She’s breathing light and hard through her mouth, eyes fixed straight ahead. Yeah, I now have a new problem, and Bren won’t be easy.
The elevator must have ten people waiting on it so we take the stairs, saying nothing until Bren pushes through the glass double doors and we’re out in the parking lot.
Bren spins around on me, her hand reaching for pearls she isn’t wearing. “What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“What were you doing, Wick?”
“Checking my email.” I study my Chucks like I’m too embarrassed to meet her eyes, which I’m not of course. I’m not.
I am having a hard time looking at her.
“On someone else’s personal computer?”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” Bren continues. “First the boys at school, now this.”
There’s a pause. The longer it continues, the more I realize I’m supposed to fill it with some logical explanation: I’m depressed, I’m angry, I’m having flashbacks.
Because all those things are fixable and if I’m not fixable . . .
I slide my hand into my pocket, grip the jump drive in my palm. “I didn’t think about it like that.”
Another pause. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Is that a rhetorical question? Now I do glance up, try to gauge her mood and realize I can’t.
This isn’t a Bren I’ve seen before. She isn’t staring at me like I’m broken. She’s watching me like I’m dangerous.
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As promised, I turn in everything I found to Carson and I’m surprised to realize it’s kind of weird for me to operate like this. When I ran my own investigations, I put together an entire profile for customers: finances, job histories, online interests. By the time I was done, I knew my target inside and out.
Working like this is totally different. I give pieces of the person to Carson and he does . . . what? I probably don’t want to know. It gets him off my case though. Carson hasn’t bothered me for almost a week, letting me pretend he doesn’t exist and my life is back to normal.
Lab project? Done.
Homework? Done.
Sleeping? Sort of.
My life is normal, or as normal as it can be now that Griff’s no longer in it.
Now that I have the Mini again, I roll into school as late as possible, careful to avoid him in the halls. This is easier than expected since I never see him anymore. Well, that’s not entirely true. I see glimpses. His dark head moving through the crowded hallways, his bottle-green eyes slashing away, his smile cutting through the afternoon dark.
God, Griff’s smile.
My smile.
Only it isn’t mine anymore.
It’s easier to smother those thoughts when I stay busy though so I end up riding around with Lauren a lot. After being gone for almost two weeks, she’s back and wound tighter than ever. We haven’t talked about her mom—she doesn’t want to—but I’m helping her catch up on homework, waiting for her to finish cheer practice and gym classes. I get home later, but I don’t mind.
Actually, considering the way Bren’s watching me, it’s kind of a relief.
“Wick!” Lauren bounces up behind me and locks one arm around my neck, dragging me toward the parking lot.
“Jesus!” I laugh and press my shirt against my nose and mouth. “You reek! What did you do in there?”
“Kickboxing.” Lauren does a one-two punch into the air and spins into a roundhouse kick narrowly missing someone’s Jeep.
“I thought you were doing spin classes.”
“Nope, I like this stuff better.” She shakes her sodden dark hair out of its ponytail. “Turns out, I really enjoy kicking things. You should try it sometime.”
“I probably should.”
Lauren’s gaze hitches on my face. “Everything okay?”
No. “Yeah . . . no.”
Lauren studies her car keys as we walk. “I talked to Griff this morning.”
My chest seizes up. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, he said you guys broke up because you were working again.”
I spend a few seconds picking at my nails. Interesting that he said it was my work, not that there was another boy. I wish Griff hadn’t told Lauren about Carson. . . . Then again, it’s almost easier now that he has. Almost.
“Yeah, Carson offered me another job.” And after I gave him Norcut’s files on Kyle, he disappeared. “It’s not just the work. I found some information on my mom too.”
“Like what?”
I quickly sketch out the details: the DVDs, how my mom was an informant, see what they did to her, Lily’s reaction, Griff’s reaction—I even add how I want to give it up and how I don’t feel like I can. Lauren doesn’t say a word. We reach her car and she leans one hip against it, listening until there’s nothing left for me to say.
“People don’t understand what it’s like to have parents like ours.” For the first time, Lauren’s gaze breaks with mine. She stares into the gym parking lot’s shadows. “Parents like ours are so broken and it doesn’t mean we love them any less. Maybe it makes us love them more.”
“Not for me. Not at the time. I was so angry with her for not leaving him and then . . . for jumping and leaving us.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what to think.”
Lauren shakes her head. “I don’t like it. You’re surrounded by all this . . . evil, Wick. How long before it pollutes you too?”
Maybe it already has. “It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
I tug both hands through my hair, rubbing my suddenly thumping temples. I should be pissed and yet there’s something so sad and earnest about her tone that I can’t be mad.
Maybe it’s because I worry about the same thing.
We’re surrounded by darkness. Sometimes it’s everyday evil. Maybe it’s the guy who beats his wife or cheats on his taxes or belittles his kids, but he still considers himself a good person. It’s a talent most of us have, telling ourselves we’re good when we’re not.
Then you have evil like Todd or Kyle, evil that shows us just how breakable we all are, and how much our safety depends on everyone playing along.
Until someone doesn’t.
I climb into Lauren’s front passenger seat and wait for her to finish adjusting the radio before we pull out. When did I learn about the biggest fairy tale of all? Was it from my dad? Carson? When did I realize that, deep down, we’re all nothing, just sacks of organs and blood, and someone can flick us off like a light?
I don’t want Lauren to know that.
“So Jenna Maxwell was asking me about Griff. She wanted to know what the deal was.”
My breath dries up. “What’d you tell her?”
“That you guys are forever.” Lauren’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “He’ll come around, Wick. It’ll be okay.”
“Yeah.” But I know it’s never going to be okay. There are some things that once broken, stay broken. I smile like Lauren’s right though, fake like I believe her.
Feels so good I almost believe it too.
Then I get home and find another DVD waiting for me.
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That night, we eat Chinese takeout and watch some movie I don’t remember because Bren and Lily talk straight through it. Every once in a while, they pause, looking to me to add something. I never can. The new DVD is looping through my head. And when I finally go up to my room, I lie in bed with every light on, still too afraid to close my eyes.
I need to sleep and I can’t. “Remember Me” twirls through my head in gory colors, a whisper stuck on repeat. Maybe that’s why I watch the last of the interviews. I haven’t had my fill of
monsters.
“He isn’t home much anymore,” my mom repeats, not even bothering to wipe away her tears. “He’s always gone and he gets mad if I ask him about it.”
I bite down hard on my thumbnail, tasting blood. I remember those arguments. I can smooth the crushed edges of probably ten different memories where she would ask him questions and he would answer with a slap. Or a punch.
How could I have not realized what was going on?
“Anyway, I need to go.” She bends down, drags her purse from the floor. “I need to pick up my girls. It’s hard to find someone to watch them.”
“I don’t care as long as you never bring them here.” There’s a pause as she stares at him, waiting to be dismissed.
“Who has them?” he asks.
“Samantha.”
My breath goes light and fast. I haven’t heard that name in years, but it leaps from my mother’s mouth like it was waiting for me. Sam and my mom were good friends—actually Sam might have been my mom’s only friend.
“She know where you go?”
“No.” The answer is too quick and my mom knows it. Her eyes dart side to side, never landing. “Maybe,” she amends.
“Which is it?”
“Yes.”
I sit up straighter, chest suddenly tight. Sam knew about this? At first I’m shocked, then something else lies on top of the shock, smothers it: If she knew, maybe she could tell me more.
“You think that’s wise?” the interviewer asks.
“Is any of this ‘wise’?” It sounds defiant even if her shoulders round in a cringe. From him?
From everything, I realize. She was never a tall woman and under the fluorescent lights she looks tiny . . . breakable.
“Get us better information and it’ll be done.”
The screen freezes, leaving my mom’s mouth twisted in a frown. I want to trace it with my fingertips, so I sit on my hands, watch the image dissolve into black.
What Are You Going To Do?
My skin crawls and I have an overwhelming urge to look behind me. There’s nothing I can do. It’s done. She’s gone . . . so why can’t I stop thinking about her best friend, Sam?
When my mom was alive, Samantha was a mostly functioning alcoholic. After my mom died, Samantha . . . was no longer functioning. Last I heard she was living on the streets in Atlanta. It would be next to impossible to find her. I don’t have the contacts. I don’t have any way of searching for her.
Unless I knew who to ask.
Milo might know. His dad is in a similar situation. Maybe he would know someone. I pick up my phone . . . and my fingers stick. We haven’t spoken since the Norcut thing and I don’t need Milo more involved with me than he already is. Plus, running after Sam would be stupid. I won’t find anything. She won’t remember.
But I have to try.
I run my fingers over the keypad, feeling sick. I should be reaching for Griff. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
I stab the send button and he answers on the first ring. “Yeah?”
“Milo . . . I need your help.”
Milo calls me back late Sunday night and says he thinks he knows where she might be. One of his contacts at the shelter saw Samantha two days ago.
“Great.” I stand up, look for something to write with. “Tell me.”
“No, I want to go with you.”
“Why?” I rub the skin between my eyes. That was not the right response. “No. This has nothing to do with you.”
“True.”
I stare at the ceiling, waiting. “So you’re going to tell me where she is?”
“No.” Milo laughs. “Seriously, why would you not want me to come? Is there some prereq to hanging out with you? I have to be a skinny emo kid?”
“Griff’s not—”
“Whatever.” The laugh curls up. “You want your Samantha? I get to come along. I’ve earned the outing. You wouldn’t have gotten into Norcut’s files without me.”
“Um, you do remember who you’re talking to, right?”
“Okay, fine, you wouldn’t have gotten into Norcut’s files as fast without me. Let’s go tonight.”
I study my closed bedroom door, listen to the house settle. It’s almost midnight and Bren and Lily have been asleep for hours, but they could wake up any minute.
Or they could stay asleep and I could sneak out and be back before anyone even knew I was gone.
I glance at the security camera feed running across my second computer monitor. Yard and street are empty. Either Kyle hasn’t found me or he’s biding his time.
I could use this opportunity, but . . . “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“At the moment? No.”
I am so not playing these games. I let the silence stretch between us as I debate how long it would take me to track Samantha down myself. I could try calling some of the shelters, pretend I’m a concerned relative.
“Why do you want to come?” I ask.
Milo’s sigh barrels down the line. “Morbid curiosity.”
It’s faster this way. Just do it and be done. “Meet me at the Waffle House at the airport exit.” I snatch my keys off my desk. “Be there in thirty or it’s off and I’ll do it without you.”
“I’m already on my way. I’ll see you in fifteen.”
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By the time we reach Five Points, it’s raining again and the streets are starting to flood. Milo finds a parking spot along a side street and we spend a moment staring through the windshield, saying nothing.
“For the record, this is why I needed to come along.” Milo gestures at our surroundings. “See? Scary, isn’t it? If the need to hold on to me overwhelms you, please feel free.”
“Somehow I’ll find a way restrain myself.”
“Well, you can try.” Milo cracks his knuckles, watches how the rain spreads like fingers against the glass. “You know this is stupid, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know you won’t find anything?”
“Yeah.” Slowly, I turn my head to stare at Milo. He meets my eyes and whatever he sees makes him blow out a long-suffering sigh.
“Jesus, fine. Let’s get this over with. She should be this way.” He points to our right, down a narrow alley that runs parallel to the subway stop.
“Ready?” he asks.
I tuck a bottle of Bren’s wine, still cold from the refrigerator, under my jacket and nod. We slog down the flooded sidewalk and turn in to the alley, pulling up under a tattered awning.
“I can’t see a damn thing.” I pull my hood tight, hunching against the rain blowing in. “How’re we going to find her in this?”
Milo shrugs. “We actually have a better chance of finding her—only so many dry places she can be. Plus, she might not feel like running away if it means getting soaked.”
He has a point.
“Little farther in?”
I nod. If this were a movie, this would be the part where we find her. Except we don’t. We look through lean-to tents and under shop awnings for almost an hour and never see her.
“Wick.”
It’s Milo. I turn away from a homeless woman whose eyes remind me of my mom’s and wait for him to catch up with me.
“I’m sorry.” Milo wipes rain out of his eyes. “But I told you it was stupid. I told you—”
Behind him, an unsteady figure moves out of an alley. It only takes a few seconds for me to recognize her. I point and, slowly, Milo turns. We both stare at Sam.
Sam’s eyes are cloudy and faded. They widen as we near and I know this is a mistake. I recognize her. She doesn’t recognize me. “Who’s there?”
Milo motions me forward with one hand and an eye roll. I bump my chin into the air and brush past him, making sure my shoulder catches his arm.
“Samantha Stewart?”
Sam’s mouth twit
ches like her name has a taste.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Wiiiccckkkeettt Taatteee.” She draws my name out. “The drug dealer’s daughter . . . Sia Tate’s daughter.”
I stop. I don’t like the way she says my mom’s name. “Yes, that’s right. I wanted to ask you a few questions about my mom.”
I wait and Sam doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if that’s a Yes, go on or a Hell no so I plunge ahead.
“I know that my mom was an informant. I know she was scared.”
“Your mama was scared of a lotta things.”
“Like what?” The rain starts to come down harder, leaking under my jacket.
“Your daddy . . . your daddy’s friends . . . how you would look at her.” Sam’s smile is slow and secret and I can’t tell if it’s for me or the bottle she sees in my hand. “She hated how you would look at her.”
“I hated how she looked sometimes.” I sound defensive. I am defensive. Gritting my teeth, I put myself between Sam and Milo and tell myself so it’s so he can’t see her nasty smile.
I know it’s because there are tears in my eyes.
“She loved you.” Sam’s attention drifts up and away, following something no one else can see. “She didn’t understand you, but she loved you. She was in awe.”
I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter.
“What—” My voice cracks and I clear my throat. “What do you mean my mom was afraid of my dad’s friends?”
“They were a problem. He was a problem. Always following her, pressing up on her.”
Something cold coils in my stomach. “Which friend?”
“The big one. She was so afraid of the big one.”
I wince—can’t help it—and I have to force myself to ask even though I know the answer. “Do you remember the big one’s name?”
“Joe. His name was Joe.”
“He scared her enough to commit suicide?”
Sam shakes her head hard. “Not suicide.”
“She jumped off a building, Sam. That’s called suicide.”
Remember Me Page 17
