Last Girls

by Demetra Brodsky

  “You were great,” Rémy says. “Totally at ease.”

  “You might as well say your goodbyes now,” Birdie tells him. “She’s screwed.”

  She doesn’t know yet that the proverbial screwing doesn’t only apply to me. “We have to go,” I tell Rémy. “I need to fill them in away from prying eyes.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “You can’t. I’ll text you if anything comes up that we can’t handle alone.”

  “Fill us in on what?” Birdie says. “Blue said you found out something about Daniel.”

  Don’t say Daniel snitched. Don’t say Daniel snitched. Don’t say Daniel snitched.

  My eyes flick to Rémy. “I did. And Whitlock. It’s more complicated than we thought. I’ll tell you everything on the drive home.”

  If I tell Birdie my theory now, she’ll go off the rails. I need to be one hundred percent sure, with proof.

  “You’ll text me?” Rémy says to confirm.

  I nod. “You’re one of the only people I can trust beside my sisters.”

  “Like D’Artagnan.”

  Provisional D’Artagnan. The DTA rule doesn’t apply.

  * * *

  The bay window in our kitchen is nearly empty, all of Mother’s equipment and experiments gone with only the hanging plants left in place. Not a great sign. She left us a note saying she went into town to sell more of our products, along with a list of things she expects us to do. Milk the goats, feed the chickens, rotate the cans, pull up anything in the root cellar that needs to be eaten before it goes bad. None of it matters right now, because we’re trying to decide how to deal with the inevitable backlash of me appearing on the news tonight. Not to mention wrapping our heads around whether or not Whitlock is a federal agent.

  “What if we break the TV?” Birdie suggests. “Open the back panel and remove parts so it doesn’t power on.” She polishes an apple on her shirt and takes the loud, juicy bite that cuts into my nerves.

  “That would only stop Mother from seeing the news. Not everyone else.”

  “A wave of inevitable truths that was set in motion long ago,” Blue says.

  Every time I think our little sister can’t out-weird herself, she earns another gold star.

  “Whitlock had an agenda all along. I know better than to trust somebody just because they say they’re a prepper. I only let my guard down because I thought he could get us answers about the white powder. But now…”

  “He got caught,” Blue says.

  “Who got caught? Whitlock?”

  She shrugs. “That’s just what came to me.”

  Daniel got caught. Whitlock got caught. I’m gonna get caught. Only one of those truths is verifiably in motion. “Can you get me our cellphone?” Blue goes to the kitchen to dig through her EDC and I get a better idea. “Never mind. I don’t want to call him from our phone if he’s a fed.” I fish the burner Rémy gave me out of my bag. Then dig through all my pockets for the late slip Whitlock gave me with his cellphone number on it.

  “Where did you get that phone?” Birdie asks.

  “Rémy wanted me to have a burner in case ours got taken away or is being bugged.”

  I catch the what-the-fuck look that passes between Birdie and Blue right before I punch in Whitlock’s phone number. My heart skips a beat the first time it rings, and my brain runs through everything I might say. Help. I think I got myself into a world of shit. Are you a federal agent? But then it kicks over to voicemail and further considerations add to the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Am I willing to give up Dieter Ackerman to save my own hide? If what Blue said is true, Whitlock may have gotten caught. The only question is by who? And when? He said he’d find a way to get in touch with me about the white powder if it was urgent. Since I never gave him our cellphone number, the only way to get in touch with me would be through email.

  I make a mad dash for the stairs without explanation, my sisters hot on my heels.

  Our computer is older, and it takes forever for the operating system to sync up all the systems and applications that haven’t been updated to standard in years.

  “What’s going on?” Birdie asks.

  I hold up my index finger, open Suremail, and log in, but there aren’t any new emails in my in-box. Not from the school about the national self-portrait scholarship competition, and not from Mr. Whitlock. “Rémy said everyone who was entered in the art competition received an email. I should have received one, too. Especially if I won. Whitlock told me he’d figure out a way to get in touch with me about the white powder on our clothes. Since he took over coordinating the competition, I thought maybe…”

  “Did you check the junk folder?” Blue says.

  “No. Good thinking.” I double-click the folder and right there in black and white are two emails misfiled as junk. One from the EHS art department and one from Pryce Whitlock, aka pwhittyteach@suremail.com. “Come look at this.”

  Honey,

  I analyzed the white powder on your clothes and discovered it has the same chemical makeup as cocaine, only the molecules are rearranged into a drug known as scopolamine. Street name: Devil’s Breath. It is often blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, causing a loss of self-control and rendering them incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the drug’s influence. In essence, the victims are like zombies. At high doses, it’s lethal. Please, trust me. You and your sisters are in danger. Call my cellphone or meet me after school in my classroom so I can help you.

  P. Whitlock

  I can’t breathe.

  Devil’s Breath. Devil’s Breath. Devil’s Breath.

  “Annalise drugged us,” Birdie says. “Blue was right. What do you think we did that night we came home filthy?”

  “I don’t know. Ansel doesn’t know, either. But Daniel had to know something. Why else would he say Don’t Trust Anyone? Everything has to be connected. The white powder, the way so many of us forgot where we were or what we did, Mr. Whitlock.”

  I tread lightly, hoping my sister will link Daniel to Whitlock herself, because I need her to stick with me.

  “Oh my god, what if he doesn’t come back?” she says.

  I swivel and gape at Birdie. “What if I don’t come back? I’ve been so focused on your safety, I disregarded my own.” The letters for Devil’s Breath swim in front of my eyes and I make the missing connection. “Where’s that origami bird Daniel gave you?”

  Birdie rushes out of the room and flies back, handing it over. I unfold the origami chicken with shaky hands. Dirtierdevilbread 928836. I see our oversight immediately. “It doesn’t say Dirtier Devil Bread. Daniel was trying to tell you Dieter Devil’s Breath.”

  Birdie’s gasp is loud enough to suck the air from the room.

  “Before Ansel dragged you away from the bunker the other night, did you notice if there was a lock on the door?”

  “There’s a keypad.”

  “928836.” I hand her the unfolded yellow square of paper. “I bet it’s the passcode.”

  “Does this mean we’re going back?”

  “I think we have to. I want to know what’s in that bunker just as much as you do.”

  “What about the news story airing tonight?” Blue asks.

  “We could cut the power to the whole compound,” Birdie says. “I think there’s a transformer box mounted on the pole near the road.”

  “Dieter would flip on the generators if he thought the power outage extended past The Nest and The Burrow,” Blue says.

  “She’s right.”

  My temples pound out my imminent sentence.

  You’re a goner. You’re a goner. You’re a goner.

  The reality of that makes my temples thump like drums. Annalise may have already informed her father. I need to be Responsible, Reactive, and Ready. All three big Rs. “First things first, what do we know? Dieter will most likely call another meeting, right? What if we go over to the bunker and use Daniel’s passcode while everyone else is gatheri
ng in the training area?”

  Birdie writes the numbers from the yellow paper onto her palm with a Sharpie. “I’m in. I told you something strange is going on over there, and I still think Daniel might be inside.”

  To be honest, I’m more worried he’s not.

  “What about Mother?” she asks. “She should be home soon.”

  “We’ll leave her a note saying we’ll come back for her once things with Dieter cool down.”

  “They won’t,” Blue says. And her tone is so free of doubt it gives me the chills.

  TOBYISMS FOR ACTION

  7

  HOPE IS ALIVE

  BASH WALKS INTO Nikko’s at the end of my lunch shift and takes a seat at the counter. He knows Stavros hates when our friends hang around. He must be in a mood to tempt fate. I finish taking my last order and punch everything into the POS system before bringing Bash a menu.

  “I still have forty-five minutes.”

  “I know. I got off early and needed some feta fries.”

  “I have to go straight home today and take care of Banquo. My mom’s out of town, talking to some people at a gallery about doing a retrospective of her work. I think they want to help jump-start her career.”

  “No shit,” Bash says. “That’s great. I was worried about you when I left, but … Wait. We should have a party.”

  “And invite who? You, me, and Brooke?”

  “I’m not down,” Brooke says from the soda fountain. “You nerds just like to play video games.”

  “Told you. You still want those fries now that she emasculated you?”

  “Yep. And a Coke. Brooke will be sorry when I have enough money saved to go to the Art Institute, where I’ll learn to design video games and become rich and famous.”

  “I’ll be the first to say I knew you when,” Brooke says. “You want me to ring him up for you, Toby?”

  “Please.”

  “Thank you, Hookie,” Bash says.

  “Call me Hookie again and see what kind of feta you get on those fries.”

  Brooke got caught skipping school when we were juniors. Her dad laced into her in a big way outside the principal’s office, humiliating her in front of half the school. I don’t think she ever skipped again, but people called her Hookie all the way through graduation.

  “Let me take care of this table and we can bounce,” I tell Bash. “I want to grab a sub from Sandwich Slayers. I need a break from Greek and fried chicken.”

  “Who needs a break from Greek?” Stavros asks, walking in on the conversation.

  “No one,” all three of us say simultaneously.

  “Good. Because the Mediterranean diet is the most healthiest. You could eat Greek food every day and be like Adonis.”

  Brooke is smiling and blinking her eyes at me, trying like hell not to laugh as she walks away to check on her tables.

  “Who invited fried chicken boy to the restaurant?” Stavros asks.

  “No one,” Bash says. “I just wanted to eat some delicious feta fries because I, too, would like to look like Adonis.”

  “Ha! Good luck for you with this.” Stavros pats my arm. “No discounts for friends.”

  “I know. One more table and I’ll get him out of here.”

  An hour later, I’m tearing into a turkey sub, recounting the conversation I had with my mom between bites while Bash drives to my house. His fingers are wrist deep in a bag of salt and vinegar chips when I get to the part where she thought the powdered sugar on my shirt was cocaine or something.

  He balks and wipes his salt-covered fingers on his work pants. “Man, has she got you wrong. Although we could smoke some weed inside the house since she’s gone.”

  “You got any?”

  “No.”

  “Me, either. But Jonesy left a few beers in the fridge.”

  The first thing I do when we pull up is let Banquo outside. Then I check my phone for messages from Mom. It’s the first time we’ve been apart overnight since my sisters vanished, but she must be doing okay since Jonesy’s with her. The light from the TV is flickering through the windows into the backyard. I left it on for Banquo while I was at work since he’s used to it always being on. He runs inside and barks for a treat, trained to know that not shitting in the house earns him a biscuit. I toss it in the air before searching the fridge for Jonesy’s beer. He may or may not remember leaving them here. Guess we’ll see if he’s a good enough detective to uncover the case of the missing IPAs.

  “Check this out,” Bash says from the couch. His eyes stay glued to a human interest story when I hand him a beer. “We never had reporters come to our art classes.”

  “Here’s the teen of the hour,” the reporter says as a tall brunette walks into the frame. “Honey, right? That’s sweet. No pun intended.”

  She announces they’re at Elkwood High School in Washington, ready to interview the lucky young artist who won a full ride to the art school of her choice.

  “The chick who won is hot in that I’ll-kick-your-ass-if-I-need-to sort of way,” Bash says.

  “Whoa! What the…”

  “Relax, man. She’s not that hot.”

  The girl has her brown eyes fixed on someone in the crowd when the reporter asks, “How does it feel to be the recipient of the Scholarship for the Arts America?”

  I grab the remote and move closer to the TV, blinking to make sure what I’m seeing is real.

  “Honestly, it’s the biggest shock of my life,” the girl says. “I was just telling Rémy Lamar, the student liaison for the competition, that never in a million years did I think this would happen.”

  I hit Pause and toss the remote onto the couch so I can grab my phone from the kitchen table and write down Rémy Lamar, student liaison art competition. I pull up the photos I took of the new age-progressions for my sisters.

  “What’s up?” Bash asks. “You forget to text your mom or something?”

  “Come here and look at this.”

  Bash saunters over and I hand him my phone. He looks between my phone and the TV screen. “Ohh, shit. You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know. She’s around the same age.”

  The TV resumes play when Banquo jumps on the couch and hits the remote.

  “I have to say your art speaks volumes about what’s going on in America right now,” the reporter says. “The concerns many people have for our safety and welfare during tumultuous and uncertain times. When you painted this, were you leaning toward any one side of the political fence?”

  The camera pans to the winning girl’s painting and my heart thumps a million beats per minute. It’s a triple self-portrait, two of the faces partially covered, but the one in the middle is strikingly similar to the girl centered in Mom’s painting, the same girl in the age-progression photo on the phone in my hand. The gas masks and balaclava on the other two shock me less now that Mom told me about being drawn to certain subject matter in her art. But what does hit me like a gut punch are the symbols written down the leg of the figure on the right, because it’s the Pigpen cipher Bash and I once used.

  “Well, Miss—?” The girl asks. I can’t bring myself to believe it’s her. Not yet. We’ve been wrong before. Jonesy has been wrong.

  “Fielding,” the reporter clarifies.

  I grab the remote from under Banquo’s butt, rewind, and pause it on the painting. “Look at the writing on her leg.”

  Bash’s eyes balloon. “No fucking way!”

  I make a mad dash for my bedroom and fling open my desk drawers, throwing everything aside, on the floor, I don’t give a shit because I’m looking for one thing. The stainless steel spinning decoder ring our dad gave me before he died. I find it in the top drawer, tucked inside an old Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card tin. Yes fucking way.

  I race back to the TV. It only takes me a few seconds to spin the ring and decode the message. Home sweet home. The rest is two sets of numbers, the first followed by an N, the second a W.

  “Bash, the numbers on her leg, are those co
ordinates?”

  “Oh fuck. You think they’ve been looking for you all this time and she thought to use the cipher?”

  My thoughts exactly. I grab the remote and press Play. There’s a two-second delay before the interview resumes and the girl says, “Miss Fielding. I’m not old enough to vote yet. And my mother taught me it wasn’t polite to talk about politics or religion, but I’m happy to discuss my process if you’d like.”

  That sure as shit sounds like Katherina. Even at age six she was a stickler for rules.

  “Sounds like your mother taught you how to stay out of harm’s way.”

  My stomach clenches. Whoever she’s talking about isn’t our mother.

  “Can you tell us why you chose to paint three versions of yourself for your self-portrait titled Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”

  “… to represent my past, present, and future. None of which have ever fully escaped our present-day prejudices and impending doom, as you pointed out. But if something catastrophic does happen, I hope those of us who survive will remember to keep the arts alive.”

  She’s lying. She shook her head in that tiny way she always did before she dropped a fib. I’d bet my life the other two masked figures in the painting are Imogen and Cassandra. My head is humming with disbelief. I tune out the reporter to watch Katherina closely. When she finally looks at the camera, I see her eyes. Really see them and recognize them as my own. They’re our mother’s eyes.

  “Rules breed rebels,” she tells the reporter and I whisk back into focus. “I think it’s important to think for yourself when making art. That way you’re leaving a mark as uniquely yours as your own fingerprints. We’ve all been taught that the black sheep is a deviation from acceptable standards and something to be avoided. Still, when you see it among a herd, its lack of conformity is what steals your breath and captures your attention.”

  “As you will continue to capture that of the art world, no doubt. You heard it here first, from up-and-coming young artist Honey Juniper in Elkwood, Washington. This is Bridget Fielding for News Seven.”

  “Honey Juniper. Elkwood, Washington. What the actual fuck?” I pause the picture before the clip ends in case I want to rewind it again.