by Trisha Leigh
“So, we have to buy seven gifts, right? The first ones are little, the last ones are bigger, and the final one is what we bring to the white elephant exchange,” I recite from my Internet research.
“You got it,” Maya confirms, distracted by a booth filled with cheap moonstone bracelets and earrings.
Savannah’s across the aisle sampling homemade dips of some kind, but rolls her eyes. “It’s not rocket science.”
“Okay, well… can you guys give me any suggestions as far as what Izzie might like?” I’ve barely met her. She’s on the dance team with Savannah, and I think, for some reason, she might have a crush on Peter.
“She’s not really big on jewelry, but she loves candy and chocolate. And… I don’t know. I suck at this.” Maya turns up her palms, looking helpless.
“She’s smart, right?” I pick up a little homemade puzzle box made of shiny wood.
“Top three in our class,” Maya shouts from behind a rack of shirts.
A brilliant cheerleader. The movies lie again.
The puzzle box costs ten bucks, at the high end of what we’re supposed to spend on our final gift, so I go ahead and buy it. Since I learned that the point of the white elephant gift is that anyone can end up with it, it’s a good choice for a guy or a girl. Maybe.
“Hey, white elephant gifts are supposed to be jokes,” Savannah reprimands.
I consider this while the vendor makes my change. “Well, the joke is that hardly any of you yahoos will be able to figure it out.”
They both laugh, Savannah sounding surprised by her sense of humor, as she always does. We keep browsing, and by the time we make it through the enclosed spaces reserved for the high-end vendors and down to the exit at East Bay, I’ve collected leather bracelets, saltwater taffy, a little eagle made from nuts and bolts, a pretty purple butterfly under glass, a cool braided hair tie, and a flowy black infinity scarf splattered with purple dots. Savannah’s done shopping for Jude, and Maya’s finished picking up a bunch of stupid crap for Peter. We aren’t supposed to share our names the way we did, because now we’ve narrowed the field as far as who has our names, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just supposed to be fun. And I have to admit, the idea of getting gifts from Jude makes me tingle with anticipation.
He probably doesn’t have my name. It could be Izzie or Peter, or maybe one of the girls is lying about who she drew to throw me off. Maya did ask my opinion a bunch of times.
By the time we’ve completed our tasks, though, my mind is done trying to pretend this is a normal day. It’s been begging to return to Flicker and finally I give in. No matter how many times I check my phone, though, there’s still no text from the Olders. Nothing from the twins or Mole saying they’ve found the answer in the stuff we took from Dane.
My heart hangs heavy, resting in my stomach and making it ache. I want to go to my father’s and do something, anything. Even if it’s just trolling the Internet for information that’s just not there—about Saint Catherine’s, about Darley, about that chromosomal anomaly.
I can’t believe they’re all dead ends.
“Okay, so I guess I’ll see you guys at the party on Saturday,” I say, trying not to let my distraction show.
“Are you seriously still grounded? We can’t hang out again until then?”
“Yep.” In truth, my punishment is over a couple of days before then, but I plan to spend the rest of the week digging through those files.
“That sucks. You remember where I live, right?”
“Yes.” I give her a smile, letting her know I wish we could hang out more, too. Because I do.
Our friendship may have gotten started because of her obsession with gossip and Darley, but other than her endless amusement at my misconceptions of normal high-school life, she never brings my old home up anymore. It’s taken longer than it did with Jude, because Maya and I haven’t bonded over anything specific, but our friendship has grown.
The sun disappears below the horizon as the three of us head up East Bay toward the Battery, the cold air and the exercise clearing my head. Savannah and Maya chat about the basketball game I missed the other night, how many scholarship offers they expect Jude to get, and next semester’s classes.
“What electives did you decide on, Norah?”
It’s Maya that asks, but Savannah looks curious, as well. Her careful expression sticks in place, but I always feel like she’s watching me a little too closely. Not like Dane or for some nefarious reason--more like she’s trying to guess my intentions. Measuring, weighing.
“Forensics and yearbook.”
Maya lights up. “Oh, awesome! We’ll have at least two classes together, then, and maybe we can be forensics partners every once in a while. I’m sure someone else will want his fair share of time, if you know what I mean.”
Since subtly isn’t Maya’s strong suit, a rock could guess what she means. “I didn’t know Jude took forensics.”
“Sure you didn’t.” The smile on Savannah’s face doesn’t match her snotty tone.
Maya rolls her eyes at me, and I shrug. “What about you, Savannah?”
“I’m the yearbook editor, so I guess you work for me now.”
“Awesome.” I try for sincerity, but some sarcasm sneaks into my response, anyway.
She turns off a few blocks later, heading down Unity Alley. Maya and I walk together along the Battery, the strong wind off the harbor fresh and salty, until it’s time to part ways.
My father’s not home yet, but there’s a small gift waiting on the front porch. It’s wrapped in crinkled red tissue paper and tied with a crooked white ribbon. It fits easily in the palm of my hand.
The sloppy wrapping job suggests my Secret Santa is either Peter or Jude.
Jude.
I take it inside and grab a water from the kitchen before trekking up to my room. The house envelops me in perfect silence, even the streets outside subdued in the face of the impending winter. I drop my bags on the bed and shrug out of my coat, then sit at my desk and stare at the package. Strange how right now it can be anything. The anticipation, the wonder, will disappear as soon as I tear off the paper and discover the contents. It’ll just be something else I own.
It will also probably tell me right away whether my Secret Santa is Jude or Peter, and I’m not ready to know. I like smiling at the prospect that Jude’s leaving me gifts a little too much.
I set the present aside to open it later. There aren’t too many things that make me happy these days.
There’s a text waiting on my phone when I wake up the next morning. It’s Mole asking me to come over when I wake up because the file-cabinet problem has been solved. Apparently they put Pollyanna’s ability to influence people to good use and talked a local locksmith into busting it open.
Saint Philip’s isn’t on my way to the group home, but it’s not completely out of the way, either. I have to walk northeast either way, and though I’ve wandered the graveyard attached to the church a few times, the cemetery across the street remains on my list of things to see. Even though I should get to the home and help them dig through files—and I will—I can’t resist taking a peek.
I smile at a sign on the wrought-iron fence that says, THE ONLY GHOST AT SAINT PHILIP’S IS THE HOLY GHOST. Nightly ghost tours stop here and tell some of the more well-known—and probably untrue—spirit tales, and the church apparently doesn’t much like it.
They also dislike the insinuation that the attached graveyard is reserved for “friends” of the church—the oldest, wealthiest families in the city—while the cemetery houses the “strangers.” Pretty much anyone whose family hasn’t walked these streets for at least six generations is a stranger, and anyone not born here surely didn’t get into that graveyard, no matter how hard they tried to spin the tale.
It all stems from the supposed ghost of John C. Calhoun. He was the savior of Charleston, a war hero, vice president, state senator… but he wasn’t born here. Even though he spent time in both the graveyard an
d the cemetery, the story goes that the oldest members of the church made certain his final resting place remains the “stranger” cemetery.
The punch line is that he crossed Church Street more times dead than alive.
I put a hand on his cold monument, crouching down along the back side to tie my shoe. The stone chills my butt through my jeans, and brittle, brown leaves trip and tumble through the scraggly stalks of grass. There’s no reason to avoid my destination, except for the fact that I’m not sure that the contents of Dane’s files are going to be easy to stomach.
The sound of footsteps crunching their way through the cemetery interrupts my brief moment of serenity. It’s not as though this place is my private stomping grounds, but an irrational anger bubbles into my limbs, anyway.
It disappears, leaving behind only the barest residue, when Dane Kim’s face appears, backlit by the rising sun. There are lines around his eyes that weren’t there yesterday. The heaviness about him today, the way the wind lifts his glossy black hair off his forehead, and his insistence on hovering in the gray areas of my life ramps up my wariness. And my irritation.
“Hey. Is this impossibly small ledge taken?”
My smile feels tired, but that it’s appeared at all surprises me. “No.”
Dane folds his lanky frame into a sitting position next to me, but he’s neither as limber nor as small as I am, and his butt has to be getting wet from the muddy ground. He doesn’t complain, just slumps against the weathered monument.
“How did you find me? Supersecret spy technology?”
“I think those people at Darley let you watch too many movies,” he says, the wry tone of his voice making him sound more like himself. “I’ve spent time watching you, that’s all. You’re predictable, with your goulish love of graveyards and your need for quiet time alone.”
“This is a cemetery. Not on church grounds.”
“Thanks for the history lesson.”
“Anytime.” I turn to face him, laying my head on my arms where they’re wrapped around my knees. “And how did you know I’d choose this one?”
“I didn’t. Maybe I was searching for my own bit of peace and this cemetery happens to be one of my favorites. Thanks to this guy.” He glances up at Calhoun’s stone likeness.
“Why do you like him?”
“For one thing, whether the whole friend and stranger thing is crap or not, his story embodies this city so perfectly it’s hard to imagine it’s not true. Currency still comes with being a son or daughter of Charleston.”
“More like being a great-great-granddaughter or -son.” It makes me smile. It’s the reason I love the Calhoun legend, too, and the reason it persists even with the exasperation of Saint Philip’s. Because it captures the city.
“Right.”
“Is there another reason?” I prompt, mesmerized by the way it feels as though we’re in a bubble. Just two people who happened to meet in a cemetery, sharing their favorite pieces of history about the city.
“I think Calhoun would have been shocked that while Charleston loved him, they never embraced him. It’s a reminder, I guess, that as much as you can feel a part of something, it’s often an illusion. Acceptance, belonging—they’re subject to the whims of others, out of our control more often than not.”
The observation goes straight to my heart, squeezing it into a pancake. I don’t think Maya and Jude feel about me the way Charleston felt about Calhoun, exactly, but how long will they remember me if I disappear?
Maybe the world can never accept me, like the Philosopher promised. My fingertips dig into the pitted stone.
“Norah? Are you okay?” Dane’s dark eyes go soft, liquid. They dribble concern toward me, and not just for this moment.
I felt it yesterday afternoon, too, when I spilled the beans about the syringe attacks. Dane’s worried about me.
“I’ll be fine. No sense in feeling sorry about things I can’t change, right?” In the silence after I speak, I hear what he doesn’t say—that he understands. Because he’s existing in a world that’s not his, too. “It must be hard, remembering that your everyday life isn’t true. Being a student, working for the principal, turning in homework—it’s all pretty stupid compared to what you actually do, I guess.”
“Maybe,” he murmurs. “It’s hardest when I start to wish the illusion could be real.”
The way he looks at me, the liquid in those eyes brimming with a million conflicting emotions and spilling out toward me, coating me, makes it impossible to breathe, to look away. The cemetery disappears, and if my fingers weren’t anchoring me to the massive stone at my back, I might topple over.
“I wish you would reconsider my offer. The people who attacked you in Pirate’s Alley could be dangerous.”
He knows where the attacks happened. I never told him that.
The words, muttered in the lowest voice still audible to the human ear, bring the world rushing back. We’re not Dane and Norah anymore, connected by a sad inability to belong in the world. He’s some kind of secret agent, and I’m the… Asset? And the concern he’s showing, the way he’s trying to reforge the connection between us—it’s only because he’s trying to recruit me. Bring me in. Turn me into Flicker.
Even though once they learn all the things I can’t do, they might not want me, either.
I’m surprised by how quickly I adjust. How easy it is to restrict the bubble only to me, keeping Dane and all his fake niceties safely on the other side. “How do you know? Maybe they’re the good guys.”
His lips twist as though it’s an insult. “They’re not.”
“How do you know?” I ask, too sweetly.
He hasn’t said anything specific about the Olders, but every bone in my body says he knows. They keep track of all of us, and even if they’re living under the radar, or off the grid, or whatever spy-speak is right, the government hasn’t forgotten them.
“I don’t know who would have done that, Norah, but isn’t common sense enough reason to assume they’re not good? They stabbed you in the neck with a syringe!”
The lie followed by the truth almost throws me off, but as long as Dane’s been watching me, I’ve been watching him. Even before the reality of his day job came to light, something felt off about him. Intrigued me. And not just his ability to block my awesomely lame number-seeing.
“You must have either gone looking for my police report, or you’ve known all along,” I comment. “I never said where it happened.”
He says nothing, lapsing into silence and refusing to meet my gaze. It’s as though there are words he can’t catch, as though they’re skittering around like restless spirits, but for the life of me I can’t guess what they might be. As with most of our interactions, when Dane talks it sounds as though there’s a bud of truth underneath soil made of lies; the thought that maybe he’s right, that the Olders aren’t what we think, makes me sweat in the chilly breeze.
We don’t know anything about the government agency using Flicker, but we don’t know anything about the Olders’ motivations for enhancing our powers, either. Maybe Dane’s trying to tell me something, the way he was talking about how things might be if this were a movie.
A hot rush of anger, as strong as last night’s, pushes me to my feet. I pace back and forth in an attempt to rein it in, but it doesn’t work. “I don’t understand you, Dane. You act like you want to help us, maybe even protect me, with your little roundabout truths. But if you really cared, if you weren’t just using me to complete your mission or close the file on the Cavies, if you really believe we’re in danger… why not just say so?”
He doesn’t answer, and the fact that nothing I’ve said leaves any kind of discernible mark pushes me further down the rabbit hole of rage.
My lips twist into a snarl. “You know what? I think you don’t care. You’ll say anything to make me believe that joining your agency or whatever is the only safe option. The people who attacked us might be a mystery, but at least they’re trying to help us.”
“You don’t have all the facts. You have to stop and ask yourselves what’s in it for them. Because no one gives a gift and asks for nothing in return.”
We stare at one another, my chest heaving, his gaze hard and unflinching. The way the pulse jumps in his neck tells me he’s not as unmoved by our confrontation as he wants me to think, but his stubborn self-control makes me grit my teeth to keep from flying at him, pounding my fists into his chest until he breaks.
“Think about it,” he whispers. “You know I’m right. Everything between us hasn’t been a lie, Norah. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Truth.
Even so, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just words. They’re cheap and changeable and can be twisted and marred and spun into fields of enigmas.
“I don’t know you at all, Dane. The friendship we started was bogus from the beginning, and you haven’t convinced me it was ever anything but your job.”
I turn and walk away, ignoring his last plea for me to think about it. The gates to the cemetery spill me out onto Church Street, but it’s not until I get all the way to Market that the chill on my face registers as tears, the tightness in my chest makes me realize I’m heaving sobs, and I recognize my terror for what it is.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It’s been four days since we took the files from Dane’s apartment, but even though we’ve been through them more than once, we can’t find anything on Flicker. There are a plethora of documents on genetic mutation and potential applications in the government and military, a topic that certainly wasn’t included in our Darley-run education. It’s interesting, and pretty much all the proof we need to feel confident that the government knows what we can all do, and has monitored our progress for years.
But there’s nothing about Flicker since her disappearance five years ago. No updates or files regarding her life since, what they’ve been asking her to do, or where they might be holding her hostage.
