Sister Assassin

by Kiersten White

  “Mostly running and strength training. You never know when you’ll need to sprint three miles. Besides, we’re focused more on breaking and entering now.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It really isn’t, is it?”

  I stand and walk over to my bed, feel for her. Her head is hanging off the edge, upside down. Her hair has gotten long, longer than it was when I saw her in the vision on the beach. I wonder how else she’s changed.

  “You aren’t happy, are you?” I’d been hoping she’d adapt, that whatever weird things were going on with her, whatever strange dynamic she had here would change. I swallow hard. I am a terrible person. I know she’s not happy. She hasn’t been happy in months. Years. But I kept waiting and hoping. Not because I thought she’d change. Because I needed her to be happy so I could keep being happy here.

  Fia doesn’t sound upset when she finally speaks. She sounds far away. “I don’t even remember what happy felt like. I think it probably felt like that night I got really drunk with James. Soft and fuzzy, everything spinning and out of focus.”

  I pull her up, pull her off the bed and onto my lap. She curls into me like a child, though she’s as tall as I am now, she has to be, all arms and legs. She rests her head against my shoulder, and it’s wet where her eyes are.

  “Oh, Fia, Fia. I’m so sorry. I’m going to fix this.” How could I let it get this bad? She’s depressed. Obviously. There has to be something they can put her on, some sort of antidepressant, to make it better until we can figure out how to get her happy again. “I’m going to take care of you.”

  “You can’t,” she says, and her voice is hollow. “It’s my job to take care of you.”

  I’m taken back to when I was seven and she was five. We were in our second house, the one without any stairs. I was putting together puzzles in the family room, feeling their contours to match the edges. When I finished I needed Fia to come in and tell me what the pictures were. But I was way better at puzzles than her; I always finished them first.

  I heard the kitchen door slam. “What were you thinking?” My mother’s voice, high and sharp and sweet, was shrill with panic. “Greg, call the doctor.”

  “She’ll be okay.” Dad’s voice was warm. It made me think of blankets straight out of the dryer, sticky with static, thrown around our shoulders. I didn’t remember much of what either of them looked like—just vague ideas of brown hair and long, long legs.

  “She could have done permanent damage! Fia, sweetheart, you never stare straight at the sun! You could go blind!”

  Fia’s voice came out laced with tears. “I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to go blind?”

  “So I could be like Annie. I want to be like Annie. You said you were getting her a dog.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. We won’t get the dog for a long time. And you don’t want to be blind. If you were blind, too, who would take care of Annie? It’s your job to take care of her. You’re very special. Usually big sisters are in charge of little sisters, but in our family it’s the opposite. Can you do that? Can you take care of her?”

  “I can! I will.” Fia’s little voice was solemn with the weight of responsibility.

  I picked up my puzzle and pushed it, piece by piece, out the open window. I’d always thought I was there to help Fia. To calm her down when she got too angry, to comfort her when she got too sad, to tell her to shut up when she was being obnoxious.

  After that she held my hand more. I let her. But I didn’t look for ways to help her anymore. She was the special one, apparently.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper now, running her hair through my fingers. “I’ve been so selfish. You know you don’t have to take care of me, right? You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not your responsibility. If you want to leave . . . ” I swallow hard. I don’t want to leave. I’ve even been thinking about going to college close by and asking Clarice if I can stay on as a sort of resident adviser, though more than half the girls we started with are gone now. Eden and I both want to stay. Her family is seriously screwed up—she lives at the school all the time, too, even holidays. We’ll go to college together, in the city. Maybe I’ll be a teacher here, after I get my degree. Help girls like Eden and me, help them understand themselves, know they aren’t crazy.

  I take a deep breath. “You can. You can leave, if you want to. We’ll find Aunt Ellen. You don’t have to feel bad. You don’t have to stay at the school because of me.” I reach down for her hand.

  She rips it away like I’ve burned her, sits up, shoves herself off me. “I don’t have to stay, huh? I don’t have to stay? I’m only here because of you! This is your fault! All of it!”

  I frown, hurt. “I didn’t make you come!”

  “It’s your fault I’m all you have! You let Mom and Dad die! You saw what was going to happen. You SAW it. And you didn’t stop it! If you hadn’t let them die, we’d never be here in the first place! Everything would be okay! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

  Fia, who said she never blamed me, who promised me, promised me, had blamed me this whole time.

  “Get out of my room,” I say.

  “Make me.”

  “GET OUT OF MY ROOM! GET OUT OF MY LIFE!” The slamming door is my only response.

  Later that night I can’t sleep. I feel too guilty. I shouldn’t have said those things to her. I’m the big sister. And she’s hurting, has been for a long time. I need to help her. I need to be the calm one, the one who can be in control, see this for what it is.

  She needs help.

  I pad down the hall. I don’t know if the lights are still on or not, but I know the way to Clarice’s office by heart. She works late a lot; maybe she’ll still be there. It feels right to be doing something.

  Voices are coming from her office. The door must be open. I walk closer, then stop. At least I know she’s awake. I’ll wait in the hall until she’s done.

  I’m about to sit when I hear Fia’s name.

  “Surely there has to be a better way to control her.” Ms. Robertson’s voice.

  “Eden says she’s getting worse. The guilt is fading and being replaced by anger and something Eden calls a swirling mess of empty despair. That girl has a thing or two to learn about precise definitions.” I don’t know whose voice that is; it sounds vaguely familiar, but I’m sure I’ve never had instruction from her. Almost all my classes are with Clarice, one-on-one.

  “It’s an unusual case.” Clarice. So Clarice knows Fia’s struggling, too, and she’s already working with the rest of the faculty to help. I smile. “The other girls worth keeping are easy enough. By the time they put it all together, they’re in so deep and enjoy the perks so much they don’t realize it wasn’t their own idea. Like Eden. Broken homes are wonderful, aren’t they?” A smattering of laughter. I don’t like the feeling of this conversation.

  Clarice’s voice is closer to the door. I shrink back against the wall, praying that the hall lights are off. I don’t hear them. There’s no hum. But I don’t usually try to listen to the lights. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they can see me right now. Maybe they’re standing there, silently laughing at me. Mrs. Robertson needs to see you to read you. Can she see me? I slide a few feet back toward the hall to the stairs.

  “But it’s different with Sofia,” Clarice says. “It always has been. There was no way to gain her trust and then build up to what we wanted her to do. She knew from the very beginning she didn’t want to be here or do what we want her to, so it’s been a fight all along.”

  The unknown voice who talked about Eden: “The guilt is fading, though. You’ll have to figure out a new method to keep her from running.”

  Clarice, in a tone so matter-of-fact my blood runs cold: “I already know exactly when she’s going to try. We’ll have something in place by then. She’s the school’s top priority; Keane is deeply invested in her. All the little empaths and Seers are replaceable. Sofia is special.”

  “She’s a monster.” Ms. Robertson.

&n
bsp; Clarice, small laugh: “But she’s our monster.” Creaking. People getting up from chairs. I need to leave. I was not supposed to hear this. “And we’ll keep doing whatever it takes so she stays ours.”

  I turn and run silently back down the hall. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. It echoes through my head. They’ll keep doing whatever it takes. What else have they already done? It doesn’t matter. I’m getting my sister out of here. I won’t fail her anymore.

  Tomorrow we run.

  I BRIEFLY CONSIDER STOPPING AT A LIBRARY TO CHECK for an email from Adam, but it doesn’t feel right. Besides which, I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about Adam and the way he looked at me, the way I saw him decide to trust me. I don’t want to think about how normal and safe it made me feel when he was driving. I don’t want to think about things like normal and safe, things I can’t have.

  I don’t want to do anything tonight, nothing at all, but spin and pulse and pound. My fingers cannot tap tap tap when I am dancing. Annie can’t betray me while I’m dancing. James can’t use me. I can’t hear my own thoughts. I haven’t been dancing in four months, not since we left Greece, and I ache for it.

  I run a few blocks south, then cut in to the city. Not sure where I’m going. I never plan ahead. Learned my lesson about that a long time ago. Thank you, beautiful James.

  There, ahead of me, a line snaking around a sidewalk. The unmistakable thumping hum of bass that will push right through me. Perfect. I look up and choke on a laugh. The place is called Vision.

  Of course it is.

  It’s too early for such a long line. Must be a celebrity DJ or something. I slip into my stilettos and walk straight up to the front. There, third person. A guy with carefully sculpted hair, even more carefully sculpted arms and pecs, a shirt picked especially to showcase them. Here with two friends, no girls.

  “Hi,” I say, reaching over the velvet rope to trace my hand along the edge of his shoulder. Oh, my hands, my hands make me shudder, but he doesn’t shudder. “I hate lines.” I smile at him, and I know that I am beautiful and beauty is a tool. It will get me what I want, and what I want is the front of this line.

  “Hey.” His eyes travel the length of my legs.

  “Good thing I’m meeting you guys here so I don’t have to wait in line, right?”

  He smiles. His teeth are so white they would glow under a black light. “Good thing.”

  I duck under the rope and he puts his arm around my shoulder (don’t touch my shoulder, it hurts), and I could break his arm, I know how to twist it just so to pop-pop-pop it right out of the socket, but he seems nice enough and that would get in the way of dancing.

  He even pays my cover charge, the darling boy. Good thing, because I don’t have cash after I gave it all to Adam and I don’t want a card pinging my location. We walk in and I can’t hear his voice, which is another good thing. He shouldn’t have a voice. A body is fine, he is allowed to have a body. I need other bodies to dance around me so I can get lost.

  This club is like any other club anywhere in the world. There’s a waterfall and fire pit and several floors, but none of that matters as long as there is a dance floor and music. I push through to where it is the thickest, where it is the loudest, where you can feel the music in your teeth, where it overpowers your heartbeat, where it takes over. I don’t want my own heartbeat tonight. I want it to pulse and pump outside of me.

  Everything is spinning out of control. First Adam (I wonder where he is—no, I don’t, don’t think about Adam, it’s not safe to think about him). Then Annie. I can’t keep the threads I’m supposed to follow together, I can’t pull them and yank them to what I want them to be, I can’t follow what I’m supposed to do.

  I have no idea.

  I used to be so good at knowing exactly how to do what was best for Annie and me, but I have no idea who me is anymore, and Annie, why would she want me to kill him? If I don’t know who we are, how can I know our track?

  I start moving. Swaying. Finding the music, losing myself.

  “DRINK?”

  I turn, surprised to see my line boy still behind me. He stopped existing for me as soon as I got what I wanted. “I don’t—” I don’t drink. Annie made me promise not to, and I haven’t, not a drop, not a single drop since that first time. Not even the year we were apart. Annie also promised to take care of me. Then she sent me out to kill someone.

  “ABSOLUTELY!” I shout. He smiles and he thinks it’s predatory, and if I were another girl, I would-should-could be worried. I am the predator in any situation. I am not worried.

  I close my eyes and sway, let the music wash out everything else, let it give me the dull I look for everywhere, let it pound the very thoughts from my brain. My only job right now, the only thing I have to do, is move.

  So I move.

  I move slow. I move fast. I move faster. My shoulder burns and I can’t raise that arm much, but I don’t care, can’t care. I am rhythm and bass and drums and beats and I don’t care what the song is, I just move.

  Something breaks through, breaks me out, and I’m livid. I turn to find the boy from the line. He’s shouting something. I don’t care what he has to say. He leans closer and shouts again.

  “YOU’RE CRAZY SEXY OUT HERE.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “One part of that description is correct.”

  “WHAT?”

  He’s holding two glasses. I grab one. The way he watches it, I know he put something extra in it. All the better. I tip my head back and bring the glass up and—

  “STOP.” Someone grabs my arm, the drink splashes me. It smells sharp and sour and sweet all at the same time, and now there’s that much less of it to drink. I scowl up to see James.

  “He put something in it,” James yells.

  I roll my eyes. “Of course he did.” I turn to the line boy, but, oh dear, he’s on the ground, clutching a bleeding nose. I shake my head and tsk at James. “That’s no way to make friends!”

  “We’re leaving.”

  He still has my arm, my uninjured one, and he’s pulling me toward the door. I spin away from his grasp and back into the bodies, turning and beckoning him with a grin. He shakes his head.

  I raise both arms in the air (it hurts but I don’t care), bring them up through my hair, let my hips catch the beat. Look at James through my eyelashes. I have never let James dance with me before, not once, but I might die tomorrow and Annie used me and I can never be with someone like Adam, so I don’t care tonight.

  He bites his lip. He follows me.

  He puts his hands on my hips and I keep my arms in the air and there is the beat, the beat, the beat, and the music. And there is his body next to mine, and it isn’t just a body, it’s his body.

  I wanted this so many times. Too many times. I never let myself have it. After a song or three or seven, James pulls me closer. “We should get you home.”

  “You should buy me a drink!”

  “You aren’t supposed to drink.”

  “Thanks, Annie! I’m also not supposed to do this.” I put my hands on his chest (my hands he knows all about and he doesn’t push me away), and stretch up, take his earlobe between my teeth.

  “Fia,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s scolding me or moaning.

  “Buy me a drink.” I bite his ear harder. I feel like I’m in control tonight. I feel like I am the one using him tonight. I feel good. Or as good as I ever do.

  He leans his face into mine—his cheek has a hint of stubble, it’s rough, I want to run my mouth along it—then bends down, lets his lips touch my neck, trace it ever so lightly.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the crowd, toward the bar. He’s angry, with himself or with me I can’t tell, but I’m getting my way so I don’t care. “Since we’re breaking all the rules anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  “Annie will kill me.”

  “No, she’ll just have me do it.”

  He squints suspiciously at me, b
ut I smile and twirl away to get to the drinks faster.

  “Only one,” he says.

  I open my blue eyes wide. I am the picture of innocent earnestness. “Absolutely.”

  I can’t dance anymore. The lights are spinning and the floor is spinning. How did they install a spinning floor? It’s amazing. The whole world spins, spins, spins from the balcony where we’re sitting. I try to tap, but I can’t find my leg with my finger, and I laugh. I’m even free from my three taps.

  “You know why I don’t want to be with you?” James’s eyes are as glassy as they were the first time we met.

  “Because I’m too young for you? Because you’re an evil, manipulative monster and I know it?”

  He smiles, and his smile has that edge I know, that sharp edge I recognize. It sings to my own sharp soul. “You knowing makes me want you more. And you aren’t young. You haven’t been young since you were fourteen.”

  I smile back. “Fine, then. Because I’m psychotic and I kill people?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Because my dad wants us together.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. He suggested it when we left on the yacht. Wanted you to fall in love with me as another way to tie you to us.”

  I laugh. “Wasn’t he worried I’d kill you in your sleep or something?”

  “I don’t think he’d actually care.”

  “Oh, poor James.” I scoot across the dark velvet of the love seat, scoot right onto James’s lap, wrap my arms around his neck. “Why do you care if he cares? Your dad is evil.” Is it the money? Can he not live without bottomless funds? Or does he actually believe in this shadowy network of power his dad is building? I need to know. I let myself ignore it for so long, but the why is killing me. The why of James working for his father. The why of how I can feel like this for him even though he is part of what did this to me.