The Veil (13 page)

Was I some sort of monster because I had no feelings for these people? Or was it because I had no real memories of them?

Back when we’d been friends, Emily and I had discussed what it was like to be kids whose parents were dead exactly once. Her parents had died in a car crash when she was four, and she’d spent a year in a foster home before being adopted by Mary and Joshua Archer. She considered them her parents, just as I considered Gran to be mine. Like Gran, they dragged out a photo album a couple of times each year so Emily would remember her biological parents. Like me, Emily said she only thought of her biological parents at those moments; the rest of the time, the Archers were her parents, her life was her life, and that was the end of it.

But the thing that always stuck in my head the most about our talk had been the part where Emily told me she remembered her parents.
Really
remembered them, as in, she had pictures of them in her head that hadn’t come from memorizing the contents of a photo album. When she told me that, I remember thinking how strange it was that even though I’d been two full years older when
my
parents died, I had no memories of them.

Not a single one.

In fact, I had no memories at all about my life before I came to California with Gran. I didn’t remember England. I didn’t remember Gran telling me my parents had died. I didn’t remember getting on a plane and flying from London to San Francisco. I didn’t remember arriving at this house.

My first, honest-to-goodness memory was walking into my first day of first grade. The teacher—Mrs. Charles—had sat me down on the floor next to Nate and asked him if he could please share the Lincoln Logs with me.

That was it. Not a single, solitary memory of my life before that moment.

Why was that
?

I looked at the pictures in the frame again. I
knew
the people in those pictures, but I knew them the same way I knew the state capitals, or that Au is the chemical symbol for gold on the periodic table. Because I had learned it. Years of study had committed every detail of the photographs to memory, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing these people with my own eyes. Was that why I couldn’t work up the proper emotion to the news of their murders?

It couldn’t be because I was a heartless wretch through and through. I couldn’t even
imagine
how distraught I’d be if anything were ever to happen to Gran, or to Nate, or to Olivia. But they were different—they were actual people in my life, people who I loved and who loved me.

And I couldn’t feel the same way toward the strangers in those photographs. I just couldn’t, even though I knew I should.

Maybe I
was
a monster.

I sat holding the picture frame for a very long time, loathing myself for being so cold and unfeeling, before another unwelcome thought wormed its way into my head; this was yet another thing that I couldn’t discuss with Nate, or with Olivia. They wouldn’t understand the guilt that came from not being able to grieve for your own parents—their parents were not strangers to them.

There was only one person who might possibly be able to understand. And she was now the one person who had more reason to hate me than anyone else on the planet, the one person I definitely could
not
talk to about this, or possibly anything else, ever again.

Emily. Who probably already hated me for stealing Lucas, even though I hadn’t actually stolen him, and even though it hadn’t even been my idea in the first place. Up until last night, there had always been the possibility we could reconcile. It’s not like anything truly bad had ever happened between us.

It was just one of those things. Emily had been the new kid in fourth grade who Nate and I had decided to take pity on and befriend. The three of us had been inseparable until the summer after eighth grade, when Emily made the fateful decision to exchange her brain for shiny hair and boobs. Then we’d entered high school, and she found out the popular crowd would have her. We never saw her much after that.

Nate always liked to say we “traded Emily in” for Olivia. But in reality, it was Emily who traded
us
in. And even though I wouldn’t give up Olivia for the world, I sometimes miss Emily. The old version of her—not the self-admiring, shell of a person she is now. In the back of my mind, I’d always sort of hoped one day she’d snap out of it and we could all be friends again.

But Lucas had slammed that door shut last night. Tomorrow I’d have to endure the total, unrestrained hatred of Emily Archer. I couldn’t argue with her for hating me or blame her for it, even though I knew I’d really done nothing to deserve it.

Nothing—except lust after her boyfriend for two solid months. The fact that this had nothing to do with anything was now beside the point.

Ug. Tomorrow was going to be
awful.

——

W
HEN
I
WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING
I realized, with a slight shock, that it was Halloween. Not that the holiday meant too terribly much to me anymore. I mean, I was well past the age when it was considered appropriate to go door to door and beg for candy, but it was a mark of my preoccupation with recent events that I’d almost let it pass by without even noticing.

Today, though, I was much more concerned with how my new, fake relationship with Lucas was going to go over at school. I had an ominous foreboding totally in keeping with the fact that it was October 31st.

I went through my morning routine faster than usual, now that I had only one cat to feed instead of eleven. There had still been no sign of Gran or her boys when the doorbell rang at precisely seven thirty.

When I opened the door, I took a moment to marvel at the way Lucas’s green, long-sleeved T-shirt set off his eyes, and the way his dark jeans seemed tailor-made to fit him. Lucas never dressed fancy—I don’t think I’d ever seen him in anything except for jeans—and he never looked like he was trying very hard, but
damn
that boy knew how to wear clothes.

Even though he’d scoffed at the reference yesterday, I’d already started thinking about him as my very own personal guardian angel. And I had to admit that a small part of my head was gleefully celebrating that everyone at school would soon be thinking that this exquisite creature was my boyfriend.

But before the celebrating could really get going, the rational side of my brain beat it back, reminding me sternly this was all
fake
,
fake
,
fake
, and just a job to him. Nothing more.

And he’d probably rather still be fake going out with Emily.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and I realized I’d been staring at him for some time, with God-only-knows what kind of weird expression on my face.

“Fine,” I said, forcing my face into a normal-seeming smile as I followed him outside.

There was a black Honda coupe parked behind my Oldsmobile. It looked just beat up enough to be a real, human teenager’s car, but it was otherwise well cared for. I wondered if Lucas had added the small dents on the front and back bumpers, or the six-inch scratch on the passenger-side door on purpose, just to make it seem more realistic.

Or maybe not. He hadn’t listed “flawless driving” as one of his Annorasi abilities—maybe the Annorasi were just careless.

I was going to have to remember to ask him what his other abilities were. He hadn’t answered that question yesterday.

“Did you talk to Nate last night?” he asked, as he turned left on Grant without me having to remind him we had another passenger to pick up.

“No.” I’d ignored all five of his phone calls, trying to put off lying to him for as long as possible. I’d ignored three of Olivia’s calls too.

Nate was waiting on the curb outside of Sully’s, two coffee cups in hand. He looked puzzled at first as the black Honda pulled up beside him. He peered through the windshield, smiled curiously to
find me in the passenger seat, and then nearly dropped the coffees when he saw who was in the driver’s seat.

“Let him have the back,” Lucas reminded me in a whisper, as I got out of the car to let Nate in. “Remember, you’re my ‘girlfriend’ now.”

Oh, right. Like I could have forgotten about that. The air quotations he had put up around the key word only hurt a little bit.

Nate gave me a sly grin, as he slid past me into the backseat. “Hey, man,” he said to Lucas. “Sorry I don’t have a coffee for you. If Addy had any manners, she would’ve told me you were coming.”

I slammed the passenger door a bit harder than was strictly necessary and fumbled with my seatbelt.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucas told him. “I don’t really like coffee.”

Nate chuckled as he passed me one of the two cups. “That’ll change, believe me. Addy’s a champion pusher.”

I took the top off of the cup so I could take larger gulps of caffeine than the small hole in the lid would allow, praying as I did that Nate would just shut up and be cool.

But he wouldn’t have been Nate if he’d done that.

“So,” he continued, thoroughly enjoying every second of my uncomfortable silence. “What did you two kids do yesterday?”

“We went to the lake,” Lucas told him pleasantly. “Addy’s Gran packed us a lunch, and we just sort of hung out for a while.”

Nate choked on his coffee. “You met
Gran
?” he sputtered.

I winced; in the eleven years I’d known Nate, he had only met Gran twice, on two of the extremely rare occasions when she had left the house. How could I explain to him why Lucas, who had been in my life for less than two full days, was already tied with him? Past him, actually—Nate had never been inside of my house. I started praying silently that Lucas wouldn’t mention that little tidbit next.

“What did
you
do yesterday?” Lucas asked Nate, avoiding his question as we turned into the school parking lot.

“Just work and stuff,” Nate muttered.

I turned around and looked at him accusingly as Lucas parked the car. “You had work yesterday? Why didn’t you call and ask me for a ride?”

“You were busy,” he said, his face a mask of calm.

“Nate,” I said irritably, “You know you can always call me, anytime you need a—” I broke off suddenly—maybe he
couldn’t
call me every time he needed a quick ride somewhere, not now that Lucas had to be with me whenever I left the house.

“It’s okay.” Nate began to look uncomfortable. “My dad can usually drive me. It’s not a big deal.”

I felt like crying as I opened the car door and stumbled out, dragging my coffee and my messenger bag behind me. This was already not going well, and the day hadn’t even started yet.

Lucas was right beside me as we walked up to school, not quite touching me but close enough so the whispers had already begun by the time we reached Junior Hall, where all of our lockers were. Nate mumbled an excuse and darted away in the direction of his first class.

I watched him go, wondering what I could say to make it better but not coming up with anything useful.

I dropped down to the floor in front of my locker, and Lucas knelt down beside me.

“Are you—” he began, but then a giant, gooey cookie swung into my field of vision.

“Happy Halloween, Addy!” Olivia chorused, swinging the pumpkin cookie back and forth until I snatched it out of her hand. I looked up to find her beaming down at me. Except for the cat ears perched atop her head and the long, black tail pinned to the back of her jeans, she was dressed perfectly normal.

“Happy Halloween, Lucas!” She pulled out another cookie, this one in the shape of a smiley ghost, and handed it to him. Olivia was an excellent baker, and she never let a holiday pass without forcing us all to eat something heavily frosted.

“Thanks,” he said. “And it’s ‘Luc’, actually. Nobody really calls me Lucas.”

I raised an eyebrow; this was news to me. And I was supposed to be his girlfriend? This was
never
going to work.

But Olivia seemed convinced, smiling between the two of us as though we’d just announced our engagement and asked her to bake the wedding cake. Clearly, she had spoken to Nate.

“Well,” I said, closing my locker and standing up awkwardly; Lucas—excuse me,
Luc
—reached out a hand to steady me, and I thought Olivia was going to positively overflow with excitement. “We’d better get to class.”

“Yep,
we’d
better do that!” Olivia squealed, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, pulling my ear an inch from her mouth, and stage-whispering, loudly enough for Lucas to hear, “You
will
tell me everything later!” She released me, gave us both a wave, and bounced away, grinning broadly, cat tail swinging.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Lucas said as we headed to his locker. “At least we got cookies out of it.”

“‘
Luc’
?” I hissed, from behind the cover of his locker door (a top one—figured). “When were you going to tell me about that?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t occur to me until right then. Why?”

“Never mind,” I said, exasperated. I downed the last of my coffee in one giant gulp and tossed the empty cup into a nearby trash can, wishing there was some way I could get another fix between now and the start of precalc. I was starting to turn into a junkie.

“Hey,” he said, putting a hand over mine, which was clutching the side of his locker, white-knuckled and practically shaking. “Relax. You’re acting like someone is going to call us out and make us admit in front of the whole school that we’re—” he dropped his voice as Terrance Seaver walked by, suspiciously close and obviously intent on eavesdropping—“we’re not really a couple,” he finished when Terrance had wandered out of earshot.

His hand was warm on mine, and for a moment my train of
thought was totally obliterated. When I managed to get it back, I realized he was right. We could do this. We had to do this. But still—it was already a lot more uncomfortable than I’d thought it was going to be.

“Can’t you just make everybody be cool?” I pleaded in a whisper. “Don’t you know some kind of Annorasi mind trick or something?”