Deception So Dark

by Clara Kensie

  Cheeks burning, I gave my head a little shake to break the hold the Nightmare Eyes had on me. I flipped to a blank page and obediently copied the information from the whiteboard onto my paper. But once Miss Bennett turned her attention to someone else, I started a new letter to Jillian. This time, I kept it short and simple:

  Jillian, it’s me, Tessa. I’m alive. I’m safe. Come to Lilybrook, Wisconsin. It’s safe here.

  I stared at it, hard, until my eyes dried out and the words turned blurry. Then I blinked, and stared at the words again.

  Was Jillian seeing this? What if the fog was blocking her ability to see through me? I’d been writing notes to her for three days; maybe the fog was the reason she wasn’t seeing them.

  I should lift the fog a little…. A little more…

  I stared at the note again.

  Jillian, it’s me, Tessa. I’m alive. I’m safe. Come to Lilybrook, Wisconsin. It’s safe here.

  Something shifted in my peripheral vision—Winter, turning to smirk at me over her shoulder. She was listening to me, telepathically. Her amused snarl burned into me, along with the Nightmare Eyes, reminding me that I was Killers’ Spawn.

  Ignoring both Winter and the Nightmare Eyes, I lifted the fog higher, and focused on my note.

  I couldn’t tell if Jillian was seeing through me or not. The only thing I could sense was the multitude of students who’d sat in this chair before me. Trenton Abrams, last period. He thought Miss Bennett was hot. Amber Fakhoury, two years ago, wishing Tristan Connelly would dump Melanie Brunswick and ask her out instead. Kiarra Davis, ten years ago, doodling hearts and stars in her notebook.

  The bell rang, and fog still raised, vaguely aware of Miss Bennett telling me to pay more attention next time, I shoved everything into my book bag and walked out of the classroom. If Jillian had connected to me via mobile eye, she would be seeing everything I was seeing and hearing everything I was hearing right now.

  “Jillian,” I murmured, holding a textbook in front of my mouth so no one would think I was talking to myself, “can you hear me? It’s me, Tessa. I’m alive. I’m trying to find you.”

  The halls were so crowded. Was everyone heading to an assembly or something? If Jillian was watching through me right now, she’d see that I was in a high school, not locked away in a gray cell somewhere. As I pushed through the students, I saw a blue flyer taped to the wall:

  LILYBROOK HIGH PEP RALLY TODAY!

  GO LIGHTNING!

  I let my gaze linger on it. “See that, Jillian? I’m in Lilybrook, Wisconsin,” I murmured behind my textbook. “Come to Lilybrook. It’s safe here.”

  It was becoming hard to concentrate. Everyone was on their way to that pep rally, all walking and talking. So loud. The mass grew bigger and denser by the second, everyone chattering. Brian Edes plodded along. Susie Berkowitz and Tamara Yonkers rushed past him. Girls in acid-washed jeans, boys in brown leather jackets. Junie Lyons. Ben Guntherson.

  The bell rang but the hall wasn’t emptying. Girls in poodle skirts and saddle shoes passed by, intermingling with scruffy boys in fringed vests.

  Poodle skirts.

  That wasn’t right.

  The students in the hall weren’t really there. They used to be there, but they weren’t now. Now they were visions.

  The pep rally flyer wasn’t there either.

  The fog. I’d lifted it too high.

  Dizzy, woozy, I stumbled to the row of shiny lockers, leaning against them for support. Big mistake—the lockers forced more visions into me.

  Rochelle Mellon in bell-bottoms and sporting big, feathered hair.

  Darren Szostak wearing a royal blue T-shirt that boasted LILYBROOK HIGH CLASS OF ‘88.

  Tristan Connelly, in a hockey sweater, walking down the hall with a worshipful Melanie Brunswick to his left and a short-haired, laughing Nathan Gallagher to his right, just two years ago.

  The visions of Tristan and Melanie continued walking, but Nathan’s stopped. Stayed. Stared.

  “N-Nathan?” Was he real?

  No—just a vision. He disappeared, swallowed up by other visions, more and more visions, crowding the hallways, shoving and clamoring.

  I tottered away from the lockers. But the visions were still there, multiplying, growing denser and louder.

  I had to bring in the fog. I had to bring it in now, before I lost control and the visions became solid, and I started spiraling into nothingness.

  I pulled it in, but it wasn’t enough.

  I pulled it in lower. Thicker. Lower and thicker again.

  More, I needed more fog. One big yank, and the visions disappeared. But I could see nothing but fog. I breathed in fog. My muscles turned into fog.

  So much fog. Too much fog. I’d gone too far. Everything was fog, no sight, no air, no strength, why didn’t Tristan call, he didn’t call to warn me—

  Then everything disappeared.

  ❀

  Blackness. Absolute and all-encompassing.

  But even in the blackness, there was something. Something gleeful and threatening.

  My Nightmare Eyes, darker than even the black fog surrounding me. Watching me. Dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal.

  I could not move. The eyes kept me paralyzed. Their rage burned through me. They wanted to keep me in the black fog forever.

  Something twinkled. Something silver.

  ~killers’ spawn~

  I heard the words, booming through my subconscious, low and rumbling, as if they were spoken aloud, or perhaps whispered in my ear. I struggled to escape from the hateful words, from the eyes’ hateful glare.

  A knife. Long and sharp and silver. Its blade glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.

  I had to get away. I had to get away from the ominous eyes, from the glimmering silver.

  I had nowhere else to go except deeper into the fog. With a desperate heave, I pulled the fog in closer, darker, thicker. It came, quick and solid, and it consumed the glimmering, glittering silver, it consumed the Nightmare Eyes, and it consumed me.

  ❀

  I found out, after I woke up in the APR’s clinic with Tristan holding my hand and begging me to come back to him, that a security guard had found me. Unconscious, alone, and crumpled on the floor of the school’s hallway. The school nurse had called Dennis, who’d rushed me to the APR.

  I also found out that Tristan never called because he hadn’t gotten a warning premonition about it. He didn’t get a warning premonition of the visions overwhelming me. He didn’t get a premonition of the fog overpowering me.

  I also found out that it was the next day. While the Nightmare Eyes had me pinned under their hateful gaze, the sun had set, and risen again.

  ❀

  Dr. Sheldon, the kind, warm physician who had taken care of me in the Underground, placed one hand behind my neck and her other on my forehead as I sat on the curtained-off cot in the clinic. “Don’t move,” she said. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head.

  She’d kept me here overnight while I was lost in the fog. Deirdre and Dennis had stayed until about midnight, and Tristan had stayed the entire night with me, holding my hand. Now he hovered close as Dr. Sheldon determined if I was ready to go back to the Connellys’ house.

  “So much fog,” she muttered as she looked into my mind. “But there’s something else… something dark. A starless night. A cavern of coal.” She shuddered, then opened her eyes. “Any idea what that means?”

  “That’s just my nightmare,” I said.

  Tristan took my hand back. “She gets them every night.” His hair was messy and his button-down shirt was wrinkled from sleeping in it overnight, curled up in a chair next to my cot.

  “I can certainly understand why you have nightmares,” Dr. Sheldon said, “but that darkness is terrifying. It felt… hateful.”

  Terrifying. Hateful. Shameful. It all burned through my blood. “It’s just a nightmare,” I muttered.

  Dr. Sheldon made a note on her chart. “Well, you
’re back in control of that fog of yours, and nightmares are no reason to keep you here.”

  “So she can go home?” Tristan asked.

  “Yes, she can.” Dr. Sheldon slipped her pen into her white doctor’s coat. Before she left, she put a warm hand on my shoulder. “Be careful with the fog, sweetheart. I understand why you want to practice using it, but we don’t want that to happen again. The second you feel it slipping out of control, you need to stop.”

  “I will.” Relieved I could get out of here, I slipped from the cot. Tristan held out a hand for me to hold in case I was shaky, but I wasn’t. I changed from the blue cotton hospital gown and into the clothes Tristan brought for me—my usual jeans and one of his hoodies.

  “I don’t understand why I didn’t get a premonition about you fainting,” Tristan said as we left the facility. A thin layer of snow had fallen while I was unconscious, and it crunched under our feet as we walked to Tristan’s car. Though I didn’t need him to, he held my elbow so I wouldn’t stumble. “I could have called you. I could have warned you and stopped it from happening.”

  “It’s not your fault, Tristan,” I said. “I raised the fog. I lost control of the visions. I pulled the fog in too low.”

  “Why, though? Why were you playing with the fog in the middle of class?”

  “I wasn’t playing with it.” I confessed my plan, that I’d been trying to contact Jillian psionically in the hopes that she was trying to develop remote vision again. “I thought maybe the fog was blocking her ability to see through me. So I raised it. Then I lost control.” I sighed. “But I know now that was a stupid idea. Jillian could only piggyback on our dad’s mobile eye. She was never able to move beyond that. Besides, I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day staring at a sign that says Lilybrook, Wisconsin.”

  Tristan had stopped, and now he was staring at me, incredulous. “How could you put yourself in danger that way? My mom’s dream—”

  “Your mom’s dream will only happen if I leave town to look for my brother and sister. There was nothing in that dream that said I can’t look for them from within Lilybrook.”

  “That’s not—” He scrubbed his hand in his hair. “You raised the fog that high, then pulled it in that low, on purpose. That’s exactly why my mom’s dream will happen if you leave Lilybrook.”

  “I was trying to connect with my sister, who is missing, and scared, and heartbroken. You can’t be mad at me for that. And you didn’t have a premonition about me fainting, so you couldn’t have stopped it from happening anyway.”

  He exhaled, his whole body deflating. “You’re right. I promised you that I would keep you safe. I failed you in Twelve Lakes, I’m failing you by not finding Jillian and Logan, and I failed you again yesterday.”

  It was usually me who shivered, but this time it was Tristan.

  I took his hand and gave it a kiss. “You’re not failing me. I don’t blame you for any of that.”

  “Well, you should. I blame myself.”

  We reached his car, and he opened the door for me and helped me inside.

  We drove back to his house in silence.

  Dennis and Deirdre wanted to keep me home from school the next day, but I convinced them to let me go after I’d promised not to play with the fog anymore. I had to triple-promise Tristan. “Please be careful with the fog,” he said. “Please. What if I don’t get a premonition again? Even if I do, I’ll be too far away to stop it from happening.” He raked his hands through his hair. So worried. So anxious.

  I took both his hands in mine. “Tristan. I know you want to keep me safe, but you also need to trust me. I will be careful.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips. “Please don’t worry about me.”

  Not at all comforted by my promise or by my kiss, he cupped my face in his hands and brushed his lips on my forehead, then reluctantly left for school.

  Twenty minutes later, bundled up in coats and mittens, Ember and I shuffled through a layer of snow on our way to Lilybrook High. Determined to prove to Tristan that he didn’t need to protect me as much as he thought he did, I concentrated on keeping the fog balanced. But as always, Jillian and Logan were in the forefront of my mind.

  A blackbird descended from the trees, and while Ember stopped to feed it, I gave Aaron Jacobs a call. “Any progress?” I asked, keeping my tone chipper and optimistic. One negative word from me would discourage him.

  “Their l-last known location was in Braddock, Tennessee,” he mumbled, tripping over his words. “S-so I started there, and I’m moving outward in all directions.”

  “That’s a good plan, Aaron,” I said. “Tristan said you were super-smart, and wow, you are.”

  “But I haven’t found anything.”

  “You just have to keep looking,” I said. “Don’t let Kellan intimidate you. You can do it.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “D-does your sister… I mean, I know I’m not… but do you think she’d like…”

  “She likes guys like you, Aaron,” I said. Jillian had had lots of boyfriends—silly, pretty, empty-headed boyfriends. But the only boy she ever loved was Gavin, and she loved him because he was sensitive, sweet, and super-smart. Just like Aaron.

  He said nothing for another long moment. Then: “I’ll find them.”

  “I know you will. Bye, Aaron.”

  Ember finished feeding the bird, and we continued to school. She’d been quiet around me lately, and I thought I knew why. I’d been so preoccupied with finding my siblings that I’d neglected our friendship. And Ember was the only friend I had.

  “How’s your song coming along?” I asked. “I’d love to hear it.”

  “My song?”

  “You said your band had to write an original song for Battle of the Bands.”

  “Oh.” She looked off into the trees. “I don’t know if we’re doing Battle of the Bands anymore. The keyboardist and the drummer quit. I can’t find anyone to replace them.”

  “Did they quit because of me?” I asked as my blood started to burn. “Because I live in your house?”

  “No,” she said, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ❀

  The warning bell rang as Ember and I climbed the front steps to the school. She rushed inside, but I stalled before entering the building. I filled my lungs with the cold February air and balanced the fog. The last time I was here, I’d lost control of the visions, then the fog, and passed out. I had to be extra careful to keep the fog balanced from now on. I had to show Tristan that he didn’t need to protect me so much. I took another deep breath, nudging the fog a little higher, then a little lower.

  “Are you okay?” a sweet voice said beside me: Melanie, her black hair tumbling from under her black beret.

  “Yeah,” I said, a bit surprised that she’d asked. “Thanks.”

  “I heard you fainted in the hall the other day,” she said with genuine concern in her voice. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t happening again.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, now really surprised. “Thanks, Melanie.”

  Melanie Brunswick truly was kind. And sweet. I could understand why Tristan had loved her.

  She would make a good friend. I gave her a smile, a real smile.

  She started to smile back, but then she cleared her throat and looked down at her Doc Martens. “I feel bad for everything you’re going through, Tessa. I really do,” she said. “But… my dad… and Tristan…” Her gaze flitted to my hand—to my promise ring. “I’ve lost so much. I’m sorry, but I can never be friends with you.”

  She rushed into the building without looking back.

  ❀

  In art class that morning, Mr. Vargas returned everyone’s fruit bowl paintings we’d made last week. Except for mine. All I got was a slip of paper that read, See me after school.

  I shoved the note into my pocket. What had I done wrong? I liked my painting, how I’d divided the canvas into six squares and painted just a part of each fruit. But maybe he wanted us to paint the frui
t as he’d presented it. Realistic, not abstract.

  After last period I went to the art studio. Mr. Vargas was bent over the counter, cleaning paintbrushes in the sink and wearing a ratty cardigan splattered, as all of his clothes were, with dried paint. “No one realizes how expensive these brushes are,” he mumbled to me. “You have to take care of your brushes.”

  That was why he called me in after school? I was always concentrating so hard on keeping the fog balanced that it was entirely possible that I’d neglected to clean my brushes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vargas,” I said. “I forgot. I won’t do it again.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t you, Tessa.” He wiped his hands on his sweater to dry them, then went to his desk. He picked up my abstract fruit painting and tucked it under his arm. “Come with me,” he said, and sauntered from the room.

  I followed him to the cafeteria. He stopped at the back wall and held his arms out wide, facing it, my canvas still in one hand. I had to step out of the way so he wouldn’t hit me with it.

  “Tell me what you see,” he said.

  Was I supposed to see something? If I didn’t have the fog balanced, I’d see dozens of visions, but Mr. Vargas wasn’t asking about visions. He was neutral. “Um, a wall?” I said.

  “I know you can do better than that. Try again. What do you see?”

  “Um…” Oh! “A giant canvas?”

  “Yes!” he said. “Excellent. Now what do you see on this giant canvas?”

  I stared up at the wall for a minute. We were in the cafeteria, so that meant food. He couldn’t mean… “My painting? My bowl of fruit?”

  “Yes. Your bowl of fruit.” He held my painting in both hands, arms straight out. “I want you to recreate this same piece, on a much larger scale, big enough to fill this entire wall.”

  “But everyone will see it,” I said.

  “Everyone should see it.”

  He couldn’t be serious. “It’s just fruit.”