Ghost Hold

by Ripley Patton

  “Because of her social status and the risk of being kidnapped,” Marcus continued, “Samantha has an entourage of security people around her most of the time. But at school she doesn’t, other than your usual high school security staff, and that’s where you two come in. The goal is for you to get inside her inner circle of friends as quickly as possible. You’re going to have to earn her trust,” Marcus said, looking at me, “and the fastest way to do that is going to be to show her your PSS.”

  Passion looked from Marcus to me, then down at her own hands, and she quickly tucked them under the table. Was she actually self-conscious about not having PSS?

  “So what?” I asked. “You want me to go in there, say ‘Hi, nice to meet you,’ and pull off my glove?”

  “No.” Marcus shook his head. “It’s going to need to be more subtle than that. We have to assume the CAMFers have an agent in place like they did in Greenfield. It will be someone close to her, probably an adult in a position of authority, which means it could be a teacher. The reveal should only come when you’re alone with her. Your cover for wearing gloves is that you have severe eczema and have to wear them to protect your skin. I even put that in your school medical records.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering if Marcus was going to get around to mentioning the cult thing. He hated to talk about his personal life, and The Hold was so enmeshed with his family and his loss, I knew it would be hard. Still, shouldn’t Passion know everything I did?

  “So, after Olivia reveals her hand, do we tell Samantha about the CAMFers?” Passion asked.

  “No,” Marcus said. “She’d just run to her father with that. You need to convince her to come back here with you. And I’ll take it from there.”

  I caught Marcus’s eyes and nodded toward Passion, hoping he’d get my signal.

  He looked at her, but I could tell he had no idea what I wanted. “Passion, how’s your hand?” He took a stab in the dark. “Is it healing up okay?”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “But I should probably go put some more antibiotic stuff on it. Don’t want it to get infected.” She got up from the table. “I mean, if we’re done talking about the mission.”

  “Yeah, we’re done,” Marcus said, sliding into Passion’s vacated seat as she headed upstairs.

  “Don’t you think we should tell her about The Hold?” I asked when I was sure she was out of earshot.

  “Why?” Marcus asked, looking genuinely surprised.

  “Because she’s part of the mission. Because we trust her. Because why not?”

  “You are way too trusting,” he said. “Think about Greenfield, Olivia. People you were sure you could trust ended up trying to kill you. I told her there’d be extra security on Samantha outside of school. That’s all she really needs to know.”

  “You think Passion is a CAMFer spy?” I whispered, appalled.

  “I’m not saying that,” he said, “but I still don’t understand why she decided to come with us. She seems uncomfortable around PSS. She doesn’t strike me as a fighter. It doesn’t add up. And that’s one more reason I want you to get to know her better.”

  I’d thought Marcus wanted me to get to know Passion because we were going to work as partners and pretend to be cousins. And because she was so sweet and vulnerable. But I should have known better; this was Marcus we were talking about. And now that I thought about it, I wasn’t exactly sure where Passion had been after the Palmer thing. At first, she’d been in the kitchen with me, but then she’d gone upstairs. What if she was the one who’d tampered with the camera footage? Mike Palmer had been a regular attendee of her dad’s church back in Greenfield. I think he’d even been a deacon or something.

  “If you suspect her,” I said, feeling panicked, “why use her for this mission? She could sabotage the whole thing, and throw us all to the CAMFers.”

  “Because you have to keep your friends close,” Marcus said, “and your enemies closer.”

  “Wait. Was that whole thing yesterday about sending her in without me complete bullshit?” I asked, glaring at him.

  “That whole thing yesterday,” he said, reaching out and touching my face, “was about me being terrified of losing you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” I said, my anger vanishing.

  “You can’t promise that,” he said. I could see it in his eyes. He was thinking of Danielle. And of his mom and dad. He’d lost a lot of people he’d loved. Not that I qualified for that category. At least, not yet.

  “I promise I’ll do everything I can to stay safe,” I said, turning my face and kissing his palm.

  “Everything?” he asked, a desperate gleam in his eye.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he nodded, dropping his hand, reaching into his pocket, and pulling something out. “I was hoping you’d say that because I want you to wear these.”

  I stared at the dog tags dangling from the chain in his hands. There were two of them, small, and oblong, yet rounded on the corners, the metal looking like it had been pounded to a thin wafer. Each one was engraved with my fake name, Anne Clawson, plus all her fake stats (birthday, blood type, and religion).

  “Dog tags?” I said, staring at him. “You think I’m going to need dog tags?”

  “They’re not just any dog tags,” he said, jingling them in his hand. “Yale made these out of our razor blade. As long as you have them on, the CAMFers won’t be able to trace you or detect your PSS. We already tested them with the minus meter, and they work like a charm.”

  I stared at the things dangling from his hand. Since the moment we’d left Greenfield, I’d let Marcus handle the items I’d pulled out of people. The bullet from Jason didn’t work anymore anyway, since it was inside Dr. Fineman’s cube. And there was no way I was going to use that cube and risk whisking us forward in time again. As for the blades, whenever I touched them I could feel where Passion was. And I was pretty sure she could feel me back. Which was another reason I’d avoided handling the bullet-cube; if Dr. Fineman (or Julian, or whatever his real name was) ever woke up from his coma, that last thing I wanted was for him to feel me on the other end of it.

  “I’m not wearing those,” I said to Marcus.

  “They won’t zap you,” he assured me. “Yale and I tested that too and it seems to have worn off. Maybe because it’s only one blade and doesn’t have the others to resonate with. Anyway, there’s still a sensation, but it’s more like a tingle than a shock.”

  “I’m still not wearing them,” I said.

  “You promised,” Marcus said, holding out the tags, his eyes challenging me.

  “You tricked me into promising,” I objected, knowing I’d lost already.

  “But it was still a promise,” he said gently.

  “Fine.” I turned and presented the back of my neck to him. “Put them on me.”

  First, his arms came over my head, the cold chain brushing against my skin. Then his warm fingers fumbled at the clasp. He finally hooked it, and the dog tags slid down my chest, nestling there.

  “They look great,” Marcus said, looming over my shoulder and looking down at them.

  “Hey.” I elbowed him in the ribs and pulled the tags to rest on the outside of my t-shirt.

  He sat back down next to me, smirking, as my fingers explored the feel of my new necklace.

  “Can you feel where Passion is right now?” he asked, his face serious again.

  I turned and stared at him. Oh, he was a clever bastard. Marcus never, ever did anything for only the obvious reason. Yes, the dog tags would hide me from the CAMFers, but they would also help me keep tabs on Passion.

  “Try it,” he said, nodding at me.

  I wrapped my ghost hand around the tags, squeezing them inside my PSS, and instantly knew that Passion was upstairs, not in the bathroom tending to her hand, but in our bedroom, standing at the window. I wasn’t surprised, and I didn’t doubt the perception; it was that clear.

  “It’s never been this strong before,” I said to M
arcus. “I don’t like it.” I dropped the tags, and the sense of Passion faded, though I could still feel her upstairs, a faint presence haunting the back of my awareness.

  “I know,” he said, taking my ghost hand in his, “but wear them. For me.”

  12

  UNDERSTANDING PASSION

  The rest of the day was weird in its Sunday normalcy. The guys that weren’t on security duty played video games, and Passion and I joined in, diligently referring to one another as Anne and Mirabelle to try to get used to it. Marcus found his gun under the couch, and the other guys gave him a hard time about it. I tried to sooth the inner voice that kept reminding me that I’d seen Mike Palmer, and I went on the Internet and looked up the word Shades, but there were way too many hits to narrow it down to a relevant clue. We all did our laundry in the huge washer and dryer, and one of my camp shirts literally fell apart in my hands afterwards. For dinner we ordered cheap pizza and gorged ourselves, then filled in the cracks with giant root beer floats. No one mentioned Palmer, or the CAMFers, or our looming mission to rescue Samantha, and I kept my dog tags tucked inside my shirt, slowly adjusting to the fact that I always knew where Passion was, even when I couldn’t see her. I wasn’t sure if she felt it too, though I did catch her glancing at me more than usual.

  At ten, Marcus and Yale went on security detail, and Jason and Nose decided to watch some horror movie on the big screen in the living room. Since Passion and I had to get up for our first day at Samantha’s school, Edgemont High, in the morning, we decided to head to bed.

  As soon as we got to our room, I crawled into my curtained cocoon, but I could hear Passion moving around, going in and out of the closet as she tried to pick out the perfect outfit for the next day. She was nervous, and so was I, but her restlessness wasn’t going to help anything. It was just going to drive me crazy and keep both of us up all night.

  I pulled my curtain open and found her trying on yet another long-sleeved top.

  “It looks great,” I offered. “So did the last one. They all look great on you.”

  She turned to me, an annoyed expression on her face. “Aren’t you nervous, or terrified, or anything?”

  “Yes,” I answered honestly. “I’m nervous and terrified, but what I wear tomorrow isn’t going to change that.”

  “Really?” She glanced down at my t-shirt, and I followed her gaze to see the dog tags dangling there, completely out in the open.

  I leaned back, but I didn’t tuck them out of sight. If the shit was going to hit the fan about Passion’s blades, it was long overdue. Maybe Marcus didn’t trust her, but I needed to if we were going to do this Samantha James thing together. And she needed to trust me.

  “Can you feel them?” I asked, touching the tags. It was a stupid question. Of course she could. She’d known the tags were her blade, even though it looked completely different now. Just the way Jason had known his bullet was in Dr. Fineman’s box.

  “Only when you have them,” she said, looking away.

  “Can you tell where I am?” I asked, and she looked back at me, surprise flickering in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said. “Can you feel me too?”

  I nodded.

  “Like twins,” she said, crossing and sitting in a chair next to my bed, her long legs folded under her. “Twins are supposed to be able to tell where the other one is. But it isn’t true.”

  “It’s not?” I asked, wondering how she could be so sure.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m a twin, but my sister drowned when we were twelve. I could never feel where she was. I still can’t.”

  I didn’t know what to say. This was the longest conversation Passion and I had ever had, and she’d just told me about her dead twin sister. Nothing about that had ever circulated through the Greenfield rumor mill. I don’t think anyone in Greenfield even knew.

  Then again, Passion’s family hadn’t moved to town until her freshman year of high school. And maybe that’s why they’d moved. To start over after the death of her sister. Maybe that was why—

  “Is that why you cut?” I blurted, my tongue flapping before my brain could think to stop it.

  “No,” she said. If she was put off by my bluntness, she didn’t show it. “Maybe. I don’t know. There are so many reasons to cut.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Does it make you feel better?”

  “Feel better?” she asked, pondering that. “Maybe. But mostly it makes you feel something.”

  “Yeah, but there are tons of other ways to feel something without doing that.”

  Passion looked down at my ghost hand, glowing against the bed sheet. “What if cutting was the only way to find out something important about yourself?”

  “You really believe that?” I looked down at her hands. The injured one only sported a small Band-Aid now, but her skin was so pale I could see the blue web of her veins crisscrossing just beneath the surface.

  “Sometimes,” Passion said, looking up at me. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t cut anymore. You cured me, I guess.”

  My head snapped up, my eyes boring into her.

  “I haven’t done it since you pulled them out of me.” Her eyes flashed down to the dog tags, then back up to my face. “I haven’t even wanted to.” She sounded almost sad, like she was grieving the loss of a friend or something.

  “But what about at the hospital? I saw you with your wrists all bandaged? And you had fresh cuts that night down in Palmer’s basement.”

  “They weren’t fresh,” she said. “They were from before, and they were already healing. My parents made me wear those bandages to the hospital. They were pretty freaked out that day. They’d never seen my scars, and to find out like that, in the nurse’s office—it completely humiliated them, and all they wanted to do was cover it up. Even when they listened to your mom’s advice that night and took me to the hospital, they didn’t want anyone to see. They didn’t realize that all those bandages just made it worse.” She smiled wryly. “The receptionist in the emergency room totally thought I’d tried to kill myself. But it did get us a room faster.”

  “Wait, your parents didn’t know you were cutting until that day? But you were seeing my mom. How could they not know?”

  “Um, because they didn’t want to,” Passion said. “And I wasn’t seeing your mom for my cutting. I mean, we talked about it, but that wasn’t the reason my parents sent me to her.”

  “Then why did they send you?”

  Passion looked away from me, and I followed her gaze. She was staring at The Other Olivia, some wistful, deeply pained look in her eyes.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said. “It’s none of my business.”

  “No, it’s okay.” She looked back at me. “My parents sent me to your mom because I like girls.”

  “Like girls?” I repeated. “You mean like like girls?” Well, that certainly explained why she’d rebuffed Nose’s advances.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Passion nodded. “I mean, I’ve never been attracted to a guy in my life. And when my parents finally figured that out, they kind of freaked. They didn’t want me to change in the girl’s locker room anymore, or wear shorts, like that was what had caused it or something.”

  “Oh my God, that’s terrible,” I blurted.

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “But it made other things easier to hide. And eventually they sent me to your mom, which ended up being a good thing. It helped just to have someone to talk to.”

  It was weird how you could know someone on the surface and think you understood who they were, or why they did things and then, when you really got to know them, you discovered this hidden underworld of hurt and pain and confusion. Did everyone have that? Were we all just broken people wandering around pretending we were fine? I had always thought of my life as kind of tragic, because I’d lost my dad, but that was nothing compared to what both Marcus and Passion had lived through.

  “Listen,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“I owe you an apology. I’ve been a total asshole to you ever since we left Greenfield.”

  “Before we left, actually,” she corrected me.

  “That—is fairly accurate.” I agreed. “And I don’t have an excuse. Sometimes I’m an ass. My only redeeming quality is that, occasionally, I am capable of realizing it and doing better. That’s the most I can promise you. I never meant to take anything from you, and then I was afraid to talk to you about it because I had no idea what to say. But these are yours,” I said, grabbing the dog tags and pulling them over my head. “I can have Yale change the name on them.” I held them out to her. “And if you don’t trust me after the way I’ve treated you, I totally understand.”

  “I accept your apology,” she said, staring at the dog tags in my hand, “but I don’t want those back. And I actually do trust you,” she continued, looking me in the eye, “because even when you’re being a complete bitch, at least you’re not fake.”

  “Why, thank you. I think.”

  There was silence between us as I put the dog tags back on, but it was good silence, not the uncomfortable wall that had been hanging between us for weeks.

  Suddenly, my cell phone started ringing, muffled but persistent.

  “Crap, what time is it?” I asked, scrambling for my duffle bag, but I already knew. It was 10:30 on Sunday night. The exact time I’d set up for Emma to call me this week and let me know what was up with my mom, and Dr. Fineman, and everyone else in Greenfield. And I’d completely forgotten.

  I found the phone in a side-pocket and pulled it out. “Hello?” I said, hoping it hadn’t already bumped the call to messages.

  “Olivia?” Emma’s voice sounded in my ear.

  “Hey you,” I answered. We’d only talked two other times since I’d left Greenfield. Nose had put some kind of scrambler in the phone but he’d still advised me not to use it too often, or for too long.

  “I was afraid you weren’t going to pick up,” Emma said. There was an undertone to her voice. She had something to tell me. Something bad.