by Trisha Leigh
Oddly, her words hit me like globs of cool mud, then slid off as easily. Sure, I feel a little caked and dirty, and it would be a while before I felt clean of her accusations, but in the end, I don’t know this woman. She clearly doesn’t want to know me. It’s hard to feel hurt or slighted, even though I’m sure that’s what she intended.
My father wants me, and it’s so much more than I ever expected. With everything else going on, I have no time or emotional space to waste time caring about a horrible person.
The downside is that she’s obviously not going to give me any information about Saint Catherine’s House, but after talking to her, I doubt she ever asked for details. It was enough to find a place willing to hide her daughter’s dirty little secret: me.
My father texts me again and suggests that I order a large pizza so it will be here when he gets home. I call it in around six, then kill the rest of the time translating some Latin so I won’t be rusty next semester.
I’ve decided on my electives, too—forensics and yearbook. I was already interested in the former, but finding out that my mother had loved acting sealed the deal. Now that I’ve talked with my grandmother, I secretly hope she’ll will find out and be pissed off all over again. Yearbook interests me mostly because of the pictures. I’ve always wanted a camera.
The buzzer sounds, and I run downstairs to let Haint in, mentally reminding myself to call her Becca once my father gets home, then lead her back up to my room.
“How did you get here?”
“I drove.”
“You drove?”
“Yeah. No big deal. My grandfather took me driving a few times, made me study a little book, and declared me ready for the streets. I passed the test, so here I am.”
“Impressive.”
There’s no reason for me to have a driver’s license in town, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to work on getting one so that I can go see Haint or the twins if I want to. Or Mole. I don’t know where he and Pollyanna will end up.
I shut the door behind us even though we’re alone, and once we’re settled on my bed she jumps right into the swirl of uncertainty storming in my mind.
“I agree with that guy’s dad.”
“What?”
She rolls her eyes. “The reporter. About the government being behind our release from Darley. They’re probably waiting until they have all the information, so they can grab us and turn us into weapons or spies or something.”
“Jude.”
“What?”
“‘That guy’s’ name is Jude.”
“Okay. Whatever.” She flops onto her back. “Anyway, I hope we can find something at Saint Catherine’s, because if not I have no idea where we’re going from there.”
“I know.”
She sits straight up after a lengthy pause, excitement painting her dark features. “That other guy. Dane Kim?”
His name looses an arrow of dread straight into my gut. “What about him?”
“How can he know about us unless he’s A, one of these previous Cavies or B, part of the government entity that’s watching us—the ones who stole Jude’s father’s files?”
“He’s not old enough to be a previous generation,” is my immediate response.
“So, he’s government.”
“He’s watching us,” I murmur, my thoughts far away. “That’s why he befriended me, tried to gain my trust.”
“I think that’s a fair assumption.” Her eyes cut around my bedroom. “I also don’t think it’s an unfair assumption to worry that our houses are bugged. This is the federal government we’re talking about, right?”
I nod, suddenly feeling a million eyeballs on the back of my neck, rolling across my skin with an icky coolness. My armpits break out in a sweat, and by the looks of Haint’s forehead she’s not faring any better.
Our eyes lock, then she gives me a bright, fake smile that says she’s thinking about it, too. “So tell me more about this Jude guy.”
It might sound as though we’re back in our cabins at Darley, discussing the boys we think are cute in the movies, lamenting the fact that the only guys we have access to are basically brothers to us—to people who don’t know us. Who can’t tell how the subject matter hurts my heart until it aches in my chest.
Who don’t know that Haint couldn’t care less if anything besides friendship is going on.
“I like him. I do.” I pause, wondering if I shouldn’t talk about my gift, but figure anyone listening already knows. “He’s going to die when he’s eighteen. Eighteen.”
The horrible truth drips from my lips like acid. I wish it would burn off my mouth so I couldn’t say such heartbreaking things. Nausea bubbles in my stomach.
The mischief in her gaze disappears, replaced by foreboding. Cold scrabbles at my heart, the images that display in my mind when we touch throbbing. The vibrant purple-blue hydrangeas. The redness of his blood.
The confession that I’m there when he dies, that I think it’s because he met me, stalls in my throat. Tears prick my eyes, but I blink them back. If anyone’s listening, they don’t need to know that the injections have changed us.
“Have you thought about trying to save him?”
My eyes snap to hers, the suggestion both intriguing and ludicrous. “I can’t do that.”
“You never know.”
I hear in her voice that she’s thinking the same thing I am, that things are changing. Geoff’s moving. Athena can hear conversations taking place across the ocean now.
“I don’t know.” If I invest myself enough to try and still fail, it’ll be worse than just letting it happen. Won’t it?
Haint studies me until it makes me fidget, then purses her lips and nods. Her words, though, are back to pretending nothing’s wrong. “Sheesh, Gyp, you get out of Darley and all of the sudden there are boys popping out of the woodwork! Don’t tell Mole, or he’ll think we’d better lock you back up.”
“I know! Don’t you think he’s acting weird about… everything? My accidentally touching Jude, then wanting to come to the basketball game and puffing out his chest?”
“Do you think he, you know… likes you?”
“What?! Mole? No! We’re best friends.” The reaction is immediate and forceful, but followed by a slower, more ambiguous feeling that’s something like curiosity.
“Right, you were so close at Darley, but he didn’t have any competition. Not to mention we had the rest of our lives to broach awkward subjects.” She waggles her eyebrows, but sobers just as quickly. Her voice turns quiet, serious, and she flops back onto the covers. “It’s might not be that. Maybe he feels like he’s losing you. I kind of do.”
Reaper pretty much said the same thing. That my making new friends seemed so easy it made her feel as though I’m tossing away the old.
I lay next to Haint, twisting my head sideways so I can look into her face. “Mole’s not losing me, and neither are you, or Reaper, or any of the Cavies. Our friendships are stronger than classes or giggling about boys or eating lunch together. We’re family.”
“I know. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make sure Mole knows that, too.” She grins. “And then make out with him, just to drive home the point.”
I squeal and wrinkle my nose as though her suggestion grosses me out to the max. I’m more than a little surprised to find that, deep down, it doesn’t at all.
Discomfort wedges between my shoulders and twists. It squirms down to my gut, up to my brain, and scrambles all of the truths about my life that I’ve been clinging to. In Beaufort, we all agreed to consider the fact that we don’t know anything about our lives at Darley, but I didn’t think that extended to the relationships among the Cavies.
Maybe it does.
“Did you notice Reaper didn’t show up after school today? Have you seen her much lately?”
The shift in subject jars me, which is good because there’s so much more than boys to consider. “Yeah. I mean, yes, I noticed but no, I haven’t seen her much. She’s… wit
hdrawn. At school. Doesn’t talk to anyone unless Dane forces her, and we know he’s not genuine.”
“I’m worried about her.”
“Me, too.”
It’s starting to feel more like the way it’s always been is the way it’s supposed to be, and instead of wanting a normal life, all I want is my Cavies to be safe. For us to understand what we are, control what we are, and live without the fear of the past insistently nipping at our heels.
Chapter Twenty
Everyone works it out so that we can meet by four thirty the next day to get to Saint Catherine’s House before they close at five. There’s some disagreement about getting into trouble or worrying our families, but in the end the situation with Flicker wins out.
The Cavies will always win out.
Even Reaper comes, but I had to pry her away from Dane Kim after school so we wouldn’t be late. They stopped talking as soon as I came around, which irritated the crap out of me, but when I questioned her on the walk back to my father’s house she says she thinks she’s close to finding out more about him. It might be our best shot on that front, since Dane knows I know he’s not being honest, and our budding friendship dissolved in the process.
I keep my mouth shut about the likelihood that, if we’re right and Dane’s a trained government agent, he won’t tell her anything useful. We all want so badly to be doing something. There’s no reason she can’t try to crack Dane.
The twins pick us up in a car they “borrowed” from their dad’s collection, and I feel like they’ll be lucky to escape without a whipping for driving the vintage Jaguar over an hour into town. No one else had to resort to thievery, since Mole and Pollyanna took the bus from a temporary foster home, but Haint had to cut last period to meet us on time.
Saint Catherine’s House is twenty minutes south of the city, on a quiet island called Edisto. It’s more secluded than the urban islands that surround Charleston, which are more like suburbs than beach towns, and we don’t pass much of anything besides houses and the occasional gas station or grocery store.
The House itself rests all the way on the southern tip of the island, and from the outside might be just another three-level, blue-painted vacation home. It sits on stilts to help avoid hurricane damage, and the bright white shutters must have been recently painted. We traipse up the front steps, Mole holding lightly to Pollyanna’s arm while an invisible Haint hovers next to the front door and Goose lurks around back, waiting for her to let him in once she’s safely inside.
That leaves five of us on the steps when Pollyanna—Tate, today—rings the doorbell.
It’s ten minutes until the end of their posted visiting hours, which isn’t much time, but we’re not exactly visitors, anyway.
A woman in a black nun’s getup, complete with giant black-and-white habit, peers at us through a crack in the door. “Can I help you children?”
We elected Mole to be our spokesperson, because he’s the best spoken and least unintentionally offensive of the bunch. “I hope so. I don’t know if you watch the news, but recently the police liberated a group of teenagers from Darley Hall, an old plantation just a little bit up the road?”
The nun nods, her lips pursed. “We’ve been praying for the souls of everyone involved.”
Her unmoved expression stirs irritation in my blood, and I work to keep it off my face.
“Well, you’ve been praying for our souls, then, and we appreciate it.” He pauses, waiting for a reaction that never comes, then plows ahead. “We’ve recently learned we were all born here at Saint Catherine’s. As you can imagine, we have some questions and were hoping that someone here would be willing to talk to us.”
The silence that follows sets us all on edge. Polly’s and Reaper’s fingers curl into fists, and the twins pop their knuckles in unison, sending a shudder up my spine. The nun glares their direction, her beady, cold eyes sliding over the lot of us as though maybe we’re cockroaches in disguise.
After what seems like an eternity, she opens the door wider. An invitation. “Our administrator has been here for over twenty years, so she might remember something. She might not. We get a lot of girls in here with similar stories. Hard to remember them all.”
“Thank you, ma’am. S—sister,” Mole stutters, stepping past her into the dark foyer.
It’s odd to find the interior of a beach house dark and unwelcoming, but the earth has mostly turned its back on the sun for another day. The ornate chandelier overhead also seems out of place, even on its muted setting—a little too fancy for a home that’s run by religious women hiding pregnant teenagers.
If they still do that.
I bet they do.
An Oriental rug stretches across the living area to our left, which is decorated with furniture that looks expensive and horribly uncomfortable, with a baby grand piano on one end and a polished wet bar on the other. On the right, an office or a library waits behind a pair of glass French doors, shelves and shelves of books serving as the main decoration. A staircase sweeps upward, made of polished wood, and a few creaks and groans from overhead proves that we’re not alone.
The place gives me the creeps, and even breathing in the air at Saint Catherine’s feels as though we’re willingly sucking down poison—a draught of lies and shame, of babies being stolen and passed off to scientists instead of families. It takes a few tries to force back the bile swishing into my throat.
The nun leads us past the stairs, by a kitchen that smells of Italian food, and pauses outside a plain, wooden door that doesn’t fit with the ornate, pristine condition of the rest of the ground floor. She knocks, and a moment later, a voice calls out, “Enter.”
We get the briefest glimpse of another woman seated behind a desk before the door closes behind the nun. We stare at one another, raising eyebrows and shrugging shoulders, but we’re too afraid to speak for fear of being overheard.
Haint and Goose must be inside by now, and by the looks of things there isn’t much staff here. We haven’t seen a single other person, nun or patient… girl, whatever, so there’s a good chance they won’t get caught, but now I’m worried most of the records are behind this door.
The nun who greeted us reappears, looking ready to invite us into the office, but if we all go in there then Haint and Goose aren’t going to find a thing.
“Do you think we could sit out front, in the drawing room?” I blurt, hurrying on to cover the tremble of fear in my voice. “I’m sort of claustrophobic. I’m in therapy.”
The nun frowns, and her lips start to form the word no, but an older woman appears behind her and gives me a tight smile. The nun who answered the door is no spring chicken, but compared to this woman, she’s youthful and spritely.
The old woman’s smile should relax me, should say she’s going to be more helpful and less full of disdain, but it doesn’t. A storm brews inside me, sloshing anger and resentment.
How dare they treat us like this? Like us coming back here is nothing but an annoyance. As though we have no right.
I don’t know how all of these emotions radiate from her smile, but they do.
“It’s fine, Sister Margaret. I’ll take them out front. Please ask the cook to bring us some tea.”
She toddles past Sister Margaret, who complies but doesn’t bother to hide her disapproval. At least the office will be empty if Haint and Goose can find a way in.
After Margaret walks toward the kitchen and the old nun takes the lead toward the front of the house, Mole bumps me with his hip and gives me a thumbs-up. While I’m pleased that my ploy succeeded, this awful place has me too worked up to relax.
A rush of air brushes past my cheek, one that’s out of place in the closed-up house. The nun pauses and glances back our direction. She feels it, too.
But Goose is fast and Haint’s invisible, and it assuages my anger a tiny little bit to think they’re already in that office, trying to find out the truth.
The old nun continues to the sitting room and takes a seat in a la
rge wingback chair that threatens to swallow her in maroon velvet. The rest of us settle on a pair of love seats arranged around the fireplace, and my observation about how uncomfortable they are turns out to be true. A silent woman in street clothes rattles in with a tray of tea and cups and other necessities, and serves us each in turn before leaving again. No one has ever served me tea before, and I have no idea how I take it, so I ask for plain. The rest of the Cavies do the same.
Once the distraction is gone, the nun sips her tea, then nestles it on a china saucer, a slight tremble in her hands. “Sister Margaret tells me that the five of you were born in our facility. What can I help you with?”
The way she says facility sets my teeth on edge. It’s not like a hospital, or a house, as it claims. It’s more sterile than that.
“Well, Sister… ?” Mole waits, polite and staring at a spot on the wall over her shoulder.
“Mother Nan,” she corrects, gentle enough.
“Mother Nan, we were hoping you might be able to tell what you recall about our mothers.”
“We’re also curious about our adoptions,” Pollyanna adds, her eyes pleading in a way that makes me want to look away. “About how we ended up at Darley.”
“Our privacy policies are in line with state legal codes, and I’m afraid they prevent me from revealing the details of your adoptions. But I might be able to tell you a few small facts about your origins that could set your minds and hearts at rest.” She frowns, sipping her tea again, and glances out the window as though she’s wishing God would take her home right now, if only to avoid having to discuss such banalities.
Origins. It seems an odd choice to describe our births in this place. More clinical than religious.
