by Skylar Finn
“I called them,” said the snowboarder boy.
“Thank you,” I told him.
“No worries.” He grinned down at Riley. “That dive was gnarly. You should get a trophy for that. I definitely won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.”
Riley couldn’t help but return the smile. “Don’t know if it was worth the grief though.”
“Oh, it totally was.” He bumped his fist against her uninjured hand. “I’m Aaron. Look me up when you get out of the war zone. Girls who shred are awesome.”
“Move along, Aaron,” I said in a gruff voice.
The paramedics set the stretcher next to Riley and prepared to transfer her onto it. As they did so, Daphne and Dash helped me to my feet again. In all the hubbub, the paramedics didn’t realize that two people were sick on the slopes.
“We should get you a wheelchair,” Dash offered.
“I’m feeling better,” I said truthfully. “I just need your help getting to the clinic with Riley. I can’t leave her.”
“No problem,” said Daphne.
We followed the paramedics as they carried Riley inside, forming a short but noticeable parade. People stared unabashedly, first at Riley and her twisted arm, then at me purely because I was Madame Lucia. I tried to ignore them, but their eyes burned like firework embers against my skin. I felt my cheeks grow hot and kept my eyes on the back of Riley’s head all the way to the clinic. It was a relief to reach the cool, mint-colored walls of the office. They wheeled Riley into the emergency unit, a small but fully equipped room, and one of the paramedics stopped me at the door.
“Sorry,” he said. “Family only.”
“I’m—”
Nothing. I wasn’t anything to Riley. I’d only met her three weeks ago, and despite all the terrible things that had happened between now and then, we still weren’t anything but a pair of strangers with the same psychic ability.
“She’s my legal guardian,” Riley called from the stretcher.
My heart bloomed like one of those rare flowers that only bloomed once every hundred years. The paramedic glanced at Riley then back at me.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay then. I guess we should have a look at you as well. What happened?”
“She fainted,” Daphne said as she and Dash handed me over to the medical team. “Probably dehydrated.”
I thanked the couple, and they took their leave. Then I slipped in between the team of paramedics to sit by Riley’s side and hold her good hand.
“We have to take X-Rays,” said the grumpy paramedic. “So you can’t stay there.”
Riley patted my arm. “Let them make sure you’re okay.”
So for a few minutes, I let the White Oak medical staff poke and prod me as they took my temperature and blood pressure and asked me questions about my time outside before the fainting spell. I hardly paid any attention to them, giving them answers that would satisfy the dehydration story. I had a hankering why I’d fainted outside—and why Riley had too—and it didn’t have a single thing to do with dehydration. When they finally finished drilling me and Riley’s arm had been X-rayed and cast, the staff left us alone in a recovery room.
Riley knocked the purple plaster cast against the plastic bed frame experimentally. It made a loud thunking noise. I grabbed her arm before she could do it again.
“Are you crazy?” I said. “They just set that. Quit it.”
“I can’t feel anything,” she said, her eyes glazing over. “Weird.”
“That would be the heavy-duty painkillers they gave you,” I reminded her. “Don’t get used to it. It’s simple ibuprofen from here on out.”
She thrust her arm at me. “Sign it.”
“Your cast?”
“Yeah. Sign it from Madame Lucia.”
“I don’t have a marker.”
She gave a gusty sigh. “Fine then.”
“Hey.” I squeezed her good hand. “I’ll sign it later, okay?”
She tipped her head on the pillow to look up at me. “You promise?”
“I promise,” I said, moving her sweat-encrusted hair away from her face. The skin under her eyes was swollen. She looked so tired and sad. “I’m so sorry, Riley. I hate everything that’s happening to you right now.”
“Because you know what it’s like?”
“I don’t though,” I said. “I haven’t lost my whole family.”
Riley tapped my nose with the tip of her finger. “But you kind of have. Are you finally going to tell me what happened?”
A chill stole through my body from the top of my head all the way down to my toes. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
Riley sighed again. All hopped up on painkillers, sighing seemed to be her main form of communication. “Listen, Lucia. We’re not stupid, right? I like to think you and me are both pretty intelligent individuals.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I would agree.”
“Then why are we playing stupid?” Riley asked. “We both know we didn’t faint at the same time for no reason. It’s got something to do with King and Queens. Did Stella tell you anything new?”
I pulled back. “How did you know Stella was still around?”
“Because she follows me too,” Riley replied. “I’m the one who’s haunted.”
“Then why does she keep telling me to confront my past?” I asked.
“Because you’re the stronger psychic,” she said. “Your energy is outrageous. Can’t you feel it?”
I rested my head on the edge of Riley’s bed. “Right now, I don’t feel energetic at all.”
Riley petted my hair absentmindedly. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you need to tell me,” she said. “Whatever you’ve been bottling up all these years. It’s about time you come clean. Tell me about your family.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Are you sure?”
“I’m drugged. I probably won’t remember in an hour. Lay it on me.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Do you remember why you got mad at me in the first place?”
“Stella said you killed your father,” Riley muttered. “And you didn’t deny it.”
“You had every right to be upset,” I said. “I kept something so big from you, but you should know the whole story. My father wasn’t a good person.”
“Like my dad?”
“Worse,” I assured her. “Because my father wasn’t just mean to his employees. He was mean to me and my mother. He was a recovering addict, like Detective Daniel, but he wasn’t very good at the whole ‘recovering’ part.”
“Start at the beginning,” Riley said.
“My father was an artist,” I explained. “And he bought into that dumb concept that artists had to be tortured and wounded. He also believed that he produced his best work when he was high, so he got addicted to pain pills.”
“That’s stupid,” Riley said. “Everyone says the same thing about Van Gogh, but he painted most of his best pieces while under the care of a psychiatric hospital.”
“My father wasn’t much into Cubism,” I replied. “Anyway, my guess is that my dad was bipolar because when he wasn’t on a ‘creative streak,’ he was pretty much the best dad I could ask for. He was attentive and loving. He’d take me to art galleries and museums. He loved my mother more than anyone else.” I trailed off, staring blankly at the bare wall of the recovery room. “Sometimes, I think that made it worse. I wish he had been terrible all the time because then it would’ve been easier to hate him. And I wouldn’t have felt so guilty about what happened.”
“Which was what?” Riley said. Her eyelids had begun to drift shut, but she was still listening to me.
“Each night was a game of chance,” I said. “We never knew which version of my father would be coming home from the art studio. Half the time, he was bitter and violent, but my mom was supposedly so in love with him that she wouldn’t leave him. I watched him hurt her over and over again, and when I got a little older, I couldn’t understa
nd why she let him do that.”
When I stopped short, Riley rubbed my head again. “And then what?”
“One time, my mother was away with her friends,” I said. “I was thirteen, old enough to be left on my own. My father came home drunk and high. He tried to hit me because my mother wasn’t home. I ran and hid in a closet. I must’ve been in there for three or four hours, terrified to come out. He fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, so I went into his bathroom and grabbed a bottle of pills.” My voice cracked. I bowed my head over Riley’s bed and spoke into the blankets. “I woke him up and dared him to take the pills. I don’t know what I was thinking. I never thought he would actually do it, but he looked me right in the eye and emptied the bottle into his mouth and swallowed everything with a huge mouthful of vodka.”
“Whoa,” said Riley, her eyes widening to the size of tea saucers. “That’s heavy.”
“I was too scared to call 911,” I admitted as tears burned in the corners of my eyes. “The cops had been at my house so often for domestic disturbances, but this time I knew it was my fault. I put my dad in the shower, hoping to wake him up. I stuck my finger down his throat. It didn’t work. He didn’t wake up, so I just sat there in the shower with him until my mom came home. That’s why she hates me, you know. It’s because she found me with my dead father.”
Riley kissed my forehead, mothering me in an unexpectedly comforting way. “Everything’s going to be okay, Lucia.”
I felt lighter now that I had finally told someone the entire truth. My headache was almost completely gone, as was the brain fog that had been plaguing me since our first morning at White Oak.
“Damn it, Stella was right,” I muttered. “I do feel better.”
“Keep it going,” said Riley. “Talk to your mom.”
“I can’t do that.”
She flicked my forehead. “Saying it out loud the first time is the hardest part. Now you’ve got that out of the way, you can do anything. Go fix it.” She shoved me off the bed with her foot. “Go. Now.”
I groaned as I stood up. “Really? You get to nap and I have to go do something productive? How is that fair?”
“It’s not,” Riley said. “But you’re the adult here, remember?”
7
My mother’s room was also on the twentieth floor, but I wasn’t sure which door belonged to her. I paced in the hallway, phone in hand. I could dial the front desk and get my mother’s room number, but it was one thing to think about it and another to actually do it. I stood there for so long, lingering in the corridor, that three different families made their way past me either to or from the elevator. The fourth time the elevator opened, Jazmin came out.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thank God you’re here.” I yanked her into our suite and slammed the door. “I need you.”
Jazmin raised an eyebrow. “Is this about the whole selling you out to Lourdes thing? Because I already told you I did it for a good reason. We think—”
“No, no, no. Forget about that.” I shook my head as if trying to clear it of cobwebs. “I told Riley about my dad, and now I have to talk to my mother about it, and I’m freaking out.”
She grabbed my shoulders to stop me from wearing a path into the kitchen floor. “You told Riley? How’d she take it?”
“Surprisingly okay considering I just admitted to murder,” I said.
“You are not a murderer,” Jazmin said. “Oliver Watson was a murderer. You aren’t like him. How does all of this connect to your mother?”
“It’s not over,” I said. “Something followed us from King and Queens.”
“Stella?”
“Yes, but I’m not talking about her.”
Jazmin peered into my eyes. The white snow reflecting through the sliding doors made her green ones sparkle. “You mean that thing from the basement.”
“I think so,” I said. “I keep having nightmares about it. It’s what’s been haunting Riley all this time. I just can’t figure out who or what it is.”
“Then we figure it out,” Jazmin said. “What can I do to help?”
“It’s not that easy,” I replied. “That thing is too powerful. It’s sapping mine and Riley’s energy. We were just out on the slopes and fainted at the same time. Riley’s in the clinic with a broken arm.”
“What?” Jazmin said. “Is she okay?”
“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “But if we let this go on for much longer, she might not be. I’m tired of this, Jazmin. I want to end it, but that starts with speaking to my mother.”
Jazmin wrinkled her nose. “Why?”
I resumed my pacing, unable to keep still. “Odette and Stella both pressured me into learning how to control my energy. I’ve gotten better at it—that’s why I don’t collapse anymore—but Stella says I won’t have full control until I confront my past.”
“So psychic abilities are linked to emotion,” Jazmin clarified. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Does it? Because I don’t understand any of this.”
“I imagine psychic powers come from the root of your conscience,” Jazmin said. “But who am I to say? I’m no expert. How did you learn to control your energy before? Practice doing that again.”
“It was like meditating,” I said. “I had to sit down somewhere and learn how to clear my mind, but I barely have the ability to relax on the toilet these days. I feel like something terrible is always about to happen. Either Lourdes is snapping pictures of me and Nick to spread rumors or my mother is stalking me or Riley’s getting run over on the slopes.”
“We’ve only been here a few days,” Jazmin reminded me. “Give yourself some time to settle in.”
“The problem is that we’re running out of time,” I said. “You said it yourself. I’m not doing anything to make the situation better.”
Jazmin hoisted herself up to sit on the kitchen counter. “I was pissed at you when I said that. It wasn’t true. I know you haven’t been feeling well. I also know you’ve been doing everything in your power to help Riley.”
“Yeah, but I need to do more,” I said. “Which is why I need to talk to my mother. Will you come with me?”
“Of course. Right now?”
“Sooner rather than later, right?” I said. “We might as well get this over with.”
She hopped off the counter and slipped her arm around my shoulders. “Come on then. Let’s get to it and hope this works.”
Jazmin guided me into the hallway. I was glad for her company. Without her, I knew I never would’ve made it to my mother’s room on my own. Jazmin headed straight for a room at the end of the hall.
“You know which suite she’s in?” I asked.
“She made sure to inform me when you weren’t around,” Jazmin replied, her upper lip angled in a tight sneer. She tried her best to keep the expression from me, but she couldn’t quite conceal all of the disdain she had for my mother. She was the best friend anyone could ask for. At this point, Jazmin was more of a family member than my parents had ever been. She rapped her knuckles against the door. “Here we go. You ready?”
I squared my shoulders. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
We both faced the suite, solid in solidarity, but the hallway remained quiet and the door remained closed. My mother, who was prompt and eager in most scenarios, did not answer. Jazmin and I exchanged a glance.
“Do you think she’s at the spa?” she asked.
“My mother can’t relax long enough to go to a spa,” I said. “She’s probably trying to track down Nick in order to arrange our wedding.”
“Let’s give her a couple of minutes,” Jazmin said as she spun me to face her. “In the meantime, look at me. Let’s practice. What did you want to say to her?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yup. Hit me.”
“I guess I wanted to tell her what it felt like to have her choose my dad over me so many times,” I said. “He was so terribl
e to her, but she was so scared of what would happen if she left him that she never bothered to consider what was best for her own kid.”
“That must’ve been hard for you,” Jazmin said.
“It was,” I said. “And that was why my mom and I never had a good relationship. She would always try to convince me that my dad loved us even though he hurt us, and it never made sense to me.”
“So your dad’s death was probably the nail in the coffin.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “When my mother found us, she started screaming. She didn’t call 911 or whatever. She just screamed. Then she threw me off my dad and yelled for me to get out. That’s when I called the police. When they got to the house, she wouldn’t let go of him. The paramedics literally had to pry her away from him.”
Jazmin pulled me into a rough hug. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Lucia.”
“It’s over now,” I mumbled into her shoulder. “But this is the crap Stella keeps telling me to come to terms with. My mother blames me for my father’s death. That’s why she hates me.”
Behind us, the tinkling sound of several little bottles hitting the floor made me and Jazmin jump. We spun around to find my mother there, fresh from the spa, holding a gift receipt in one hand and several white towels in the other. A new bag of stolen samples lay at her feet.
“Is that what you think of me?” she whispered, her bottom lip trembling. She didn’t spare Jazmin a glance. Her gaze was locked on me. “That I’ve hated you all these years?”
“Mom, I—”
She burst into hysterics, but this time it wasn’t her usual crocodile tears. She sobbed and sighed, heaving for breath as she collected the scattered samples off the carpet and pushed past us to get into her suite.
“Wait!” I called, but she slammed the door in my face so quickly that she almost took off my nose. I looked at Jazmin. “So that went well.”
She raised her hand to knock on the door for the second time. “We can try again. Your mother caught the worst part of that conversation. Just explain—”
My phone went off. I checked the notification. It was for a new gossip headline. This one detailed Riley’s fall from a few hours ago. A picture of Riley getting wheeled into the resort on the stretcher with me limping after her between Daphne and Dash accompanied the article. It was entitled King and Queens heir injured in an engineered accident at rival resort. The picture was of high quality. Someone with a professional camera had taken it, and I was ninety-nine percent sure that Lourdes Calvo was the culprit.
