Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  And the world goes black around me.

  The images of the memory fade, but I am ringing with its emotions, crusted onto me like the ocean salt. My arms sag, leaden, with the sadness and despair; my chest tightens with fear and the convulsions that follow a brush with death. Guilt fills my gut like molten iron. My eyes well up and spill over and drip into my mouth, strong and brackish.

  Valya’s stare is a thousand miles away, but a smile tugs at his lips. Though the memory remains, it’s been stripped of its toxic emotions. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and slumps back against the chaise lounge.

  The panic inside me builds. I claw at my throat, desperate to get fresh air. I’m drowning. Valya’s mother is drowning me, drowning both of us in her desperation to rid herself of her curse and Valentin’s—

  But it isn’t a curse. My mind is mine alone. This is my gift. My mind is mine alone. I take emotions in, I draw memories in, and I push them away just as easily. I am the vessel. The Star. The emotions need not stay with me.

  My breathing slows; fresh air fills my lungs, pushing out the memory of water and fire and pain. With each passing moment, I’m able to part through the emotions, and they fall away from me and evaporate. The tears dry on my cheek, a salty trail the only evidence they existed. My chest rises and falls like the endless waves of the sea.

  Valentin smiles at me through his exhaustion; his gaze meets mine through half-closed eyes. “You did it,” he mumbles.

  “We did it.” I curl around him. Panic ripples through me again as I think of the unknown sickness inside of him, but I needn’t become the panic—I let it ebb away. I want to be calm. I want to enjoy this moment, this warm Valentin in my arms.

  “I’d forgotten just how cruel she could be.” He strokes his thumb along the point of my shoulder. “Sweet and brilliant and intensely loving one moment, and then—like a conflagration. Papa learned to leave the house when she got that way; he had the burn marks to remind him of what could happen when he stayed. But I didn’t have a choice.”

  I nestle my head deeper into his chest. “She blamed herself, didn’t she? For passing the ‘curse’ on to you.”

  Valya nods. “She never did find balance with her own ability, so she was sure I couldn’t, either. She wanted to spare me that pain by—by killing us both. And I couldn’t save her. I had to force her to let me go, even though it meant…”

  There’s a heavy pause; I hold my breath, waiting for him to start crying, but instead he barks with a dry laugh.

  “I—I’m sorry. I’ve never been able to admit it before. I feel—I feel so light, now.” He kisses the top of my head. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to carry it around for so long.”

  “I’d kept it hidden for a long time, same as Andrei hid your memories.” Valentin winces. “Everyone must do that to some extent, but for people with powers like mine, we can bury them even deeper. Suppress the bad memories, or even the good ones, if that’s what we need to do to carry on. Wouldn’t you forget the most painful or embarrassing moments of your life, if you could? It’s hard to resist.”

  My arms tighten around him. “I can see the appeal.” But I don’t want to forget. I want to keep every last memory for myself—of Valya, of Mama, of everyone I love, to warm me during the darkest nights.

  He tucks one finger under my chin and tilts my head toward his. His breath gusts, slow and warm, over my lips. His pulse thuds against mine. “I love you, Yulia.”

  Calming warmth spreads over me like a blanket, replacing the empty void of emotion inside me. I am of this moment, but I want to feel this moment fully. “I love you, Valentin.”

  He kisses me slowly. We kiss like we’re memorizing every contour and plane of each other’s lips, faces. The curve of him here and the swoop there, a topographical map that I can cling to, no matter what happens.

  *

  The front door slams shut, followed by the clatter of several pairs of shoes—Papa’s easy, casual gait and a frenetic ping of high heels. Valentin and I sit up from the chaise lounge, where we’ve fallen asleep. Suddenly, Valya jerks with a piercing yelp—a burst of static. It’s gone as quick as it came, but his eyes lock with mine. My heart leaps into my throat. This was not his nightmares; his memories don’t torment him anymore. This is something new. The serum is starting to take hold.

  Papa flicks on the overhead lamp. The conservatory at night adopts an eerie aquarium quality; heavily shadowed tree leaves press against the windows, watching us in our little bubble of light.

  “I thought you were going to call.” I expect Papa to scold us for touching, for doing whatever things he suspects us of doing in his absence, but he just jams his hands into his pockets and looks to Cindy for guidance.

  Cindy studies both of us, shaking as if she’s about to unravel, like she’s a spool of thread and her spindle has been pulled out. “We captured Anna Montalban in Miami,” she says.

  CHAPTER 22

  I DON’T THINK I can sleep through the long, interminable wait for Anna’s plane to arrive in Washington. I don’t think I can sleep, knowing what Valya’s suffered through, and not knowing what poison is pumping into him with each beat of his heart. But sometime in the deepest hours before morning, sleep comes to collect its due.

  I dream, again, of Mama. We’d found the bird on our afternoon walk, one wing stretched out, rubbery, and dragging on the ground as it hopped in circles. Zhenya laughed and snatched a stick from the ground to poke at it, but I pried it out of his fingers. “It’s hurt,” I scolded him, in as stern and motherly a voice as a ten-year-old could manage. “We have to help it.”

  It was September, and still warm enough that I could make it home without my hat and scarf, so I scooped the bird into the knitted cap and wrapped the scarf around it like padding, thinking, foolishly perhaps, that it might feel comforting, like a nest. The bird glared at me with black, glossy eyes, the feathers around them damp and crusted. Each jostle along our path home brought a fresh squawk of indignation, a small protest in the larger indignity of its abduction.

  Mama clucked her tongue as we came in the door; she pulled on rubber gloves and eased the wing out straight, not flinching when the bird shrieked and pecked at her. “It’s broken badly,” she said. “Looks like he was attacked by a bird of prey. He has wounds on his stomach, too.”

  Somehow the word attacked pushed tears to my eyes, as if it had ripped away a scab. Mama peeled off her gloves and pulled me into her arms with a sigh, pressing my face against the warmth of her jagged collarbone as she awkwardly patted my head. “It’s the way of things. It’s not your fault. It’s just how the world works.”

  Even so, she helped me mix together a paste of cherries and water, and we fed it to the bird with an eyedropper, his beak opening and closing in a silent question when he wanted more. Mama helped me tape a tongue depressor to his wing with medical tape, and we used hydrogen peroxide to try to clean the wounds on his stomach.

  He should have healed up. Zhenya kept his promise to leave him alone; we made the bird comfortable in a cardboard box on the windowsill so he could bask in sunlight and see the sky that we wanted him to return to soon. But within a few days, his will to live must have dried out, for I woke to find him stiff and cold, already smelling musty.

  “Why did he have to die?” I screamed at Mama, as she dug a hole in the backyard of our dacha. “It’s all so senseless. There’s no point in it.”

  The shovel fell from Mama’s hands, clattering against the freezing earth. She seized me by the shoulders with startling swiftness. Her nails dug into my arms through her wool gloves; her eyes tightened to two blazing points as she knelt before me, urgency rippling through her. I felt bolted into place by that intense gaze. I didn’t dare so much as breathe, lest I disrupt the moment with a tuft of frozen breath.

  “There is always a purpose.” Cold spit flecked across my face as she hissed out the words. “The more senseless a death seems, the greater a purpose it can serve. The less
sense it makes, the more we must honor it. Remember it. Vow to never let it happen again. Do you understand me?” She shook my shoulders; my brain rattled in my skull. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I muttered, though of course I did not.

  How could I? I had no real perspective on death. The most senseless, most tragic deaths, like those of millions of Russians in the Great Patriotic War or in Stalin’s purges, are like a great weight on a cosmic scale, and the only way to balance them is to heap justice on the other side of the scale—through honoring, through remembrance.

  And maybe, just maybe, through revenge.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE THUDDING SOUND that’s swallowing up all other noise in the safe house room cannot possibly be coming from me. But I feel it like a drumbeat under my sternum. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. I cannot sit still. I cannot watch Cindy and Papa do their crazed multiple-telephone square dance, their words just phantoms under the furious beat of my heart.

  My mouth tastes dry and swampy, like I haven’t brushed my teeth in weeks. I look down at my fingernails. I need to trim them. But how can I bring myself to take part in this mundane act, to do this routine thing, when it will forever lock me on the side of After? Enough time cannot have passed since Valentin was attacked (since you let yourself be forced to attack him ba-bump), so therefore I can take no further action until it undoes itself.

  This is the logic of denial, blundering its way around my head, blind and banging into every raw memory in my perforated brain.

  Ba-bump.

  “Let’s go.” Cindy’s arm is through mine, though we might as well be swaddled up for a Russian winter for all that I can feel her. No memories, no musical shield, no nothing passing between our skin. “I need your help with her, Yulia. I can give you at least half an hour before Frank Tuttelbaum arrives, but then you’ll have to leave. Come on. It’s time.”

  We are going. We are chasing another wild goose. Anna Montalban, who has been sitting in a cell in the safe house for several hours now, a bulky camera lens watching her every move as we wait, on the other side of the camera, for any signs that she is wearing down. Twenty hours. Twenty hours since the man who used to be Al Sterling set himself on fire after Rostov forced me to inject Valentin with whatever poison ravaged him. In twenty hours, I have tried to sleep; I have tried to lodge Valya permanently in my mind, so I might never forget his face, but each time I glance away from him, I find some other crucial detail missing from my mental picture. Already I am forgetting.

  No. I have to harness the anger that pulled me from my dreams. I have to unravel whatever’s been done to him, and Anna might be our only way of finding out what it is and how to undo it.

  Donna cracks her gum and bows her head toward mine. “Look … I’m sorry about Valentin, okay?” She sighs. “I don’t know if Frank’s right about you, but hopefully you understand that if you want to save Valentin, questioning Anna together is our best shot.”

  I think I’m supposed to tell Donna I forgive her or that I understand or that we can put it behind us, but I don’t have the energy for such words. Even if I wanted to forgive her, though, I cannot go into that room to question Anna. I can’t be that near to her, this traitor, this attacker, this woman who has somehow hovered near the poison inside Carlos and Heinrich and Al Sterling and now Valentin and come out unscathed. I’m watching her through the black-and-white closed-circuit television as she smokes in the concrete questioning room; water stains along the wall behind her stand out in crackling relief on the screen, which skews everything into harsh lightness and dark. Her eyes and hair—hollow, dead black; her skin and dress—blinding white. When she opens her mouth it becomes a gaping pit of deep black.

  “Fine,” Donna says, when I don’t answer. “Suit yourself. I’ll crack Anna Montalban without you.”

  Cindy shakes her head. “We could really use your help questioning Anna, Yul. Let me handle Frank—you let me know if you’re ready.”

  Winnie settles into the chair beside me as Cindy and Donna leave, and fixes her gaze on the screen. “I’m so sorry, Yulia. I wish there was more I could do.”

  I stare at the angry slash of Anna Montalban’s mouth on the distorted TV screen.

  Papa offers me a hasty, too-broad grin, though his teeth clench hard on his cigarette. After he puffs the cherry to life, he leans back in the seat and pats me chastely on the shoulder. “Why the horse face, kiddo? You tryin’ out for Mister Ed? We’ll get whatever we need from her. Don’t you worry your pretty little head.” He sends a thin ribbon of smoke spiraling skyward, then stubs out his cigarette and heads down the hall after Donna and Cindy.

  Winnie smiles sadly. “See? Your pops’ll take care of it.”

  I twist around in a flash. “My father doesn’t take care of anyone but himself.”

  Winnie leans toward me, matching my stance, but her voice stays eerily cold. “And what makes you think that?”

  “He barely acts like he knows me. I’m his roommate, not his daughter. And what has he done to help Mama? To save her before she goes too far? Why is he off drinking and flirting every goddamned night instead of trying to bring Mama here safely?” Rage swells on my fingertips like blisters, like it’s scalding me from within. I should call upon my mantra, but deep down, I want to feel this rage.

  Winnie’s face softens; she puts her hand on my knee. “You mean he hasn’t told you.”

  I’m boiling over. Everything is steam, and I’m ready to unleash a teakettle scream. Bad enough that Papa should keep secrets at all, but that he should tell them to someone besides me? It takes every ounce of self-control I’ve ever had, every trick in Cindy’s meditative bag, to keep from screaming. When I do manage to speak, my voice is a sharpened blade. “Hasn’t told me what?”

  Winnie’s no-nonsense varnish is peeling. Is it sympathy that’s pushing her toward telling me the truth? I can almost smell it on her, like fresh-baked sugared apples. I can hear it in her rippling Ella Fitzgerald shield. “Well,” she says slowly, “I suppose that’s for him to say.”

  My pulse quickens as a dark thought takes hold of me. I clench my hand around Winnie’s. It’s too much effort to fear my power; why shouldn’t I embrace it, like Papa so cheerfully does? If I can ply Winnie’s sympathy, pour it into her like I did to Donna that day, give her that little push toward telling me the truth—

  No. I can’t be like Papa, manipulating others on a whim. The rage dulls; the boil slows. My mind is mine alone.

  My hands sink into my lap as Donna appears on the television screen.

  The dark wells of Anna’s eyes lighten a degree as her lashes raise, her eyes tracking Donna’s movement around the table. Anna isn’t restrained, but she leans forward, like a leering fighter; she’s primed for a bout.

  “Really? They’re giving me to you, stupid little girl?” Anna snorts, loud and grating, in Donna’s face. “You don’t know shit. You don’t understand anything!”

  We can only see a sliver of Donna’s face in the screen, but her shoulders are trembling. Donna grips her own ponytail and twists it around one finger, again and again. “Then I guess you’d better explain it to me.”

  Anna leans back into the chair. Her eyes are lidded again—dark horizontal bars as she squints at Donna. She sucks at her cigarette, dark gray patches appearing in her sucked-in cheeks, then exhales right into Donna’s face. “You are toast, little girl. Your whole little world is toast. This … system of yours? Your little happy capitalist smiley bubblegum face?” Anna draws a circle in the air with the cigarette. “Toast.”

  “You weren’t so sure about that two weeks ago, when you met with your handler. Carlos Fonseca.” Donna opens the folder in front of her, but her bravado is fading, making her hands shake as she shoves a photograph at Anna. “You told him you never agreed to go as far with the plot as he wanted you to go.”

  Anna’s smirk slackens. She uncrosses her arms and legs, slumping forward now without the rigidity to her spine. “How do you know I said that?”r />
  Donna smiles, sitting up straighter. “We have our ways.”

  “How the hell did you know I said that? Don’t play games with me, little girl!”

  Anna lunges forward. Donna leaps back with a yelp, chair squealing against the concrete floor. I jump to my feet, forgetting I’m in a separate room from them.

  “She’ll be fine,” Winnie says, though I notice she’s already lit a fresh cigarette from the dying old one. “Your father’ll help her out if he has to.”

  Though Donna hasn’t said anything, Anna looks like she’s realized this, too. She sits back down, though she’s at the edge of her chair now, like she can’t get comfortable. “Careful,” Donna says. “I’d hate for them to take your cigarettes away.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” Anna purrs.

  Donna squares her shoulders. “Fonseca gave you two things at the diner. A roll of microfiche, and a bunch of vials. You’re going to tell me why.”

  I exchange a glance with Winnie. “She’s not going to tell her anything.”

  “Donna doesn’t need her to say anything—just think it.”

  I shake my head. “I doubt she knows enough to help us.”

  Anna is silent, waiting Donna out. Donna tries a few other approaches—the grandmother she’d overheard Anna mention when we first met her, her friends here in America—but nothing sticks. Ba-bump. Valentin needs answers. I need answers—whatever else the team wants out of Anna, I need some hint as to what’s happening to Valya, and if there’s any way to stop it.

  I shove out of my chair and storm from the monitoring room and into the hallway of the nondescript suburban house. “Yulia?” Winnie shouts, chasing after me. “Yulia, are you okay?”