swarm” in her calendar. “I can do this.” Katie smiles nervously. Her silky dark hair drapes over both shoulders, making her look too innocent to hunt down Swarm members.

  “No, I’ll think of something else—”

  Katie cuts me off. “You’d do it for me. Besides, I owe you one.” Her eyes flicker down before settling on mine. She still feels guilty for thinking I was crazy when I told her not to go to the pier. Or maybe it’s because she had friends there—people she didn’t warn.

  I try to convince myself I’m not endangering her life by allowing her to help. The truth is, I need her.

  I give her a weak smile. “Don’t be . . .” I struggle with how to finish. “Obvious.”

  “Covert. Got it.” Katie’s eyes sparkle for a moment. “I always wanted to be a spy.”

  Katie is the last person I’d ever peg for espionage. Still, I feel a small sense of relief. I avoid eye contact with Adam and head toward the library, my game plan focalizing.

  If the Swarm was hoping that video of my father’s murder would cripple me, they were wrong.

  Adam starts after me. “Where are you going?”

  My steps are awkward. “The library.”

  “Then I’m coming too.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just—”

  Adam cuts me off. “I think you’re an idiot. You should flee the premises, but I’ll be damned if some girl wearing a nasty, second-hand-store army jacket is going to off my best friend today.”

  I bite my lip, grateful for their comradery. Adam and Katie are the only two people in this entire school I’d want on my side. Katie in her thick headband and her ruffled skirt. And Adam in his tight black jeans, faded Black Sabbath shirt that’s ripped at the collar, and leather bands tied around his skinny wrists. As if deliberately contradicting his outfit, his black hair is sculpted into a side pompadour and he’s wearing thick-rimmed Tom Ford glasses. He picks up on what I’m thinking.

  “I might not look like much of a threat, but my intellect is unmatchable.”

  Adam walks beside me without asking why I’m going to the library or what I plan to do there, which is good. I wouldn’t have an answer for him if he did.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing with Cullen Henking.”

  “I don’t even know how we’re going to get into the library without a pass.”

  “You have the greatest sob story of anyone at our school.”

  He’s right. It’s about time I start using that to my advantage.

  Adam references a picture of Jeremiah Dopney standing on the Skydeck’s Ledge. “He was in Chicago three years ago.”

  After spending the first four periods scouring Dopney’s social media sites, Adam finds a picture of Dopney’s feet hovering over a bird’s-eye view from the Skydeck’s glass balcony 103 floors above Wacker Drive. Makes me nauseous just looking at it. No caption, no mention of anyone else he was traveling with or visiting. Just the picture that, luckily, Adam recognized.

  “Two trips in three years? He must have been visiting someone,” I say with more conviction than I feel. The truth is, I need Dopney to have a connection so badly I’m almost willing to invent one for him.

  I prop my foot on a stepstool Adam stole from the biography section and shift in the boxy wooden chair. It has to be the most uncomfortable chair ever created, like the school needed another way to torture its students. On a desktop tucked into the back corner, I scroll through old yearbooks uploaded in our library’s database, looking for Cropped Hair Girl while Adam sits beside me manning his iPad. At his insistence, both of us are signed in to his school account, not mine.

  I point to a strip of electrical tape over the camera on his iPad. “What’s with that?”

  “Precautionary measures. These things are incredibly easy to hack. This”—he flicks the tape with his finger and raises his eyebrows like I should be impressed—“prevents anyone from picking up the feed.”

  Adam’s cell phone buzzes. He checks it before flipping it around to show me the latest picture Katie sent of a girl with short black hair. This one has a nose piercing, heavy purple eye shadow. I shake my head. To Katie’s credit, she’s had five passing periods and already sent half a dozen pictures of girls who fit the description. Unfortunately, none of them have been close. Same with my yearbook search, though I’m not sure I’d recognize Cropped Hair Girl with a different haircut. More than once, I’ve wondered whether I hallucinated this morning, made associations that don’t exist.

  I thi
nk about what Cullen said about me—that I used to pretend my twin sister was still alive. He was right. I remember creating elaborate scenes involving the two of us having tea parties in the basement and dance competitions around our swing set. I remember talking to her about the routines we performed. I pictured her facial expressions when I dictated instructions, basically making her my backup dancer. She would nod like it was a good idea. I guess that’s the thing with an imaginary dead sister: she’ll do whatever you want her to do.

  Adam scrolls through Dopney’s online picture galleries, many of which showcase pictures of rare birds he’d come across. “The guy’s a homebody. Other than his two trips to Chicago, he’s completely boring—except for his bird fascination.” He flips his iPad so I can see the screen. “Look at this one,” he says, referencing a bird with a crazy wingspan about to take flight.

  Adam’s phone buzzes again. I glance over, already prepared to dismiss it when I see a picture of Cropped Hair Girl—the actual one I’m looking for—pulling a book out of her locker. I jump in my chair and grab for the phone, but Adam beats me to it.

  YES, he writes. Get her name.

  How??

  My body shakes with anticipation.

  Adam stares at the picture. Never mind.

  “What are you doing?”

  Adam swipes at his device. The school’s homepage. The staff intranet. He keys in a password and continues clicking. “For the record, she’s wearing an army-green jacket, not an army jacket.”

  He hits the link: Locker assignments.

  “How are you doing this?”

  Adam looks at me through his designer glasses. “Mrs. Greenberg’s an idiot. Her password is one, two, three, four, five. What’s the locker number?”

  I grab Adam’s phone and zoom in on the number above the locker Cropped Hair Girl is rummaging through. “Two, five, one, zero.”

  Adam smirks like he just did something sinister. “Amy London. Junior.”