Mind Games

by Kiersten White

  Ms. Robertson is screaming at James and he’s talking, trying to calm her down. I sink along the wall to the floor and laugh. I knew it was a good idea to pick up her cell phone when she left it out on her desk the other day. I didn’t even have to sing pop songs, and my thoughts are safe.

  “If she doesn’t have anything to hide, then why does she do that? You don’t know what it’s like, having to listen in on her thoughts! She’s a monster!”

  “Rawr,” I say.

  James walks her to the door. “I think everyone could use a break. Doris, thank you so much for your efforts, and I promise your family is safe and she doesn’t know where they are and even if she did”—he cuts a sharp glance my direction with his warm brown beautiful eyes—“she would never hurt them. She’s just disoriented and in pain. It’ll pass.”

  “I doubt that.” She opens the door.

  “Give my love to the kids,” I shout as the door closes, and I’ve never seen that shade of red on a face. It’s quite lovely, actually, I should aim for it more often.

  Eden stands. Oh, Eden, why haven’t you gotten out of here yet? You could go, you could be free—why are you still working with them? They have nothing on you.

  “She’s calming down,” she says, “but her arm hurts a lot and she’s very confused and angry. The last one goes without saying. She’s not going to kill herself, though. Can I leave now? I have a headache.”

  James nods and I see the way she leans toward him, the hand she casually puts on his arm, before pulling herself back and walking carefully to the door. She is aware of how her hips look in those jeans—she wants him to want her. I wonder if he still does. I send a big burst of anger in her direction as a parting gift. I hate her.

  “Fia,” James says, raising an eyebrow. His hair is somewhere between blond and brown, golden really, backlit by the last rays of sun sneaking through my huge picture window, and he is glowing and so very, very handsome. I’m glad Ms. Robertson is gone because I’m thinking things about James I don’t want her to hear. About tracing the broad line of his shoulders and his arms, about the way he walks. The curve of his lips. I’m thinking about running my hand down his stomach. He knows what my hands do, he knows about them. He’d still let me, I bet.

  I wonder if Adam would let me touch him with my horrible hands, if he knew, if he really knew. I told him I killed people, but I don’t think he understands what that means. He can’t. If he could, he wouldn’t be Adam. Calm and steady and sweet. I wonder where he is, if he’s okay.

  Don’t think about it. Thoughts aren’t safe, ever.

  James is staring back at me. He knows he’s handsome. He uses it to his advantage constantly. Is it bad that I like that about him? I miss him so much. I miss how easy it was, being his.

  “James,” I say, mimicking his tone, then stand and stumble over to the couch, throwing myself across it. Dr. Grant stitched me up all nice, then James brought me home and actually let me take something. They never let me take anything. (It’ll mess with my abilities, they say. You’ll take too many again, they don’t say.) “I would like some more drugs, please.”

  “I think no.”

  “Why not? Come on. I earned it. Besides, I’m about to start my period, and you know how PMSing messes with everything.” I beam at him, but he doesn’t so much as squirm.

  “I seem to recall Clarice saying you were actually at your best then—you just couldn’t focus your intuition on what we needed you to do, only on what you wanted to do.”

  “Yes, well, I seem to recall Clarice being dead.”

  “Fia,” he says, and it’s like a sigh. He sits on the other end of the couch and puts my feet across his lap. I shouldn’t let him touch me. I don’t, usually, because he is a liar and I promised Annie, I promised her so long ago. I broke that promise in Europe, I wanted to break it completely, but I learned better.

  But Annie.

  Annie.

  Annie wanted me to kill Adam.

  She wanted me to close gray eyes and put long, soft, sure fingers under the ground. How could she want him dead? Did she want me to do it? How could she set me up for that?

  I don’t know her at all. All these years, all these things I’ve done, all these things I’ve become to keep her happy, to keep her safe. I don’t know her. I tap tap tap Annie’s betrayal onto my leg.

  “Listen,” James says, and he’s rubbing my feet. His hands engulf them—he’s tall, so tall, and stronger than me by far. Right now he could take me in a fight, I think. Maybe not. He wears contacts. I could use that to my advantage.

  His fingers linger at my ankle. I haven’t let him touch me since I made him bring me back to Chicago. I think it’s actually affecting him. Maybe there are a lot of other things I could use to my advantage against James. “What am I supposed to listen to?” I turn and look up at him through my eyelashes.

  “You need to calm down. Quit antagonizing the other women. It makes my job a lot harder.”

  “Oh, poor dear. You have a hard job? I can’t imagine.”

  He yanks my pinky toe. “I think you have a very good imagination. They complain to my father, and then my father suspects I’m not doing a good job managing here.” His voice gets tight. Daddy issues. I wish I had daddy issues. Though I suppose I have issues with his daddy. “And if I’m not your manager, I can’t help you anymore.”

  I sit up and pull my feet away from him. I look straight in his eyes. I do not look away and I do not let him look away. “I got shot and I killed someone. Do you have any idea—” I let my voice break. It’s not hard. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? What it does to me? How are you helping me?”

  “I want to. I’m trying to. But, see, that,” he says, cupping the side of my face with his warm hand. “Why can’t you let them see that? That’s a perfectly acceptable reaction. That’s a reaction they can report without getting us in trouble. That’s a reaction that gets you trusted in this system.”

  I shove his hand away and stand. “I’d hate for you to get in any trouble.” I put my hands on my hips. “I want something to help me sleep.”

  His phone rings and when he looks at the screen, his face shifts, gets harder and further away. Must be Daddy Dearest. He answers it.

  No, no, no. This could take all night. How can I ever get to sleep now? I grab my own phone and call Annie, walking back into the hall, away from James. Annie answers. I need to talk to her, need her to explain.

  But she can’t right now, not without revealing that I didn’t kill Adam. They’re always listening.

  “Fia? How are you feeling? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m peachy! Never been better. I wanted to talk to you about something you said earlier.”

  There’s a long pause, as she tries to feel out whether or not she can talk around it without giving us away. “You mean my vision?”

  “Yup. Your vision.”

  Another long silence. “I don’t think you should go dancing, is all. It’ll make sense later, I promise. Please trust me. When I can explain, it will make sense.”

  I grit my teeth, adding the pain in my jaw to the pain in my head and my arm and my heart. “Sure. Everything does. Later. Too late, actually. You know, I don’t think you understand what you’re asking of me. Do you have any idea what you’re asking of me?”

  “Please, Fia. Please. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t want it to happen to you. We’ll talk about it. I promise.”

  “No. It’s fine. Fine, fine, fine. Everyone uses me, everyone bosses me around. Guess you finally caught on.” I remember what we’re allegedly talking about for whoever is listening. “But the funny thing is, I wouldn’t even have considered going dancing tonight if you hadn’t brought it up. What’s that term? Self-fulfilling prophecy?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I think it’s hilarious. Let me know if I have to kill anyone tomorrow, okay? Bye!” I end the call, then throw my phone against the wall. She’s—I can’t process
this. I can’t deal with it. If she’s the one who wanted the hit, she would have had to convince Keane that Adam needed to die. Why? Why would she? Even if she didn’t make me go, she’s still the reason I had to.

  She has to remember. She can’t have forgotten what it was like before Clarice. What it’s been like ever since. But no. She used me, just like Keane, just like everyone else. And I screwed up, again, always, and now she’s in danger and she didn’t want me to not kill him. How could she be disappointed in me for making the right choice for the first time in years?

  Annie. Annie. Annabelle. Annahell. I stomp into my room and pull all the clothes out of my closet, throwing them behind me, until I find the perfect strapless black dress. It’d probably be more accurate to call it a dressless black strap. I laugh.

  I wish Annie could have heard that joke.

  Sharp red stilettos. I don’t know why I need the sharp ones, but they’re right for tonight. I can’t do my hair one-handed; it’s falling in waves down my back. Twist a strand back from my face. Dark eye makeup to better match my Cameron Underhill ID. Cameron is twenty-two.

  I’m twenty-two tonight.

  The only thing ruining the effect is the bandage on my left arm (it joins my other faint scars), but nothing to be done there. Shot is shot is shot. No room for a knife in this dress. I lean back and ponder. Don’t need one tonight.

  I slink down the hall into the main room.

  James is standing by the window, the sun now set, his beautiful, strong, all-American-boy face creased and pinched. “We need to be more careful. This type of work isn’t good for her. It risks everything I’ve built up the last two years. Why don’t we have her back on stocks and trading and espionage? She’s perfect there. This—” he pauses, only for a second but I know his dad will see the weakness there “—assassination work messes her up. She won’t be useful for months in this state of mind.”

  Oh, useful. I won’t be useful. Heaven forbid. If they only knew what their pet had done. A pause, where I can only guess what the elder Keane is saying. I’ve never met him. None of the girls from the school ever have. I tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. I need to get out of here.

  I grab my purse from the counter by the door, take off my heels, and hook them around my wrist.

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” James’s dad can’t see the way his jaw tightens, the way every muscle in his body traces a line of anger and barely controlled rebellion. He is never more beautiful to me than when he is livid. But still James does as James is told. Good boy, James. Have another treat. Sit, James. Roll over. Play dead. Kill. There’s a good son!

  “Going out,” I call, and he whips around in time to see me blow a kiss before I slam the door shut and sprint down the stairs, past the bewildered doorman, and out of the building. I can’t run away. But I can run.

  And I can dance.

  FIA

  Two-and-a-Half Years Ago

  ANNIE WANTS ME TO MOVE BACK INTO HER ROOM.

  She doesn’t understand. I can’t. I can’t live with her because I can’t tell her, and if I live with her, she’ll know, she’ll figure it out. She’s worried about me.

  She has no idea.

  I am a murderer.

  That day on the beach. I am trapped in that day on the beach. I take the small package. It fits in the palm of my hand. I focus on getting it in the woman’s bag without being seen. It’s easy. I know exactly what to do. No one notices a thing out of place, as the gangly teenage girl chases her ball past with a determined look.

  No one connects her to the explosion that kills two people three minutes later.

  Her. Me. Her. Me. I did that.

  “Please choose, Sofia.” Clarice is sitting in front of me, calm and placid. She is always calm—I want to claw her eyes out sometimes. On the table between us are five boxes wrapped in plain brown paper. Five boxes. Two people. One explosion. Two murderers in this room.

  I can’t leave now, not ever. I’d get caught. They’d know. They’d know it was me. I can’t tell anyone what this school really is because then I’d have to tell them what I did.

  “Who cares. They’re all boxes. Why does it matter which box I choose?”

  “We need to test the limits. Can you make the correct choices on instinct only when you understand what is going on, or can your intuitive senses help you make the correct choices even when you have no idea what you are choosing?”

  “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does anyone give a crap?” I mutter.

  “Now, please.”

  I glare at her. We are murderers together, Clarice and me. I point to the box on the far left. “I’d take that one.”

  She smiles. “Very good.”

  “What’s in them?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling. “Can I be done now?”

  “It’s interesting,” she says, carefully picking up the boxes and stacking them in the corner of the big, cinder-block walled, windowless basement room. Annie has never been down here. Most of the girls haven’t. Only Eden and I are left from my original class, anyway. “I have the hardest time seeing you. Some people are easier than others, of course, but your constant ability to react without thinking makes it very, very hard to see anything in your future.”

  I wonder if she could still have visions with her eyes clawed out. Annie loves her. Annie thinks she’s the best thing that ever happened to us. Annie needs her. They are running tests and diagnostics, and every three months there is another bit of hope for Annie’s sight.

  I can’t leave anyway because I am a murderer and they would send me to jail and I couldn’t take care of Annie if I were in jail.

  “Did you know we had no idea you existed?” She walks over to the door and taps on it three times. Tap tap goes my finger. Two taps. Two lives. “It was only Annie we were interested in. She’s proved less than exceptional, but you were the real find. At first we thought you were a Reader, or maybe a Feeler, since you knew this school wasn’t all it was set up to be. But you’ve proved far more interesting than any of that.”

  “Goodie for me.” I could pick up the chair. I could smash it into her face. I wonder if I’m going to. Would she have already seen it if I was going to? Guess I’m not going to, then. Or she just can’t see it. I’m bored. I want to go sleep.

  Sleep, sleep.

  Tap tap. I don’t know what their faces looked like. I never really saw them. Would knowing what their faces looked like make the nightmares better or worse? I know their names. I looked up the story online, later, much later.

  I killed a senator. Does that make it murder and treason? I’m scared. I’m scared in here, and I’m scared out there. I can never leave.

  The door opens and three men dressed in gray sweats come in. They each have a small black thing in their hands, like a boxy cell phone. I don’t know what it is, but every sense is on alert and my heart is racing and my focus is narrowing, getting sharper. This is bad. I need to get out of this room. I stand and put the table between us, gripping Clarice’s chair. It’s heavy. Too heavy for much, I wish it were lighter, but I can take out someone’s leg.

  Why do I need to take out someone’s leg?

  “Sofia, these gentlemen are going to help you with some training. They’ve all got stun guns. Your job is to get out of the room.”

  “Without getting shocked?” I stare at her, aghast. We haven’t done one of these in so long. I thought we were done.

  “No. Your job is to fight back and get out of the room in spite of getting shocked.” She smiles pleasantly. “Consider it an exercise in focusing through pain.”

  I should have smashed her head in with the chair, seen how well she could focus then.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry. Annie can hear if I’m crying. She can’t see me curled in a ball on the couch, every part of my body in pain. She can’t see that I’m biting my wrist as hard as I can. I got out of the room. Oh, it hurts s
o much.

  “So, what’s new?” she asks. She sounds nervous. She should be. She hasn’t tried to touch me today.

  “Nothing.”

  “You haven’t been here much.”

  “Busy. School stuff.”

  “Oh.” There’s a long pause and I hope she is done trying to talk to me. “I’ve been getting better. That’s good, right?”

  “Better at what?”

  “Seeing things. Clarice thought I should focus on you, and it helps. A little. But lately I haven’t been seeing things exactly how they will happen. I’ve been seeing…I don’t know. Bits and pieces that feel like they mean something more. Like maybe they’re still shifting and not set. It feels…big. Not like what I used to see, where it was something that really was going to happen exactly like that, and I only had to figure out how to understand the images. These visions are more like puzzles. Lots of little pieces. Like a recent vision, there was a guy with light hair and one with dark hair, opposite each other like they were two sides of a mirror. And a flash of you, and one of Clarice, and the color red, and a room all filled with tables and chairs but really fancy looking, official…I don’t know. It’s kind of scary, and I don’t understand it yet. But some are good. I’ve even started dreaming them. Sometimes they’re happy.” She gets a sort of dreamy smile on her face.

  I sit up (it hurts, it hurts, my body hurts) and grab her hand in mine. She startles; I haven’t been touching her at all lately. I don’t like my hands anymore. I used to think they were pretty. Now they look like they belong on someone else’s body. Someone who kills people. “Listen to me. Do not tell them. Don’t tell them you’re seeing more. Don’t tell Clarice. Don’t even think about what you’re seeing.”

  “Why? Fia, you’re scaring me. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Promise me you won’t tell them!”

  “I won’t! I promise! What’s going on?”

  I drop her hand. “Nothing. And stop trying to see me. You won’t like it.” I walk out of her dorm room.

  Down the hall.