Mind Games
Page 11
He lets out a considering breath. It is the first noise he's made aside from his greeting. He does not move. He does not fidget. He is not a person in my head. He is a robot, chrome and steel, without blood, without a heart. I cannot even begin to piece together in my head what this soulless voice should look like.
"You are very bright, Annabelle. Did you know what Adam Denting was working on?"
I do not let so much as a muscle in my face twitch. I knew only what his work would lead to. "I have no idea. It wasn't a real-life vision. I already told you-I just saw his name swallowing up yours, destroying it."
"You're seeing in the abstract now. I find that very intriguing. You will, of course, keep us posted on any more of these idea visions."
I hate that I had to admit I can see more than just the solid future after promising Fia I never would. But what I really saw-face after face after face of women, women who I knew could see and feel and read, suddenly coming into focus and then fading into black, with a voice that sounded like my own whispering Adam Denting's name over and over again...I panicked. I had to help those women, keep them safe.
"Of course," I snap. "It would help if I knew what anyone actually does here, though." I still don't. All these years later, everything Fia's done.
I have no idea what any of it is for.
I am so stupid. After the vision about Adam, I demanded a meeting with Keane and told him the first thing I could think of to get him to order a hit immediately. Oh, Fia, I didn't want you to have to kill anyone, ever. I never thought they'd send you, but I needed Adam Denting dead.
We all did.
I wonder how Keane is sitting. What his chair looks like. How he moves his hands. Apparently he's done with me, though. He says, "I'm looking into the disturbance. It isn't your concern."
"If it involves my sister, it is. You know no one can see her like I do. Are you really going to risk losing her?"
He won't. I know he won't. Of all of us, he's put the most time into her. With what she did two years ago, any of the rest of us would have been dead. Immediately. No questions. Fia got a pass.
"The name we have is Lerner. Whether that is a person or the entire group we don't know yet. They aren't playing on the same field as we are; however, they're getting close. We believe we have a few pictures of their people, but those won't do you any good, now, will they?"
I bristle. I think I hear a ghost of a laugh.
"Rest assured that I have nothing but your sister's best interests at heart, as I do with all my girls. And you know that your best interest is to keep your sister working."
"How could I forget. I'll look for anything with Lerner."
"Give your sister my regards."
I turn and walk out, knowing exactly how many steps will take me away from that monster. Once again wishing I were Fia, Fia who could have killed him with her bare hands.
Fia who is impossibly broken because she can do just that.
Back at my own table, a mug of tea between my hands, I can finally breathe again. I know where I am in space. It's not where I want to be, but at least I know it.
I bring the mug to my face to blink in the steam. Lerner. I'll bet anything they were there for Adam. No one could track Fia's movements that well. Not even Clarice could have.
It's so wrong that I miss her sometimes. I know it's wrong. I can't help it.
I breathe in again, deeper, and light bursts in front of my eyes. I can see! The familiar euphoria fills me like the steam from my tea, expanding in my lungs. And then I process what I'm seeing.
A guy sitting at a table under a bright light. He has the long arms and long legs and nice eyes that Fia told me about.
He can only be Adam Denting. She was right. I do like him. I ordered him dead, but I like him. I like his messy hair and kind eyes. I even like his ears.
He's fidgeting, looking down and up and over his shoulder. He's scared. Someone is talking to him. He's nervously answering questions about who he is and what his research is, questions about who Sofia Rosen is and exactly what she told him about herself.
And a woman's voice, from somewhere I can't see, reassures him that he's safe now that he's with Lerner.
Chapter Eleven
ANNIE
Two Years Ago
FIA'S IN MY ROOM. SHE'S BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR SO long, but lately she's here all the time. It makes me happy.
And sad. Because it's different. She's quiet. She never laughs. I wish she could laugh and that it could be easy between us, that Eden could still come over when Fia's here and we could all three just hang out.
I'm using the braille display on my new laptop. I've had speech-to-text technology for a while, but this way I can read everything instead of waiting for the computer to read it for me. This is one of the things I tried to get the public school system to bring in, but they never had the budget to aid one blind student. Now all I have to do is find the products and technology I want to try, tell Clarice about them, and within a week they're here.
My fingers fly through websites for research on my senior project, an examination of adaptations of the Cassandra myth from ancient Greece. "This display is freaky cool, Fia."
"Mmmm hmmm."
"You doing homework?"
"Nope."
"What are you doing?"
"Wondering if a fourteen-year-old who is an accessory to murder can be tried as an adult."
My fingers stop midword. "What? Why would you wonder about that?"
"Just something to think about. It seems like for most crimes you won't get tried as an adult, but murder they push the age pretty low."
I frown. "Is this for a class?" Only Eden is left from her age group. Girls leave the school a lot for other programs run by the foundation or get kicked out because the curriculum isn't working for them. I'm so relieved it's never happened to us. Aunt Ellen hasn't even written in two years. I worry about Fia getting kicked out-I literally have no idea what we'd do.
"Oh, I never go to class. Why would I go to class?"
I knock the braille display over as I whip around to face her. "You aren't going to class?"
"Class comes to me. I read a lot. I sleep a lot. Nobody cares."
"That's terrible! I can't believe this. What kind of curriculum do they have you on? I understand that they're flexible, but that's unacceptable." I pause, not wanting to ask, needing to ask. "Are they...are you doing those weird self-defense things again?"
"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.
"You are very bright, Annabelle. Did you know what Adam Denting was working on?"
I do not let so much as a muscle in my face twitch. I knew only what his work would lead to. "I have no idea. It wasn't a real-life vision. I already told you-I just saw his name swallowing up yours, destroying it."
"You're seeing in the abstract now. I find that very intriguing. You will, of course, keep us posted on any more of these idea visions."
I hate that I had to admit I can see more than just the solid future after promising Fia I never would. But what I really saw-face after face after face of women, women who I knew could see and feel and read, suddenly coming into focus and then fading into black, with a voice that sounded like my own whispering Adam Denting's name over and over again...I panicked. I had to help those women, keep them safe.
"Of course," I snap. "It would help if I knew what anyone actually does here, though." I still don't. All these years later, everything Fia's done.
I have no idea what any of it is for.
I am so stupid. After the vision about Adam, I demanded a meeting with Keane and told him the first thing I could think of to get him to order a hit immediately. Oh, Fia, I didn't want you to have to kill anyone, ever. I never thought they'd send you, but I needed Adam Denting dead.
We all did.
I wonder how Keane is sitting. What his chair looks like. How he moves his hands. Apparently he's done with me, though. He says, "I'm looking into the disturbance. It isn't your concern."
"If it involves my sister, it is. You know no one can see her like I do. Are you really going to risk losing her?"
He won't. I know he won't. Of all of us, he's put the most time into her. With what she did two years ago, any of the rest of us would have been dead. Immediately. No questions. Fia got a pass.
"The name we have is Lerner. Whether that is a person or the entire group we don't know yet. They aren't playing on the same field as we are; however, they're getting close. We believe we have a few pictures of their people, but those won't do you any good, now, will they?"
I bristle. I think I hear a ghost of a laugh.
"Rest assured that I have nothing but your sister's best interests at heart, as I do with all my girls. And you know that your best interest is to keep your sister working."
"How could I forget. I'll look for anything with Lerner."
"Give your sister my regards."
I turn and walk out, knowing exactly how many steps will take me away from that monster. Once again wishing I were Fia, Fia who could have killed him with her bare hands.
Fia who is impossibly broken because she can do just that.
Back at my own table, a mug of tea between my hands, I can finally breathe again. I know where I am in space. It's not where I want to be, but at least I know it.
I bring the mug to my face to blink in the steam. Lerner. I'll bet anything they were there for Adam. No one could track Fia's movements that well. Not even Clarice could have.
It's so wrong that I miss her sometimes. I know it's wrong. I can't help it.
I breathe in again, deeper, and light bursts in front of my eyes. I can see! The familiar euphoria fills me like the steam from my tea, expanding in my lungs. And then I process what I'm seeing.
A guy sitting at a table under a bright light. He has the long arms and long legs and nice eyes that Fia told me about.
He can only be Adam Denting. She was right. I do like him. I ordered him dead, but I like him. I like his messy hair and kind eyes. I even like his ears.
He's fidgeting, looking down and up and over his shoulder. He's scared. Someone is talking to him. He's nervously answering questions about who he is and what his research is, questions about who Sofia Rosen is and exactly what she told him about herself.
And a woman's voice, from somewhere I can't see, reassures him that he's safe now that he's with Lerner.
Chapter Eleven
ANNIE
Two Years Ago
FIA'S IN MY ROOM. SHE'S BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR SO long, but lately she's here all the time. It makes me happy.
And sad. Because it's different. She's quiet. She never laughs. I wish she could laugh and that it could be easy between us, that Eden could still come over when Fia's here and we could all three just hang out.
I'm using the braille display on my new laptop. I've had speech-to-text technology for a while, but this way I can read everything instead of waiting for the computer to read it for me. This is one of the things I tried to get the public school system to bring in, but they never had the budget to aid one blind student. Now all I have to do is find the products and technology I want to try, tell Clarice about them, and within a week they're here.
My fingers fly through websites for research on my senior project, an examination of adaptations of the Cassandra myth from ancient Greece. "This display is freaky cool, Fia."
"Mmmm hmmm."
"You doing homework?"
"Nope."
"What are you doing?"
"Wondering if a fourteen-year-old who is an accessory to murder can be tried as an adult."
My fingers stop midword. "What? Why would you wonder about that?"
"Just something to think about. It seems like for most crimes you won't get tried as an adult, but murder they push the age pretty low."
I frown. "Is this for a class?" Only Eden is left from her age group. Girls leave the school a lot for other programs run by the foundation or get kicked out because the curriculum isn't working for them. I'm so relieved it's never happened to us. Aunt Ellen hasn't even written in two years. I worry about Fia getting kicked out-I literally have no idea what we'd do.
"Oh, I never go to class. Why would I go to class?"
I knock the braille display over as I whip around to face her. "You aren't going to class?"
"Class comes to me. I read a lot. I sleep a lot. Nobody cares."
"That's terrible! I can't believe this. What kind of curriculum do they have you on? I understand that they're flexible, but that's unacceptable." I pause, not wanting to ask, needing to ask. "Are they...are you doing those weird self-defense things again?"
"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.
