Adam opens the door and smiles shyly at me. “Hey. How are you?”
I stand and stretch my arms over my head, my stitches pulling and itching in my arm. I want to get them out. “I’ll be good.”
“I was wondering if I could…well.” He reaches up and runs his long fingers through his hair. “This is more awkward than I thought it would be. But I was wondering if I could get an MRI of your brain and also draw some blood.”
No. No no no. Never let them do that. Never let them find anyone else like you, not ever, not ever. I smile and shake my head. “I never let a boy see my brain until the third date.”
His eyes go wide and then he laughs. “Sorry. I guess that was too forward.”
“You at least owe me dinner and a movie first.”
His smile hits me straight through, breaks my heart. “I’d like that.”
Oh, I wish. I wish I were a girl for this boy to take to dinner and a movie. I could be, still. I could have that life. I could earn the way he looks at me. I glance at the clock. Almost time. Can’t think. I pull out the tiny, pay-as-you-go phone I asked Sarah to buy for me. “Do you have a phone?”
He nods. “Are you going to throw it out another window?”
“No phones out windows today. Maybe something else. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to call this phone at 12:20.” I give him the number. He’ll do it, of course.
I slip the phone into my pocket next to my stolen one, then sit on the edge of the bed, pat the spot next to me. He sits. His feet stretch out onto the floor. “Adam, listen to me. I know about working for people who think they know more than you do. Promise me that whatever you do here, you’ll be careful. Promise me you’ll always listen to that thing deep inside you that tells you whether something is right or wrong. Even if it’s just a twinge. Even if it’s just a hint of a hint of a feeling. Because you could save—or destroy—a lot of lives. You’re going to have help, though. Someone who really does know more than you do.”
He smiles and looks at me with hope in his gray eyes. This boy is built of hope. What does that feel like? “I’m so glad you’re staying.”
“Thanks for looking at me like…like I could be whole. You have no idea what it means to me.” I lean in to kiss him on the cheek and he surprises me by turning his head and our lips connect and he is soft and sweet and true, true, true.
I could have kisses like that for the rest of my life. Kisses that don’t know who I am. Kisses that make me feel more and less than what I am. But my finger tap tap taps on my leg and reminds me that I am not who Adam thinks I am, and it makes me want to cry. It’s not that I don’t deserve his kiss. It’s that the person I am can never really share a life, a soul, with the person he is.
He pulls back, looks down at the bed with a semicircle sweep of his lashes. “I’m sorry, I know we don’t really know each other, but I’ve wanted to do that.”
I sigh and glance at the clock; it’s time. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. Thanks again. And don’t forget to call.”
He feels right for this. It’ll be okay. I stand and walk out of the room, jog down the hall. Back to the lobby area. I’m in luck, Sarah and Cole and, oh, even better, Sandy blond who had the gun (he has no gun today) are all in there. Sandy blond looks at me with barely disguised anger. His knee is in a brace.
Sarah smiles. “There you are. We were just talking about you.”
“I’m sure you were.” (Freestanding chair still next to the window, which is not plate glass nor does it have mesh wiring in it to prevent shattering.)
“I was wondering if you might be willing to give us a better idea of what you did for the school and why they were so invested in you. You said you were ‘hands’?”
“Hands, yes. Also stock predictor, corporate espionage specialist, fight picker, and resident scary psychotic chick.”
Sarah looks sad. “I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through. Would you like to talk about it?”
I stretch both shoulders, crack my neck, crack my knuckles. This is going to hurt. Nothing to be done for it. “Nope, don’t want to talk about anything. You were using past tense to describe my work with Keane. You should use present tense. I am their hands.”
“But—” Sarah looks confused. More evidence she shouldn’t be doing this. She should look scared.
Cole understands. He quickly rises from the couch, puts himself between Sarah and me. Sandy blond is slower but he, too, stands, limps closer. I smile and hold both of my hands out wide.
“I really am sorry about this. But a girl’s gotta do…” I lower my head and charge into Sandy blond, catching him around the middle and knocking him to the floor with a loud oof.
Cole picks me up and throws me off Sandy blond. I roll; my face smacks into the floor, hard. It will bruise. Good. I stand, shaking off the daze.
“I won’t let you destroy this,” Cole says. They need him. I’m so glad he’s here.
“I’m not going to breathe a word about you.” I swing at his head, making my movements obvious and wide. He ducks under my fist, slams his own into my face where I already hit it on the floor. I spin, hit the wall, use it to hold myself up.
Pain, pain, pain.
“I really am sorry.” I look at Sarah, who is watching all this in horror. “And I promise not to tell them anything. But I’ve got to go.”
I run for the window, twisting out of Cole’s reach, then throw the chair through the glass with a resounding crash. Duck down, fist over my head again, kick out, Cole goes down, I see a knife on his belt.
I hit him in the nose, it’s probably broken, then snake my hand out and slide the knife out of the sheath.
“Sofia, please.” Sarah stands, holding her hands out. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No. I really do.”
“Then walk out the door. We’ll let you.”
I laugh. She’s so sweet. “Oh, I know. I just need physical evidence for a good escape story. I was knocked unconscious, kept in a cell, and fought my way out without speaking to a soul. I have no idea who took me. Good luck. Take care of Adam.”
I climb out the window, letting the jagged edges of the glass catch on my arms, cut me. Then I run down the sidewalk.
Today is the end. Today I am done reacting. All these years I’ve been turning myself off, letting my paths choose themselves. After today I am acting. I am choosing.
I am going to do truly terrible things. Unthinkable things. But the back of my head is buzzing with right right right. I laugh, slide the knife into my pocket, and run toward the arch.
When I am close I pull out the stolen phone.
James answers immediately. “Fia? You escaped!” He must be with others if he’s lying. “Where are you? We’ll come get you.”
“I want Annie underneath the arch. No one else. If anyone is with her, if anyone approaches her, I’ll run and you’ll never see me again.”
“Come on, you know—”
“This is my only offer, James. Annie right underneath the arch. I know you’ll be watching. That’s fine. But she needs to be by herself. You know I can’t take her and run fast enough to get away. Tell them I’m confused and scared, and I need to see my sister, alone.”
“Why?”
“Annie under the arch. Now.” I put myself in the middle of a tour group, walk casually, circling closer. It’s a beautiful day, clear blue sky. Warm. A day for endings and beginnings. I glance behind me. Cole is tracking me, trying to be invisible. That’s fine. I look toward the arch and see a man—Darren from the hall—walk Annie to the center of the cement underneath. Then he looks all around and walks away. I watch him, trace him. No one can be too close. Annie looks so small. So alone.
Oh, Annie. Annie, Annie, Annie.
I will not cry. I will not be sorry. It has to be this way. It has to end. It’s the only way to move forward.
I keep walking with the tour group. The arch park isn’t crowded but it’s steady with people, and that’s enough. There is a man wh
o has stopped to tie his shoelaces about twelve feet from Annie.
My phone is out again. “James. Tell the man tying his shoe to get away from my sister. Now.”
He sighs. “Fine.”
The man abruptly stands and walks away. I break from the group and sprint to close the distance. I know they’ve seen me now. I also know they’ll hope that I’m going to come quietly after talking with my sister. Public disturbance is their last resort.
Annie looks so lost. I slow as I get close, walk up, drink in every detail of her. The brown hair kept simple at her shoulders. The china-doll mouth, exactly like mine. The squarer-face, delicate chin. The milky brown eyes looking out, looking out but seeing nothing.
She looks absolutely terrified.
I want to tell her it will be okay. But I can’t lie, not about that. I reach out and take both her hands in mine, her soft, perfect, clean hands. She smiles, but tears are tracing out the corners of her eyes.
“Fia,” she says. Her voice is strange, strained, choked. “I’m so sorry. For everything. But it’s okay. I understand.”
My stomach drops. She knows. She saw. Of course she saw. I wish I could tell her everything, but I can’t. Not now, not ever. She saw and she still came. A sob rises in my throat, but I choke it back. This is right. I am choosing it.
“Annie,” I whisper. “It’s the only way. I can’t protect you anymore, and we can never be free. Not together. I’m so sorry, but it’s the only way.” I let go of her hands, then lean forward and kiss her forehead. I want to stay here, frozen, with my sister, for all of time.
It’s not an option.
I pull out the knife, and the sun catches it at an angle to glint like a beacon. I am going to lose my Annie forever. The sob comes out, but only just. “I love you. I love you, but I need you to be dead. You have to be dead.”
I close the distance between us, the knife between our bodies, my hand behind her back supporting her in the last hug I will ever give her. And then I twist my wrist, and the knife cuts, cuts deep, my hand is wet with the blood. Annie gasps. “Be dead,” I whisper so softly only her ears could ever hear it. “I’ll miss you.”
Then I step back and after a few seconds (please, please, Annie, understand, you have to understand what I’m doing) Annie puts her hands over her stomach and drops to the ground, unmoving. I hold the knife out to the side, the red red knife, and a drop falls to the ground from it.
And while anyone watching will be watching that hand, my other slips into my pocket, pulls out the tiny phone, and drops it onto Annie’s hand, which quickly closes over it and then she doesn’t move, not a hint of movement, good girl.
I smile, so proud of her, and say, “Good-bye, Annie. I love you.”
Then I turn and walk away, toward where I know James will be waiting. After a dozen steps someone falls into place next to me, but I don’t look at him. He doesn’t matter. Someone else falls into step on my other side. I look back and see Cole running, dropping to Annie’s side, putting a finger under her chin to look for a pulse.
We keep walking. I pass a trash can and drop the knife inside. No blood evidence for Keane. James takes the place of one of the men next to me, and whispers harshly, “Fia, what is wrong with you?”
I look at him and grin. “Absolutely nothing. The man by her body is from the group that kidnapped me. It was his knife. They’ll clean up the mess. I’m free now to choose. And I choose Keane.”
He’s looking at me with horror—he has never looked at me this way—but then his eyes that pick up everything notice a deep gash across my stomach, the black T-shirt sliced open but hiding the blood. “What happened?” he asks, and I can see things falling into place behind his beautiful brown eyes. The angles. The showmanship of it all. The way Annie covered her stomach before falling.
“Had to jump out a window to get here. See?” I hold up my arms with their small cuts.
And then he smiles, and I know he knows what I did, and I know the secret will forever be safe with him because we will do this together. We will be inside Keane, farther inside than anyone else could ever get. And we will destroy his father and his webs of power and we will end this completely. I am giving up a life of freedom, I am giving up my sister, I am giving up who I could have been. But it’s the right choice, because together James and I will do what no one else can. We will do what is right, however long and however much wrong it takes us to get there.
“I see.” James laughs. “My clever girl.”
Next to a van two men are holding Eden’s arms, restraining her.
She shakes her head, tears spilling out of her eyes. “You’re a monster. Annie never did anything to you, she loved you, and you…and you’re happy and hopeful. James, you can’t be okay with this.” She looks at him for support, but he shrugs. She’s shaking now, whether with tears or rage I couldn’t say. “I can’t—I’ll be in the other car.” She jerks her arms away from the men and walks quickly to the black sedan a few parking spots over, her gait stiff and unnatural.
I smile and James takes my hand that isn’t covered in blood in his own. “Thank you,” he whispers.
“It was the only way.” I don’t look back. I can’t and I won’t. I hope hope hope Annie and Adam will take care of each other. She’ll figure out a way for all those women to be safe without Adam dying. I think that’s what she was supposed to do all along.
And I think that this, here, with James, will always be wrong but it will always be the right sort of wrong, because if we don’t do this, no one will. We are a matched set of perfect liars, perfectly destroyed people, perfect for destruction. James rubs his thumb down my own and my hand doesn’t seem like it belongs on someone else anymore.
Annie is safe. And because she is, no one who hurt us will ever be safe again. I smile, and it is not a lie. It is a promise. I am ready.
ANNIE
Ten Years Ago
I’M NEARLY ASLEEP WHEN I FEEL THE BOTTOM OF MY bed move.
“Fia?”
I can hear her breathing; it’s fast and ragged and peppered with sniffles. “Please?”
I sigh and scoot over to the wall, holding the covers open. Her little body snuggles in next to me. “Ouch!” I hiss as she knees me in the stomach.
“Sorry.”
“You know you aren’t allowed to do this.”
“Please don’t tell.”
I smile. I won’t. Because she’ll get in trouble, but also because even though I pretend like I don’t, I love it when Fia has nightmares and comes into my room. It makes me proud that she chooses me over our parents. “Okay,” I say, patting her head and stroking her hair like Mom does to make me feel better.
“I wish night wasn’t so long.”
“Why?”
“It’s scary. I can’t see anything. What if there’s something hiding in the dark in my room?”
“Silly. Dark isn’t scary. Dark is safe.”
“Why?”
“I live in the dark all the time. But when it’s dark outside everyone has to be there, too. And if you can’t see someone, they can’t see you, either.”
She sniffles a few times. “So, it’s like I’m hiding in the dark?”
“Yes. You’re the secret when it’s dark. Dark is safe.”
“Dark is safe,” she whispers, snuggling into me and throwing one of her bony arms over my stomach. “But only with you here, too.”
“Safe together.” I smile and brush her hair away from where it’s tickling my nose. Sometimes I am the one who takes care of Fia. It makes me happy. “I’ll take care of you,” I say, but she is already asleep. I breathe in the sweet shampoo scent of her and fall asleep, too.
Acknowledgments
FIRST THANKS, AS ALWAYS, TO MY NOAH, FOR HELPING me calm and organize the chaos that is my brain. You are everything good in my life. Thank you as well to my darling Elena and Jonah, for your patience when Mommy went crazy with a story. Again. You are absolutely delightful little people.
Thank you to
my mom, Cindy, and my sister Lauren, for babysitting that one night so Noah and I could go on a date and see a movie that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this but somehow sparked the idea that I needed. Please feel free to take credit for this book. Unless people hate it, in which case I guess you’ve just lost plausible deniability. Sorry.
Special thanks to my siblings, Erin, Lindsey, Lauren, and Matt. I am so glad to have grown up with you. All the memories and stolen clothes (Matt, you are exempted…I think) and shared history make me who I am, and I’m glad that you are all part of it. Again, feel free to take credit for me, unless people hate me; in which case, beat them up.
Biggest familial thanks go to my dad, for making me his Kick Butt Action Movie Buddy all growing up. KBP forever.
Thank you to Natalie Whipple, for always spurring me on and for saying, “I thought the sister would be the other POV?” I owe Annie to you. Among many other things (that are not imaginary people). Thank you to Shannon Messenger for doing a lightning-fast crit that I believe included threatening to throw olives (or was it carrots? I’d be much more frightened of carrots) at me. Thank you to Stephanie Perkins for always helping me find my way and for showing me where to deepen my stories and strengthen my writing. You’re like my personal trainer, only instead of getting slender and toned I get better at writing. Maybe we should also try the slender and toned thing next time. Just a thought.
Thank you to Michelle Wolfson, Agent Extraordinaire, for letting me write a book I wasn’t supposed to and for sending it out in spite of its being “crazy.” You keep taking chances on me, and then you keep making those chances pay off. I am so glad you are in my life.
Thank you to Erica Sussman. I can’t imagine making a book without you. I would make some funny threat about what I’d do if you ever quit being an editor, but after reading this book, you’d probably believe I was serious and get scared. I promise my love of working with and adoration of you is all things good and nonviolent. Thank you also to Berkeley, the cutest Harvard-bound dog in existence.
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