Burn (4 page)

She'd almost circled the duck pond near the admissions office twice waiting for Fenn, having left him a message to meet her there after his interview.

The air was cold and she found herself jogging to stay warm, trying to keep pace with a bunch of girls in earmuffs and nylon jackets who looked like they might be part of the track team. As she rounded the curve near the science library, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Talia. She slowed to a walk, resisting the urge to sit, which would only make her cramp up.

“Hi, Talia. I survived. Fenn's in there right now.”

“The interview? It doesn't sound like you survived. It sounds like you're being tortured.”

She forced herself to take two deep breaths. “I went for a run around this pond. Just self-imposed torture.”

Lona talked about Dr. Greene first – how he'd been odd and silly but fascinating – and Talia swore she hadn't known anything about his connection with the Julian Path. Then she moved on to the campus, to the worried mom and all of her safety questions, and Talia laughed.

“Do you think you want to go there? Do you think you'd be happy there?”

It was another version of what she'd thought about in Dr. Greene's office. What would make her happy? “I think so,” she hedged. “If I'm going to go to college, I think I'd be happy at this one. I want to see what Fenn thinks. He should be getting out of his interview soon.”

“Lona, wait.” There was something new in Talia's voice – a misgiving, a trepidation. “I didn't call you about the interview. I'm glad to hear about it, but I called about something else.”

“What?”

“You asked me to see if I could find any records. About your mother. And I said I'd try, but that there might not be—”

“What did you find, Talia?” She lurched to a stop. This was happening so much faster than she'd thought it would; it had only been a day since she'd asked. “Were there records?”

Talia hesitated. “No. But—” But?
But?
The wind was searing through Lona's coat yet it wasn't the cold that made her teeth chatter. “I found a video.”

She slowly sunk to her knees, into the soft, woody pine needles covering the trail. “Of my mother?”

“I haven't seen it yet. It's being messengered to my house right now.”

“Right now?”

“Lona. There's a good chance there's nothing useful on it.” Talia was speaking slowly, like she spoke to Gabriel, or like Lona spoke to Warren when she wanted to make sure he understood that she wasn't going to read a story another time.

“But it's of my mother?”

“It's of the Path building, the night you were born. The security footage. I'm shocked they still have it, honestly, except video files take up so little space, I guess there was no need to throw them away.”

A herd of footsteps sounded from behind. Lona was vaguely aware of bodies pressing around her. The track team, a dozen girls in matching colors. One of them turned to give Lona an irritated look. She was still sitting on the ground, blocking the entire path.

“It's probably nothing,” Talia said again. “It's old, and probably too dark to see much. Lona?”

“Yes?”

“Tell me you understand.”

Probably nothing still meant possibly something.

“Lona, tell me you understand.”

It was more than she'd had five minutes ago.

Lona leaned her forehead against the cool of the glass, watching the trees outside speed into a blur of green. She'd barely made the train, sprinting onto the last car just before it pulled out of the campus's station.

“Your card didn't go through. Miss?”

She looked up. A man with a mustache and a blue uniform was standing in the aisle. “When you went through the turnstile,” he explained. “You went too fast – the machine couldn't deduct payment from your card.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.” She dug her train pass out of her pocket and handed it to the conductor, who swiped it with his mobile reader.

“You should never run to catch a moving train,” he reprimanded her. “Take my mother's advice – if she ever saw someone do that, she'd say, ‘Well, he must be late for his accident.'”

“Are we almost to the Forest Glen stop?”

He shook his head in irritation. “Half an hour. Be more careful.”

She watched him stride into the next car, and the realization of what she'd done began to sink in. Talia had told her not to come, but she'd insisted on it anyway, leaving the pond and running straight to the train. And Fenn – she cringed with guilt when she thought of Fenn. He was probably standing at the duck pond entrance, alone, waiting to hear about her interview. She'd left without even telling him – how could she have done that?

She pulled out her phone to remedy at least that small thing.
Something came up with Talia
, she typed, feeling like the apology deserved full sentences.
I caught an earlier train. I'm sorry.

How many truths was she omitting now? That she'd started looking for her mother again? That she went to visit Warren when she said she was running errands for school? That she was having bad dreams, of a man she'd never met? Fenn would never lie to her this way. She thought of him again, waiting for her under the pine trees, holding his binder full of transcripts.
I'm sorry
, she typed again.

“I told you not to come,” Talia said when she opened the door. Lona was worried she was annoyed, but after a second she sighed and beckoned Lona into the living room, where Gabriel was playing with blocks on the floor.

“Lona!” He pointed proudly to the tower in front of him. “I made a castle!”

“Hi, Gabriel,” she said mechanically. She was too jittery to summon the right excitement.

“Help me?”

“Hey, dude.” Talia crouched to his level. “Let's relocate this building project upstairs, okay? Lona can't play right now.” Lona knew she should offer to help move the toys, but all she could do was stare at the television mounted on a stand across from the couch. Next to it was an antiquated machine, the type Lona hadn't seen since Julian was little. Talia must have requested it in order to play the footage. Inside the machine would be a disc. On the disc would be her mother.

“It's all set up?”

Halfway up the stairs, Talia stopped. “I'll be down in just a minute, after I get him situated. If you want to wait—”

“I just press play, right?”

“Are you sure you want to watch it alone? I can come back and—” Her face wrinkled in concern, but she cut herself off when she saw Lona's expression. Lona was sure. All of this felt too uncertain and too raw. The footage might make her cry and she didn't want to do that with company.

She waited until the door of Gabriel's bedroom closed above her and leaned in close to the television, until she could almost feel the heat coming off it. Her finger hovered over the play button, quivering.
This was your wish,
she reminded herself.
This is why you blew out the candles.

There was static on the screen. And then there was blackness. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out more than blackness – the outline of a brick building, ghostly in streetlights. This was the building she'd grown up in, as it looked on the night of her birth. She'd grown up watching someone else's life on a screen. Now she was watching her own.

In front of the entrance, a car pulled up, the passenger's side facing the camera. It was a light-colored sedan, gray or beige. There was no audio to accompany the footage, so the car drove into the frame silently and pulled to a stop.

Her fingers hurt. She looked down and she was clutching the sides of the coffee table so forcefully her fingernails were bending.

She waited for someone to get out of the car. Would it just be her mother? Or had someone come along to help? Would her mother look sad? Would she stop to give her a last kiss?

The car pulled away.
No
, Lona thought. It couldn't pull away. She hadn't seen anything. The person inside hadn't done anything.
She hadn't even glimpsed her mother's face
.

But the driver
had
done something. Because the car was gone, and in its place, directly in front of the Path center, a tiny bassinet sat in the doorway. Herself. Lona, asleep and impossibly small, barely a smudge on the grainy screen. If she squinted her eyes, she thought she could see the baby on the screen raise a tiny fist in a wail.

She rewound the video and watched it again for clues. And then again, and again. But she could never see the driver open the door, or remove the bassinet. She could never see anyone ring the buzzer that must have been next to the door. She couldn't even see the license plate.

Talia had been right. This was a dead end.

“My hair was amazing, right?” Lona hadn't heard Talia come back down the stairs, and she jumped at the sound of her voice.

“Your hair?”

“You didn't wait for me to come on the screen with my hideous bangs?” Talia joked. “Nobody ever told me your hair wasn't supposed to grow horizontally.” Her voice grew quieter as she placed a careful hand on Lona's shoulder. “You weren't outside alone for very long. I promise, Lona. Whoever left you rang the buzzer – I hoped you'd keep watching because I came down and got you less than two minutes after they drove away.”

“You already watched it. You watched it without me.”

Talia shrugged in apology. “I know I shouldn't have. I just – if something bad had happened on that screen, I didn't want you to be the first one to see it.” Lona softened at the concern in Talia's voice. “I'm really sorry, Lona. I'm sorry there wasn't anything useful.”

“You tried. And you warned me. You said there probably wouldn't be anything.” But she felt deflated. And annoyed. Not at the Talia now, who had watched the video after all, but at the one seventeen years ago, who came downstairs two minutes after the car that left baby Lona had driven away. Why couldn't that Talia have come down earlier? Why couldn't that Talia have seen something?

“Can I make you something?” Talia offered. “Hot chocolate or coffee? With animal crackers? Watch, as I try to solve the world's problems with snacks.”

Lona shrugged loose of Talia's hand. “Thanks. But I should go now, anyway. To get back to the train station before it's too dark.”

“Are you sure? How about I drive you home? We can stop for dinner on the way.”

“No, you'd have to pack up all of Gabriel's stuff,” she began, and when she saw Talia opening her mouth to protest, she hurried through. “And I kind of think I want to be alone. If that's okay.”

Talia nodded, but looked unconvinced. “Call me if you change your mind. I'll pick you up at any stop.”

Lona knew she wouldn't, though. She was feeling weary, saddened by the loss of something she'd let herself want even more than she realized.

She walked the fifteen minutes back to the train station on autopilot, and sank into an empty seat next to a commuting business man.

The whir of the train made her eyelids grow weighty. The colors outside the train window blurred together until finally she gave into the heaviness and fell.

There was nowhere to hide. There was no time to hide, either. It was too late. He wasn't going to find it before they got here. He had failed.

The door began to open. He stood up, leaving the contents of the drawer spilled on the floor. There was no sense in trying to put it away. No sense in greeting your enemy with your knees on the floor. No sense in letting your enemy know they are your enemy.

The man who walked inside jumped backwards after he opened the door. He said, “Oh!” like he'd walked in on his own surprise party. Like this was a pleasant reunion for all of them. “I was just looking for you,” the man said.

“Hi, Warren. You found me.”

“The prisoner still isn't responding. Sir.”

“Give it time, Anders. Anders. You don't like when I call you by your first name, do you? You want me to call you
Doctor.
”

“No. Sir.”

“It bothers you that you have initials after your name, and I am the one they put in charge.”

“It bothers me that the project has been stalled for weeks and you're still not achieving any retainment. The advancements are useless if the subjects aren't retaining anything.”

“I already told you that I didn't want to force it. I want Lona to come to me. I was put in charge of this project, because I have special knowledge of how to achieve these goals.”

“The decision to bring you in was a highly unorthodox one, and it's one that's reversible. If they don't feel that your methods are working, there are other methods to be tried. All of those alternate methods will involve you going back to the place you were rescued from. How would you feel about that? Sir.”

“I thought you knew. I was recruited because I don't feel.”

Lona locked herself in the bathroom at home, curling into the small space between the sink and the bathtub, trying to surround herself with concrete, literal things. Things she could touch. Things that made sense. The dream had been scary when she didn't know anyone in it. Now that she knew Warren was in it, it was terrifying. She couldn't ignore it anymore. Something was very wrong. She didn't understand it. But something was very, very wrong.

“Lona?” Fenn knocked on the door. “You're back?”

She scrambled up to the sink, scraping a wash cloth over her cheeks and checking to make sure her eyes weren't too bloodshot before pulling the door open.

“I'm back. I'm fine.” She heard how curt she sounded. She knew she should be apologizing. But it was hard to get out even short sentences after everything that had happened in the past three hours.

She squeezed past him into the hall. Fenn stepped back, but it seemed like it was at the harshness of her words, more than to let her pass. “You left me,” he said. “You left me in the middle of campus with no warning.”

“I know.”

“You
know
?”

She pushed past him. Everything seemed pixelated. Everything seemed fuzzier than the sharp lines and pure colors of her dream. She needed to stay in reality. She needed to keep touching real things. She went to the kitchen, pouring a glass of water, making herself concentrate on the feeling of the liquid as it slid down her throat and all the way into her intestines. “You
know
.” He pressed. “That's your excuse? Where
were
you?”

“I told you. I left you a message.”
Breathe. Feel the water on the back of your tongue
. “I was going to Talia's.”

“Is Talia okay? Are
you
okay?”

“Talia's fine,” she managed.

“Then what happened?” She stalled, setting the glass on the countertop and watching the circle of water pool around the bottom. Wasn't that the essential question?
What was happening to her?
“Lona?” he asked again. “What's going on?”

It should be so easy to tell him. But none of this seemed easy.

“
Lona?
”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“You don't—”

“
Stop it.
Stop asking me.” She watched the words fly out her mouth and couldn't take them back. “I'm sorry that I left you, I'm sorry you were waiting for me, I'm sorry I don't want to talk about it, but I don't. I don't want to talk about any of it!”

“Then what do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want you to leave me alone!”

Fenn hadn't said or done anything wrong. She knew that. It was the questions she didn't know how to answer, and the panic that thinking about them prompted. Fenn's face – she could barely stand to look at the hurt and confusion in it, especially knowing that she'd caused it.

Back when Lona first left the Path, they'd had a few arguments. Times when she wondered whether the boy she'd grown up with had completely disappeared. They hadn't in a while, though. Not since the Path was shut down. Not since they were supposed to be normal. They had left the Julian Path and they had been cured, or if not cured, then better. This was their first real fight, she realized.

“Fenn, I didn't mean—” she started, but he waved at her not to bother.

“You don't need to,” he said stiffly. “You don't have to explain where you were. I don't have to know everything about you.”

“Wait, that's not what I meant,” she said. She wanted him to know everything about her. That's how it had always been. She just didn't know how to fix this.

“It's fine, Lona. It's fine.” He turned and disappeared; a few minutes later she heard the sound of his door closing.

The water had helped. She could feel steadiness returning to her stomach. She could feel herself becoming herself again. Or becoming whatever terrible person she was turning into.