by C. L. Stone
I nudged Luke, and made him scoot. “Get on the other side?” I said.
Gabriel crawled over Luke and me, crashing into the wall and then settling down into the bed, face first into the pillow. “Fuck me,” he said, his voice muffled. “Sick. Fuck. Shit. Sick. Fuck. Fuck…”
“Hey,” North barked. “Enough.”
Gabriel groaned but then quieted. He reached for the blanket, wriggling for space. “Luke, you’re taking the whole bed.”
“Sang’s taking the whole bed.”
“Oh my god,” North said. “One of you roll out the other bed please?”
“I’ll do it,” Kota said. “One of you get up, and you can have the whole roll out bed to yourself.”
No one moved. I was squeezed beside Luke and Gabriel, flat on my back. The bed wasn’t as big as Nathan’s, so it was a tight fit. I was sweating, but I didn’t want to complain. I wanted them there and wouldn’t ask either one to jump out to the other bed.
“And how in the world is it the three of you who’re sick?” North asked. He came closer, hovering over the bed and looking down with those dark eyes. “Explain that to me.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed with my lips pressed together. If it was just us, then how? When?
The only thing I could come up with was that we’d gone out on Black Friday. Didn’t he know about it? He must have since we went all weekend dealing with the aftermath.
“We’ve all been in and out of public areas, not to mention we were all together on Thanksgiving,” Kota said. He sighed loudly. “Do you want me to stay? I might as well.”
“Actually, I could use more green tea,” North said.
Everyone in the bed groaned, even Gabriel. He must have had North’s green tea before, too. I’d had some green tea in the past, but North’s was particularly heavily flavored, like he dumped a lot of tea into the water.
Kota chuckled. “Let me check in at school again. I can go pick some up. I may need to be around in case anyone else drops.” He walked back downstairs and I listened for a car driving away.
North gathered some more pills for Gabriel. He tossed all the discarded clothes, including my bra, into a basket he got from Kota’s closet in a heap. I wondered who would wash it, and thought I should eventually when I was better, so no one had to figure out what to do with a bra.
Then he pulled out the roll out bed, and found a pillow for it. When Luke and Gabriel refused to move, North used it instead, lying down on top of the blanket, his arms crossed.
Everyone slept for what felt like a long while. I woke up a few times, but kept my eyes closed, listening.
My throat was still itchy and raw.
I pictured Kota’s kitchen, wanting to find marshmallows. It was all I could think about. My throat hurt and I knew marshmallows would make it feel better.
I got up and slowly crawled to the foot of the bed as carefully as I could to not disturb the others.
The boys were still sleeping, even North. We’d all been running around; maybe he was worn out. Maybe he was getting sick, too. Maybe that’s why he’d offered to stay.
I went to the bathroom quickly, in case they woke while I was moving around.
When I opened the door again, Luke had turned into Gabriel, and Gabriel had an arm flung around him.
It was cute, and I wished I had a camera to snap a picture. Seeing those two together like that made me sorry I’d ever thought Luke was Volto. Would he hurt Gabriel by deleting stuff from his phone? Would he do anything to any of us? Kota was right. I was an idiot before for thinking it even for a second.
I quietly shuffled across the floor and then down Kota’s stairs, opened the door at the bottom quietly, and tiptoed out toward the kitchen.
I opened every cabinet, staring into it, wondering where they’d keep the marshmallows. I’d been in their kitchen before, but with my brain not working well with a fever, I forgot where everything was.
Dishes? No. I opened another. Spices? I stared at them for a long time, my brain trying to figure out if marshmallows could be in a spice cabinet. The medicine made it hard to focus. I even opened the fridge. I dug through all areas as quietly as I could in search of anything resembling a marshmallow.
Nothing. Not one.
Maybe North had hid them so I wouldn’t find them. Or maybe Erica was out of marshmallows at the moment.
My brain searched for alternatives. I was tired and my body was sore, but I knew what I wanted. I was sure Luke would want marshmallows, too, especially if his throat was sore.
I wanted to make him happy, possibly making up for what I had been thinking, accusing him of being Volto.
Then I remembered: my old house had marshmallows. I wasn’t sure about Nathan’s, though. I couldn’t recall any being at his house. At my old house, they were always in the food pantry. We didn’t go through many of them, but I was sure the last time I’d been there, there had been some.
I went to the back door. Max appeared and followed me. I petted him on the head, asked him to be quiet, and I walked out in the pajamas. I found a pair of flip flops by the door, assumed they were Kota’s because they were green, and used those to walk out.
I realized in the garage I probably looked crazy. I reached back, feeling tangles in my hair. I didn’t have a clip this time. I combed what I could as I walked. I hoped anyone else on the street would be at work.
The cool air was crisp, feeling good against my hot skin. The road between Kota’s house and my old one felt like a hundred miles long, though. Halfway there, I considered heading back. It was too hard, I was too tired.
I’d gone this far, I told myself, and carried on.
My old house had an eerie feeling to it, even as I approached it now. When I’d lived here before, it was still a new home to me. We’d only been in town a short while before I ran into Kota…and then everything changed. The gray, two-story house felt like a distant memory, and yet it felt like yesterday, too, when I had felt trapped inside it.
I went to the side door, knowing better than to go in through the front. My stepmother might hear me.
She’s in the hospital, I told myself. Don’t you remember?
Marshmallows.
The door wasn’t locked. I reminded myself to tell Marie to lock it. Maybe I should leave a note.
I stepped inside the door and looked around. The orange couch in the living room had a popcorn bowl on it. Soda cans were scattered on the floor. The television was off.
The computer in the corner was gone. What had happened to that?
Curious, I went up the back steps, moving slowly because my body was so tired, but I wanted to see the rest of the house. Maybe there was something I’d left behind that was important. The air smelled like perfume and bacon. Had someone fried bacon in here recently?
We never had perfume.
Other people had been in this house. Derrick and Danielle, maybe others. My nose picked up such strange smells; the house wasn’t familiar to me anymore.
My old bedroom door was open. I peered inside. I’d left books on the bookshelf and a few other items I hadn’t needed to carry over to Nathan’s house.
The bedroom seemed to be as I left it. There were a few clothes on the floor. Marie had gotten into the closet again. There was nothing but the bed I slept in. The top of it looked rumpled, perhaps Danielle or Derrick slept on it if he spent the night.
I checked in on Marie’s room. There were clothes all over her floor. Cups of water sat on her dresser. There were magazines in a pile. She had no one to tell her to clean up anymore.
The computer was upstairs in her room, a wire from it running down the front steps and around to the living room. If she had the whole house to herself, why had she brought it up here?
Tired of snooping, I went down the front steps, heading toward the kitchen. I didn’t look in on my stepmother’s bedroom.
The kitchen was a disaster. There were dishes piled high in the sink. The floor was grimy, sticky. The counters were cluttered with
chip bags, cookies and other junk food.
Had Kota bought her those? Was she able to get to the store on her own? I wasn’t sure how things worked here anymore.
I went to the pantry and found a bag of mini marshmallows and almost cried in relief. I opened them, letting two slide down my throat.
My soreness started to ease. Marshmallows were magic.
I closed the door, holding the bag of marshmallows in my hand, considering how I could get them back without North discovering them. Could I sneak the bag into the bed and where we could feed on them in secret? North usually had great hearing. I worried he might discover us.
The air shifted around me. Someone had opened the door.
I grimaced, expecting North. He’d fuss at me for leaving the house, especially over marshmallows.
But as I turned, there stood Volto. White mask. Dark clothes.
In broad daylight?
I blinked at him.
He stared at me, the white mask stark against the black. It was such a plain mask, nothing special about it. I’d seen it often in the last few days.
Was I dreaming? Hallucinating from the fever? No, He was right in front of me.
“I’m sorry you’re sick,” said the familiar altered voice, giving nothing away about his identity. It was tinny, mechanical, and sounded like several echoes of people talking at once.
Since he wore gloves, and covered himself all over, there were no physical characteristics, either.
I didn’t say anything. The boots he wore made it difficult to tell his true height. He was average-sized and there was no way to determine his age or even if he was a ‘he’.
“Don’t be upset,” he said. “I warned you things would get worse if you stuck around.”
“Where do you expect me to go?” I asked, suddenly alert. I held onto the marshmallow bag, wavering on my feet. I wanted to go collapse in bed and be done with Volto and everything else. I was so sick, tired of all these problems, but I held on, knowing this might be my only chance. “Why are you here?”
He pulled an iPhone in a pink case from his pocket. He turned it over, showing me the scratch marks.
“You took them,” I said. “And you came here to let me know? Why?”
“You were getting too close,” he said. “If you’d put your phones together, you might have discovered me. I couldn’t allow that.”
My eyes widened. He’d stolen my phone and erased data from the others’ because of the evidence somewhere buried inside them? “My phone didn’t have any evidence.”
“But yours was the easiest to get,” he said. “You figured it out fast. Good thing I was ready. It didn’t take long to get what I needed.”
“Why tell me it was you?”
“I want you to let them know it was me, and to stop trying to come after me. It won’t work.”
“What do you expect us to do? Let you take our phones and access our data and just let you get away with it?”
“The problem with technology is that it’s breakable and not as secure as you may think,” he said. “The stronger the lock, the more likely something valuable is behind it. Someone can always break it. You’d probably rather it was me than someone else.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“For you. You’re not really safe. You know that.”
“Why do you care?” I asked, pleading. “Why?”
“Because you don’t,” he said sharply. He stepped forward, making me take a step back. “Don’t you see what’s wrong? They claim to want to help, but they’ll take everyone down with them in the end. They’re all idiots, thinking they can operate undercover. They take innocent people like you and put you at the greatest risk, even harming you, forcing you to work with them…they’ll leave you behind one day.”
Kota was right. Volto was looking from the outside in, and seeing…I wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Things he didn’t like. Things he wanted to fix but was actually breaking. Things he didn’t understand. “Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Leave us alone.”
“When they leave everyone else alone,” he said in a grumble, causing the distortion masking his voice to gain additional static. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t have gone to school today. You took longer to get sick than you should have—a stronger immune system than I had factored.”
Shock buzzed up my spine. “You…”
“If one of you got suspension, the others did, too,” he said. “I needed to make sure you sat still for a long period in the same space. I didn’t want anyone else to get sick.”
“But how?” I asked. “How would sitting in suspension get me sick?”
“You lot sat at the same desks each day,” he said. “I just made sure each desk was covered in the virus. It took this long to incubate; I was worried you all were resistant to the strain. Luckily, it worked.”
My cheeks burned. He could do that? Make us all sick for his own twisted plans? “How did you get me suspended?”
“There is no Vera,” he said. He reached into his pocket again, pulling out my iPhone. He pushed a button, looking at all the pictures and then turned it, showing me the screen.
It was the letter I’d mentioned to the boys, the one I’d seen on Ms. Wright’s desk. They had found out there wasn’t a Vera, but they had suspected perhaps Mr. Hendricks was behind it.
The picture focused on the name at the bottom, Vera O. Lottie. Letters were crossed out over the picture, and then the name rewritten, missing a few letters, to spell out Volto.
“I didn’t do that,” I said. I didn’t take that picture.”
“Luke did. With his phone. His data is on here now, along with everyone else’s. Thanks for that.”
“He knew it was you?” I asked.
“He suspected and started pulling a lot of things together. I had to stop his progress. He was taking credit, too, I know, for things I was doing.”
I swayed on my feet, putting a hand onto the counter, getting a little dizzy. “The masks at the house?”
“I did that. He took credit. So you would ground him. Whatever that means.”
Luke took credit when he hadn’t been behind the mask prank? I couldn’t believe it.
But had Kota phrased it oddly? Had he gone to Luke saying I was going to ground him if he had done it? Would he confess just to be grounded with me?
He had seemed to enjoy it.
Maybe Luke hadn’t even realized he was thwarting Volto trying to get our attention.
“Go,” he said. “Get some rest. You’ll get over your strep soon. Get to the doctor and get some antibiotics. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t be there this week.”
I shook my head and stepped forward now, reaching to him. “Volto, you don’t have to do this. Why would you try to make me sick so I wouldn’t show up?”
He chuckled. “I’m liking this name. I think I’ll keep it.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why make me sick? You haven’t told me.”
“Hendricks is desperate, thanks to your Academy team. They’ve been pushing and pushing at him. Do you think he was going to just stand by? He’s not that stupid. So I made sure to stop it. I made some bad things happen, so he’d see what was going on. I started pointing out some of the bad things members of his own team had been up to, so everyone would see just how bad things had gotten.”
It hadn’t been Mr. Hendricks! He wasn’t the one throwing everyone under the bus. Volto had been doing it to show Mr. Hendricks things going on around him? “You can’t do that?” I said, tears at my eyes, disbelieving the mix-up. He didn’t understand what was going on at all. I didn’t even understand what he was up to or his reasons. “Why? Why would you?”
“Do you not see what they do to you?” he asked. “That teacher, the doctor, he should be in jail for forcing himself on you.”
“He’d never!” I spat more syllables, trying to correct him, but I was so overcome with shock and anger, I couldn’t get anything else out.
“They all do,” he said quietl
y. “It’s not normal. You don’t know it because you’re mentally unstable. You’ve had a rough life. I get that.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“You’re sick, Sang,” he said. “But I’m going to help you, whether you want me to or not.”
“Stop trying to help me!” I cried out.
“Hendricks was going to come after you!” he said, much more powerfully, the voice in his mask catching on high pitch sounds. He dropped his shoulders, his voice returning to normal. “He was looking for McCoy, wanting him to come kidnap you. Do you realize that? He never said it outright, but he kept toying with Mr. McCoy, suggesting but not directly saying.”
I shook my head. “He couldn’t.”
“I know McCoy’s being followed,” he said. “That doesn’t stop someone like Mr. Morris coming to get you, maybe tricking you, and leading you to Mr. McCoy. They almost did it when you were out shopping. They got close, but I showed you they were hunting for you.”
He had been there. He’d wanted me to chase him, so I’d know they were there.
He continued, “Today, he was going to try it again. Get you alone in his office, make sure the right people would keep your friends away, and have Mr. Morris drive off with you, telling Mr. Morris to do it or he’d get fired. Mr. Hendricks told him to take you to the school board building, and drop you off for a trial because you had to be escorted. Only he would drop you off with McCoy waiting nearby. Mr. Hendricks was going to wait until Mr. Morris was back, and then call the police on Mr. McCoy.” He touched his chest. “I stopped it.”
I shook my head over and over again. Would Mr. Hendricks really have done that? Was he that desperate to get away? “The boys were working on a plan,” I said. “They were trying…this weekend…”
“They didn’t know what he was planning,” Volto said. “They gave him access to some decoy information, but Hendricks doesn’t work from information he’s not sure about, not after they tried to trick him this last time with someone else pretending to be you. Anything that comes from an Academy source, he doesn’t trust anymore. He was going to get you and give you to McCoy to hang on to, and watch them scramble to find you. You’ve been pushing him too far. He’s getting orders from someone else to get out, and he’s trying.”
