Vengeance (17 page)

“I mean,” she added, “hypothetically. In general. Not, like,
right now
.”

And I thought:
Yes, right now
. I was watching the traffic. Watching the road. “Not in general,” I said. “Yes, with you.”

“Okay,” she said, and I spent that night and the next three wondering what the hell she meant by that. Like okay, yes? Or okay, good to know. I should’ve asked her back. I should’ve put in all those nice-guy addendums, like,
if you’re ready, when you’re ready, but it’s okay if not
.

I wondered how long it had been eating her up—the thought of me and Tara. How much it had hurt her, though she didn’t mention it for months.

And now she was turning red, looking ill, like I was telling her about Janna to hurt her on purpose. “No,” I said. “
No
. I wasn’t there. Justin was. I had no place to sleep. And I was really freaking cranky this morning.”

That at least got a ghost of a smile. And I thought,
we can do this
. I can talk to this side of her.

She stepped back into her room and came out with another umbrella. It was yellow. It had a duck for a handle. I turned it over in my hand. “Uh, trade?” I asked.

She shook her head.

I held the umbrella out to her again. “This is from second grade,” I said. I remembered her carrying it at the bus stop.

She shrugged, smiled as she pulled the door shut behind her. “I told you to pack your own.”

I loved that she knew I wouldn’t.

It wasn’t until we were in the lobby that she asked where I was going. “With you,” I said.

She stopped walking and I said, “Can we please not argue about this. I don’t want to argue anymore. About anything.”

She was looking at me, trying to see what I meant, I guess, but I couldn’t look her in the eye right then. She pushed through the door, not arguing. Except I could see every argument on her face, anyway.

It was hard to tell how much it was raining from inside the hotel. It wasn’t like at home, where you could hear the wind rattle the windows or the rain beating on the roof or the ice bouncing off the walls. Here, everything sounded protected and sterile, and it was a shock to swing through the revolving door to a freaking deluge.

Delaney raised her black (nonembarrassing) umbrella over her head, the spokes directly level with my face, so I couldn’t even hover under it if I wanted to. She twirled her umbrella
and grinned at me—she was nervous about today, I could tell. Otherwise she wouldn’t be twirling her umbrella and grinning at me. Delaney was decidedly not a twirler. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Your umbrella not working?”

It was too late anyway. My clothes were soaked through. I felt rain seeping through my sneakers to my socks. Felt it clinging to my hair, my eyelashes, everything. I grabbed her free hand. Let it go. Grabbed the umbrella instead. Watched her eyes widen in horror the second before the rain turned her blond hair darker and pressed her clothes to her skin. I watched her face break into the biggest smile I’d seen in months the second before she lunged under the umbrella, an inch from me, smiling up at me.

It was so easy here. Away. No history. I wished I could meet her here. I wished I could meet her here for the first time.

She was pressed up against my side, and I flashed back to months earlier, her doing the same, leaning into me and smiling while keeping secrets in her head, while my dad was starting to disappear. I felt myself pulling away. I handed her the umbrella and let the rain drown out the memories. “Let’s go,” I said, following the signs for the subway stop.

We were in a basement. Everything was labeled “lab this” and “lab that,” but there was no getting around the fact that we were in a basement. And seeing as it was Saturday, most of the doors were locked, the rooms dark. The hallways were half-lit, and our steps echoed as we walked across the floor. My
sneakers squeaked, leaving wet footprints behind, and I shook my hair out as I walked behind her. She read the numbers off as we approached. “LL3 …?LL5 …?here.” We stood in front of an open door. Some guy who looked nothing like a scientist sat on a stool, perched over a lab bench with his back to us.

Delaney knocked on the open door, and the guy spun around. His hair hung in his eyes, and he had on a worn gray T-shirt and worn jeans. I bet he was the type who bought them that way to begin with. I didn’t like the way he smiled when he saw her. Didn’t like the way her body relaxed when she saw him smiling. “Delaney?” he asked, rising off the stool, strutting—yes, strutting—across the room. Scientists shouldn’t be allowed to strut. He stuck out his hand and she took it.

“Sorry, I know I’m early. Nice to meet you, Dr.—”

“Josh,” he said.
Josh
. Dr. Josh. Seriously? He looked like he was born about six months before us. And then he looked at me, like he wasn’t sure if I was here with Delaney or just some guy wandering the basement, dripping wet.

“This is Decker,” she said, waving her hand at me.

“Hey,” Dr. Josh said, no hand extended. He did the whole guy-assessment thing. I wrung my shirt out on the floor. He cleared his throat, and Delaney made this pained expression. And then this guy masquerading as a doctor launched into a description of his research. He gave us a tour of the lab, and the one attached to it. He told us about the animals he’d been researching, of the way pheromones typically work. And about how humans have the parts necessary for receiving and
processing these signals, but that the connection to the brain isn’t active. That the organs are thought to be vestigial. Like an appendix.

But that Delaney, with the changes to her brain—neuroplasticity, he called it—might be an example of its functionality. He said that he was excited. Very excited. The dude was dripping excitement, practically drooling over her, leading her around the lab, and she was nodding and
uh-huh
-ing, but I could see her eyes glazing over. Her spine straighten. What the hell had she told this guy? I took a step toward her, put my hand almost on her back. Almost.

We went back to his work area, and he pulled out a second stool for Delaney. None for me. He rearranged a few beakers on the shelf, reaching behind them while standing on his toes before pulling down a pen. He winked at Delaney. “The undergrads keep stealing my pens.”

He rested a yellow notepad on his knee and started asking questions. But it sounded like he already knew a lot. “So, after your brain injury, you soon realized you could … sense things that you couldn’t before. Can you explain that a little more?”

Delaney cleared her throat. “Yeah, sure. I could tell when people were sick.” She was choosing her words carefully.

“How, exactly could you tell? And what made you realize that?”

“It was like an itch, in the center of my brain. Like a pull I’d feel toward someone. I didn’t know what it was at first. When they were really sick, my hand would start twitching. My doctor thought I was having a seizure, but the EEG
showed no abnormal activity. But then I realized, my neighbor had emphysema. A friend with epilepsy …” She never said they died. Just that they were sick.

She was smart. She wasn’t telling him everything.

I loved that I was the only one who really knew.

Josh swiveled from side to side on his stool. “Several animals have something like this, you know. The death pheromone. It’s usually a signal to leave one of their own behind, for the betterment of the group. Or, in ants, it’s a sign to remove them from the habitat.”

“But it pulls her,” I said, to show him that he was wrong. To show him I knew her better. Not a push. A pull. Not like animals. Not to leave them behind.

“Interesting,” he said. “Tell me, are there any other pheromones you’ve been able to sense?”

“I’m not sure … I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“There are danger ones, and sex ones.” He said it so matter-of-factly, so scientifically, but Delaney turned red and cut her eyes to me for a fraction of a second.

Josh grinned. “I see,” he said. But I didn’t. Was he saying that Delaney was only interested in me because of pheromones?

“No,” she said, like she could hear my thoughts. But he kept scribbling.

“Um,” he said, tapping his pen against the pad of paper. “I’d like to show you something. We need the computer in the next lab.”

“Okay, sure,” Delaney said, but she said it slowly, like she wasn’t okay or sure. She looked at me for a split second.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll keep your seat warm.”

Not the answer she wanted. Not even close. But I was standing, and I was taller than Dr. Josh, and I could see the glint of a metal corner on the shelf where his hand had just been reaching for a pen. What ever else was up there was definitely not a pen.

They left the room, the doctor talking the whole time, Delaney shooting nervous glances over her shoulder. I waited until I could hear him through the walls of the next room, then walked over to the beakers where he’d gotten his pen. I ran my hand along the shelf, stopping at a cold metal rectangle. I pulled it down. It was one of those digital sound recorders that Kevin tried to use in class instead of taking notes once. And it was on.

I turned it off before stuffing it in the waistband of my pants and pulling my shirt down overtop. Then I strode over to the next lab, my muscles twitching in anticipation. I cracked my knuckles against the sides of my legs.

They were sitting on stools again, across from each other. The computer monitor was on, displaying a diagram of the human head, complete with random arrows and brightly colored regions. He had taken out this instrument, like the kind my doctor used to check for ear infections, and was holding it out to Delaney, like a question.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said. They both looked surprised to see me. “I mean, do you have a waiver or something? Something for her to sign granting you permission to examine her and stating what you could use this information for?”

“I’m not really at the stage of research where I’m ready to publish—”

“Then what. The hell. Are you doing?”

He leaned back in his chair and scanned me slowly. “It’s called
research
, kid. It’s called
helping out your girlfriend
. It’s called
asking questions to get some answers
.”

Not for her. For
him
. Delaney stood up. “We actually have to be somewhere soon. College tours.”

He smiled at her, like he didn’t realize he was making her uncomfortable. “Will you be coming here next year?”

I wondered if she felt the same thing, something chasing her. Like she couldn’t get away from it. Like it would find her anywhere. “Not sure,” she said. “I don’t think I could get into most of these places.” And I wondered when she’d gotten so good at lying so effortlessly. She grabbed my hand as she walked away. I put an arm around her waist. Both of us, lying and lying and lying.

We didn’t speak until the elevator opened on the ground floor. “Thanks,” she whispered, and the word echoed through the empty corridor. “I never thought about all of that. Down there, you sounded so much like your dad.” She shook off a chill as she pushed through the door and out into the rain, but we stayed pressed against the building, under the awning. “That was awkward. Crap.”

“No,” I said, “that was
creepy
.” I lifted my shirt and pulled out the recorder.

Her eyes went wide. “Where did you get that? You stole that?”

“I
got
this from where he allegedly kept his pens. And yes I stole it. He was
taping
you.”

Her mouth fell open. But then she closed it. “Because it’s research …”

“No, it’s
you
. It’s
us
. And he has no right to it. You aren’t research.”

“Actually, I kind of am.” Her eyes widened even further. “If that’s his research,” she whispered, pointing at the recorder in my hands. “There’s probably more on it. Other stuff.
His
stuff.”

“I don’t care,” I said. Couldn’t she see? I only cared about
her
.

“He’s going to know we took it.”

“Still don’t care,” I said. And he couldn’t ask us about it without confessing that he was taping us without permission in the first place.

“We need to give it back,” she said. “It could be important.”

“There’s no way he’s getting this back,” I said as I slid the recorder into my back pocket.

“Just”—she was reaching for it—“give it to me. I’ll delete my part, and I’ll bring it back. Okay?”

“Yeah, no.
I’ll
mail it back to him, after I delete your part.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I promise,” I said. “But you’re staying out of it. He already has your
number
, Delaney. God, what were you thinking?”

And then I felt that thing that had been chasing us here, still. Not Falcon Lake. Not the water. Our past. Everything between us. And now it was here. “What I was
thinking
was that I needed to talk to someone. I was
thinking
I needed help
understanding. I was
thinking
that I am, actually, something to research. I was thinking that maybe he could help.”

“Oh, no, he can’t. He’s not interested in helping you. He wants to help
himself
. His research.”

“It’s not like I have a whole lot of options. Who should I be talking to, without my parents or my doctor thinking I’m losing it again?”

“
I
was right there.
I
could help you. Not him,
me
.” Not my dad, me. Not this doctor, me. “You’re supposed to talk to
me
.”

She tilted her head to the side, closed her eyes. “Really?” she asked. “How about now, Decker? Who should I be talking to now?”

She nodded at me when I said nothing. She handed me the umbrella, held the duck from second grade over her head, and checked her watch. “There’s still time to catch the one p.m. tours. Do you know where you want to go?”

I didn’t, but it looked like she knew exactly where she wanted to be, so I nodded.