Dualed (26 page)

Her parents’ room.

My Alt’s bedroom is at the end of the hall. There’s an air of stillness that I can already sense. She’s been gone from here for a while now. Most likely since the very beginning.

I step inside, past the threshold where the hall’s blond hardwood meets soft carpet. Faint perfume reaches me. I wrinkle my nose in distaste. Too floral. I wish I could turn on the lamp, but I can’t risk the light being seen. Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve had to work in the dark.

In so many ways it’s a completely typical bedroom for a fifteen-year-old girl. Pillows on the bed for lounging, bright walls covered with posters and static photos (including more of
him
, too, all over the place). Cosmetics and jewelry cover the top of the dresser.

Except everything is freakishly neat. Everything. The pillows are aligned, not tossed. The posters and photos on the wall are all at right angles to each other. The cosmetics are in perfectly measured rows, the jewelry in distinct piles.

That same odd sensation I had downstairs, when I came across the photos of her boyfriend. Both ice and heat running along my limbs, reminding me that I can never forget I’m in the home of the one person who wants nothing more than to see me dead.

Enough, West
.

I begin to search.

It’s hard to find something when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. Coming in, I had this brilliant idea of stumbling across an old cell with contact numbers, a list of close friends with whom she keeps in touch, maybe even discarded notes with jotted-down ideas for tracking me. Something,
anything
that would tell me how she planned to eliminate me.

I’m cursing myself even as I silently open drawers, sift through the neat, squared-off stack of papers on her desk, try to boot up a dead tablet. I saw her face, her eyes, didn’t I? How could I have even begun to hope she would slip when it counted the most and leave a hint behind?

The door to the closet is open. As I run my hand over her clothing, I think of my own sweaty shirt, my jeans that are already creased with dirt. I can smell how unclean they are, how unclean I am. For a brief second I consider changing my outfit. I know everything would fit me as if it were my own. But the thought is gone before it takes hold. I can’t do it. It would be too … close. Pushing a boundary that is already too blurred. To slip from one identity to another shouldn’t be that easy. This is where she lived, slept, dreamed, the essence of who she was—and is. If I spent enough time here, would I become more like her and less like me? The idea is both exhilarating and disturbing.

Wait.

The voices from the other room are growing louder. There’s the creak of a door swinging open, the sudden bright glow of a bedroom light before it’s turned off, and the shuffle of feet in the hall.

Instantly, my back is against the wall, my bag caught in
between. My eyes are wide and staring, my breathing light and quick. Ducking into the closet, I fall to a crouch. Jackets hang in front of my face, boots and sneakers make the ground an uneven terrain. I place a hand on the wall for balance.

The footsteps are getting closer.

I free my hand from my sleeve and reach for my gun. When I feel the cool steel, I slip it into my palm. The comfort I feel is both wrong and right. Slowly I slide up until I’m standing again, leaning against the closet’s door frame.

A large shadow emerges in the doorway of the bedroom. Then it splits into two. I can see the figures of the parents, backlit by the skylight. For a moment, they don’t move, hovering in the doorway as if remembering how it once was. Wishing for it to be again.

A cold sweat washes over me, and I can smell the acidity of it in the air. The taste of fear in my mouth is sharp and bitter.

Someone comes inside. The steps are light and hesitant. The mother. She reaches over to touch something on the desk. The movement of her hand is like a ghost in the shadows, flitting. She’s adjusting something I moved. I hold my breath, wondering if she can somehow sense there’s someone else in the room with her. Not just any someone, but me—her daughter’s Alt.

No. I’m safe. The moment passes, and she turns to face her husband, who hasn’t moved from the doorway. It’s eerie, her profile. There are echoes of my Alt there … echoes of me.

“Tell me that you believed her,” my Alt’s mother says quietly. “When she called you this afternoon. That she wasn’t saying it just for our sakes.”

“She knows what she’s doing.” A man’s voice, sounding strained. The father. “She’ll be home soon.”

Hearing them, it’s almost easy to imagine my own parents—if they were still alive, that is—having the same conversation about me. For a brief second, all four voices overlap, blur, become interchangeable in my head, before they sort themselves. I snuff out the twinge of sorrow that I suddenly feel for my Alt’s parents, for putting them through this. It’s weak of me to forget for even a second that the sadness surrounding them is not even remotely for me.

“For her to have made it this far …,” the mother murmurs. “I have to think she’s going to be the one. And what about Glade? Has she heard from him?”

Glade
. The striker. The boyfriend.

The father sighs heavily. “She said not yet, no.”

“I
told
her to reconsider asking him to become a striker. Even if it did mean not having the Board classify it as an AK if it worked out …” She moves over to the bookshelf. Starts straightening some of the books absentmindedly as she continues to speak. It might have been something my own mother would have done—keeping her hands busy to lessen the significance of what she was actually talking about, the fate of her child. “And that boy she saw with
her
. How can she be sure he’s not
her
hired striker?”

My hands clench at her words, and I almost drop the gun. My mouth goes dry instantly.

Chord. She’s talking about Chord
.

Images flash inside my head like bursts of wildfire. My bullet grazing her cheek. The expression on her face as she turns to
run from Chord. His face, harsh with concern as he bandages my wound, the gentleness of his hands giving him away.

“Those photos she saw of him at her Alt’s house, remember?” the father says. “No marks on his wrists.”

My
house. Is she there right now, just like I’m here in hers?

“Well,
she
wouldn’t be anywhere near there. No one would be that foolish,” the mother says, her voice hard, full of hate. Confusing me, bewildering me, because I know she’s as much my mother by blood as my real mother was. Why does it seem both right and wrong for a deep ache of hurt to swell in my chest? How has it nestled itself so snugly alongside the growing panic I’m feeling for Chord?

“Did she say where she’s planning on heading now?” the mother asks.

“She did, but she’s waiting in Gaslight until she hears from Glade first. He’s supposed to call her tomorrow, after he’s completed a contract.”

“Well, she can’t wait for him forever!” Notes of hysteria, perfectly normal for any mother over her child. “She’s running out of time!”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” the father says, trying to calm his wife. “C’mon, you should eat. Let’s go downstairs.”

With that, they both leave the room. They walk down the hall together, the sound of their feet moving down the stairs and soon dwindling to nothing.

I don’t move for a few seconds, trying to pull myself together. Information pounds at me from all directions, threatening to blow me apart. I can’t sort it fast enough.

Glade. My Alt, waiting. My house. Chord.

Somehow I have to find out where she’s going to be next. And the one thing left connecting me to that answer is the fact that her father knows.

Slowly I step out from the closet, glide toward the doorway. Stand motionless and listen to make sure they’re still downstairs. Only when I hear the clanking of pots and pans against the stovetop do I dare to finally move into the hallway. Toward the home office.

The skylight behind me gives me enough light to see what’s inside. Carpeted floors. A bookshelf along one wall, a large whiteboard along another.

I move to the desk. Not just the briefcase on top, but also these:

An empty coffee mug.

A tablet.

Two books.

A cell.

And a pen. Lying on top of a single sheet of notepaper. Which has something scrawled across it.

Two lines, actually, the ink stark and heavy against the white.

It’s not logical that my pulse picks up right then, becomes absolute thunder in my ears, but it does. Heart and gut leaping ahead of what my head doesn’t want to believe. My fingers shake as they reach out and grab the paper.

Difficult to read. I pull out my cell with my free hand, tap it awake, and hold the lit screen to the writing. It doesn’t register at first. Meaningless scribbles on paper, numbers and letters that have nothing to do with me.

Except they do. They have
everything
to do with me.

77513 Arcadian
. My address. Which is understandable.

But then this below it. Which is not.

77561 Arcadian
. Not my house, but the one five doors down.

Did she say where’s she planning on heading now?
the mother asks.

She did
, the father answers.

When it finally hits me, it hits hard.

Chord
. Suddenly the distance between us is unbearable, a test of my sanity. Never have I needed to see him so badly as I do this minute, this second.

I let the paper drop back onto the desk. Stride over to the office window. I’m on the second floor, but leaving the way I came in is no longer an option. I draw the blinds up, slowly and quietly, even as a voice sounds in my head, shouting at me to hurry, hurry!

Outside the window is the front yard. The bare fruit trees I saw earlier are small and distant and frail-looking, too far away for me to use as a way down.

Which means sliding down the roof and jumping. And the downslope of the roof is undeniably steep. Steep and slick with rain before it drops off into nothingness.

If I think about it, I’ll waste time trying to find another way. So I don’t let myself. Instead I picture Chord’s face.

The window slides open along the metal track. Using both hands, I push at the screen until the whole square frame pops off with a mild twang. It lands with a clank on the roof shingles below and skates down until it flies off the edge. Panic has
my pulse dancing, but I don’t hear it land, so I’m spared that noise at least.

I climb out until I’m perched on the lip of the window frame. Take a deep breath, hold it, and start half crawling, half shimmying down, trying to keep the weight of my body from overtaking the hold of my feet.

I can’t do it for long before gravity takes over and I start tumbling. Fast.

The roof catches at my hips, my knees and elbows. I see rough asphalt shingles; dark, cloud-filled sky; the pale flash of moon. Then I’m clutching the gutter that lines the edge of the roof. My breath is fire in my throat as my legs dangle over the driveway. My fingertips are painfully white, gripping the gutter with desperation. My shoulder throbs in time with my drumming heartbeat.

The rest of the way down is tame in comparison, a straightforward drop of about fifteen feet, from toes to ground. So I let go, careful to keep my knees bent just the slightest until I land on my feet. My jaw clicks together hard as I let my weight tip forward and enter a tumbling roll, just like we were taught back in kinetics.

My shoulder screams long and loud before slowly petering out. But that’s it. No bones snap. No muscles twist. I can barely believe it.

Sprinting across the lawn and hitting the street at a full-out run, I stare straight ahead, making my way home to him.

My neighborhood has become a minefield of shadow and danger and threat. In the utter darkness of night, I no longer know it. I stick close to fences and bushes, trying to disappear as much as humanly possible. The fact that she’s supposed to be in Gaslight until tomorrow is only mildly reassuring. Things happen. People hear wrong. My Alt could figure out where Glade went, find his body, and race back to Jethro to destroy me twice over—once for each of them.

In the backyard of the house behind mine, the ground below the old tree house is sloped and soft—typical of the silt the ward sits on—and my feet are getting wet from standing in a rain puddle that never entirely dries out. I bend down to the fence that divides our backyards. Coming from the opposite side this time, so it’s three boards over from the right. I slide the loose slat to the side and peer through.

My house is absolutely still. Asleep. Nothing obviously out of place—no lights in the windows, no doors left open. But my eyes have already adjusted to the lack of light, and it’s the littlest of things that tell me someone’s been here.

The blinds on the kitchen window are not twisted all the way shut. Almost, but not quite.

I feel the shadow of her presence here, a weighted heaviness in the air. It’s ugly and unfamiliar and rings of confidence. Has she made it a part of her routine to come by, or is it only a spur of the moment thing? It’s possible she’s inside right now—if her parents are wrong about where she is, if her plans have changed.

I slip my bag off my shoulders. Holding it by the straps, I tuck it through the gap. It fits through easily enough, and I can’t help but remember the last time I slipped through this same gap. How the bag got stuck, overpacked and fat with a past that I didn’t know how to leave behind. It holds less now, but in many ways, everything that’s inside has become
more
. The contents are what my life has been pared down to.

After stepping through the fence, I slide the loose board back to close the gap behind me.

I’m home.

I don’t even breathe, not daring to risk that telltale white plume of warmth from my mouth. When there’s no movement, I slowly make my way along the side of the house, heading out toward the front yard, staying so close to the siding that I’m nearly rubbing against it.