“Judah, no.” Noa pulled his hand over her heart, pressed hard so she could feel it beat. “This doesn’t change.” She held his eyes, his distrusting, frightened eyes, tried to beam her certainty into his mind. “But—”
“Something’s wrong here,” he nodded, dropping his eyes. “And we can’t ignore it because we’re scared.”
“Yeah.”
Judah wrapped her hands in his, clinging to her as if she might disappear. His brow furrowed as he noticed the delicate bracelet on her wrist. “What’s that?”
“Olivia found it my room the other day. I think it might be Isla’s.”
Judah reached over, fingered the small treasure chest. The crease on his brow deepened, almost darkened.
“What?” Noa pressed.
Judah shook it off, got up. “I need to show you something.” He walked to the secret floorboard where she’d found his sketchbook, then reached behind it to a second floorboard, farther back. A second hiding place, one Noa hadn’t found. He pulled out a second sketchbook, even thicker than the first. “It’s not just the Girl for me.”
He handed her the book. She took it carefully, sat against the futon with it on her lap. He paced. Noa opened the cover and gasped—three faces stared at her: a man’s, a woman’s, and a boy’s.
Noa swallowed, recognizing the line of a jaw, the curve of a cheek. She didn’t know these faces, not exactly, but somehow she still knew the strokes by heart.
Noa turned the page: two figures stood, arms slung around each other. It was Judah and the boy, as if posing for an old photograph. Noa ran her hand over the pair of them. The other boy was a little taller, a little broader, maybe a little older. “You have a brother….”
Judah nodded; she didn’t see him, but didn’t need to. Noa turned the page. An older man stared back, his face and eyes like Judah’s, like the brother’s—but the angles sharper, somehow regal … and chillingly severe.
“Your father.”
Judah seemed to shiver; it passed to Noa, to her hand as she turned more pages. The figure didn’t change—Judah’s father stared at her from every angle, sketched in every size. From corner to corner, harsh eyes pierced each panorama; pages squeezed between the tense muscles of his mouth. Judah’s jawline, Judah’s hair—but frightening, sharper, hardened to the bone. As if Judah was his echo, or he was Judah amplified, a reverberation that destroyed Judah’s fragile, hidden harmonies.
Finally, on the last page of the sketchbook, the woman figure reappeared, just once, like a gasp of air and light. Instantly the chill was gone. Noa had never seen a face so beautiful and ethereal, yet somehow safe—alabaster pale but with long black hair, so black it was almost blue. Hair that could fall around you, a chrysalis against the world.
Then Noa saw her eyes. Her eyes were filled with stories: each iris held a map of sadness, but also love. Every experience, every memory written like a poem in her eyes.
“I think…” Judah swallowed softly. “She’s my mother.”
Noa closed the book and closed her eyes. “You have a family.”
Judah sat beside her. “Or had.”
“You mean…”
Judah shrugged painfully. “Sometimes people see the Otec and they don’t come back.”
“You think that’s what happened to them?”
Judah shook his head. “My brother … how could I forget my brother?”
Noa thought of Isla, how much it would hurt to lose her. “Maybe you were made to, because forgetting was easier.”
“Like Jeremy now, forgetting who he is?” Judah asked.
Noa frowned helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“The thing is, Noa…” Judah looked down, struggling for the words. “I think, somehow I know. I feel something, something else….” He forced himself to look her in the eyes. “In my father.”
Noa’s chest tightened.
Judah nodded sadly; she clearly felt it too. He took a folded page from his pocket, a page she realized he had torn from one of his sketchbooks, kept with him, afraid to leave it unattended, even hidden. He unfolded it: his father’s face, overwritten, time after time, with a single, repeated word:
Otec.
“I hear it, over and over, in my dreams,” Judah whispered, fighting desperation. “I see his face and hear it. It’s him. I know it is.”
“Your dad … is the Man with White Hands?” Noa breathed.
Judah nodded miserably. “I’m the reason, Noa, don’t you see? If my father’s the Otec, this—everything—it’s my fault. The reason Jeremy … and the Girl! Something must have happened to the Girl, Noa. You feel it too—”
Noa grabbed his hands, forced him to look at her. “No, Judah,” she said, soft but firm. “This has nothing to do with you. Even if he is your father, which we don’t know—”
“I wanted so badly to ignore it, Noa,” Judah said harshly, turning his anger inward in the way that broke her heart. “To think that there was something good—”
“There is something good, Judah. You and me, and Olivia and Jeremy … Miles, Isla! People are happy all around us! Their lives are great!”
Judah shook his head violently. “You feel it too! Don’t lie!”
Noa clutched his hands tight. “If he is your father, Judah, then we don’t have anything to worry about. Don’t you see? Because if he is, then he made you.”
Judah looked at her, doubting and desperate, wanting so much to believe. She kept her eyes firm on his, her hands strong.
She told herself, over and over, that it wasn’t necessarily a lie.
• • •
Olivia yanked Noa into her room the moment she reentered the Girls’ Pavilion.
“I’ve decided I have to do something,” Olivia informed her as she quickly shut the door. Annabelle was inside, unpacking something at Olivia’s desk.
“Do something?” Noa asked cautiously as she slowly lowered herself onto Olivia’s orange inflatable couch.
Olivia seemed anxious, frantic. “I’m not sure,” she said, chewing the side of her mouth. She sat next to Noa, drumming her fingers, tapping her foot up and down in a blur. “I’m happy Jeremy is back, I am, and I’m grateful the Otec helped him—”
“Praise Otec,” chimed Annabelle.
“But…” Olivia shook her head. “For some reason, the whole thing makes me want to … do something. For myself.”
Noa met her friend’s manic eyes, and her scar suddenly flashed hot. She recognized something in Olivia’s look—it was Noa’s look when she’d written her poem.
“What are you going to do?” Noa breathed.
Before Olivia could answer, a soft but insistent rapping shook the door. Olivia’s brow furrowed as she jumped up to answer it, hesitating before turning the knob. Noa cursed, for what felt like the millionth time, Harlow doors’ lack of peepholes.
She caught herself—she hadn’t needed peepholes before. Had she?
Olivia opened her door a sliver and yelped in surprise. She turned sideways to let the visitor slip in: Miles Keenan. Noa was surprised—but at the same time somehow not surprised at all.
What was happening?
Annabelle, at least, still seemed sane. “Miles? What are you doing here?” she asked in shocked disbelief.
Miles shrugged, looked uneasy himself. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see how you guys were. Now that Jeremy’s back, I guess?”
Olivia didn’t seem to care one way or another why Miles was there, just hurried him in. “If you stay, you can’t tell anyone what we do or say here. Room rules.”
Miles smiled his golden-retriever smile. “Never.” He plopped down easily next to Noa. She fought the feeling of familiarity, ignored the way her body automatically prepared for and adjusted to his weight beside her on the inflatable couch.
“Okay, O,” Annabelle said from Olivia’s des
k, where she had finished unpacking a tattoo kit.
“Your plan is to get new ink?” Noa asked.
Olivia’s mouth twitched. “Well, Jeremy’s always loved my tattoos, too. But”—she paused, struggling to explain—“but I don’t want any more mathematical shapes. I want something…”
“Forbidden,” Miles finished for her. Noa looked at him, and then she saw it in his eyes, too. That thing. Her heart pounded.
Olivia frowned. “I just don’t know what tattoo to get.”
The words were out of Noa’s mouth before she even knew she was speaking them.
“A poem,” Noa whispered. “It should be a poem.”
• • •
Noa waited anxiously outside her sister’s Mandarin class. Even though she and Isla shared a room, she felt as if she hadn’t actually seen Isla face-to-face in what seemed like forever. Isla had always been a night owl, but now their relationship seemed to exist only in the traces Isla left behind: her bracelet, dirty clothes, crumbs from late-night snacks attracting ants on their shared floor.
And Noa needed Isla, not her leavings. She needed to confide how everything felt like it was unraveling, how she was certain she was supposed to find a girl who did not exist, how people were disappearing or changing strangely and even Judah was haunted by faces he’d never seen. Isla would know what was real and what was not; she would make some flippant quip that dismissed all Noa’s nightmares, brushed off her fears. Isla could do that. She didn’t worry. She laughed.
Noa needed her big sister.
But as Noa waited in the hall, trying every so often to peek in through the Language Center’s cloudy, opaque glass, she felt only rising panic. Usually, just knowing she would soon have Isla’s refuge put Noa at ease. But now, each second that passed felt more frantic. Instead of feeling closer to seeing her sister, she had the insane feeling that she was closer to never seeing Isla again.
Slowly, Noa turned to face the hall, looking at the shapes of clustered students. A fog of paranoia crept and wove its way around her, and she suddenly wondered, with startling clarity, when she’d last seen anyone up close—not from a distance—besides Judah, Olivia, Jeremy, or Annabelle. Carly Ann, Noa remembered, but who else? Noa looked now at Ansley, Leticia, and Mary Jane, holding court with their backs to her a little distance down the hall. They’d been inducted to the Fools, but Noa hadn’t actually heard them brag or seen them strut.
That was strange.
With a careful breath, Noa walked slowly toward them, trying to ignore the urge to turn and flee in fear. When she came up behind Ansley, Mary Jane, and Leticia, she paused—no giggles or voices floated her way. She reached out a shaking hand to tap Ansley on her shoulder.
Ansley didn’t turn.
Cringing, Noa touched her shoulder again. When Ansley still didn’t turn, Noa walked around to face them, and screamed.
The three of them—Ansley, Leticia, and Mary Jane—had no faces.
• • •
Noa fled, running as fast as she could away from the faceless girls. She didn’t know where her body was taking her; she thought feebly to herself to go to Judah but wasn’t sure her legs could respond. Suddenly, she was in the hallway in front of Dr. Chandler’s History class, which was about to start. Olivia was there, and Annabelle, and Miles. And Jeremy, staring serenely at the door.
“Word is, we’re gonna get Jaycee as a sub,” Annabelle was saying gloomily as Noa sped around the corner.
Miles saw her first. “Noa?” he asked, instantly worried. “What’s wrong? Why are you so late?”
Noa shook her head, words completely failing her.
“Get Judah,” Olivia told Miles urgently. “Go!”
Noa stood stock-still, shaking, unable to explain what she had seen.
“It’s going to be okay, Noa,” Olivia said, voice high and forced. She took Noa by the shoulders, tried to look into her eyes. Noa tried to focus, but her heart was pounding, vision swimming black and white. The whole hall behind Olivia flashed and blurred and jarred—that static again, but now unending, until she was there, the Girl, small mouth moving, wide eyes huge.
“I can’t hear you!” Noa cried to the ghost.
“Noa, it’s me, Olivia—” Olivia tried, frantic. “Please, it’s going to be okay—”
Olivia was suddenly jerked backward, yelping under sharp, peach talons.
“It is most certainly not going to be okay.” Ms. Jaycee’s voice was shrill and harsh, simpering smile nowhere to be found. Noa’s eyes finally focused as Ms. Jaycee yanked down the back collar of Olivia’s blouse.
Noa’s words, in black script, spun down Olivia’s neck.
Olivia’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the only one who could have been Jaycee’s informant. “Jeremy,” she whimpered, “are you even in there at all?”
“You should be thanking him,” Ms. Jaycee snapped. “Explain yourself!”
Olivia looked ready to collapse—but then, all of a sudden, she ripped herself from Ms. Jaycee’s grasp like a wild Amazon, her collar tearing off in Jaycee’s hand. She clawed off her blouse entirely, threw it to the floor, stood defiant in her hot-pink bra. With her back ramrod-straight and proud, she yelled right into Ms. Jaycee’s face, “Read it for yourself!”
Ms. Jaycee froze—shock and disbelief magnified almost comically across her face. When the vice headmistress finally spoke, each word was separate, seething. “I. Would. Never.”
That’s when Noa found her voice. Or rather, heard it, speaking the words she’d found in her own heart:
“Girl-Beast wake and wail with me
Pack your wounds with rocks and mud
Let growls rip betwixt your teeth
Be killer, hunter, fighter, thief,
Give no mercy, no relief,
Spill truth with flesh and blood!”
Ms. Jaycee whirled. Annabelle cowered into the wall, whimpering, but Noa stood her ground—not because she was frozen, but because she felt electrified, heat and certainty spinning out from the scar across her chest.
“I should have known this was you,” Ms. Jaycee said, her sad, cold smile finally making its reappearance. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“Noa may have written the poem, but Annabelle is the one with the contraband,” Jeremy pointed out blandly, as if he wasn’t betraying every one of them. Even Annabelle’s terrified yelp provoked no reaction.
“Well, I have no choice. Review for you all.” Before any of them could think to run, Ms. Jaycee had Noa and Olivia in her razor clutches, and Jeremy had Annabelle pinned by her hands. Noa and Olivia struggled, but it was useless; Ms. Jaycee was fueled by righteous indignation, by zealotry and a sense of duty. She and Jeremy pulled them roughly around the corner—just as Noa thought she glimpsed Miles and Judah, heading the wrong way, past the windows in the hall.
“Jud—” Noa tried to cry, feeling one last spark of hope—if only they turned, if only they saw—but Ms. Jaycee yanked her hard through a door before the word was out.
There was no earthly way he could have heard her.
• • •
Ms. Jaycee locked her office door after they’d been bound to chairs, their hands tied behind them in plastic circlets, their mouths taped shut. Now in control, she became calm, collected. She looked at them with her most compassionate, kind smile—their teacher once again.
“You know, I think of you kids as my children, truly,” she confided, in that faux-intimate way Noa loathed. “There is nothing that I treasure more than knowing that I help to shelter and to guide you. It’s my purpose. My calling.” She walked to her Wall of Wonder, those photos of so many students, just like them, whom she had straightened out, had ‘saved.’ She sighed, gently touched a face or two.
Ms. Jaycee turned to Olivia, whose nakedness she had swaddled in her own powder-peach designer blazer. Olivia
was scowling in a way that would have made Judah proud, but as Ms. Jaycee tenderly tucked back a wisp of hot-pink hair, Noa saw fear crowd out the defiance in Olivia’s eyes.
“I know you feel betrayed,” Ms. Jaycee told her softly. “But Jeremy reported you because he loves you.” Olivia looked down, blinked back tears. Noa knew Olivia would rather kill herself than cry in front of Ms. Jaycee.
Ms. Jaycee murmured, as if in understanding. “You already see that, don’t you. That’s why I’m going to give you two a little time, let him explain his side. So you can sort things out before you see the Otec, praise him.” Ms. Jaycee nodded to Jeremy, who stepped forward to lift Olivia’s lassoed hands from her chair back, then began to guide her out. Olivia’s eyes darted wildly; she looked in panic at Noa, who tried her hardest to look reassuring.
Once the door had closed, Ms. Jaycee turned to Noa and Annabelle. She walked first to Annabelle, who looked paralyzed with terror.
Ms. Jaycee sighed deeply. “Oh, Annabelle,” she began sadly, “You’ve been here the longest, you know.” Noa looked between them, wondering what that meant, but Annabelle looked too freaked out to care. Ms. Jaycee continued, as if wanting to explain, to unburden herself for some terrible decision. “The danger of what you’ve been doing, Annabelle, is that you help others to act out, even if you yourself are merely a facilitator and not a practitioner.” She touched Annabelle’s wet cheek, slick with silent tears. “Don’t worry, Annabelle, you’ll see him first. He will make everything so much easier.”
At that, Annabelle’s tears turned to awkward, clumsy sobs, partially muffled into tortured sounds by the silencing tape. “Oh, sweetie!” Ms. Jaycee cried, embracing her. “There is nothing to be afraid of! The Otec, praise him, is your protector! We all must do our part!”
Ms. Jaycee helped Annabelle up and guided her to a hidden sliding door behind the Japanese screen—the one that showcased Ms. Jaycee’s quote Alone we can do so little! Together we can do so much! Let the Otec guide you! Ms. Jaycee pulled Annabelle, sobbing, stumbling, behind her, as two hands reached through to help them across the threshold. Strong, male hands in latex gloves of blinding white.
Renegade Red Page 5
