Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  “You move when I say you move,” Monty continues.

  Charlie taps me on the shoulder again, but I glance at him and shake my head.

  “I can’t leave him here, Charlie. But you should go. Get Indigo to safety.”

  Charlie crouches down and lays Indigo behind the van. “I was going to say I’ll come with you.” He stands back up. “I never thought I’d say this, but I wish I still had my ax.”

  “Me too.” I feel blood dribble down my forehead to my cheek, and I wipe it away with the back of my sleeve. “Let’s do this.” I slip out from behind the van and move silently toward the office, and without looking back, I know that Charlie is right behind me.

  “Monty, come on,” Finn is saying as we get closer to the open doorway. “Just put the gun down.” Monty’s only a few feet away from him now.

  “I was going to do something big,” Monty rants. “This metal . . . it will change the world. And I was going to be on the forefront.”

  “You’re not a failure,” Finn says, and then his eyes bulge as he notices us. I put my finger to my lips and he nods slightly.

  “But this would have made me a leader,” Monty says. “A leader like Dad. But better. For something better.” He’s waving the gun around like he’s forgotten it’s in his hand.

  We are right outside the office now. In the glass, my reflection doesn’t look like me at all. The girl in the reflection has blood streaming down her face, but she doesn’t look scared; she looks determined. On the other side of the glass, Monty hasn’t noticed us yet, and Finn is struggling not to look at us or give us away.

  “Run,” I whisper to Charlie, who shakes his head. Instead, he grabs my hand and holds it, and we enter the doorway together.

  “Finn didn’t do anything,” I announce. “I bent the telescope.”

  Monty flips around and glares at me. He points his gun toward us, and there is a huge circle of sweat under his armpit. “Shut up,” he says to me, and then he turns back to Finn. “And you—” Monty takes a step toward him, and I push Monty from behind just as Finn sticks his foot out. Monty stumbles and falls forward, his arms spinning and one hand grappling to hold onto his weapon. As he hits the concrete, he tries to catch himself with the hand holding the gun.

  BANG!

  I scream as Finn collapses to the floor, blood pouring from his shoulder.

  Groaning, Monty lifts his head up an inch off the concrete and stares at Finn as if he can’t believe what just happened. “Did I . . . ,” he stutters. “Did I just do that?”

  I move quickly across the office toward Finn. “He’ll bleed to death if we don’t—”

  “Don’t move!” Monty orders, swinging the gun my way. I stop and watch Monty climb slowly to his feet.

  “Monty,” I say. “You have to help him.”

  “Help him?” Monty asks. “He didn’t help me.” Despite his tough words, Monty looks like the scared kid I first met, the one with the A-holes cap, and I know that he doesn’t want to do this. He just wants to be somebody, and he doesn’t know how else to do it.

  “You can still prove your dad was wrong about you,” I say, “if you help him.”

  Monty’s lip trembles. “How?”

  “Take that power cord and wrap it around his wound,” I say, silently thanking Indigo for his annoying after-work training sessions that I thought were totally useless at the time. “An inch or so above and below,” I add. “It should stop the bleeding.” Monty hesitantly picks up the power cord and wraps it around Finn’s shoulder, even though Finn shrieks in pain every time Monty touches him. “Now tie the ends under his arm,” I continue. Monty ties the ends of the cord under Finn’s arm, and Finn whimpers.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” Charlie says, but as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, Monty startles like he’s been in a dream. He snaps his gun up toward us again.

  “No cops,” Monty says. “Put it away. Now.”

  Charlie slides the phone back into his pocket.

  “Who are you?” Monty demands.

  “Callie’s boyfriend.”

  “Well, Callie’s boyfriend, if you never see my name on a building, you can thank your girlfriend for that.”

  “But your name is on buildings,” I insist. “Remember the Cooper Science building?”

  “That’s my dad!” Monty walks toward the doorway, his gun still pointed at us. “Now I don’t want to do this, but you know I can’t let you leave.” Monty clicks the trigger back, and as calm as I’m trying to be, having a gun pointed at you in real life is totally different than in a vision. In this case, my body takes over before my brain can stop it—my palms start sweating and adrenaline rockets through my muscles—and I have to force myself to pull it together, and quickly.

  “You won’t kill us,” I say slowly. “Because then the police will come looking for us, and eventually, it will lead them to you,” I add, trying to sound more confident than I feel. “And you don’t deserve to end up in prison, although some therapy would do you a world of good. Now put the gun down.”

  “I can’t.” Monty shakes his head back and forth violently. “You’ve left me no choice,” he says. “I was never the best at anything,” he adds. “This was my gold medal!”

  “You’re not a killer,” I insist, trying to draw his attention away from Charlie. “You don’t deserve to go to prison.”

  “How do you know what I deserve?”

  “I don’t. But I do know that this isn’t who you are,” I say. “You’re better than this.”

  Monty steps forward and presses the gun against my chest. His hand is shaking, and the cold barrel trembles against my T-shirt, making my heart pound with fear. “You don’t know anything about me.” He presses the barrel against my body so hard that it pushes me out of the office and across the warehouse floor. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  “But I do,” a voice says from behind us.

  Monty stops, and his eyes narrow into a deadly glare. He unconsciously lifts the gun inches away from my chest, and I glance behind me. Jasper is standing in the office doorway, shaking with rage. His fists are clenched by his sides, and his face looks as if the blood has been drawn out of him. He didn’t leave.

  “What are you gonna do, boy?” Monty asks him. “Time to choose: money or—”

  Suddenly there’s a screech as the right end of a metal beam bends away from the ceiling. Monty looks up, and his eyes widen when he sees the sharp piece of metal dangling above him.

  “Not money,” Jasper says, and the left end of the metal beam bends with a loud screech, forming a large C-shape.

  “You wouldn’t—” Monty says, but before he can finish his sentence, the metal beam crashes down on him, trapping him against the floor. He tries to wriggle out from under the curved beam, but one side of it starts wrapping tighter around him. He squirms in the other direction, but the other side wraps around him until he’s pinned on both sides, and he can’t move. “I gave you everything,” Monty shrieks. “You were just a kid on the street until I—”

  The metal beam bends over Monty’s mouth, and he mumbles angry words beneath it.

  Ignoring Monty, Jasper stares across the room at me. “I’m sorry, Callie,” Jasper says. “I choose you.” Our eyes lock for a long moment, and my heartbeat explodes like fireworks in my chest. It’s like the first time we met all over again: with my heart in free-fall, I circle round and round into the blue whirlpool of his eyes. I try to rip my gaze away from his, but it’s like we’re stuck there, our fates locked together in a passionate, confusing embrace. After several seconds, Jasper walks quickly past me to the front door. He puts his hand on the doorknob, but pauses, still facing the door. “Even if you don’t choose me.”

  He pulls the door open and walks out into the night, and I watch him until the door closes behind him. I don’t notice until that second that I’m gripping Charlie’s hand so tightly my fingers are cramping up.

  I glance at Charlie, and my heart starts to slow its ra
pid pounding. Charlie nods at me, and I look back at the closed door, envisioning Jasper still standing there. Jasper chose me. He chose to save my life and give up everything Monty had given him. And some part of me knows that that’s what love is—the ability to sacrifice yourself for the person you love, even if you don’t get love in return—and I wish Jasper didn’t feel that way for me. Even though it doesn’t change how betrayed I feel by him, there’s a softness in my heart that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. It reminds me that Jasper was someone I cared about deeply. Sure, he betrayed me in the worst way possible, but then he came back for me. He didn’t leave Charlie and me to die. I know, at that moment, I will always love him for that.

  “Callie?” I feel someone squeeze my hand, and I tune back into Charlie talking to me. “Should I call the ambulance now?”

  I nod. “Tell them there’s three pick-ups.”

  Charlie pulls out his phone and dials 911, and I glance back at the door. There’s good in Jasper, I’ve seen it. Part of me wants to run out there and tell him I forgive him, but the other, stronger part of me is going to stay right here with Charlie. I lock my hand in his, and we walk over to where Monty is trapped under the metal beam.

  “An ambulance is coming,” I say, glaring down at Monty. “And I’m going to tell them everything. But if you ever tell them that my mom helped you—” I feel Charlie look at me questioningly, but I continue, “I will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.”

  Monty mumbles angrily as we turn away.

  “Wait,” I say, and turn back to Monty. I lean down and carefully straighten his fake black bangs across his forehead. “There. That’s better.”

  Monty mumbles through the metal. I can’t make out any exact words, but I imagine they’re an equal mix of vengeance and vanity.

  Charlie and I walk over to the van, and behind it, Indigo is still lying across the floor, unconscious. Charlie picks him up off the ground and strains to lift him over his shoulders.

  “Think he’ll wake up soon?” Charlie asks, settling Indigo’s weight equally across both shoulders.

  “I sure hope so.”

  “Wait for me,” Finn calls from behind us. He stumbles out of the office, one hand pressed against the extension cord wrapped around his shoulder. Charlie and I turn around and wait for him to catch up to us.

  “You okay?” I ask Finn.

  “Do I look okay?”

  Finn’s shoulder is dark with blood, but it looks like the bleeding has stopped. Still, when he reaches us, I try to help him by lacing his uninjured arm over my shoulder, but he pushes me away. Then the four of us, bloody, hurt, conscious and unconscious, limp through the warehouse toward the exit.

  “Can you really do that?” Charlie asks as we walk slowly across the warehouse. “Haunt dreams?”

  “Nah. But he doesn’t know that.”

  Charlie grins at me, and for a moment, everything is okay again.

  But then I pull open the front door, and look out into the empty night. I quickly scan the surrounding buildings, looking for any hint of Jasper, but there’s no one as far as I can see. He’s gone.

  I slowly shake my head, and force myself to focus on what Charlie is saying to me.

  “I said, do you want me to go after him?” Charlie asks.

  I glance out at the salt flats, to where Finn is stumbling off into the night.

  “Let him go,” I say aloud, and I know I’m not talking about Finn at all: I’m really convincing myself of what I have to do with Jasper.

  Charlie and I settle Indigo comfortably against the outside of the warehouse, and then Charlie takes my hand again and squeezes it. I look up, and in Charlie’s eyes, there are questions about me and Jasper, and me and him.

  “Emergency ax,” I say, and he smiles at our familiar game. It’s my answer to Charlie’s unspoken question about who I choose to love, and he knows it.

  “Lit wick,” Charlie responds. “With both ends burning.”

  In the distance, the ambulance’s siren breaks through the night. Charlie’s arm laces around my waist, and we both look at the salt flats glowing white under the moon, like a fresh field of snow.

  “Let’s start over,” Charlie says. He turns to me and holds out his hand. “Hi, I’m Charlie, and I’m not psychic.”

  I grin and twist my pinkie finger around his. “Hi, I’m Callie, and I am,” I say. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all,” Charlie says, shaking his head. “Not at all.”

  Charlie kisses me.

  It is more than I remembered a kiss could be: it is true, and good, and life-affirming. It is everything. Because with Charlie, it’s not about flash and glamour, smoke and mirrors, things that look better from the outside than the inside. In other words, we don’t have a movie-worthy love scene.

  We have us, which is better than a movie. Our kiss is real, and rich, and deeper than anything I’ve ever felt before. And after, both of us breathless with all of life’s possibilities, we hold each other as we watch the ambulance race toward us, its red and blue lights painting the salt flats bright colors we’ve never seen. Then we look into each other’s eyes, and I don’t hide anything—because now, he can know all of me.

  “I missed us,” I say, and his lips murmur his agreement.

  US. A two-letter word that spells out a whole life.

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  I’m almost packed for my move to New York when Mom opens my bedroom door and pops her head in. “You almost ready, honey?” she asks.

  I nod. Over the past three months, I’ve packed everything meaningful from here: my computer, my clothes, a few books, a picture of Mom and Richard, and a picture of Michael, the man I’m getting used to thinking of as Dad. I wanted to bring a picture of Indigo, but he refused. “You can always come back to visit,” he said when I dropped by the office to say good-bye. It’s hard for him, though: Indigo’s returning to normal more slowly than he had hoped after being cut off from his body for so long. And as supportive as he’s trying to be about my move, I can tell he’s going to miss me.

  “Are you nervous about classes?” Mom asks. She’s trying to stall me from zipping my suitcase.

  I roll my most faded hoodie into a tight ball and stuff it into the last few available inches of space. “Very,” I respond. It’s sort of true. Although I’m not very nervous about the few freshman NYU courses I’ll be taking next fall, I’m very nervous about my psychic training classes—which are much more strenuous than biology and algebra—of how to bend all types of physical substances with my mind, and how to use mind control to convince people to change their decisions, hopefully for the better. “Finding the bad guys,” Indigo used to say during my initial training. At the New York office, the training will continue, but I hear it’s harder, and the boss is tougher. But luckily, Charlie will be beside me the whole time. And even Amber, who’s starting to become a friend.

  I finish stuffing my hoodie into my suitcase and try to zip it, but it just pops right back open. “Let me help,” Mom says, sitting on the overstuffed bag and holding the zippers together.

  “Maybe I packed a bit too much,” I say, but quickly zip the suitcase closed before she can agree with me.

  “Did you ever say good-bye to that guy friend of yours?” she asks. Mom’s thrilled that I’m back with Charlie. She’s reminded me a few times about Mr. Bernstein’s nephew, the one with the motorcycle—and I can tell she hopes I have nothing to do with him.

  “Haven’t seen him,” I say, and it’s true. I haven’t seen Jasper since he saved our lives from Monty. But I got a letter in the mail the other day. It was postmarked from some random city in the Midwest, one that started with a C, like Cincinnati or Cleveland. There wasn’t a return address on it, just the picture of a flamingo on the moon and a bubble caption that said, “Wish you were here.” I recall the night I planted the flamingo into Jasper’s dream, and I remember telling Jasper that I didn’t dream, and so sleeping felt like being dead, but that’s not true an
ymore. Now, every time I sleep, I have dreams of Jasper, and in every one of them, I’m painfully alive. Every time I’ve said I’m sorry, and I loved you, too. But not everyone you love is a forever. Sometimes you can love someone for a reason, and for a time, and although you never stop loving them, no matter how much they may betray you, you move on, because they aren’t the one who makes you into an us.

  “Make sure to say good-bye to my hubby,” Mom says shyly, and I grin at her. Ever since they eloped, Mom has loved calling Richard her hubby.

  “Will do,” I respond, and Mom reaches over and gives me a hug. I know how rare those are, so I try to soak it up.

  “Love you,” I say.

  “Ditto, kiddo,” she responds, the closest words she can find to the word love.

  I zip my suitcase and drag it downstairs to the living room. Richard is sprawled out on the couch, drinking a soda and watching a baseball game on television. Now that they’re married, we don’t have to watch our neighbors’ TVs from the roof anymore. She gave Richard a television for his wedding present, which I thought was a grand gesture on Mom’s part.

  In front of the television, sitting cross-legged on the floor, is Michael. He’s visiting today from Shady Hills. Although Indigo refuses to say why he hid the truth about Michael from me for so long, he’s making up for it by bringing him here once a week to spend time with Mom and me. And Richard doesn’t mind having Michael here occasionally. “Someone I can watch the games with,” he says.

  I’ve started to get to know Michael, but I know it will take a long time and many hours in front of the television, tapping our shoes and trying to communicate, for us to really understand each other. There’s so much I want to know about him, and most of these are things that Mom can never know.

  Mom’s still in the dark about my psychic abilities, which I know Indigo wouldn’t approve of, but it’s the only way to assure her safety. Mom doesn’t even know that I’m aware she stole government secrets, and luckily, she never has to. Finn had already pleaded guilty for breaking into the NASA website to name a star after his mother, which briefly made the website available to the entire public, so no one knows exactly what information went missing. Besides, it’s irrelevant that Mom took the asteroid trajectory information since the asteroid passed safely by the earth. And since Finn plea-bargained down to no jail time by testifying against Monty, who ended up in prison for treason and attempted terrorism, no one has to take the blame. Now Mom’s no longer in danger, and I’m going to make sure it stays that way.