Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

He ran a finger down my arm. “I know what else we could do…”

  I thought he was going to say go at it again. But he didn’t. “We could put your skills to good use.”

  He had weed, and we smoked a shit ton of it. Then he laid out his plan for me. First some casual snooping, and then Minnie and Cord and Julia.

  “Baby, you need cash, I know you do. I see it written all over you. Scrappy, needy, ready to do anything to get what you want.” He paused, leaning across the bed to whisper to me. “You were born for this.”

  My head tingled as I took in the tainted compliments. Was I really just a girl who was born to be a criminal? A liar? I had come out to California, in a way, for a fresh start. To escape a crappy situation. I remembered what Katerina had told me. The world is very big. Perhaps bigger than someone like you might see yet. Look where you go.

  For the first time since I’d gotten here, I wanted to talk to my parents. Tell them where I was. The thought faded within a couple seconds.

  “You got talent, Charley. People like you. I really need you to help me.” He kissed me hard again, and while he was what I had wanted … my insides felt like a wiggly, gross teeter-totter.

  For the next hour, I sat on his bed while he paced the room, detailing what he needed from me. He wanted me to get into Dr. Carrillo’s head and find out what she had going on in the program, what she’d discovered. He wanted me to look into the lives of people who worked at the lab and at the CIA, as well as other richies, and then manipulate and blackmail them. Get their social security numbers, bank account numbers, maybe even codes to the safes where they stored their jewelry. Then use my charm to convince Cord and Minnie to move to a new scientific facility.

  Stealing. Blackmailing. Manipulation. Lies.

  I’d been staring at people’s fingers and palms for years. Not once had it occurred to me to do something with that information. So why, now, was I even giving it a second thought?

  Maybe it was the pressure of Henry’s serious magnetism. The expectations. The stare. Maybe it was just because in my heart, I knew what I had been doing was wrong all along. I never knew there were borders to my own selfishness. Maybe I was crossing a line that even I didn’t know was there.

  Yet there was the gooey way Henry made me feel wanted, sexy, and important. Dad always said I was a giant screwup. Mom told me I would never get out of Carmel. Even boys tossed me aside. I supposed the idea of controlling my own fate this way, holding a certain amount of power, offered an allure. It was a cherry on top of a melting, messed-up sundae.

  “Hey, are you even listening? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I shrugged and reached for the joint. He slapped my hand. “No more until you get some work done.”

  31

  Julia

  I ran into Minnie and Cord outside on my way home from breakfast. I was relieved to see her again after thinking she’d been sucked into the great void of SRI. Cord threw a friendly hand in the air.

  While we walked together, I couldn’t take my gaze off the blur of grass, an intense focus that would surely melt any kind of apprehension I’d felt earlier.

  I’d already told Cord that I saw Aunt Sabrina yesterday in the cage but hadn’t said much more than that. The idea of going to Mandaree without telling the authorities paralyzed me at first. But by then, I knew I had to go. I decided to tell them more, share more secrets. Trust them. I told the two of them I was headed to see my aunt—in person.

  Minnie took a step toward me and clapped her hands together.

  “Good!” she said. “And here you thought she done died.”

  Cord was more worried. “You ain’t just going over there alone. Right?”

  Of course, I was going alone. That’s what she had requested. I’d go there, find her, bring her home. I’d wipe my hands of SRI and sew up the gaping hole in my life that was my missing aunt. But as I told myself this, I was unsteady, standing up in a rocking canoe. If Aunt Sabrina could not escape on her own after ten years, then how can I bring her home so easily?

  I could feel Cord’s heavy gaze, pleading for some clue to my sanity. I didn’t have anything to offer and kept my eyes averted, watching my tennis shoes as we walked.

  At the entrance of the dorm stairwell, we passed the faint smell of sour milk. I raced ahead, trying to escape the smell—and their doubts. The metal echo of our footsteps rang in my ears.

  Cord quickly galloped ahead of me, stopped on the stair above me, blocking my way. He looked at me, really looked at me. “You’re gonna call the cops, right?”

  “No.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, shut my mouth,” Minnie said. “That’s just askin’ for trouble.”

  “Yeah, why not, Julia?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer and instead moved around him before darting through the door to the hall. I didn’t want a cross-examination.

  Just then, the door to Henry’s room opened. He emerged in the hallway and kissed someone in the doorway. Brown messy hair. A low giggle. Charley?

  Henry saw the three of us down the hall, watching. He smirked and gave us a small salute before striding away from us down the hall. Cord’s face wilted and then hardened. It was clear he liked Charley as more than a friend, and that scene right there? I knew it would crush him like a tin can.

  My stomach coiled. Samuel had gone to Henry’s room and disappeared. Now his door slammed shut and the girl did too.

  We couldn’t lose Charley too.

  32

  Charley

  Henry wasn’t so bad. We left campus, and over the next several hours, I “bumped” into people Henry had identified as important. First, the balding General Macomber at the grocery store. I ran into him and fell to the floor. When he reached down to help me, I held tight to his hand and flirted with him for a few minutes, pulling and chewing on words in his aura. Words like MKULTRA Subproject 58 and SIGINT operation in Africa. Semipalatinsk Test Site, Russia’s primary nuclear testing facility. Plans to train a remote viewing team in the Army. When we let go, I jogged to a park bench and recited everything I’d seen while Henry wrote it down.

  “Does that stuff even make sense to you? I mean, why did you want that information?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s like gold for us.”

  For good measure, Henry had me vigorously shake the hand of some big-time artist, Richard something-or-other, outside a gallery. My assignment was to learn where he stored his finished paintings. I got nothing but visions of what he ate for breakfast. Lumpy oatmeal.

  Two hours later, I stood outside Dr. Carrillo’s office in the Dungeon. Henry gave me a kiss—long, lingering, pretty hot, really. But I wasn’t feeling it. My head throbbed from the pressure, and guilt ate at me like acid.

  “Do this and we’ll be royalty, babe,” he said.

  I knocked hard on her office door, and Dr. Carrillo called for me to come inside. I did, closing the door behind me. The familiar smell of stale coffee and paper wafted through the air. She peered over her reading glasses at me and shuffled some papers. “Charley, we don’t have you scheduled today.”

  “I know. Um. It seems like things are really falling apart here,” I said slowly, easing myself into a cold metal chair across from her desk. “I just wondered if things are going to … you know … stay afloat.”

  “The study has revealed profound findings.” She turned away, flipping through papers again, but her lip twitched.

  I put my hand out slowly, placing it on top of her small, childlike hand. “Dr. Carrillo. I just worry—”

  She snapped her hand away. “Charlotte! I don’t know what’s worse. People who manipulate others, or people who think I’m stupid enough to fall for it.”

  My face burned. I really was a terrible manipulator. Not natural at all. I was sure I had manipulated people here and there. I probably did it to Cindy, to Ruby, probably to Cord and Julia too. But I didn’t really intend to do it, with a real means to an end. I could just be a real jerk.

>   This was different. This was intentional, and I didn’t have the smooth shrewdness of a con artist.

  “Get out of my office, young lady. You should hope I don’t send you packing today.”

  My shoulders tensed, and I felt like a little kid. But I wasn’t a little kid. And I was sick of being treated like I didn’t matter. Henry, for all his faults, had never made me feel that way.

  “Well, I guess it won’t matter when the CIA shutters your little whack-job project, right? Because pretty much everyone around you is dropping like flies.”

  “Out.” She pointed at the door, glaring at me.

  I hadn’t rattled her at all. But me? I felt like I’d stepped into a hockey game and someone had checked me against the boards. Nerves flying and adrenaline pumping, I slammed the door to her office.

  I strode down the dark hallway as thoughts fought for attention: was this the path I really wanted to go down? Was Henry the guy I really want to be around? “She knew what I was doing, and she kicked me out.” I flopped my hands on my sides. “Sorry?”

  Henry shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Shit, Charley! This could be worth a million bucks. I know the experiments said you really had ESP. But maybe you’re just a fake, too. Is that it?”

  He sounded like Dad when he got pissed at Mom. Always critical of the extra fifty pounds she carried, criticizing her management of the diner, furious with whatever small problem, whether it was she hadn’t filled up the car with gas or hadn’t cleaned the kitchen right.

  This was important to Henry, but yet there were more important things going on. Things that needed my attention. Katerina was still missing. Julia had just found her aunt. Cord, well, he was hurting.

  Henry threw his hands in the air and took off, and I sat down on the concrete floor, feeling as if all the blood had been sucked from my brain.

  I wondered how he’d be next time I saw him. I’d look for those minute little signs that said he’d calmed down and was approachable. It’s funny how growing up with a raging alcoholic who could blow any second made me acutely aware of everything. The turn of the neck and the slurred words meant all hell was going to break loose. Conversely, the slump of the shoulders, the relaxed forehead, meant he was calm and available. I figured Henry might be the same.

  After a few minutes, I conjured up enough energy to go back to my room. I wandered down the hall, passing Dr. Carrillo’s door, set slightly ajar. Voices emanated from her office, and I slowed down, craning my neck to see inside. A couple of military people stood in her office, and she spoke to them in low tones. I should say something. I should tell her what Henry was doing.

  I got to her door, and then an image swam in my head: it was of me counting bills and bills of money. All my problems and worries would disappear with money, right? My knuckles raised, I was ready to knock, when her low voice broke the silence.

  “Stay put. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t do anything.”

  She paused, and I waited for the response. It took me a second to realize she was on the phone. The two military officials stood nearby.

  “No, no, no. Look, I will arrange for the meeting. Bring the documents.”

  I thought of Henry. A liar. Dr. Strong. Liar. Katerina was supposedly a liar too. Now, was Dr. Carrillo into some dirty business too?

  My stomach curdled, and without giving it a second thought, I ran down the hallway, away from her office and every question I had.

  “Charlotte?” Mom’s voice stuttered at first and then swelled. “Charlotte! Oh, my Lord. Where the hell are you?”

  Trembling and pacing in my room, I still had to play it cool. I held the phone tight but flattened my tone. “I’m in San Francisco. Didn’t Ruby tell you?”

  “Why on earth are you there?”

  The sharp tone of her voice put me right back in the war zone of my house. I had wanted to leave it all behind, yet family was part of who I was. Like a jumbled pie recipe. Each one of them—Mom, Dad, Cindy—and all my mixed-up experiences were the ingredients. They were all shoved into a pie tin and lit on fire in the oven.

  They were my family, and even if we were messed up, they meant something to me. Just like Cord’s pure and simple family meant something to him. And Julia’s strange family meant so much to her that she’d obsess about saving them.

  “I don’t know. I guess I ran away.”

  “Hmph.” Dishes clinked in the background and Ramona shouted out a sloppy joe order to the kitchen. The silence expanded between us. I didn’t know how I felt, what I wanted, how to explain. Thoughts flitted like fireflies in my mind.

  “How’s Cindy?”

  “Fine.”

  “Oh.”

  “What in the world are you doing in San Francisco? Did you join some sort of hippie cult?”

  “Did you get the check I sent?”

  “Check.”

  “I sent you money.”

  “Why on earth would you have money?”

  “I—”

  “Are you in trouble again, because if you are, there’s no way in hell—”

  My pulse quickened. “No, Ma. I’m at the Stanford Research Institute. They’re doing tests on psychics.”

  “Oh, please.” She sighed, and I could imagine her wiping her sweaty hands on her apron and tearing off the paper tab for a customer’s order.

  “It’s true,” I said. “They’re paying me. When the scientist invited me, I was going to tell you, but Dad was … drunk. And…” There was so much I wanted to tell her. About what I’d seen, all that was happening. My new friends.

  “The billboard is still up,” she said. “People come in and ask.” It was as if she hadn’t heard anything I’d said.

  I wasn’t going to talk about the stupid billboard. Like usual, we’d have two separate conversations. “Can Cindy come live with me?”

  “With you? Puh-leeze.”

  I struggled to swallow the emotional knot. My head bobbled around on my neck. I wasn’t going to cry. Dammit.

  “Why don’t you just get a divorce?”

  “What?” Her voice sounded like a whip.

  “You and Dad hate each other. It makes for a pretty shitty place to live.”

  “Charlotte!”

  “It’s true.”

  Silence. I stuck my finger through the curling loops of the telephone cord.

  “I love you, Mama.”

  “If you really did, you’d come home.”

  I was silent. She didn’t say anything for a long stretch.

  “I love you, too,” she said. I could hear her voice break.

  Her words felt like the quick, hard kisses she gave me on my forehead when I was little.

  Full of love, but they hurt.

  “Come home.”

  I paused, gazing at the linoleum floor. “Not yet.”

  Later that night, I opened my door to find Henry leaning on the frame, giving me that smolder. “I need you to help me out.”

  No.

  He slung a finger through my belt loop and pulled me toward him.

  Yes.

  His lips hovered next to mine, teasing me, melting me. He was so bad for me. He pulled away slowly and leaned back, denying me the kiss. “Minnie avoids me at all costs.”

  I tilted my head. “Yeah, well, she hates you.”

  “Which is why you need to win her over. Tell her the program is shutting down and she needs to go to a new location for tests.”

  “That true?”

  His lips were now so close to mine and his hot breath was a magnet. “Not for you, baby—if you get this done.”

  I pulled away a half an inch.

  He moved closer again. “I need her and Cord to get there. And Julia too, if you can.”

  I broke away from his trance and took a step back. “Where?”

  He moved toward me slowly, again. A vampire. A hot vampire. “It’ll be good. They’ll do great work.”

  “Where?”

  He shook his head, not wanting to talk anymore. His lips ran up my ne
ck, and it made my stomach twirl. He whispered near my ear. “Don’t worry about it. Just some lab in North Dakota.”

  “North Dakota?” I mumbled. That’s where Julia’s aunt was. Questions became bumper cars in my mind. Did they pay psychics more there? But what about Julia’s story that her aunt had bruises and death threats?

  He pulled back, just an inch away from my face. His hands pressed the side of my face. It seemed like he cared. Maybe. “Just know that you and I will walk away with more money than you can imagine.”

  I recalled Katerina telling me how if you drop out, you forfeit the cash to the others still in the program. Maybe this was his angle.

  “How much?” I felt bad asking that instead of asking the bigger question of why. But it mattered.

  “Six figures.”

  “Where’s that kind of money even from?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He touched my lips lightly with his and pulled away. Everything sounded muted, like the muffled sound of falling snow in the woods. Suddenly I wanted to do this. Wanted to help him again. Make him happy.

  I nodded slowly, entranced by him. The parted lips. The heavy eyes. The dark sexual energy. Something else, too. It felt fuzzy, as if I was a sleepwalker. I knew exactly what I would do next. I would get Minnie into my room, tell her she needed to leave SRI immediately, and when Henry came in, he would convince her to go with him.

  It would be best for everyone. Henry’s touch told me so.

  33

  Julia

  Victoria dissected my plan. My hair fell over my face, and I held the phone so tight that a cramp ate into my hand.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Victoria asked again.

  I didn’t get the chance to respond.

  “What the hell are you going to do when you get there? All this on a whim. On seeing some girl who you think is our aunt in this remote seeing, or whatever you call it?”