Last Girls

by Demetra Brodsky

  “That’s true. Regardless, if you or any other kids that are part of your group were leaning toward actions that could get you and your sisters into bigger trouble, it might help to have an Outsider you could go to for advice, or protection. Prepper to prepper.”

  Trusting him is becoming more twisted than a juniper tree. He’s wending his way into dangerous territory, and it’s making my pulse tap like a woodpecker’s warning.

  He knows something. He knows something. He knows something.

  Rémy told me he had photos to prove it when it came to Annalise. The turkey sandwich photos from his note. He’s probably taken dozens more, even out on Overcast Road. If he used those photos to get himself out of trouble … I stop my unfounded suspicions from spiraling when I catch myself moving my hand to cover the arrow wound on my deltoid. We’re talking about Rémy. The direct approach is best. “What did Rémy tell you, exactly?”

  “About you specifically?” He shrugs. “Nothing I hadn’t figured out on my own. He was more concerned his suspension would interrupt his ability to act as student liaison for the art competition. Makes sense. National attention is something colleges like to see on applications. Naturally, I spoke to Ms. Everitt on his behalf and got everything squared away.”

  I can’t stop my eyes from narrowing. I can usually spot a lie, but his face gives away nothing, a prepper trained in the art of impassivity.

  “That disturbs you. Would you have preferred it if Rémy had told me something you can’t?”

  I shake my head. What’s disturbing me is his interest in our group. But asking may bring an irrefutable truth to the surface. The dynamics in our coalition are not fine, like I told him. And I’m not a hundred percent sure we are safe. At least, not from Annalise. At the same time, his interest in our group can’t go on without question forever.

  “I have to ask … are you looking to join a prepper group? Is that why you’re so interested in what we’re doing?”

  “Let’s just say I wouldn’t mind meeting the person in charge. Is that something you might be able to arrange?”

  “Introductions aren’t really how it works. My mom found the group through some secret online prepper network. She had to apply, offering up her specific skill set, and wait for an invitation to join.”

  “Could I speak with her? Or maybe you know how she found the secret prepper network?”

  “I never asked. You’d have better luck with Ansel or Annalise if you want to go the informal route.”

  “Ah,” he says, catching on. “Their father is the man in charge. Do you know much about him?”

  I shake my head again. The truth is I don’t know much about Dieter Ackerman. I never felt a need to dig deeper. Our life as Nesters has always been about prepping and training and staying safe. Questioning Dieter’s motives never occurred to me because I accepted that they were fueled by a potential power grid failure, extreme weather, economic collapse, viral pandemics.

  “It’s just us,” Whitlock says, being as observant as he claimed. “Honey, I have to ask if you think the white powder on your clothes may have come from someone inside your group. You don’t have to say who.”

  A shadowy blur obscures the edges of my peripheral vision. I glance at the door and see the students in his next class gathering outside.

  It was Annalise. It was Annalise. It was Annalise.

  I keep my expression numb to the accusation screaming inside my head, because it’s just a guess. A theoretical finger-pointing based on what we know and what Blue saw. I look straight into Whitlock’s concerned blue eyes and nod. Just once. And the bell trills above the door like I tripped a listening device that was hidden there all along, waiting to alert the masses of my betrayal. Confiding in Mr. Whitlock was the right thing to do if I want answers. But to what end? I haven’t thought that far ahead.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” he says. “I’ll write you a late pass for Ms. Everitt.”

  Mr. Whitlock writes a quick note saying he kept me behind after class. He scribbles his cellphone number on a separate late pass and hands it to me. “Just in case you need it. I’ll look into what you gave me right away and get back to you. Do you have a cellphone?”

  I shake my head for the last time, knowing it’s a lie.

  “I’ll find a way to get in touch with you if it’s urgent. I trust you’ll do the same.”

  I take the note and his JIC number and leave, questioning and replaying everything I told him. Just In Case. I don’t know what happens to someone who betrays The Nest or The Burrow. Snitches get stitches. That’s what Annalise said, but what if the consequences are worse?

  TOBYISMS FOR ACTION

  6

  SUSPECT YOUR ALLIES

  BUSTED. FOR THE first time in three years. Mom is waiting for me wrapped in the bloodred Lady Macbeth robe Jonesy got her for Christmas. Not that her dagger eyes are helping.

  “You better have a good reason for sneaking in at this hour.” She points her cigarette at me and lifts it to her lips, taking a deep drag.

  “You know those things will kill you if you keep it up, right?”

  She squints and sniffs the air between us. “What’s that smell?”

  “Nicotine, formaldehyde, arsenic. Nobody smokes anymore. It’s not chic or whatever.” This is my way of avoiding the fact that I came home at two a.m.

  “No.” She steps closer and sniffs my jacket. “What smells like dry cleaning chemicals? And what’s that white powder on your shirt?”

  I stuff my paint-stained hands in my pockets and look down at my chest. The white powder in question is powdered sugar. From some donuts Bash got for free from Holey Donuts because they were about to close. I ate three blackberry jelly ones, but don’t have time to explain, because she’s firing more questions at me.

  “Were you with Bash? What are you two doing this time of night? Where is he? Your eyes are red. Are you boys doing drugs? You can tell me.” She’s inches from my face.

  “Drugs? Are you serious? I’m not the one that was rolling around on the floor covered in black paint. Are you sure you aren’t on something?”

  “No. I never.” She shakes her head. “I don’t. I didn’t know you saw me making that piece.”

  “You were in a deep trance. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

  She drifts into the kitchen to run her cigarette under the faucet. Something catches her eye outside the kitchen window, making her dip and bob her head like she’s watching a kite. Only it’s pitch-black outside.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “A military drone.” She tosses her extinguished butt into the trash can and faces me. “There was a story on the news earlier about some teenagers that got arrested for smuggling drugs across the border.”

  “You think that’s something I would do?” My eyes pop out of their sockets. “Suddenly, I’m El Chapo or something?”

  “It’s just, I did some stupid things when I was your age, and I got worried when I saw you weren’t home. You know how my mind operates.”

  I do and I don’t. I’ve just gotten good at guessing.

  “This is powdered sugar. From some serious crack-like blackberry donuts, to be fair. Bash went home, to answer your other question, where he’s probably riding out his sugar high with a game controller in hand.”

  She opens the fridge and pulls out a jar of blackberry jelly. “I had the same thing, except on toast.” She licks her middle finger, touches a spot on my shirt, and licks the sugar off. “I’m sorry I accused you.”

  “Just so we’re clear, though, I’m not doing drugs. I don’t need them to make art. I guess I’m like you in that way, only a lot less cool.”

  “You mean less experienced,” Mom corrects me. “You’re plenty cool, Toby, and you have lots of talent. But to go to the next level you have to be ready to show your art to the world. Not because you think it’s good, but because it means exposing yourself to people who will pry, whether they love your work or hate it. Looking for everything th
ey can find to justify their opinions one way or another. The trouble is they find the shiny stuff, as well as tarnished bits. It’s probably worse now that everything is online.”

  She’s not talking about me, but I bite. “Street art is automatically out there for everyone to see. They don’t always know who made it, but I follow a bunch of different hashtags online and have seen pictures of my work. People seem to like it.”

  Mom stares like she’s seeing me clearly for the first time in years. “When did you get so grown up?”

  I shrug one shoulder. “I never really allowed myself a childhood, to be honest.”

  She averts her eyes. That one struck home. “Sometimes I forget your sisters aren’t the only things we lost that night. I owe you an apology for that, amongst my other failings as a mother.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not, Toby. And the other day, when you accused Jonesy of not working hard enough to find your sisters, I knew it was time to tell you the reason he hasn’t stopped looking.”

  “He said the case is still open. I was just saying there hasn’t been much progress.”

  “Yes, and it’s still open because of me. Because I would know if my girls were dead. And the reason I would know is because of something I did a long time ago when I was a college student who needed money.”

  I get the sense she’s about to tell me something huge. I take a seat opposite her at the kitchen table. She flips her pack of smokes over and over without removing one from the box.

  “When I was a college student, I volunteered to be part of a study that was trying to prove the validity of ESP. More specifically, the pursuit of whether or not a person could perceive something that hadn’t happened yet. Distance was an important factor to the visiting professor in charge. He only took students that excelled in their areas of study or extracurriculars, claiming they had more expansive minds. He was trialing an LSD-based drug of his own design, taking his cue from the CIA’s MK-Ultra experiments.”

  “That happens in that Stephen King book. Firestarter. The daughter ends up a pyrogenetic.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t a mere fabrication of the author’s imagination. Those kinds of experiments have been going on since the sixties.”

  “So, you took hallucinogens?”

  “In a highly controlled academic environment. Your father also participated.”

  My eyes shift to a shoebox of old photos on the end of the table. I haven’t gone through them in years. I was ten when my father died. I remember writing Bad Memories Do Not Open on the cover in black Sharpie because we had lost everyone, and the memories inside those boxes made us cry. Mom pulls the shoebox closer, takes out a photo, and slides it across the table. It’s of her and Dad, sitting on the lawn of a university with a bottle of wine. I see the similarities in our features and builds now that I’m older.

  “Seventy-five students participated. For your dad, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. He was an engineer, grounded by logic and reason. For me, as an art student, it opened up doors in my mind I could only dream of accessing. I didn’t notice anything different about myself until you kids were born. Little things, like being able to anticipate your wants before you said anything. I chalked it up to mother’s intuition. But then Cassandra came, born with a caul, as they say. I saw the embryonic sac covering her face when they cut her out of me, and felt like I was suffocating, too, before they snipped it away and her skin pinked up from terrifying blue. I don’t mean that sympathetically.”

  “You and Cassandra always seemed to have a special bond and a secret way of communicating.”

  She nods. “Yes. That’s true. With you and the other girls, it was always little things. I buy blackberry jam on a whim, you come home and tell me you ate blackberry donuts. Once the girls disappeared, though, it started manifesting in my artwork. I draw strange things because I feel viscerally driven to it in a way that’s transcendent. Is that because of your sisters? I don’t know. I didn’t have them long enough to delve into that mystery. But early on, I told Jonesy about it. I wanted him to see if he might have better luck tracking down information about the study.

  “Unfortunately, we were both told a fire destroyed the research and Dr. Maddox, the professor in charge, was long gone. The university didn’t even have a list of the students that participated. But I know enough to believe this: if your sisters were no longer with us, I’d feel it as acutely as my own death.”

  I feel the same way, but—My heart jackrabbits for a few beats. “Are you saying your drawings are a way of seeing them?” The idea of them being in some hellscape is worse than thinking the trauma made her lose her mind.

  “I can’t be sure. The images that come to me haven’t been entirely clear until the last year. Tight spaces, soldiers crawling, smoke bombs. But not a single image of a place I can pinpoint.”

  She takes a cigarette out of her pack, taps it on the table a few times, and returns it to the box. “A gallery contacted me about doing a retrospective of my work. But only if I’m willing to show three new pieces at the reception so everyone can see what I’ve been doing since I stopped working on The Bard’s Mistress series.”

  “Are you gonna do it?”

  “My new drawings are more personal, but I’m willing to talk to them about the idea. It would mean leaving you home for a week or so, and I’m a little uncomfortable with that idea. Jonesy said he’d go with me, even though he’s voiced his concern over the publicity’s impact on the case. On one hand, your sisters could see it, and it might trigger their memory—although the likelihood is slim, considering how young they were. On the other hand, it might spook their captor into doing something rash. Either way, it could lay bare every secret we keep. But like you, I’m willing to take that chance.”

  For the first time in eleven years, I’m lightened by a sense of hope.

  “I’ll be okay alone. I can stay and watch Banquo.” My dog thumps his tail under the table when I say his name. “Have you given any thought to what you’d call the new series?”

  “The Juniper Sisters.”

  A lump lodges in my throat when she uses the name of our street. The last place they were seen, which looks nothing like her drawings.

  SIP

  SHELTER IN PLACE

  BIRDIE IS COMPLAINING about having to wait for Daniel again. I’m only half listening because I’m scouring the internet for two things pecking away at my brain. The Ackerman family history, for one. Driving home, I made a connection between Whitlock asking if I knew much about the leader of The Burrow and Annalise saying she knows more about us than we think. I don’t know what Annalise knows, other than we don’t have a dad and moved around a lot. But I do know this. The past can inform the present when it comes to their family, too.

  So far, though, all I found was a German chemist named Emil Ackerman, a Nazi scientist recruited by the United States government to develop biological and chemical weapons for Operation Paperclip, a secret program carried out by the Army Counter Intelligence Corps after WWII to help with the Cold War. They didn’t list his children, but Dieter was a soldier in the Gulf War and became a scientist. Maybe following in his father’s footsteps. I don’t want to assume, but it would further explain his distrust of government, a preoccupation with impending doom, and the combustible tanks going into the bunker. Until I decide if it’s better to ask Ansel or Mother for confirmation, I’ve abandoned that search to comb through teen prepper forums, looking for posts about anyone being sent away from a group. The one consistent opinion is whenever someone leaves a prepper group, they’re rarely welcomed back, especially if they were kicked out for breaking major rules. If that happens, a few forum members said they make sure that person is neutralized, depending on the severity of the infraction.

  “It’s been forever,” Birdie twitters, pacing by the window. “What if Daniel came back and Dieter told him to stay inside that bunker until his suspension was over? Ansel could have lied.”

  “I don’t know, Birdie.
I have a lot of the same questions.” I close all the tabs and lean back in the wooden chair.

  “What were you doing over there?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I wish I could say, Something to put your mind at ease. Only it won’t. Neutralized leaves too much to the imagination.

  “You’re making that keep-Birdie-in-the-dark face.”

  She marches over and checks my search history before I can protest. “What happens to preppers asked to leave a group? So you have been listening to me. What did it say?”

  “Nothing, or I would have told you.” I snatch the mouse out of her hand before she sees the stuff about Emil Ackerman and jumps to conclusions. “What’s with you two? Blue said the same thing to me the other night. I always listen to both of you.”

  “Our eyes don’t always see what our hearts know,” Blue says.

  “What do eyes have to do with listening?” Birdie huffs.

  That one grabs top grades for obscurity. Blue gives me a slight shake of her head like she doesn’t get it, either. It’s just another thing that popped into her mind.

  “Girls!” Our mother’s gravelly voice strains its way upstairs.

  “What now?” Birdie gripes.

  “Girls, come down here!” she hollers again when none of us answers fast enough.

  “Coming!” I take the mouse from Birdie and clear my search history.

  Mother is surveying the sky through the kitchen window when we march downstairs. I flick my gaze to the television in case there’s some weather coming we didn’t know about. A quick intake of the story reveals a record day for the POTUS on social media. The oh-my-god-did-you-see-what-he-just-tweeted coverage of his behavior has become our new normal. But today he outdid himself, sending more than thirty antagonistic tweets into the world in under twelve hours, inciting multiple Twitterstorms.

  “What is it?” Blue asks Mother. “Is it Achilles?” She starts pulling on her boots, ready to flee.

  “No. Achilles is fine. I think they might be drones.”