Thomas purses his lips. “Do your parents know you’re here?”
“Of course not.” I reach out and touch his bicep. “Why does it matter? We didn’t care about them before, did we?” My voice has gotten louder, but I can’t help it. “We need to talk, Thomas.” I look at Devlin. “Alone. It’s important.”
Thomas is silent, his face unreadable. Then Devlin says, “Shall I frisk her, sir?”
I step back. “You’re kidding, right? Why would I carry anything dangerous?”
“Not harm me,” Thomas says. “Harm you.”
It takes a second, but then I get it. He’s worried I have Stic on me.
I’m left with no choice. Devlin pats me down, pressing his hands against my arms and torso and legs. Then he runs a handheld scanner over every inch of my body. Its insistent beeping makes me want to smack someone. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life. Thomas doesn’t even have the decency to frisk me himself.
Finally, Devlin announces, “Clean.”
“I could have told you that,” I say with a snarl.
“It’s protocol, Aria. Not personal,” Thomas says. “Devlin, please take Aria to my bedroom. I’ll be there momentarily.” He turns to me. “My parents are at a charity function. I need to call them and check when they’ll be home so they won’t find you here. I don’t want you to get into any trouble.”
Devlin bows a second time and motions down the hallway. “Please, miss, follow me.” Once we are far enough away, he whispers, “Sorry about the scanner, miss.”
The Fosters’ home is sleeker than ours: simple, clean lines, modern-looking furniture. There is no carpet anywhere; no hardwood floors, either. Instead, each room is tiled in shiny colors. For the first time in my life, I miss my mother’s antique end tables, tubular vases, and thick drapes.
Mystic paintings in sleek black frames are spaced throughout the apartment; the colors swirl together as though the paint is alive, moving just enough so that the images never stay exactly the same for more than a few seconds.
I stop for a moment and study one—an oil painting of the city skyline—and watch as the sky darkens from gray to blue to black, then back to gray again. It’s stunning, really.
I could stare for hours, but I move on.
Thomas’s room is nearly bare—a large bed on a black platform against the far wall. A desk with his TouchMe and a chair that looks more impressive than comfortable. Two framed movie posters—Charlie Chaplin’s A King in New York and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman—and three long windows overlooking the East Side skyline. The walls are white; the floor is black. A gray lamp with a metal body sits on a nightstand.
Devlin leaves me alone in the room. After a minute or two, I start to snoop.
I press the touchpad next to his closet and sift through his clothes—dozens of pants and shirts and suits and ties, unadventurous in terms of color and style. More appropriate for men our fathers’ age than for a seventeen-year-old who just graduated from prep school.
Then to his bathroom, where I search through the cabinets. Nothing odd to report, except for a bottle of mystic headache reliever like the one Kiki carries with her. I leave the bathroom and glance at his nightstand: an aMuseMe and a pair of headphones, and a glass of water. Thomas is neat. Clean. Seems to be hiding nothing.
I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly—my room has been wiped clean, but surely there must be some proof of our love that he’s held on to.
Then I hear hushed voices approaching. Devlin and Thomas. I face the doorway, trying my best to look innocent.
Thomas steps inside and presses a panel on the wall; the door closes with Devlin still outside. Thomas wordlessly slips on a checkered flannel bathrobe from his closet, wrapping the ties around his waist. He hasn’t shaved today, and he seems tougher than he did at the party last night. More natural. More dangerous.
I wait for him to continue scolding me. Instead, he sighs and collapses on his bed. He pats the empty spot next to him. “Hi,” he says softly.
“Hi,” I say back, sitting next to him.
“I’m sorry about before. You just caught me off guard.”
“I don’t deserve to be treated like that, Thomas. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
He puffs out a breath. “Oh no? You only took Stic without telling me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Honestly. I don’t remember why I did it, but there must have been a reason. But that’s not me. You know it’s not … don’t you?”
He scooches closer. “Maybe you were upset about something. I’m just sorry you didn’t feel like you could share that with me. I need to be a part of your life, Aria. We’re going to be married. We can’t keep secrets from each other.” He pulls me to him. It feels awkward.
“Are you friends with Gretchen Monasty?”
I can feel Thomas’s body tense. “Why?”
“I saw her today,” I say, “at a plummet. And she mentioned you, and … well, she said that you spoke to her about me, and I’m just wondering what you said. Did you tell her about the overdose?”
Thomas looks offended. “I would never. My parents and I agreed to keep that private, for everyone’s sake.”
“Would you have said anything else?”
“Absolutely not,” Thomas says. “I barely know the girl.”
I think back to this afternoon, to what Gretchen suggested. Why would she lie? Then I look at Thomas. Why would he?
“Were you anywhere near my clutch? The bag I carried last night?”
Thomas widens his eyes, pressing his hand to my shoulder. “Aria, are you okay?”
“I think so,” I say. I can tell he’s wary of me now, suspicious of my mental health. I need a different tactic.
I reach for his chest, where his heart is, and feel its steady beat. His breathing is jagged, short. His eyes are wide open.
“Touch me,” I say suddenly.
He coughs. “What?”
“Touch my heart.”
His right hand moves slowly, as though it’s been dipped in molasses, fingers spread so that I can see the spaces between them. Ever so lightly, he presses just underneath my collarbone.
“Lower,” I tell him, loosing my shirt and moving his hand inside. His fingers edge over the top of my breast. We both tremble, and I am sure: we have never done anything like this before.
“There,” I say. “Can you feel that? My heartbeat?”
He gulps, staring at me. “Yes.”
“Tell me a story,” I say, closing my eyes again.
“What do you mean?” Thomas asks.
“Tell me about us. Something romantic. Please.” Even if I can’t remember our relationship, maybe for my parents’ sake, for Thomas’s sake, and for the love of the Aeries, I can learn to love him.
I try to picture Thomas in my mind, in my memory. His hand is deliciously hot against my body, and mine against his. His chest rises and falls beneath my touch.
Eventually, he speaks:
“Right. Let me see. The first time we ever kissed was in a gondola, at night. Not night, exactly—nearly night. Dusk. You were wearing, um, a short red dress that showed off your legs. We met at our usual place near the Magnificent Block, and then we took a gondola around the city. I stepped in first to help you, but the boat was rocking, and you almost fell right into the water. I caught you, though, and you sort of … melted right into me. I leaned down and kissed you. It was like how it is in the movies—sort of slow at first, but wonderful. We were both a little sweaty, and the gondolier was giving us weird looks, but we just laughed at him. We didn’t care. We were just happy to be together. I never wanted to stop kissing you, Aria. Never.”
I’m about to tell him that I don’t remember this when a memory pops into my brain and I go silent. Images from his story begin to color the blackness in my head until the moment comes alive: I am waiting underneath a building with a broken awning near the Block. I remember running to meet someone—Thomas?—and falling into the gondola, just
like he said.
The images unfold out of nowhere, but they are so vivid it’s like I’m seeing them in Technicolor. It’s dazzling. Then my memory of Thomas goes blurry. His features go liquid and rearrange themselves, his nose lengthening, eyes broadening and tightening, lips stretching into a scary grin. When he moves, there is a delay, the rest of his body microseconds behind his head.
I shake my head hard, and everything fizzles out.
Gray.
White.
My mind is a blur, and then it is blank.
I open my eyes and I am back in Thomas’s room, on his bed. We are still touching, only his hand feels heavy now. My palm is sweaty and I lift it from his chest. “Weird.”
“What’s wrong?” he asks, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I say. “Something just happened to me. Something—”
The sound of shattering glass interrupts me. There in the door are my parents, standing with shocked expressions on their faces. My father is in a dark suit, his dress shirt open at the neck, the knot of his yellow and blue tie loosened. A water glass is in pieces on the floor. I must have knocked it over.
“Aria, you’re leaving. Now,” my father says, letting out a growl.
Thomas sits up and distances himself from me on the bed.
I turn back to Thomas. “You called my parents?”
In a flash, my father is there beside the bed, grabbing my shoulder. His fingers dig into my flesh; I yelp, then stifle my scream. There is no use in fighting—I’ve been caught. I glare at Thomas, boring a hole into him with my eyes.
I feel incredibly betrayed.
My father drags me down the hallway and out of the apartment.
I don’t question it when we descend into the Depths instead of taking the light-rail across the Aeries. Stiggson and Klartino, two of my father’s men, walk behind me; I follow my parents down a tiny, trash-strewn street to a broad canal—Lexington Avenue—lined with docks where gondoliers wait for fares. They glance at us, curious, clearly struck by the oddity of our presence.
My father finally speaks to me. “Did one of them take you across?”
I study the men. “No.” I’m not sure why he’s asking. It can’t be for a good reason.
We walk along the canal. Spot another group of gondoliers. None of them looks familiar.
“Johnny, what is the point of this?” my mother asks.
“Be quiet.” He turns to me, lips pulled back into a snarl. “Any of these men?”
I shake my head.
We travel across a handful of streets, closer and closer to the Magnificent Block, stopping whenever we see gondoliers. Sweat drips from every part of me; the night is sweltering. My shoes pinch my toes. All I want is to go home.
Finally, we come across a lone gondolier waiting near the side of the canal. My father stops, Klartino and Stiggson at either side. “Is this him?”
I study the man. His hair is dirty and his cheeks are speckled with pockmarks. It is not the red-haired boy whose gondola I rode in, but he might as well get the dressing-down my father intends to give the boy. It won’t matter one way or another to a gondolier, and my father’s anger will only worsen the longer we keep walking.
“Sure,” I say, exhausted.
The gondolier looks bewildered. “Sir, what do you want? I don’t got no money.”
My father laughs, happy for the first time all evening. Klartino and Stiggson follow with menacing chuckles. Dad looks at me and says, “Listen to me and listen carefully, Aria. I don’t know what you were playing at tonight, but the fun is over. You are not to do anything to jeopardize this marriage. Anything. Do you hear me?”
His voice is grating and scary, his face full of anger.
“Yes,” I manage to get out. “I hear you. I’m sorry.”
Dad’s body relaxes at my apology. “Good girl,” he says. “That’s settled, then.”
I sigh in relief.
“Oh, and Aria?” my father says. His thick eyebrows are raised, the lines of his forehead thin and dark.
“Yes?”
He reaches into his waistband, removes a silver pistol, and—before I have time to blink—shoots the gondolier in the head. It’s deafeningly loud. I exhale a sharp cry.
The man crumples like a puppet and tumbles backward, splashing into the canal and floating on the water. Without being directed, my father’s bodyguards pick up an oar and drag the man in. They’ll dispose of his body later, I know.
My father hands the gun to one of his men, dusts off his hands, and calmly says to me, “Never sneak out of the apartment again.”
• VI •
When they’ve finished filling six vials with my blood, it’s time to move to another room.
“Come with me,” says one of the nurses, a blimplike woman in a tight white coat, her wheat-colored hair pulled back into a severe ponytail.
I follow her into a larger room with an enormous rectangular machine. Everything is white and sterile. I feel dirty in comparison. I am in a teal hospital gown tied loosely in the back. My feet are bare.
It is the day after I watched my father kill a man, and we have still not spoken. My mother refuses to discuss it, and my father went straight to bed when we arrived home last night. He was already gone when I woke up this morning.
“The doctor will be ready in a moment,” the nurse says, closing the door behind her, leaving me alone.
With my thoughts.
I have always known that my father is dangerous. You don’t get to be the head of a family that controls half of Manhattan without spilling a little blood. But until now, he has always been careful to keep me as ignorant as possible of his dirty deeds. Every time I close my eyes, I see that gondolier tumble backward. That poor man! He’d done nothing wrong, but he lost his life because I was tired and sweaty, because I said he’d done something he didn’t do.
I keep seeing the man’s face over and over in my head. I am responsible, and it feels horrible. I know my father is capable of killing again, and I refuse to be the cause. From now on I’ll do anything to keep him from hurting others—even if it means submitting to his will.
“Good to see you, Aria.”
I look up. Dr. May has entered the room. He walks past me, the nurse trailing behind him like a pet dog. My mother is just inside the door, watching anxiously.
Dr. May opens a drawer filled with latex gloves and pulls on a pair. Then he removes a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from the pocket of his lab coat. Glasses are rare these days—most people have surgery to correct their vision as early as possible. But he is old-fashioned and, well, old. Like the examination room, everything about him is white: the thin strands of hair that sit atop his head, the chalky pallor of his skin, his mustache and, of course, his clothes.
“Aria,” he says. “How do you feel?”
There are so many ways I could answer that question. “Okay.”
Dr. May snaps his fingers and the nurse darts up to him with a folder, avoiding eye contact. “Your mother tells me you are still suffering from minor memory loss.”
“It’s not minor.” The hospital gown is stiff against my skin. “It’s very serious,” I say, wondering if Dr. May can erase the image of my father’s face as he pulled the trigger. I shake my head and steel my nerves.
“Indeed. The brain works in mysterious ways. But there are some things that can help make it less mysterious.” He motions to the massive machine at the far end of the room. It’s long and thin, like a coffin, with one open end. A long silver table extends from it, and he motions for me to lie down. I do, and he prepares a syringe, clear liquid spurting out the needle tip as he tests it.
Behind him is an entire wall of medical instruments, displayed like trophies: scalpels of varying lengths; syringes, some as thick as my wrist, others so thin as to nearly be invisible. There are instruments I could not even begin to name, metal curves and hooks and things that grip and expand, contract, sew—a terrifying collection.
&nb
sp; “What’s the needle for?” I ask.
“Relax,” Dr. May says, taking my arm. His glove feels powdery against my skin. “So many questions.”
“I can’t ask questions?”
He looks at me and laughs. At least, I think he laughs—the sound is forced and screechy. Unnatural. “Of course you can,” he says. “I just don’t have to answer them.”
Then he jabs the needle into one of the veins inside my elbow.
When he is done, Dr. May discards the needle, smooths his mustache with two fingers, and scribbles notes in a thick manila file.
After, he swiftly prepares another needle, this time with a blue liquid, and pricks me again. Then another. And another. They grow increasingly painful.
“These injections will help speed your recovery,” the doctor says. “Now, Aria, we’re going to slide you in here to get some clear pictures of your brain. We did this after your overdose, but now that your system has had time to clear the Stic from your body, perhaps we’ll get different results. How does that sound?”
“Okay.” Maybe the test will explain what’s going on inside my head. “Oh, and Doctor?”
“Yes?” he asks.
“Yesterday, I think I felt a memory of Thomas returning … but it was strange.”
“Strange how?”
I look at him to gauge his reaction. “I was remembering something Thomas and I did together, but all the parts of the memory—the way he looked, the sounds, the smells—were just … off. Like they’d happened to someone else. Or were part of a bad video.”
Dr. May looks puzzled. He exchanges a quick glance with my mother. “I’m glad you told me.” His nervousness bothers me. If he truly wanted my memory to come back, he would be excited that I remembered Thomas. Wouldn’t he? Instead, he looks … worried. Frightened, even.
The question is, why?
Then he goes back to his table and prepares one more shot. It takes him a moment to find a place to jab me; my entire right arm is beginning to bruise.
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