Fragile Facade

by Sophie Davis

  Blake feigned shyness as he slid the velvet from my fingers. He kept glancing between the pouch and my face, drawing out the moment so long I finally exclaimed, “Open it already!”

  He laughed and leaned forward to brush a kiss across my lips. “Your impatience is adorable.”

  “And your pokiness is maddening,” I teased.

  Blake kissed me again before finally untying the drawstrings and flipping the contents of the pouch into his open palm. An old-fashioned key, approximately an inch long with two gold teeth on one end and a gold latticework hoop on the other, fell out. It was attached to a wound rope made of soft black leather—very masculine—so he could wear the key around his neck, if he wanted.

  At first, he didn’t say anything and I felt an uncharacteristic need to fill the silence. “It’s so cheesy, right? I’m sorry, I–”

  “I love it, Lark,” Blake cut me off. “Sometimes cheesy is good.” He looped the leather over his head, and then pulled me in for a long kiss. For the first time ever, Blake’s lips didn’t empty my head of all thought. His touch didn’t make my problems completely disappear.

  What did you do, Lark?

  “So what exactly did I do to deserve the key to your heart?” Blake asked when we broke apart. “I’d like to know so I can do it again. Who knows what I’ll get next time?”

  It was a joke. So I laughed. He was trying to cheer me up because he knew something was still bothering me.

  The key was dangling in the space between our chests. I gently tucked it inside Blake’s collar, making sure that the gold charm fell over his heart. Then, I leaned so close that my lips brushed his when I spoke. “I love you so much. I can never say that enough.”

  Twenty-Two

  Raven

  Saturday night: party night, for all the bright young things in D.C. Not me, though. I chose to stay in and watch comic book movies. One of the cable channels was showing an Iron Man marathon. It was playing in the background while I sat, cross-legged, on the floor with all Lark’s clues spread out before me. Asher was out with a couple of his law school friends. Before leaving, he’d extended what I assumed was a pity invite. Not being of legal drinking age and living on limited funds, I’d declined. Besides, I owed it to Lark to spend every spare moment working out her clues.

  Unfortunately, the clues weren’t speaking to me. I’d been so proud of myself for deciphering the crossword, but now I just felt lost. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the answer. “Kingstown” was a password for something. An email account? Online access to her bank account? I didn’t know.

  I flipped to the next page of my notepad, where I’d copied the capitalized words from the journal entry: Morning, Run, Champagne, Breath, Footing, Electric, Mine, All, For, Beautiful, Important, Talk, Decadent. Forming a single word with the capitalized letters hadn’t panned out, so I thought maybe the words would make a sentence. The lack of words like “a”, “an”, “and”, “to”, etc. made it impossible, though.

  I blew out a deep breath and glanced at the TV. Onscreen, Tony Stark was unveiling his latest technology, robotic soldiers, to the world. “Got any suggestions?” I asked the TV. When none of the characters answered, I grumbled, “A lot of help you are. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius? Can’t you just invent a program that I can—“

  My question was lost in a fit of derisive laughter. I didn’t need Tony to invent a program, random sentence generator apps were a thing. I’d seen several in the App Store a few weeks back while looking for a new game. Unfortunately, it took me longer to download the app than it did for the same app to produce zero results. Which was also the number of results the app spit out when I entered just the first letter of each word.

  “Now what?” I asked the woman declaring “Waves laundry detergent is soccer mom approved!” on the TV. By way of answer, she gave me a thumb’s up.

  Slumping against the back of the sofa as though all the air had been let out of my body, I allowed my head fall over the top of the cushions so that my loud groan was directed toward the ceiling. “Why? Why? Why? Why can’t just one clue say something like: ‘I’m being held in a Brooklyn basement’ or ‘I found out my mom is having an affair with one of our drivers, so I ran off to Ibiza’?”

  Honestly, was a little transparency too much to ask for?

  Walk away. Exhausted and frustrated, you’re of no help to anyone, I thought. That was true, of course. Pulling three all-nighters in a row to prepare for my AP History exam had not turned out well. I shuddered at the memory.

  I had a nutritious dinner of cheddar cheese, crackers, and turkey pepperoni, all purchased at the corner store, while I watched Stark save the world, again and again and again. But the witty one-liners and impressive special effects barely held my attention. I was ashamed to admit it, but in the beginning, following Lark’s clues was a nice distraction from my own life, my own past. And the real reason I’d left my tiny Pennsylvania town with population 3794, in favor of D.C., where I was just one of the approximately 682,000 people who called it home.

  Somewhere along the way, the distraction had turned personal, and a lot more selfless. I wasn’t continuing on the mission for me, but rather to help expose the truth—the truth about Lark’s disappearance, as well as the truth she’d been trying to expose in the year leading up to it, if they weren’t one and the same.

  Why couldn’t she confide her secrets to someone, anyone? I wondered.

  Was it too dangerous? Or was it a lack of proof issue? Or was it possible that Lark didn’t know the extent of the secrets that ruled her world?

  The same damned pounding in my temples that always accompanied a long day of deep thought started around midnight. I traded the television for Lark’s iPod, which I was embarrassed to have borrowed from her apartment. Despite my love of music, I’d never had one of my own. There was a playlist of soft ballads simply called Chill. Pressing play, the songs slowly helped me to relax. Soon, my eyelids grew heavy. I knew that I should get up from the couch and go to my bedroom, but I couldn’t muster the strength. One night on the sofa won’t kill me, I thought, as sleep overtook me.

  Dreams are strange. While in one, you never realize how bizarre they are. The cat that talks to you, the fact that your mother looks like Carole Brady, and your romance with the prince of a country that doesn’t exist all seem normal until you wake up. This dream was no different:

  I was jogging on the National Mall. The sky was bubble-gum pink, with the remnants of a pale gold moon just barely visible. There were no other early morning runners around, so the crunch of dirt and pebbles beneath my feet and my labored breathing were the only sounds. My breath came out in small white puffs of air, and I suddenly felt overwhelmingly cold. I glanced down and was startled to realize why. Instead of workout clothes, I was wearing a floor-length black gown that I’d never seen, and gray and purple Nikes.

  The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and the area by the Jefferson Memorial was overflowing with the flowering trees. Ahead of me, low-hanging branches extended like bony fingers into my path. On my left, fog rolled over the muddy water of the Potomac. The ground sloped slightly downward, and I skidded several inches before regaining my footing.

  I slowed my pace, but felt my pulse quicken. I was excited, breathless not from the run, but from anticipation. I smoothed my hands over the skirt of the gown and then ran trembling fingers through my tangled hair. The shoulder-length locks weren’t pulled back into a short ponytail like they normally were when I exercised, but were loose instead. My hair was also longer than in real life, swishing back and forth between my bare shoulder blades.

  He materialized like an apparition ten feet in front of me. Early morning fog misted around his tall form, parting like a curtain as he strode forward to greet me. In my mind, I recognized his features as they’d been described. In my heart, I knew him. After waking, I would later recall the guy as a cross between Chase Crawford and the actor who played Captain America. In my dream, he was undeniably Blake G
reyfield.

  “Hey there, beautiful,” he called. The three words were soft, heavy with love and longing. Yet, had this been high noon in Central Park I’d have never heard him, he spoke so quietly.

  “Hi, handsome,” I heard myself calling back.

  The silly grin on his face was mirrored on my own. He exuded a cool confidence that excited and scared me, the latter reaction if only because no one had ever looked at me with so much want and need.

  Before I had time to truly appreciate just how amazingly the tuxedo he wore fit him—the clean, tailored lines juxtaposed perfectly with his slightly askew bowtie—Blake’s arms were around me. We were two halves of a whole, fitting together like a best friend charm. I felt whole in his arms, complete. The feeling was exhilarating and nerve-wracking all at once. It was as though some part of me had been missing until that moment, and I hadn’t even realized it.

  His lips were soft on my forehead, gliding gently across my skin as he murmured, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  I rested my head against his chest, wondering whether my makeup was going to mess up his crisp white dress shirt. He stroked my hair. His voice sounded distinctly like Asher’s when he said, “I’m so glad you were able to get away.”

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  Blake gently pulled away. Running his warm hands, slightly calloused from lifting weights, down my bare arms, he threaded his fingers through mine.

  “Want to walk?” he asked.

  I nodded and we began moving forward. I looked down and noticed the pebbles beneath my sneakers had become smaller, finer. Sand. We were still in downtown D.C., except there was a beach, not a rocky path, beside the water. The wind picked up just enough to ruffle my hair, causing brown strands to blow across my face. I pushed them out of my eyes. Several locks seemed to snag on something around my neck.

  “Here, let me,” Blake said.

  I hadn’t realized I stopped walking until Blake was standing in front me, carefully untangling my hair. Tentatively, I touched my neck. When my fingers felt the smooth, round surface of the pearls, I choked on my next inhalation of air. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. The necklace seemed to be growing tighter by the second. Pearls dug into my skin, and a heavy weight pressed down on the hollow of my throat.

  When I glanced to Blake for help, an older man stood in his place. The fingers in my hair belonged to him. As I gasped for breath, the man stepped back with a grin that would’ve given the Cheshire Cat a run for his money.

  “There. A diamond fit for the future Diamond Queen,” he said with the pride of a new father.

  The man was oblivious to my distress. My sight became blurry, my eyes were swimming, and the threat of a sob was deep in my chest. I was positive my face was the color of a ripe grape. I blinked, forcing the tears down my cheeks. When they fell, the sensation felt wrong on my skin. The feeling was softer, cooler, drier. I opened my eyes and was standing in the middle of a place I’d been only once in my life, yet recognized immediately: The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory.

  Butterflies of all sizes and colors were circling my head. The wings that skimmed my cheeks were soft and sensual. More of them glided back and forth between the fragrant flowers lining the pathway, while others perched on tree branches near the top of the glass atrium. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the gurgle of a stream sliding over rocks. The man was nowhere in sight.

  Large ivory wings appeared directly in my line of sight, blocking the conservatory from view. Thin veins of gold formed a delicate design on the wings and pulsed with each beat; the effect was mesmerizing, and I found it impossible to look away. It was as if those wings held the meaning of life. For what felt like forever, I just stared at the insect with rapt attention.

  The spell finally broke in the most unpleasant way possible. A car horn—no, a car alarm—blared inside my head. I blinked rapidly, desperately trying to recapture the image of the butterfly with its beautiful wings. The noise was unrelenting as it continued to wail. And it wasn’t inside my head. It was all around me.

  Fully awake but still disoriented, I shifted and tried to sit up, only to find that I was already sitting. The backs of my thighs itched, and sweat had my tank top plastered to my back. I started to panic.

  Calm down, Raven, I ordered myself.

  The fog in my brain was starting to clear, and I remembered that I’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room of my apartment. That horn was probably on TV. Except, when I looked around at my surroundings—really looked around—I realized I was definitely not in my living room. There was a window to my right, a headrest directly in front of me, and my left arm rested on the same itchy material as my legs.

  A car. I was in the backseat of a car. WTF? How did I get into the backseat of someone’s car? Terrified thoughts raced through my head. Had someone come in to my apartment? Why would they put me in the backseat of their car? Holy shit! Asher was right! I never should’ve been investigating Lark! How long had I been out? Where had they taken me? And where were they? I was definitely alone in the car. The same people who….

  Frantically, I reached for the door handle and realized the car keys were in my right hand. Wait, why would kidnappers have given me the keys? Why did the view from the windshield look so incredibly familiar? With only the dim light from a nearby street lamp to aid me, I examined the keys I was holding. Wait. These are–

  I was sitting in the backseat of my own car. The alarm stopped shrieking. Someone must have turned it off, or it’d been ignored long enough to realize its incessant cries wouldn’t be answered. In the silence that followed, I finally felt like I could think. Breathe, Raven, I told myself. Just breathe for a minute. Everything’s fine. My fingers were trembling so much that I dropped the keys into the slim space between the seat and the door. I didn’t bother retrieving them right away.

  Sleepwalking was not exactly new to me. On several occasions, when I was a child, I’d awoken in a different place than I’d fallen asleep. It hadn’t happened in almost a decade, though. But all the fear and confusion that I felt now was exactly as I remembered from back then.

  My heart was racing so fast that it took me several rounds of long, labored inhales and exhales before I was able to focus. As soon as I had my emotions in check, I reached for the interior light and switched it on. The dull light it provided was a shock to my senses.

  I was still wearing my pajamas, making it easy to assess my arms and legs for any signs of damage. No obvious bruises or bumps, I noted. That, at least, was a blessing. Then I saw my bare feet and groaned. Great. Even the short walk from my apartment to the car would have meant the soles of my feet were exposed to the grime and filth that covered all city sidewalks. Not important right now.

  Finally, I wiggled my fingers into the crack that had claimed my keys, sighing with relief when I felt the warm metal brush against my fingertips. With one last look around the car, I went for the door handle, preparing to exit. That was when I realized the armrest in the middle of the backseat was down. Honestly, I hadn’t even known that my car had an armrest in the backseat. This fact wouldn’t have been alarming, save the small velvet pouch in the cup holder.

  Rich black fabric with gold embroidery and delicate drawstrings sat innocently, staring up at me. I ran my fingers over the velvet, and then picked up the pouch. It was heavy, suggesting something substantial was inside. Jewelry? I guessed, given the look and feel of the little bag. I slid a finger into the mouth of the pouch and worked it open. More curious than nervous, I reached two fingers inside the bag and pulled out the contents.

  Looking back, I cannot say which was more terrifying: the pounding on my car window or the sight of the ivory and gold butterfly pendant resting in my palm.

  Twenty-Three

  Lark

  Scandal rocked the Upper East Side. At least, that was what anyone with ears would’ve thought upon hearing my mother’s high-pitched screaming.

  “Lark, that is just not acceptable. I’m sorry, th
at is not going to work,” her voice switched between stern and pleading, unsure how best to deal with my noncompliance. “Go get ready, right this minute. Henry will drop us off, and then he will come back for you. We simply cannot wait, we will miss the carpet.” She looked helplessly at my father for support.

  “Mom, it’s one night. One party. One event. We’ve been to three already this week, and I have a term paper due.” It was the one excuse that I knew would draw my father to my side. “Because of that stupid committee, I’ll be at the Park all day tomorrow setting up, and then I have to go straight to my hair appointment.”

  “That committee is not stupid. You’re making lifelong friends and connections. You’re building your place in society and meeting the proper people,” she responded, ignoring everything else I’d said to defend one of her precious causes.

  “Eleanor, she is being responsible,” my father finally stepped in. “She is showing maturity by passing up a night of frivolity to honor her commitments and live up to her responsibilities.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I beamed at him. Sure, I was milking it a little, but his support meant a lot to me. It wasn’t often that my parents told me I was doing something right.

  “Phillip, this is not a good idea…,” my mother gave my father a pointed look. “Do you really think Lark should be home by herself? What if she needed something or…there will be no one here. I gave the staff the night off.”

  “Lark is almost an adult. She will be fine for one evening,” my father responded, patience with my mother’s theatrics waning. That made two of us. Lately, she’d been wildly overprotective, as though her maternal switch had flipped on one night and she was making up for the past eighteen years. “Besides,” my father continued, “Jeanine can stay for a while.” He didn’t bother to ask the housekeeper, or even to spare her a questioning glance. His word was the bottom line in our house.