Perfect Lies

by Kiersten White

  “You really are as obnoxious as everyone thinks you are.” She sighs heavily, slides off her chair, and walks around the desk. Even in four-inch heels she barely comes up to my chin. “Let’s go get dinner.”

  I let my eyes travel down the hall behind her. Mr. Keane is there somewhere. Mr. Keane who—nope not gonna think about it, not gonna think about anything at all. I can be patient. Pixies. Pixie haircuts. Pixie sticks. Drumsticks. Music. Dancing. I want to go dancing! Ache for it.

  “You know what?” she says. “I changed my mind. Go ahead and snap my neck. It’s gotta be better than listening to you free-associate to try and scramble me.”

  I laugh and wrap my arm through hers, steering her past the security guard and toward the gleaming elevators. “Your mistake is in assuming my brain doesn’t work like this all the time.”

  We ride down the elevator in relative silence, except when Pixie asks me to please think the lyrics to a song she wouldn’t mind having stuck in her head. I settle on Queen in my head and pizza for dinner.

  “So,” I say around a thin and drooping slice. “Turns out I do miss something about Chicago. What the crap is this crust?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m a vegan.”

  I reach out and tug the collar of her leather jacket. “And this cow died of natural causes?”

  She shrugs defensively. “My grandma gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. It was hers. The cows would have been dead of old age by now, anyway. Besides, eggs are disgusting, and have you ever actually thought about what dairy is? You are eating the product of liquid squirted from the nipples of a cow.”

  “Mmmm . . .“ I stick my tongue out to catch a stray strand of goopy cheese. Pixie rolls her eyes, and I free-associate cow nipples in my thoughts to entertain her and keep my brain safe as I sit back and look out the window at the busy sidewalk. It’s dark and bitterly cold, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone out there. New York is more claustrophobic than Chicago, the buildings tall and looming so that you can’t see anything beyond your street. This afternoon as I prowled the city, waiting for James to text me that it was time to go in, I passed the Empire State Building without even noticing until I almost knocked down a tourist.

  How come Pixie is here? Why isn’t she in the school?

  “My name isn’t Pixie. And it’s because I’m too good for the school, you idiot. When they interviewed me for a scholarship, I started asking them about the Keane Foundation and what on earth Feelers were and assured them that I was more than qualified for whatever they had in mind. Then they put me up against their best Readers—”

  “Did you get Doris?”

  “Yes! Kill me now, her thoughts were like being trapped in an airless room with nothing but smooth jazz.”

  I cackle. “So, what, they gave you independent study?”

  “Pretty much. Said I could cut my teeth at the front desk of Keane’s main office, since I was too young to place somewhere big.”

  “And your family . . .”

  Her eyes get tight and she snaps her head to look outside. Not in a tragic, I’ve-been-ripped-away-from-them way. I tap tap tap tap a finger on the counter. She wants to be here, I can tell. Hmm. I will tread carefully. Super careful.

  Ha ha ha ha, as if.

  She clears her throat. “I lived with my grandma until she died when I was thirteen. Then I got saddled with my dad who’d sooner raise hunting dogs than a teenage daughter. So.” She claps her hands together, smile too wide and eyes too bright. “I get to come to the great big city and do great big things, and he gets to take the sheets off the couch that doubled as my bed. Win-win!”

  Am I supposed to hug her? Console her? (Annie would know what to do. Would have. Would have.) “Well, screw that. Let’s go dancing.”

  She frowns as though trying to hear something better, then shakes her head and jumps off the stool. “That, I can do.”

  My phone buzzes and I pull it out. Text from James. Stuck in meetings.

  Late dinner? I can eat twice if it means we can talk.

  Eating with my father. Sorry. Will make it up to you tomorrow.

  I narrow my eyes at the screen, tap tap tap tap on it. I need us to move, to do, to start this wheel spinning until it flies off its axis and destroys everything around us. I hold James’s face in my thoughts, imagine his arms around me. Imagine his voice whispering “patience” in my ear before I elbow him in the stomach because I hate it when he tells me that.

  I take a phone off the counter, where someone set it down to go get a refill.

  “Did you just steal that guy’s phone?” Pixie asks as we hunch our shoulders against the chill. She has her own phone out, looking for a nearby club.

  One can never have enough phones, I think at her. She gives me a secret smile in return.

  ANNIE

  Three Months Before

  I’VE BEEN VENTURING OUT MORE NOW THAT RAFAEL got me a white cane. Coming and going as I please is a luxury I intend to take advantage of. It’s strange—for so long I hated seeing the future because it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to Keane. Now I have my own future, and no idea what to do with it. Fia was always supposed to be with me. She’s not.

  I feel lost.

  As I trail my fingers along the hall wall I hear voices. I pause—both are hushed but clearly angry. Taking a few steps forward, I lean near a doorframe and listen.

  “—you know I’m right!” Cole.

  “I don’t! And you don’t know, either. I’m tired of arguing with you.” Sarah sounds exhausted.

  “What about Annie? There’s no reason for her to stay here. She can’t accomplish anything. She sees even less than you do, and she’s a huge target. She needs to be placed somewhere else.”

  I flinch at the tone of his voice. I didn’t think Cole liked me, but I had no idea he wanted me gone that much. Rafael decided not to set me up somewhere else with a real life and a new identity. He wanted me close.

  I was flattered, but lately I’ve realized I’m useless here. It makes me feel pathetic and small, but Cole’s right. There’s no reason for me to stay, other than to be protected.

  I’m tired of needing other people to protect me.

  “That’s not our call,” Sarah says.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Why isn’t it our call? Why does he get to decide who stays and who goes?”

  “You start bankrolling this operation and you can have more say,” Sarah snaps. Something thuds to the ground, too small for a body, and then Cole swears.

  “What is this?”

  “Give it back.”

  “You’re taking these?”

  She sounds ashamed. “I haven’t started yet.”

  “This is insane, Sarah.”

  “How am I supposed to help if I can’t see enough? Rafael has a source on the inside that says Keane has all his Seers go on Adderall.”

  “He also has girls killed and thrown into the river. Is that our next step?”

  “Aren’t you the one who said we should do whatever we have to, whatever it takes to keep more girls out of his claws? Well, this is my whatever it takes.”

  Something small hits the other side of the wall I’m leaning against and I jump, turning and hurrying back to my room. The last thing I want is for Cole to catch me eavesdropping. I can only imagine what he’d say.

  I flop onto my bed, tormented by futures both seen and unseen. They feel just out of my grasp, as usual.

  “Fia,” I whisper to the empty room, “what should I do?”

  Then something changes. I’m still in the dark. It’s not a vision, it can’t be, I don’t see anything. But I’m not on my bed anymore. It has to be a vision.

  Someone reaches out and laces his fingers through mine and my world blossoms with color—inside the darkness. It’s color and light and life that I feel inside me instead of seeing outside. I’m wild with giddy joy, a warm heat flaring like something long dormant in my heart has finally been switched on.

  His f
ingers are not much longer than mine, his palm only a bit bigger, rough but warm, and the way our hands fit together . . .

  Holy crap. I’m in love.

  That’s when I feel my bed underneath me again and realize I’m back in the present.

  I had a vision where someone holds my hand and I know I’m in love with him. It’s the single most romantic thing I have ever experienced.

  And it wasn’t even real.

  But if I saw it—or felt it, really, because I’ve never had a vision where I was me like that, where I couldn’t see—then it has to happen, right? I rub the palm of my right hand with my left thumb, torn between elation and nerves. Love. I can live with the promise of love. I just wish I knew when. And who.

  And, with a sudden sharp ache, I wish more than anything I could tell Eden. It feels wrong to have something like this without her to whisper it to. For a moment I hate Fia for her choice. She not only took herself away from me, she made it impossible for me to ever see my best friend again.

  Someone is going to hold my hand, and I’m going to be thrilled. And no one I love will know.

  FIA

  Three Days Before

  “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?” PIXIE ASKS, FROWNING AT me over her drink. I got her a Shirley Temple. She didn’t find it nearly as funny as I do. Last night she managed to scam some alcohol, but not tonight.

  “Do what?” I eye the dance floor, annoyed she called me over. I am falling apart. I’ve barely even seen James since we got to New York. I need something, anything to distract me from the waiting. Visions of flames dance in my head, but I cannot light anything on fire yet.

  Dancing is the only thing to take the edge off. (I could get in a fight. That’s good, too. Pounding and moving and reacting, always reacting, no room for thought.)

  “How do you stop thinking like that?” Pixie asks. “When you’re dancing, everything shuts down. I’ve noticed you doing it a few times, like you’ve switched to autopilot and there aren’t any active thoughts in your brain.”

  “Isn’t that the point of dancing?”

  “Not for the guys you’re with. You should hear their thoughts.” She scowls, disgusted and miserable, shoulders slouched protectively inward as she stabs her straw through the ice.

  I pat her head (four times, four is the magic number and I don’t like it, four feels lonelier than three, no middle to huddle around, but I hate them both) and laugh. “They aren’t people, they’re just bodies. I don’t care what they’re thinking.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I wish I could not care.”

  I sigh and sit down. “You have one minute to unburden your soul to me before I get too antsy and either hit you or go back to dancing.”

  “See, that’s why I like you. You don’t lie.”

  “I lie constantly. All the time. I’m nothing but one big mass of lies.” I shouldn’t tell her that. I should tell her that I’m good and obedient and do exactly what I’m told all the time. But I forget around Pixie, because she is lonely and small and fragile. I still don’t know whether or not Keane can trust her, and whether or not that means I can’t. She is such a silly, pointless assignment for me it’s hard to take it seriously.

  But I can’t trust anyone. James and me. That’s all there is, all there will be. Us against everyone. I need him. I tap tap tap tap against my leg. I need him to keep me away from the holes in my soul, but he’s not here.

  “You’re honest about being a liar,” Pixie says. “And you don’t lie the way normal people do. You don’t tell me my dress is cute and then think to yourself that I’m too flat to pull it off. I can’t tell you how much I hate girls. I hate guys, too, because they tell you one thing but think another. There’s always an agenda, and the agenda is always the same.”

  “Yup. They only care about your brains.”

  She laughs. “That’s one of the things I like about working for Keane. They don’t pretend to like me for anything other than my mad Reading skills.”

  I sit up straighter, narrow my eyes. “Have you actually met him? Mr. Keane?”

  “Calm down, puppy. His name lights up your brain like Vegas. And the answer is no. Never been in the same room as him. Everything comes via phone or message. I get the feeling he doesn’t want me crawling around in his head.”

  “Can’t imagine why. You’re a delightful tenant.”

  She flicks a piece of ice at me, then looks wistfully out over the crowd of writhing bodies. “I’d like to find a super hot guy with Asperger’s whose thoughts are the same as his words.”

  “In that case we need to work on your targeting, because this audience? Probably not your best bet.”

  “What about you? What do you want in a guy? Besides a body to dance by.”

  James. I want James but he isn’t here and the longer I go without him, the more scared I get. The fear sets in so quickly now, always lurking, waiting to swallow me. I hate being scared, hate it, it makes me sick and I want to cut it out of me with a knife, leave it bleeding and dripping on the table, a quivering mass of weakness. Every time I dream of Annie, I can’t shake the scared. What if I chose wrong? What would that mean? A sudden image of gray eyes pops into my head. I wonder . . .

  Dead dead dead dead. I snap my thoughts back into line. Dead. Adam’s dead, Annie’s dead, everyone’s dead. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I grin at Pixie. “Dance with me?”

  Her dark eyebrows have disappeared under her blunt white bangs. “Sometimes you scare me.”

  “That’s because you don’t really know me yet.” I hold out my hand to her. “When you really know me, I’ll scare you all the time.”

  My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out. James.

  “What,” I answer, annoyed. I don’t want his voice on the phone, I want it in my ear.

  “Has anyone ever told you how sexy you are when you dance?”

  A hand comes around my waist and I grab the wrist, twist it, then turn to find myself right up against James, and everything is right again. I lean against him, tip my face toward him.

  “Oh, hi,” I say.

  “Oh, ouch,” he says.

  I let go of his wrist. He laughs and puts his phone away. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I can hear the smile in his voice, the sly quality it gets when he’s truly pleased with himself. I want to ask what it is, but audience, we have an audience.

  I glance over at Pixie, who’s watching us with her arms folded. She looks like a cat, all clever eyes and inscrutable expressions.

  Cats are annoying.

  “Guess our night is over, then,” she says.

  James smiles at her, but it is his cold smile. “You’ve been monopolizing my girlfriend’s time.”

  I know in an instant that James doesn’t like her, doesn’t trust her. I’m torn between wanting to turn and leave with him and feeling oddly protective of my tiny, tired companion. I wonder what will happen if I decide Keane can’t trust her. I don’t want to think about it. “Go home,” I say to her. “You look like crap.”

  She lets out a burst of bitter laughter, then looks up, scanning the crowd. “Do you know that guy?”

  “Which guy?”

  She shakes her head, eyes darting. “Can’t tell. Someone here is thinking your name like crazy.”

  James looks wary, shoulders tensing protectively as his arms go tighter around my waist. He forgets that I can do more when he lets me go. Always at war, this need to have him close and push him away.

  “Any of my shadows here?” I ask him, but even before he shakes his head I know that’s not it. There’s a whisper of caution running down the back of my neck, and I can’t tell if I’m in danger or if I should pursue this. One of those horrible in-between feelings I’m getting more and more, that are neither right nor wrong, that make me feel off and disconnected like I’m experiencing my own feelings through a bad phone connection.

  I tap tap tap tap. What to do.

  “All right.” I slip away from James and grab P
ixie’s arm. She squeaks in protest. “I don’t feel like fighting tonight, and I really don’t want to have to protect both of you. Cab. Straight home.”

  I drag her out, probably with more force than is strictly necessary but I’m unreasonably annoyed that I won’t get to dance with James. His car, some sleek black money monster, is parked at the curb, but I hold my hand up for a cab.

  “I’ll be waiting,” James says, lips brushing the back of my neck and making me shiver.

  I want to go straight to him, but I can’t. I like Pixie. I’m not going to let her get hurt tonight. Maybe she will get hurt later, maybe it will be my fault, but not tonight.

  She rubs her arm where I grabbed her. “What do you do to the people you don’t like?”

  I flash my teeth like knives in the dark. “Do you really want to know?”

  She kicks my shin in a halfhearted pout. “You think different around him, you know.”

  “Oh?” A cab pulls to the side and I open the door.

  “Clearer. Happier. But scarier.” She gets in the cab before I can ask what she means. At least she’s safe. As far as I can tell.

  James is waiting with my door open when I walk back to him. He has a scowl on his beautiful face, and I want to trace the line between his eyebrows with my finger.

  “You need to finish up with her,” he says, pulling away from the curb with a screech. I hate being in the passenger seat. I belong behind the wheel, sliding into spaces between cars, speeding through the dark.

  I slump in my seat, put my feet up on the polished wood of the dash, hoping to scratch or scuff it, knowing James won’t say anything if I do. I finally have him and he wants to talk about my waste-of-time assignment with Pixie? “I haven’t been able to decide. Tell your father if he’s so anxious for answers, he can ask me himself.”

  “She’s too good. She could mess everything up for us, find out things we can’t let anyone know.”

  “I barely know the things we know. She isn’t pulling anything out of my head. There’s nothing to pull! I’m still waiting!” I know it’s irrational—it will take time. We are laying the groundwork for his father to be arrested, for the company to implode. It can’t happen overnight.