The hall was quiet, but I didn’t dare go down through the foyer.
I’ll be back for you, Ags, I thought. I won’t leave you here.
The back stairs were locked now.
But just outside those doors was a rusted metal hatch, built into the wall.
I remembered Barrett saying that there were little elevators for the servants to use for trays and luggage.
I pried open the hatch. It was a small box, and once I climbed inside, I would be in complete darkness. There were also a couple of very ominous-looking signs warning against putting any body parts inside of it.
But it was my only option.
Trying not to think about the story Barrett had told me—was it some poor housemaid losing a hand?—I crammed myself inside. It was open on one side, and there were metal cables—presumably attached to pullies. I grabbed one and pulled, and with a collection of squeaks and squawks, the box began to move. I lowered myself slowly and stopped when I heard the shelf beneath me hit something with a clunk.
There was another hatch here—I pushed it open and looked out.
I was in a small vestibule, one I’d seen a few times before. It was located directly next to the back service door.
The heavy hatch door closed with a resounding clang.
As the sound echoed through the house, I knew the time for slow, silent movements was over.
I hurried for the kitchen door but lost my balance and fell, then struggled back to my feet. It was like trying to run through water—the willingness was there, the movements seemed like they should be so easy—but my legs couldn’t obey.
At this rate Laura would catch me without even trying.
But I still went. I moved as fast as I could toward the garden. The sky was growing brighter as the sun began to rise. When I threw a searching glance up over my shoulder, I happened to catch Laura’s shocked face at the upstairs window. Then she disappeared.
I felt as hopeless as a snail running from a hawk . . . but I kept going.
I turned into the garden.
What I saw stunned me—
In every planter bed, like splashes of blood on the other plants, were red lilies. Everywhere.
I headed for the graveyard.
As I ran, I pulled Kiley’s phone out of my pocket and held it up. No bars. No bars. No bars.
I came to the Adam and Eve gate and realized suddenly that I had left my key behind. I was filled with despair—to make it this far and then fail?
But the door swung open in front of me.
I rushed through. My ankle tweaked and I had to limp along the path, holding the phone up to keep an eye on the screen.
Finally, fifty feet in, a single bar appeared in the upper corner of the screen. It wavered, went away, and then came back when I kept going. Another fifty feet, and a second bar appeared.
Holding my breath, I pressed the phone icon and dialed 9-1-1.
It was ringing. Then, suddenly, the service dropped out, and the call was lost.
I dialed again, moving farther back. There was motion through the trees, and I saw Laura rushing along the narrow walk. She scanned the area, saw me, and began to run straight toward me.
As she approached, I slipped the phone into my pocket. Without looking, I reached down and tapped the screen. I’d been on the contacts page. Maybe I’d managed to call an actual person.
It was my only hope.
Then I ran until I was backed into a corner, with no way out, and she came loping out of the thick tree cover. She stood like a hound treeing a raccoon. Behind me and to the right was a wall. And to my left was the dark, lazy pond, its surface broken by groupings of lily pads.
“Come on, Margot,” she said. “Be reasonable. Come back inside.”
“No!” I said. “If I come back, you’re going to keep me drugged twenty-four hours a day.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “What on earth would make you think that? The pills I give you are medicinal. They’re to treat your illness, Margot. Your brain problems.”
“I don’t have brain problems. You poisoned me,” I said. “You’re poisoning Agatha. And you killed your own sister—”
I was saying these things as loudly and clearly as I could, hoping that if some random person was listening, they would be alarmed enough to send the police.
Of course, they’d also have to know who and where I was.
Oh, great. I’m going to die.
“Stay back,” I called. “Stay back or I’ll scream.”
She shrugged. “No one can hear you scream out here. But you’re being silly. No one is trying to hurt you. You know, I’ve always thought that you were such a nice girl. Cooperative. Thoughtful. Why would you start behaving this way after everything our family has done for you?”
“Because you’re sick,” I said.
Her face darkened. “That’s uncalled-for.”
I had no chances left. And my hope was flagging.
As Laura approached, cutting through the flowers like an ice-breaking ship crushing everything in its path, I felt my courage begin to drain away.
“We can do this the easy way,” she said, “or the hard way.”
I stared at her. I was still so tired. Still felt so fuzzy.
“Be a good girl. Come back inside, and we’ll start over. No hard feelings. Now that I know you have a rebellious streak, I can help you with that.” She stared at me. “I can help you be a better person. Raise you properly.”
There was no hope left.
“I’ve told you before, Margot,” she said. “I’m really quite fond of you. So come back. Don’t fight. If you try to fight, I’m going to have to come to the conclusion that you might be more trouble than you’re worth.”
I shook my head.
“Your parents did a terrible job,” she said. “Teaching you how to be a respectful child.”
That ignited a little flame of anger in me. The will to fight, which had been gone, flared back.
But I still wasn’t strong enough. Laura came over and pushed me back against the wall. I cast a desperate glance down toward the phone, and she noticed.
She reached into my pocket, pulled out the phone, said into the mouthpiece, “I’m sorry, this was a prank call,” and then tossed it into the pond.
I could feel my strength flagging. My legs were on the verge of collapsing out from under me.
Her expression had changed. Until now, I’d actually believed that she wanted, in some twisted way, to “help” me.
“I’m terribly disappointed.” She stepped closer. “We have one rule, Margot—what is it?”
My voice shook. “Be respectful.”
“Yes. And as it turns out, you can’t even follow one simple rule. You had your chance to be good, but you chose degeneracy instead. I’m terribly sorry. I don’t think I can help you. You’re too far gone.” Then, to my horror, she raised a small syringe and plunged it into my upper arm.
All of my sharpness, my bravery, my plans . . . they began to melt away as I felt the medication spread through my body like tingling heat.
My legs went numb, my arms weak.
She leaned closer. “I want you to know that Agatha’s going to pay for helping you. She’s going to be punished. Now you have to die with that on your conscience. You’ve caused a lot of suffering that could have been avoided.”
“Leave her alone,” I whispered.
She stared me down, her eyes as sharp as jagged steel. “A child is led to righteousness by the lantern of his parents’ steadfastness and must by firm hands be molded. Firm hands. When Agatha is capable of behaving herself in a way that befits her birthright, then she can be ‘left alone.’ Until then, I will personally direct her behavior in order to minimize the damage to herself and to our family.”
“You’re going to kill her,�
� I said. “She almost choked the other night.”
“If she has the will to live,” Laura said icily, “she’ll live.”
I stared at her in horror. What kind of mother was this? Whatever kindness or gentleness may have existed in Laura had been hardened by time into the beastly woman she was now. More worried about her family’s past and reputation than their well-being.
I stared into her eyes and imagined that I could see her soul, a putrid, rotting swamp of anger and pride. But everything was starting to get glowy and soft.
“Come, Margot,” she said sweetly. “Let’s take a walk.”
I hesitated too long, and she gave me a push that made me stumble on the uneven ground. We walked along the thin strip of wet dirt bordering the pond. If I slowed, she pulled my arm, and my body moved again as if I was remote-controlled.
The sun wasn’t quite up yet. The early-morning air was soft and dim. Laura had taken the time to put on a preppy rust-colored jacket, but I had nothing on over my pajama top, and I began to shiver. The shivering grew stronger and stronger, until my teeth chattered.
“Common side effect,” Laura said. “You’re going to get pretty itchy, too. I don’t use it for Agatha—can’t have her scratching her skin to bits. But you can go ahead and scratch. It doesn’t matter now.”
Soon my arms and legs and the sides of my ribs felt like they were on fire, and I tried to scratch them but found that my fingers were getting clumsy and my head was starting to swim.
“Here’s the part you probably can’t understand,” she said. “I don’t blame you, Margot. I blame the world. We live in a world where nothing is sacred. Children don’t honor their elders. Families don’t honor their ancestors, their traditions. Everything is cheap now. Everything is worthless.”
I swayed, and she put an arm around my waist and began to walk, leading me farther along the edge of the water.
“Agatha is a lot like you, actually. I think she’s had quite a setback, influenced by you and your poor behavior. I’d hoped I could begin her recovery by Christmas, but now it seems like it’ll have to be next summer. Or longer. So you see what you’ve done to her—after claiming to be her friend.”
The inky blackness of the pond water seemed to be listening . . . waiting.
“Agatha has been a worry to me since she was seven,” she said. “But girls always are, I suppose. I should have been a boy. When I was born, my father wouldn’t speak to my mother for a month. I don’t blame him. This isn’t the natural role for a woman. We’re too soft, too tenderhearted.”
I made a sound.
“That’s impolite,” she snapped. “If I’m not those things, it’s because I never had the luxury to be. It’s because everything always rested on me. And no matter what I did, it was never good enough. My father was hard on me—he was never hard on Lily; he loved her. She had an independent spirit, he said. She never cared about saying the right thing or believing the right thing—she insisted on having her own way. I wasn’t like her. I cared too much about things he didn’t value. But he should have. Behavior, history, dignity. That is the framework on which everything else is built.”
Even in my state of confusion, I thought: She’s wrong. Those things aren’t any kind of framework. They’re window dressing, at best. My mother never cared about that kind of thing, and she was twenty times the mother (and human) that Laura could have ever hoped to be.
We came to a small footbridge that passed over a place where the pond narrowed slightly. Laura braced me more carefully there, watching out for my footing on the rough boards.
“I tried to give you a chance. You could have had a place here, if you had behaved. If you had known your place.” She looked right into my eyes. “Goodbye.”
And then she shoved me backward off the bridge.
I plunged into the cold, dark water, and I’m not going to lie—
Some part of me thought . . .
Ahh, at last.
CHAPTER
31
I DIDN’T SINK right away, but I was too weak and dizzy to swim, so I started to slip under the surface of the water. My legs kicked for the bottom, but it was nowhere to be found. They kept kicking and kicking uselessly as I slid down into the darkness.
The impact of hitting the water had shocked my mind out of its fog.
There is, of course, an instinct that takes over when you’re fighting for survival. But what people who haven’t been through it don’t realize is that sometimes there’s also the opposite instinct—the instinct to let go. To accept the fate dealt to you.
I’d messed it up before, but here was my second chance. I could get it right this time.
With the water pressing cold against my skin, there was clarity. I saw flashes and visions of the accident in my brain. Things I’d never remembered before. I saw Siena’s head slam against the window and come away bleeding. I saw the airbag trap Dad against his seat, misshapen by the water into a mask that stuck to his face. Dina was to my left—I felt her hand grasp for me and then fall away, and I knew without looking that something was terribly wrong.
And then it was just me and Mom.
She had somehow managed to turn on the light inside the car. I could see her fighting with her seat belt, which reminded me to unclasp mine. She’d also triggered the sunroof, which was now half-open, giving us our only chance of escape but also allowing water to rush into the car. My seat belt was undone. Easy peasy.
I waited for her, expecting her to float free and come with me to the surface.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her belt was stuck; the latch was damaged.
She looked at me and pointed up, out the sunroof.
I was stunned, paralyzed.
“Go,” she said, in the half moment before the water flooded us.
I shook my head.
She reached up and grabbed my wrist.
GO, she mouthed. GO!
She shoved me toward the sunroof, and at the last second, she pulled my face down to hers and kissed my forehead. Then she held me up and I saw her mouth move in the shape of the word:
GO.
So I did. I went. I lived. Because it was what my mom wanted.
And maybe because it was what some impossibly small part of me wanted, too. I mean, sure, it wasn’t the obvious choice. A clueless decision, in fact, made without any thought of the aftermath. Not a thought about how much surviving would suck, how much misery and complication waited for me once I broke through the surface of the water.
When it counted, I made a split-second deal with whatever force propels us all into and out of existence, and that deal was: Let me live.
But why?
I don’t know.
I’ll figure it out later.
But let me live, and I promise I won’t stop looking until I find something to live for.
CHAPTER
32
NOW I FELT it again, like a warm glimmer of flame inside my cold, numb, painful body.
Let me live.
But why?
Because.
Why, Margot, why? There must be a reason. You’ve had time. If you haven’t found something by now, why bother fighting? Why bother with the pain and loneliness? Why not just give up?
Because . . .
Because I have a friend who needs my help.
And the forces of the universe shrugged their shoulders and said, Hey, why not?
The smallest bit of strength came back to my legs, and I kicked and kicked until I reached the surface and took a breath.
That bought me enough time to reorient myself, to start half swimming, half flailing toward the edge of the pond. I knew Laura was out there, but I didn’t worry about it. Worrying about Laura wasn’t part of the deal.
Just stay alive.
Agatha needs my help.
My lungs were on fir
e. I felt as if I were carrying a hundred-pound weight. But I fought and fought and didn’t stop. Ten feet out, I began to slide back out of consciousness, but I felt something—as plain as day, I felt something shove me toward the surface.
I was so shocked that I woke up, and then seconds later, I felt something I’d felt before—a loose layer of mud under my hand. Mud under the toe of my bare foot, squelchy and horrible but also wonderful, because it meant I was alive to feel it.
I did it. I lived again.
Then a pair of mushroom-brown slacks and feet in preppy rain boots were in front of me.
One of the boots stepped down on the fingers of my left hand.
“You’ve got grit, I’ll give you that,” Laura said grudgingly. “But it’s not enough. I want you to close your eyes and sleep, Margot. Just let go. You’ve worked so hard.”
And then I felt a hand on the back of my head, pressing my face into the mud, where the water was about two inches deep.
I tried to struggle, tried to turn my head, but it was as if none of my muscles were hooked up to my brain.
Cold, dirty water seeped into my nose, filled my mouth. My ears were still above the water, so I could hear Laura’s breath, fast and heavy. And her voice, smug. Assured of victory.
“You’re no stronger than the cat was,” Laura said lightly.
Ah, but this wasn’t fair.
Mom, I can’t breathe.
Margot, someone whispered.
So close. Closer than Laura.
I knew that voice.
Margot, fight.
What a ridiculous suggestion. I couldn’t possibly. There were enough drugs coursing through my body to take down a full-grown giraffe.
Fight, the voice said.
Mom?
I surged up out of the mud, knocking Laura off balance, and came out of the water coughing and choking, spitting up cold mud. There were bits of dead grass and algae between my teeth.
The Companion Page 28
