Mind Games (13 page)

He laughs; it has an edge to it that sets my senses on alert. It’s unnerving and a little bit sexy. I am eighteen years old. I know nothing about sexy. Or men. I wish I did. I wonder what it would be like to have a life where boys were a part of it.

This man, whoever he is, knows everything about sexy. I can already tell by his smell and his laugh. “I
am
new. How did you know I was here?”

“Stewart smells much worse. And he breathes like a horse.”

He laughs again. “You must be Annabelle.”

I smile, then inwardly berate myself. What am I doing? He’s one of them. And, even worse, he’s new. Which means something must be changing. Which is absolutely terrifying. “Why are you here?”

“They needed a replacement for the previous project manager.”

The previous project manager. Clarice. Dead Clarice. “So, what did you do wrong to get assigned here?”

“Ah, you mean what did I do right? Because here is looking pretty good now.”

I don’t know if I’m blushing; my cheeks are hot and I feel like I need to tuck my hair behind my ear or touch my neck, but I’m holding the tray. Fia’s tray. “I have to take this in to Fia. Open the door.”

“Fia,” he says experimentally, then repeats it softly to himself. “Yes, about that.”

I feel the tray wobble ever so slightly. He touched it. “What did you just do?”

“I think it’s time we weaned your sister off the sedatives, don’t you?”

“Really?” I turn my face toward his voice, overwhelmed with hope. They’ve kept her so drugged up ever since…ever since that day. She’s barely a person. I’ve asked and asked, pleaded, argued, demanded. What was the point in keeping her here if they were going to leave her a zombie forever?

“Really.”

Tears spill down my face, warm tracks. I don’t know what to do with myself. I bend and set the tray on the ground, then, on impulse, throw my arms in a hug around him. He is tall and solid, and being this close he smells even better. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but I’m not doing it for you.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I let go and back away, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

“James.”

“The beautiful boy with the booze?” I ask, horrified. That’s how Fia and I have referred to him ever since that night. And now he’s in charge of our very lives.

I wish I could take back my hug.

“Come on. Please? No one describes movies as well as you do.” I finish brushing Fia’s hair, but she still sits listlessly on the end of the bed. I moved into a bigger dorm, more like an apartment, last month.

James let me move her out of the secure wing and back in with me five days ago. She hasn’t seen him yet. I haven’t told her he’s in charge of us now. I still don’t know what that means, how that changes things.

But thanks to him, she’s off the sedatives. I just give her one at night to help her sleep. There’s almost no difference between
heavily sedated Fia and normal Fia, though.

“You act like nothing changed,” she whispers.

“Why should I act like something changed?”

“You know what I did!”

I flinch away from her voice, but part of me is glad. At least I got a reaction. “It doesn’t matter.”

She laughs. It’s low and empty and I wish she wouldn’t ever laugh like that again. “You didn’t do it.”

“Let’s move on. Forget about it. You’re not going to be punished for it. Everyone understands. I talked with—I talked with Mr. Keane.”

“
The
Mr. Keane?” she asks.

“Yes. On the phone, right after. I was so scared they’d—they’d take you away. I told him everything, about what you saw, about why you—why it happened. He wasn’t angry!” Actually, he’d laughed, a silent whisper of a laugh. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was the only laugh I’ve ever heard worse than Fia’s dead-girl laugh. “So we move on. Back to our plan. The plan not to have a plan. Remember?” I nudge her, smiling hopefully. She needs to have hope. She needs to have something.

Ever since it became obvious that I knew what this school really was and that I wasn’t seeing anything other than the occasional glimpse of Fia, they’ve pretty much ignored me. I can do whatever I want as long as I stay in a few select (and guarded) wings of the building. But they don’t pretend to care about my
future anymore—no new tech, no more visits from the doctor. I wonder if there ever was any hope for my eyes. Probably just another lie woven to keep me invested and Fia trapped.

Just another future I’ve lost.

“You can’t see my hands,” Fia whispers. There’s a noise, almost too quiet to hear. A tiny tap-tap-tap, like she’s playing a beat on her leg.

I try to reach out for her fingers, but she snatches them away.

“You can’t see my hands, and you didn’t see her face. Remember that night we fought? Just before? You said you’d be okay without me. Did you mean it?”

“Fia, sweetheart, let’s don’t talk about that. That was a long time ago.”

She sighs. “I want to sleep now.”

I leave her alone. I’ll figure it out. I try to research post-traumatic stress disorder online, but nothing fits. I don’t know how to help her. Nothing I’m doing is working.

And the thing is, I can’t ever tell her, but she didn’t
need
to do what she did. Just knowing that they’d kill me if she didn’t do what they wanted her to would have changed things. Killing Clarice wasn’t the only option. If she had asked me, if she had just waited and talked about it, I’m sure I would have told her not to do it.

I think she knows. She picked the first way to stop that vision from ever happening. But she didn’t pick the only way.
The other way would have been doing whatever it was they wanted her to. I hope it was worse than what she did. I really do. Because the option she chose is destroying her.

That night when I go to get her sleeping pill, the brand-new bottle is empty.

“Please,” I say. “Get off the couch. We haven’t been outside since you were sick.”
Since you ate a bottle of sleeping pills
.
Since you tried to leave me in the only way you could
. “Let’s go walk the grounds.” The school is a square with an open courtyard in the middle. They let us go out there. Maybe if I can get her in the sunshine, maybe if we can feel it and she can see it, maybe it will help.

“Eden can take you.”

“I don’t want to go with Eden.”

She doesn’t even answer. I don’t know what to do anymore. This is worse than when she was sedated, worse than anything, because there’s nothing to fight, nothing to rally against. She’s completely lost herself, and I don’t know how to bring her back.

Someone knocks and I shout for them to come in, hoping it’s Eden and I can get a break from this frustrating, mind-numbingly awful existence. But the clomp-clomp-clomp of heavy, confident steps and the scent of oranges and velvet night air flood my apartment.

“James?” Fia’s voice is incredulous.

“Apparently I am to be addressed as the Beautiful Boy with the Booze. But I take it Annabelle didn’t tell you I was back.”

Of course I didn’t tell her. I’ve heard all the girls talking about him. He flirts shamelessly with everyone. The Readers whisper that he thinks constantly about sex. Eden says he reeks of lust. I don’t want him in my rooms. I don’t want him around my baby sister.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “this time I didn’t find any bottles of whiskey to steal before visiting. Can I still come in?”

An exhalation. Was that a laugh? Not the hollow dead-girl laugh?

“I don’t care,” she says.

“Excellent.” I hear the couch’s leather creak. How close is he sitting to her? Is he touching her? I want him away from her. I wish I had been sitting on the couch next to her so I could block him, shield her from him.

“To what do we owe the honor?” I ask.

“I was bored. Running this school is dead dull.”

Fia’s voice is sharper than it’s been in weeks. “Since when do you work for your father?”

“Didn’t you hear? I own the school. Twenty-one now, and I’ve come into my mother’s idea of an inheritance. I would’ve preferred my own island, but there are perks to this.” There is a pause here; no one says anything; and I have never felt so blind
as I do now, trying to imagine how he is looking at her when he says “perks.”

Finally James talks again. “Now, Fia. I’ve got a confession.” I stiffen, furious. He can’t call her that. He doesn’t deserve to use her nickname.

“Hmm?”

“The first night we met, when I told you my name, do you remember what you said?”

She doesn’t answer.

“You said, ‘I should bash your brains in right now.’ I apologize for assuming you were a liar and a flirt. I see now you were quite serious, and I must have offended you dearly.”

My jaw drops in horror. How could he? How could he joke about that? After what she did?

“I hereby vow to take any and all death threats at face value, unless you are, in fact, trying to flirt with me, in which case please threaten to bash my brains in while winking, like so.”

And then—

She laughs. She actually laughs, not like she did before we came here but like she did before things got really bad. It’s harder and has jagged edges, but it’s a laugh.

“I’ve gotta tell you, when I heard what happened, I thought my father would be more upset, but do you know what he said to me? ‘She should have seen it coming.’”

“That’s terrible!” I hiss.

Fia laughs louder. “
Someone
taught me how to get in trouble around a Seer.”

“And you are a star pupil. You surpassed even my record, which I used to be quite proud of. If we’re still keeping score, this puts you firmly in the lead and I owe you this drink.”

I slash my hand through the air. “Stop.” Did he bring alcohol in here? That joke about the whiskey—is he making fun of me because I can’t see that he’s holding some? “You will
not
give her anything.”

“Relax. I’ve come with ice-cold Coke. Not even as a mixer. Just as a drink.”

“While we’re talking about that night,” Fia says, and her voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from miles away. It sounds like she’s here, now, in this room. “I seem to recall you saying you’d like to kiss me but you needed to get through a couple more drinks before you could let yourself. Have you had enough time to down them?”

James laughs; their laughs are a matching set. It makes me feel small and alone. Jealous. I’m jealous of James Keane. Why can he make her laugh like a real person? I’ve been taking care of her all this time and I was barely keeping her alive. He’s one of
them
!

“I think,” he says, “if I kept up my end of that promise, Annie here would take your place in bashing my brains out.”

“I already called dibs on it. She would never dare.” She’s
teasing him. She sounds like the old Fia. He swoops in here, talking about bashing in heads and drinking, and draws her out? Why would she come out for him but not for her own sister?

“Excellent. I’d hate for anyone else to have the honor. Now. Since I’ve got you here, I have a proposal.”

“Too young to get married. Besides, Annie loathes you and everyone else would be too frightened to be my maid of honor. I have a bit of a
reputation
.” She whispers “reputation” exaggeratedly. How can she flirt with him about this?

“Oh, that
is
a problem. In that case, I have a different proposal. How would you like to go on a vacation? Sort of a study abroad. I think you’ve been locked up in this school for too long. It isn’t healthy, you know. Some would say it’ll drive you crazy.”

“When?” she asks, and her voice is breathless and hopeful. I’m drowning. I’m losing her, and I don’t know how or why.

“How soon can you pack?”

She jumps up with a squeal and I hear her run out of the room. “Just the basics,” James yells. “We can buy anything you need.”

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

“What you can’t.” I hear him stand. He walks closer to me, puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to make her better.”

I shrug his hand off, glare up at his voice. “How? By making sick jokes about things no one should ever have to remember?
And why do you want her ‘better’? So you can use her again? You saw how well that turned out for the last person in charge here.”

“Careful there, Annabelle. You can’t
pretend
to not care about what Fia did. You’ve either got to really not care at all, or you’ve got to care. She knows you’re somewhere in between, and her own guilt is already more than she can handle.”

“Don’t act like you know her! She’s my sister!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you lost your claim to her as soon as you accepted the Keane Foundation’s generosity. She’s not yours. After your desperate call to my father, he decided to give me a bigger role in his work. She’s my responsibility now. Don’t worry. I take my responsibilities very seriously.”

It can’t be my fault that he’s here. That’s not what I wanted when I talked to his horrible father. “I won’t let you have her.”

“You don’t have any choice.” He sounds almost sorry when he says this. He is a liar.

“If you touch her—if you so much as touch her—” I am trembling with rage. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare ever forget how young she is or how broken she is.”

His voice isn’t sorry anymore. “How could I? And how could she, with such a kind sister to remind her that she is hopelessly broken.”

“I’m ready!” Her voice is bright. I hear something thunk to the ground. Her bag.

I whip around. “Don’t go! You can’t go!”

“Aren’t you coming?” she asks.

“I’m sorry,” James says, and he walks away from me. Is he touching her? Is he touching her? “But my father would only agree to let me take you if Annie stayed here and kept up her studies. And she needs to be here in case they have a breakthrough for her eye treatments.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause, and then her voice…oh, her voice is dead again, it’s coming from somewhere so deep inside and far away I can barely tell it’s hers. “I guess I’ll stay then.”

“No.” I choke on the word, paste a smile on my face, glad I can’t see what she looks like, wishing she couldn’t see me, either. She’ll know I’m lying. She always knows when I’m lying. So she knows I’m lying every time I tell her that what she did doesn’t matter, that we’re going to be okay, that we’re going to get out of here eventually. Please, Fia, believe this lie. “You should go. You’ve earned a vacation. Just bring me back a present. Besides, I’ll have Eden.”