Perfect Lies

I take a step back. “How am I supposed to know? It’s not my fault if my shadows can’t stay attached to me. Call Wendy Darling. Maybe she can sew them to the bottoms of my feet.”

He swears, pulling out his phone. “They’re there to protect you.”

“Do I look like I need protection?” I hold out my hands, one with streaks of blood on it, and give him my best crazy crazy crazy crazy grin. “You know, I like Dmitri. I crippled him, but I like him.”

Whoever he’s calling picks up and he starts yelling about doing a job and consequences and cleaning up messes. I wonder if the Russian guy is the mess or if I am. There’s a smear of blood on James’s suit jacket from where I hugged him, and I think it looks nice there, like it belongs.

I leave him and make my way to Ms. Robertson’s office. She’s already got a massive medical kit out on her desk and I sit, peeling off my shirt. It’s hot in here, the heater in the corner working too hard, drying out the air and making everything feel small and scratchy.

“What did you do this time?” she asks through gritted teeth, fingers surprisingly gentle as she cleans the wound on my shoulder.

“Someone took my parking space.”

“You don’t have a car.”

“That doesn’t mean I should let someone take my parking space now, does it?”

She tears off strips of medical tape, lining them up to pull the edges of the cut closed. “Why don’t you tell me who did this?”

Do you really want to get into my head? I think. It’s not a friendly place. You’ll regret it.

She sneers. “Are you going to kill me?”

I twist away from her, ripping open a package of gauze and slapping it over my arm. “Is there a reason I should?”

“I don’t know. Was there a reason you killed Eden?”

I tap tap tap tap against the table, then use my teeth to tear off enough tape to keep the gauze in place. I hated Eden. I hated her. I can’t think about it, can’t think about what happened, won’t think about what happened. “She deserved it.” I look at Ms. Robertson with the full force of my baby-blue eyes. “Do you deserve it?” They’ll let me, I think at her. They’ll let me do whatever I want, and we both know it.

“And your sister? She deserved it, too?”

I explode out of my chair, inches away from Ms. Robertson’s face, which is no longer sneering. “She was in my way.” Ms. Robertson is standing between me and the door, and I look pointedly at it. “You are in my way.”

She moves.

As I walk past, her voice shakes with anger or fear (I can’t tell, I’m not Eden, Eden Eden why’d she bring up Eden?) as she says, “And Clarice?”

I pause, my hand on the doorway. “I just didn’t like her.” Letting my mind go blank, not thinking anything at all, I turn and smile pleasantly at Ms. Robertson.

In the hall I nearly bump into a girl. She does a double take. “Fia? What happened? Where’s your shirt?”

I glance down, my black bra in stark contrast to my pale torso, then laugh. “I knew I was forgetting something!” I try so hard not to remember their names, so very very hard, but I can’t sleep because I see their faces. Mandy. Twelve. From New Orleans.

I wash myself clean of guilt, of pain, of fear, of emotion. I am the ocean. I am empty. I am nothing. Mandy lets out a little sigh of relief. She loves being around me. Silly Mandy.

“I cut my shoulder and there was blood on my shirt. I was going to find another one.”

“You can borrow one of mine!” She holds out her hand, smiling shyly. I take it and let her lead me to her room, and I do not feel anything, not a thing, not a thing about this life or this girl or working in the school that I will burn to the ground.

When it gets to be too much, I picture the flames, imagine their heat. The noise they’ll make as they devour everything Phillip Keane has built. It’s better than the ocean for calming, and if any Readers look at me funny, I add marshmallows to my thoughts and am just a girl in want of a campfire.

I am a girl in want of complete destruction. But I am patient.

James finds me thirty minutes later, lying on my stomach on the floor of the main dorm common room, looking at fashion magazines with a gaggle of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds around me. They all jockey for position, each trying to slide in next to me, be close to me, be near me, because these girls know nothing.

They know nothing.

I think happy thoughts and feel happy things and I do not let myself near the swirling black edges of the hole that is my soul when I look at them.

I try not to spin. In third grade we did an experiment where we rubbed a needle on a magnet, then dropped it onto water. The surface tension let it rest on top of the water, and the magnet sent the needle spinning.

I used to be a compass, trained on the true north of protecting Annie. Without her I lost my north.

But James is my north now. The flames are my north now. Our dark secrets are my north now.

I tap tap tap tap on the magazine. Annie. Annie. Annie. Annie.

Don’t think about Annie.

James holds out his hand to help me up and I take it, squeezing harder than I need to, willing it to be my anchor. This is what I chose, and I always choose right. James saved me. He’ll always save me.

“Are you leaving already?” Mandy asks, a whine creeping into her voice. “You never stay!”

“That’s my fault,” James says, giving the girls his winningest lie of a smile. “I’ve got to take Fia to New York.”

“New York?” I ask.

His smile goes deeper, sharper. “My father wants us working there. With him.”

I don’t know what to do with this sudden flood of uncontrolled emotion. Finally. Finally. All the things I’ve done, all this blood and betrayal and wrong will be made right. We have a plan (don’t think about the plan, never think about the plan). It will happen now.

It is happening.

James pulls me close, his arm around my waist holding me up. I am dizzy with anticipation. The beginning of the end.

“Will you come visit us?” Mandy asks. “You said the school will always be your home.”

I try to smile, but my eyes dart around the room, tracing the contours of the walls, my finger tap tap tap tapping on my leg. Always.

“Take me away,” I whisper to James, and he does.

ANNIE (#ulink_993b9a5c-f048-5ca1-a9bd-b18899053c58)

Three and a Half Months Before (#ulink_993b9a5c-f048-5ca1-a9bd-b18899053c58)

I PULL THE PHONE OUT OF MY POCKET, TAP IT ON THE table. The noise reminds me of Fia. Who hasn’t called. It’s been two weeks.

Two.