Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  Monty walks to the door and unlocks it, and I rush at him with all of my force. Just before I hit him, he whips his gun out of his jacket so that I run straight into the barrel. It knifes into my stomach so hard I almost double over.

  “You wouldn’t,” I say, trying to get my breath back.

  Monty takes a step backward, his gun still pressed against my stomach. “No? I’ve beaten every shooter video game out there. I’ve been considering taking it up in real life. You know, for the challenge.” He backs quickly out of the room and slams the door closed, locking it before I can grab for the handle.

  As his footsteps fade away, I jiggle the plastic handle, feeling suddenly dizzy again. I’m distantly aware that my headache has gotten much worse, and the voices are so loud now that I can barely hear myself breathing. Desperately needing air, I climb up on the counter and stare out of the tiny barred window over the soda machine.

  It’s over, I realize. I’m never going to get out of here.

  Outside the window, the sun has set over the salt flats, and the sky is a dark, bruised color over the vacant street. I stare numbly out the window, holding the metal top of the vending machine to steady myself. Under my hand, I feel the hollow vibration of electricity as the night slowly plunges in, leaving me utterly alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Time passes, and when I say time, I mean long sections of it, which could be anything from one minute to three hours. There’s no way to count it in here, except by Indigo’s breathing, and he’d exhaled eight hundred fifty breaths by the time I lost count. So when I hear something else to count time with, the distant pitter-patter of footsteps, I think I’m imagining it.

  I get to my feet from where I’ve been sitting on the floor beside Indigo, and climb up onto the counter to look out the barred window again. There’s a figure at the end of the street, his black hoodie blending into the night sky. He weaves around each of the warehouses, staying close to the abandoned buildings as if he’s attempting (and failing) to stay out of sight.

  When he rounds the closest building and stops beneath the fading red brick of the EarthScape warehouse, he looks up, and I see that it’s Charlie. He’s come for me.

  You’d think I’d be excited, but I’m not. I’m terrified, because Charlie’s life is in danger, and that is more frightening to me than my own. A lump builds in my throat. Why did he come when I told him not to? Or is it because I told him not to? But I’ve seen what happens to Charlie outside this warehouse, and I know I can’t let that happen to him.

  Clunk! Clunk! Below me, Indigo is gripping his head with both hands and smacking it against the floor. His eyes are still closed, but his lips are moving around the words: “Get them out, get them out, get them out.”

  I leap off the counter and rip off my sweatshirt, and I swiftly ball it up and put it beneath his head before he can hit it against the floor again.

  I climb back onto the counter and look back out the tiny window, hoping that Charlie has changed his mind and left, but now he’s standing on his tip-toes peering into one of the dirty windows. I need to make him leave before he gets hurt, but if I yell out to him, Monty will know somebody is here, and Charlie may end up in this room with me. I can’t let that happen. The only way I know how to talk to him without speaking aloud is to break into his mind, like I tried to do when I was astral projecting at the lighthouse. Although it’s unlikely to work, I have to try.

  At that moment, a debilitating pain courses through my head. It feels like a spike is being driven between my eyes and out the back of my skull. The voices are getting louder, and I know I have to get out of my head again, and fast, before I’m in too much pain to break into his mind.

  I climb off the counter and lie down on the floor. I let my eyes close, and, doing my best to ignore the throbbing, I focus on sucking breath in and out of my nostrils. My breathing slowly clears my mind until it’s a blank white space. Then I focus on getting into his mind through a gap in his breathing. A small space opens between two breaths, and I focus all of my energy on seeing myself as a tiny piece of dust floating through the air and down to Charlie’s body . . .

  Then I am falling faster and faster . . . I picture myself as a speck of dust floating down his ear canal and into his brain . . .

  I try to pick up on his thoughts, but they shoot back and forth more quickly than I can pinpoint . . .

  . . . and his mind is about to open up and let me in . . .

  And then I’m shooting down a long tunnel and emerging into an open space behind two large, brown lenses. Through Charlie’s eyes, I stare at the warehouse’s grimy window.

  Fighting back the pain in my head, I push my thought into Charlie’s mind. “You need to leave,” I insist. “It’s too dangerous here.” At the sound of my voice, Charlie freezes, and then he tilts his head slightly to the right, just like he did when I tried to enter his mind at the lighthouse, when he pulled away from Amber’s kiss. I continue talking before he pushes me out. “You don’t know this yet, but your life is in danger,” I add. “Please believe me.”

  “Callie?” Charlie whispers aloud. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me,” I say into his mind.

  Charlie looks around wildly. “Where are you?”

  “I told you the truth earlier,” I say. “I’m a psychic.”

  “I believe you,” Charlie says. “It’s unbelievable . . . but I believe you. I called you to tell you that, but you didn’t answer your phone.” He pauses. “It actually explains a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he says, and pulls the black hood back over his head. “But when your mom and Richard didn’t know where you were either, I started to worry. Then I remembered where you told me not to go, and here I am.”

  I want to shout with joy that he finally knows who I really am. It’s been torture hiding the truth from him for so long. But no matter how much I want to celebrate that he can now know all of me, his safety is more important. “Well, you need to leave,” I say. “Now.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Charlie says. “Not without you.”

  Through Charlie’s eyes, I see that he’s staring straight up at my window now, and although I know he can’t see me, it still makes me nervous to have him so close to the warehouse, so close to his potentially fatal future. “Just go home,” I beg. “It’s too dangerous for you here—”

  “No,” Charlie says, his voice getting louder. “I am not leaving. Just tell me how to get to you.”

  “Keep your voice down,” I hiss. “Leaving is your only choice.”

  Charlie crosses his arms and grounds his feet hard into the pavement. “I’m staying right here until you tell me how to get inside. You can’t pressure me to leave.”

  I picture Charlie trapped under the radiation, and I know that if he won’t leave, then I need to get him inside the warehouse quickly. The longer he’s standing out there, the more likely it is that it will happen to him.

  “Fine, I’ll help you get in,” I say. “But move quickly, and don’t make any noise.”

  “How do I get in?”

  “Go around the back. Look for the tiny opening in the wall, to the right of the door.” I watch the ground moving below Charlie as he quickly walks around the warehouse, and then I’m looking up at the barely noticeable hole between the bricks. “There’s a key in there,” I continue. “Unlock the back door and go in. But carefully.”

  Charlie reaches his arm into the tiny gap and pulls out the key. Then he unlocks the door next to him and sneaks quietly into the warehouse. “Now tell me where you are,” he says quietly, “so I can come get you.”

  “I need you to do something first.” I hate to ask anything more of him, but even if Charlie were to get me out of this room my mind would still be invaded by enemy psychics. The only way I can get them out of my mind is to distract their focus away from me. But where could they be? There’s another spike of pain through my head, and something the psychics said earlie
r, back when I could still make out individual voices in my mind, jolts through me. Why does it keep making that noise? I remember one person complaining, and the other responding: At least we didn’t have to get on that thing.

  I rub my temples furiously with my thumbs, and the pressure keeps me present enough to think over everything I know. If Monty was going to check on them, like he said, they must be somewhere in the warehouse. And maybe the noise they were hearing was the screeching of the elevator, which could be that ‘thing’ they didn’t have to get on. And if they didn’t have to get on the elevator . . .

  “They must be on the first floor, near the elevator shaft,” I murmur.

  “What about the elevator shaft?” Charlie asks. “Is that where you are?” He pauses. “Hey, are you still here?”

  “I am, but probably not for long.” The voices are coursing like a flood through my head, and I can tell I’m beginning to break down from the pressure in my mind. I try to grip onto the arms of the chair to steady myself, but I’m too weak. I know that I don’t have the strength to take the psychics on right now; in order for me to leave this room with Charlie, I need him to break their concentration first.

  I need my mind back.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” I say, as if Charlie breaking into a warehouse due to my psychic instructions isn’t crazy enough. “Some psychics have broken into my mind. My brain is fighting back, but eventually, the stress will wear it out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there’s so much pressure in my head right now”—I press my knuckles hard along the base of my skull—“that it will drive me out of my mind,” I say. “Told you it would sound loony.”

  “Totally insane,” Charlie says. “So where are they?”

  “I think they are on the first floor, somewhere near the elevator shaft.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to distract them somehow, or force them out of the room they’re holed up in.” I scan my memory of the aisles I mentally cataloged earlier: food, water, flashlights, gas, matches, smoke bombs. Smoke bombs. “Remember, do not go outside, no matter what you do, okay? Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, then go down aisle ten.”

  Charlie locates the number 10 sign hanging from the top of the aisle, and takes a sharp left under it. He passes a towering stack of rescue mirrors and stops in front of shelf stacked with thousands of waterproof, light-anywhere matches.

  “Grab a book of matches,” I say.

  “How do you know what I’m seeing?” Charlie asks. “Are you seeing out of my eyes?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry; this is the first time I’ve ever done this.”

  “Okay,” he says nervously. He grabs a pack of matches and then continues down the aisle.

  “Now grab a smoke bomb,” I continue.

  Charlie snatches a tiny smoke bomb, no bigger than a birthday candle, off the shelf. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

  “No.” My head is pounding so hard, and the voices are so loud, that I’m having trouble staying in Charlie’s mind, and I’m starting to feel nauseous. “Charlie, listen carefully. I may not be able to stay in your mind much longer—”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t explain now. But you need to distract these psychics. They’re all focused on getting into my mind, and unless you break their concentration, I won’t be here much longer.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Charlie says. “No matter how crazy that sounds.” He rolls the small smoke bomb between his thumb and index finger. “Now what do I do with this bad boy?”

  “Go to the room near the elevator shaft,” I instruct.

  I can barely hold on to Charlie’s mind as he hurries down the hallway to the elevator shaft. When he gets there, he looks for the closest room, and finds a door right beside it. He puts his ear against the door, and through Charlie, I hear muffled voices mirroring the much louder voices in my own head.

  “Now what?” Charlie whispers.

  “Light the smoke bomb and roll it under the door, and then get the hell out of there. Hide somewhere until they are gone. But no matter what you do, do not go outside. Understand?”

  “Yep. But what about you?”

  I can’t respond anymore. I slump over in my chair, my head pounding too much to speak. “Do it now,” I say with all of the strength I have left.

  Charlie pulls one match out of the box and slides it across the strip, and a tiny flame bursts into life. Then he pulls the smoke bomb’s wick out so that it’s taut, and after yanking his hood down to cover more of his face, he lights the red wick.

  When fire flares at the end of the wick, Charlie rolls it under the door and backs up into the hallway. Within seconds, red smoke is leaking out from under the door.

  The voices in my mind suddenly fall silent, and all the pain in my head disappears.

  Seconds later, the door flies open and several people run out, coughing into the sleeves pressed against their mouths. To avoid them, Charlie ducks behind the open door, so he’s stuck between the back of the door and the corner window.

  “It smells like paint,” he says.

  Paint? “Get out of—”

  There’s a giant boom I can feel in the floor beneath me, and from inside Charlie’s mind, I see Charlie blown forward, through the window. The glass shatters around him as he crashes through it and hits the sidewalk outside. Through the broken window, red smoke escapes into the night air.

  “Charlie!” I shout into his mind, and I know that this is the scene I saw, of Charlie lying facedown in a pile of broken glass, red smoke surrounding him. I breathe several long, shuddery breaths as I wait for him to move. “Get up, Charlie,” I urge. “Get up.”

  He doesn’t move at first. But slowly, Charlie pushes himself over with one arm, and climbs to his knees. “Smoke bombs come in colors?” he asks weakly. He gets to his feet, his legs shaking beneath him, and the glass shards fall off him onto the pavement. “Tell me where you are,” he says.

  “I’m in a room on the second floor, the one with a window facing the salt flats,” I say, trying to remember the confusing way Jasper brought me to this room. “Take the stairs to the left of you, then take them to the elevator up to level two. After that, there are three hallways. Take your first right at each one, and you’ll end up at a wooden door. That’s where I am.”

  Charlie mumbles under his breath, “I’m coming.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Time passes slowly while I wait for Charlie, but since I’ve pulled out of his mind, my mind is now mine again—the voices are gone and the pounding has stopped. So, despite being stuck in this room, I can relax a little into the peace of having only my own voice in my head.

  Less than five minutes have gone by since I got my own mind back when I hear yelling outside the warehouse. A door slams several times, and each time, another set of footsteps echo across the pavement.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I hear Monty yell. “It’s only nine! I paid you until two minutes after nine!”

  I climb onto the counter and peer between the bars. Below me, a group of people I don’t recognize are streaming out of the warehouse, still covering their mouths with their shirts. They are headed toward a black SUV with darkened windows parked on the street, and Monty is right behind them. The wind is blowing hard against the building, and Monty leans into it, one hand securely holding his wig on his head.

  “I said you have two more minutes of work!” Monty yells.

  Without looking back, a tall, balding man unlocks the driver’s door of the SUV. “Did you not see the bomb go off?” he asks.

  “That wasn’t a bomb, fool!” Monty yells. “Look around you; it’s just red smoke!”

  “I told you it wasn’t worth the money,” the man says. He shakes his head at the other psychics as they get into the car, and then he climbs into the driver�
��s seat and starts the engine. The others grumble in agreement as they shut their car doors.

  “You can’t leave!” Monty wails. He runs toward the SUV, but they drive away before he reaches it. “Come back!”

  When the car is out of sight, Monty leans over and puts his hands on his knees, and takes several loud, ragged breaths. “Gotta do everything myself,” he says. He spits on the pavement, and then stands up. With his black bangs skewed diagonally across his forehead, he walks back into the warehouse.

  Two more minutes, Monty said. One hundred twenty more seconds until the super laser fires at the asteroid, and half of Greece gets wiped off the map.

  I climb off the counter and crouch down by Indigo’s side. “We only have two minutes, Indigo. I need your help.” I shake him gently, and a drop of blood lands on the dark bruise that’s bloomed across both of his cheeks. I reach up to my forehead, and when I pull my hand away, it’s bloody from where I hit my head repeatedly on the floor, trying to force the voices out. “Wake up!” I say, shaking Indigo until his body rattles like a dry stick, but he doesn’t open his eyes. He’s too far gone.

  I have no other choice: Now that I’m back in my body, and my mind is clear, I know I’ll have to stop the lasers from merging into a super laser on my own.

  I can do this, I tell myself, as I sit cross-legged on the floor beside Indigo. I focus on breathing deeply, trying to get myself into a space calm enough to view the telescope, and hopefully, to bend it. I figure that if I bend it far enough to break it, the lasers won’t merge into a super laser, and the asteroid will pass Earth safely.

  I count myself down, starting at five, and when I get to one, I imagine myself flying up to the satellite. Sooner than I had hoped, I am soaring above the earth and funneling myself into the attached telescope’s metal tube.