The Marked Girl

by Lindsey Klingele

  Liv’s eyes tracked over the nearly spotless room. The only item truly out of place was the heavy sword, which rested against the wooden bureau. She picked it up for the first time in weeks and was again instantly surprised by its weight. At first glance, the sword could almost pass as fake, the kind of cheap item sold at Comic-Con or a ren faire, until she actually felt its heft in her hands.

  Liv was relieved to finally be getting rid of it. She’d had a hard time shaking that weird night of the film shoot from her mind. Not only had she had to completely change her shooting plans—thanks to Jeremy being too freaked out by the earthquake to return to the river—but now she had this unwanted prop as a reminder of that night. Every time she saw it, she thought of the strangers in nightgowns who’d shown up out of nowhere before disappearing just as quickly, the shaking ground, the lost equipment. Hopefully once the sword was out of sight, that night and its unanswered questions would be out of her mind as well.

  Right after bringing the sword home, Liv had immediately called her caseworker, Joe, to tell him about what had happened. She’d first thought to call the police, but then realized that a teenage foster kid in possession of a deadly weapon probably wasn’t the most credible witness. So Joe had called the police for her, and they’d said the sword hadn’t been reported as stolen. They’d agreed to keep an eye out for the weird teens or reports of missing weapons, but after two months, Joe hadn’t heard from them. He was the one who suggested that Liv donate the sword to a museum if she wanted to get rid of it so badly. It looked old enough to probably belong there anyway.

  “Let’s go,” Liv said to Shannon as she carefully walked across the room, holding the sword and its crazy sharp edges as far from her skin as possible. She led Shannon through the tiny hallway with its nicotine-stained walls and into the kitchen, where she frowned at the dirty dishes in the sink. As soon as they reached the living room, Liv came to a halt. Rita was passed out cold on the sofa. Just like Shannon, she was still wearing last night’s clothes. Her heels and purse rested under the coffee table near two empty bottles of wine.

  “Looks like we weren’t the only ones out late, celebrating the end-time,” Shannon said.

  Liv pulled Shannon slightly away from the doorway and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Shh, don’t wake her. And enough with the dramatic apocalypse stuff.”

  “Well, what would you call four earthquakes in three months?” Shannon asked, her voice as close to a whisper as it could get. Which was not very.

  “I call it summer in LA. Now come on.”

  Liv set the sword carefully against the wall and walked slowly toward Rita, navigating around some tubes of lipstick that had somehow found their way out of Rita’s purse and onto the floor.

  Up close, Rita looked peaceful. Her usually teased and sprayed hair was flattened into submission against a couch pillow, and her eyes fluttered as if she was dreaming. The heavy curtains in the living room were slightly parted, letting in a crack of daylight to fall across Rita’s face. Through them, Liv could see Rita’s useless, broken-down car sitting in the driveway. Next to it was Liv’s still crappy, but at least functioning, Toyota. It wasn’t pretty, but it had taken Liv two after-school jobs to save up for the down payment, and she was proud of it. Ordinarily, she’d be driving her own car to the museum. But this week, she’d lent it to Rita until Rita made enough tip money to get her own car fixed. Liv figured it was the least she could do.

  Rita wasn’t the best foster parent Liv had ever had. That honor went to Chuck and Marty, the elderly couple who’d taken her in when she was eight. They were the ones who’d bought her her first camera, who’d shown her E.T. for the first time. They had encouraged her obsession with movies, even letting her stay up late to watch old classics like The Godfather and Casablanca with them on their sixteen-inch TV. Liv could have stayed with them forever, but unfortunately Marty had to move back to Australia to take care of his sick mom, and Chuck had gone with him. They left Liv behind.

  Since then, though, the foster family situation had seriously declined. Liv had moved from house to house, getting bounced out of some, running away from others. Rita wasn’t perfect, but she treated Liv with respect and left her alone most of the time. They got along.

  Liv drew an old afghan down from the back of the couch and spread it across Rita. She picked up the empty wine bottles and carried them into the kitchen, careful not to clank them against each other as she lined them up neatly on the countertop. Now that her summer program was over, she’d have some time to spend cleaning up the house before school started up.

  Sparing one last glance at her foster mom, Liv once again picked up the sword and motioned to Shannon. Together, they slipped out through the screen door and into the hot late-August morning.

  Shannon pulled her mom’s minivan over to the side of the road, right across the street from the Natural History Museum. She yawned, then reached out to take a gulp from the iced coffee that sat in her cup holder.

  “How long will this take, you think?”

  Liv shrugged. “Maybe like an hour or so? I haven’t exactly done this before. Sure you don’t want to come with?” Liv asked.

  “Tempting, but since I already have this baby out of the house,” Shannon said, patting the minivan’s steering wheel, “might as well take advantage. Think I’m going to swing down through the fashion district, see if there’s any sales.”

  “Your mom’s gonna kill you.”

  Shannon shrugged. Her parents had grounded her when they discovered Shannon had spent her summer not volunteering at the library like she’d claimed, but acting in Liv’s movie. Both conservative Minnesota transplants, Shannon’s parents weren’t too pleased about their daughter’s obsession with becoming the next Jennifer Lawrence. Not that their disapproval stopped Shannon. Nothing ever stopped Shannon.

  “What are they going to do, lock me in my room? There’s, like, laws against that,” Shannon said with a grin. “Text me when you need me to pick you up?”

  “Sounds good.” Liv opened the door handle, maintaining a careful grip on the sword. Before she got out, Shannon reached over and grabbed at her sleeve.

  “Are you sure you just want to give that thing up? I mean, it could be worth something.”

  Liv lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, and getting mixed up in the arms market is exactly what I need on my college resume.”

  “For all you know, that thing could pay for college. Or your next movie.”

  This gave Liv pause for just a moment, but then shook her head. “Not worth the trouble.”

  “Please. You love trouble.”

  “Uh, I think you’re confusing me with you,” Liv said as she hopped out of the van.

  “If you say so. See you in a bit.”

  As Shannon pulled away from the curb, Liv turned to face the museum. Though she’d lived in Los Angeles her whole life, she’d never actually been here before. She walked up the path toward the front door, passing vendors selling fruits and bags of chips. She was quickly surrounded by families and groups of kids trailing stressed-looking nannies.

  Liv’s eyes flicked over the crowd. Her mind went through its regular mental checks, running through the same questions it did whenever she saw the unfamiliar faces of kids around her age—how many of them were fair-haired, bespectacled boys a couple of years older than her, and how many were freckled young girls who tripped over their own feet when they walked? It had been nearly ten years since Liv had seen her biological brother and sister, and it was unlikely she’d run into them by chance, and unlikelier still that she’d recognize them when she did.

  But she couldn’t help checking, every time.

  No boys or girls she saw matched the outdated images of Peter and Maisy that she clung to in her mind, and Liv breathed a sigh of both disappointment and relief. Once the flickering hope had passed, it was easier to get on with her day. She gripped the sword closer and made her way quickly inside.

  The first thing Liv noticed was a giant skelet
on of a T. rex, one she recognized from dozens of television shows and movies that had been shot at the museum. As she walked around it, Liv got that strange feeling she always got when she encountered something in person in LA that she had first seen on a television screen—a sense of inclusion, like she was being let in on a secret that no one else knew. Like she was seeing behind the scenes of something amazing.

  Liv pulled out her phone and rechecked the email she’d been sent by the assistant to the museum’s acquisitions director. She was supposed to meet with the director, who would appraise the sword and hopefully take it off her hands as a donation made to the museum in her name. The hilt of the sword felt hot in Liv’s hands as she made her way up to the museum’s member desk. An older woman with glasses looked Liv up and down, raising one eyebrow when she saw the sword point dangling down by Liv’s knee. Liv cleared her throat and explained she had an appointment. The woman said nothing, but turned to a monitor on the desk. She typed into it for a few minutes, then gestured for Liv to follow her.

  The desk woman led Liv through a series of hallways and deposited her on a wooden chair outside of a door labeled “Acquisitions.”

  “Should I just wait?” Liv asked.

  “Dr. Clark knows you’re here,” the woman said, before turning around and leaving Liv alone in the hall.

  She didn’t see another person for forty-five minutes.

  Though the entrance to the museum had been bustling, this back hallway was nothing but stillness and silence. Liv’s ears perked up whenever she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, but they always trailed off before coming her way. The Acquisitions door remained firmly shut. She played with her phone until finally the door creaked open, and a mousy-looking man peered out into the hall.

  “Olivia Phillips?”

  “That’s me,” Liv said, standing.

  The man motioned for her to sit back down. “I’m so sorry, but Dr. Clark is running behind this morning. We just got a big shipment from Egypt.”

  “Oh,” Liv said. “Do you know what time—”

  “Hard to say,” the man interrupted. “Maybe you could visit the exhibits, and I’ll call you when Dr. Clark is ready?” he suggested. A phone rang in the background, and the man’s eyes twitched in the direction of the sound.

  “Uh, sure,” Liv said. She held up the sword. “But what should I do with this?”

  The man paused for a moment, thinking. The phone kept ringing, and he held out his hand. “We’ll keep it here. Don’t worry. Dr. Clark is eager to meet with you; she’s having an extremely busy morning.”

  Liv put the sword hilt in the man’s outstretched fist.

  “Sure, I understand. My number is—”

  “I have it,” the man said, then shut the door again in Liv’s face.

  “O-kay,” she said to the closed door.

  Liv found her way back to the visitors’ portion of the museum and texted Shannon with an update. She ate at the museum grill before passing through several rooms, gazing over shiny rocks in the gems and minerals room and passing a hundred-year-old trolley in the Los Angeles exhibit. She checked her phone every two minutes as the day slid by.

  At 4:47, Liv officially passed from irritated into fully pissed off. She had been hoping to spend the afternoon storyboarding ideas for her next short film project, but now those hours were lost. Liv pushed against the flow of exiting museum traffic, trying to make her way back to the Acquisitions Department one last time. She was going to tell the mousy man that Dr. Clark could just keep the freaking sword, and leave her out of it.

  Liv turned in the general direction she thought would lead her back to the office. Every hallway she stepped into was less crowded than the one she’d just left. The voices of the crowd behind her began to filter out and then fade altogether.

  After twenty minutes, Liv looked up to discover she was completely alone, in front of a doorway with a banner strung up over it. The banner featured an odd symbol, a small, dark circle with two lines drawing down from it like daggers. Liv stared at the mark for a moment, unable to look away. It seemed so familiar, and yet she couldn’t place where she’d seen it before. The words below the mark read “LOST LANGUAGES EXHIBIT, JULY–OCT.”

  Liv pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was empty—lost languages not having quite the same draw as velociraptor bones. Lining the walls of the room were long, glass cases filled with yellowing books and pieces of parchment. The door at the far end of the room was propped open slightly by a small rock. Gold letters stretched across its metal surface, reading “MUSEUM ARCHIVES ROOM—PERMISSION REQUIRED.”

  Liv checked her watch—past five thirty now—and cursed under her breath.

  Just as she turned to go, Liv saw a flash of blue from beyond the nearly closed door at the end of the room. She walked toward it, and through the crack between the door and the wall, she saw a dimly lit corridor. Walking quickly in the opposite direction down the hall was a tallish boy wearing a blue shirt—the uniform of the museum security guards.

  Liv briefly thought to call out and ask for directions to the Acquisitions Department, but then the security guard turned to a door on his left. And Liv’s mouth dropped open.

  She knew that profile. It wasn’t just familiar—it screamed out from her memory. Dark hair, square jaw, and blue, blue eyes. It was him. The boy from under the bridge. The sword boy himself, here in the flesh.

  Momentarily stunned, Liv could do nothing but stare as the boy quickly slipped into a side door from the hallway. She hadn’t expected to ever see him again, let alone here, in the back hallway of a public museum, dressed as a security guard. It was surreal enough to stop her in her tracks, but there was no mistake—it was the same boy.

  “Wait!” Liv called out, finally finding her voice. But she was a moment too late, and the door slammed behind him.

  Her mind raced. What was Sword Boy doing here? Had he been following her? Maybe to get the sword back? But if so, why had he waited two months? And what was with the uniform? Nothing made sense.

  Without even thinking, Liv stepped into the hallway. She let go of the metal door, and it fell backward. It knocked aside the rock that had been propping it open and hit against the doorjamb with a small click. Liv reached out to try the handle, but it held firm. Locked.

  “Of course,” she whispered.

  There was nowhere to go except forward down the hallway, in the same direction as the sword boy / security guard / walking unsolved-mystery person. She had definitely entered an off-limits area, one that wasn’t meant to be seen by paying guests. Unlike the cool marble corridors of the museum proper, this hallway was covered with old, scuffed linoleum. Fluorescent lights hung from metal cages in the ceiling. Instead of glass cases or displays, the walls of the hallway were lined with closed doors.

  Liv reached the area of the hallway where the boy had turned. On her left-hand side was a scuffed-up wooden door with a glass pane located at eye level.

  At first, all Liv could see through the grimy glass pane were books. Rows and rows of books, arranged on overcrowded metal bookshelves that were set up haphazardly around the room. Some of the books looked old, with cracked leather bindings and yellowed covers. Others seemed to be held together just by rubber bands.

  Liv couldn’t see the boy. But in the far corner of the room, something was moving. A tall metal bookshelf seemed to be gliding across the room. Liv leaned closer to the windowpane to get a better look, almost smacking her forehead on the glass.

  At the bottom of the metal unit, she could see a hand, pulling the bookshelf. The hand was attached to an arm, which disappeared . . . into a hole in the wall. No, not a hole, Liv realized. A tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel was rough and jagged, and only about three feet high. It obviously wasn’t an official passageway—it didn’t look like it belonged in the museum at all. The boy had crawled inside it, and was now dragging a bookshelf back to cover the hole. One book fell from the shelf and landed on the ground with a smacking
noise, which made Liv jump.

  The bookshelf was once again resting immobile against the wall and covering the tunnel as Liv pushed her way into the room and over to it. For a moment, she looked at the bookshelf, as if willing herself to see beyond it.

  She was debating whether or not to call out again when she heard the muted sounds of voices coming from behind the bookshelf. Liv strained to listen, but couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. She gripped the edges of the metal bookshelf and pulled with all her might. After finally budging it a few inches away from the wall, she stopped to listen again.

  “. . . hear that?” The voice sounded young, like a teenage girl. Someone responded in a gruff voice that Liv couldn’t make out.

  The girl’s voice continued. “. . . cannot keep going on like this . . .”

  Liv leaned closer, but the voices were moving in the opposite direction, getting harder to hear. She could turn around right now, somehow find a way around the locked door and back to the main part of the museum and then home, leaving the sword and this whole incident behind her forever. But seeing the boy again felt like too big, too strange a coincidence to ignore. What if she left now and spent the rest of her life with unanswered questions about that night under the bridge and the white-clad sword switcher who’d somehow morphed into a museum security guard?

  “Oh, hell,” she said under her breath, as she peered into the wall tunnel. “If Indiana Jones can do it . . .”

  Positioning herself to the side of the bookshelf, Liv put her shoulder against it and pushed with all of her might. The shelf inched backward from the wall with a screeching groan. Liv stopped when there was just enough space between the bookshelf and the wall for her to slip through. She took a deep breath, crouched down, and stepped into the dark tunnel.

  THE LABYRINTH

  At first Liv saw only blackness and shadows, but as she inched farther into the tunnel, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The walls around her were rough, and sharp edges of brick, cement, and metal pressed out on either side.