20
EACH OTHER’S MASQUERADE
STELLA LOOKS AFRAID AND POISONOUS at once. Mara looks satisfied. Daniel is watchful, Jamie thoughtful, and Goose is trying to pretend he’s unruffled by the revelations of the last hour and failing.
And I, I don’t know what I am. Mara talks a good game—she puffs up like a cat would to appear larger and more frightening than it actually is, and I usually find it just as hilarious because she looks so completely unmenacing, it’s hard to remember that she actually is.
So the fact that she wasn’t talking shit, but was thinking it? I can’t say it isn’t a bit unsettling.
Seems as good an opportunity as any to get to the point—my point, anyway.
“Are we going to talk about the person who killed himself in your home this morning?” I look around, but despite the paint colour, nothing else from that nightmare is familiar.
Leo stares for a blank moment, eyes watery and pale. “His room was down here. I’ll show you.”
I get up, and Mara follows without missing a beat. Jamie and Daniel are a bit slower, and Goose—
“Pardon? Did you say—”
I turn to my friend. “Goose. Mate. You’re going to have to choose, very quickly, whether to shut up and stay or go home.”
He closes his mouth, lifts his chin, and walks past. “Well?” he says, right behind Leo. “Come along, then.”
The rest of us follow as Leo walks me back into my nightmare.
The windows are tipped in gold and red stained glass diamonds, kaleidoscoping the scuffed, abused hardwood floor. Even time hasn’t quite managed to trample or fade the inlaid pattern in the wood that borders the room. The walls are the same colour, that faded mint green, the nightstand littered with the same smattering of partially filled glasses, some gathering more dust and mould than others. Then there are the bottles. The room smells like sick, but the bed’s been stripped, mercifully.
“This wasn’t Felix’s room,” Leo starts. “He came down here last night, after Felicity disappeared.”
A laugh escapes Jamie’s throat. “Wait, Felix? Felicity?”
Stella and Leo are quiet, and Jamie manages to rein himself in.
“How much do you know?” Leo asks me.
I glance at the stripped bed. “Pretend I know nothing.”
A smile twists Leo’s mouth. “I can’t do that.”
Stella looks back and forth between us and seems to make a decision. “Felix was our friend.” She takes out her phone, scrolls a bit, then hands it to me. A picture of four of them—Stella, Leo, Felix, and Felicity. He has longish light brown hair and freckles, and looks slight beside the girl—she’s taller than he, with curly ginger hair and an easy smile.
Stella turns to Daniel. “They’re both eighteen. Both Gifted.”
“Were,” Jamie says, and Stella shuts down. “Don’t you mean ‘were’?”
Her eyes harden. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“I’m sorry,” Goose says, “but shouldn’t the police be here?” He thinks for a moment. “Wait, they were here. They just left and let you lot hang out?”
Leo directs his words at me. “Your friend—Jamie, is it? He’s not the only one who can be persuasive.”
Jamie pulls a face at Stella. “And here I thought I was special.”
“I still think you’re special,” Mara says.
Mara, Jamie; it doesn’t seem to bother them at all that they’re standing in a room where someone ended his life.
Perhaps it’s easier for them, having been through worse. A boy committing suicide must seem like nothing by comparison. I’m growing irritated at them for coming, at Mara especially for bringing them, at Leo for being coy about it, and at the entire bloody world.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask Leo, and Mara’s head snaps around because as I say it, I realise she doesn’t know about the address he conjured for me to see. There’ll be fallout with her later, which I can’t even pretend to care about now.
Leo makes no move to speak, so I go on. “We know what you said—that Stella told you we were here, and you were curious about Goose’s ability, I’m sure. But I saw you watching that girl on the platform before she jumped, before Felix killed himself. Who was she? Why were you watching her?”
Mara refocuses her attention on Leo, with effort. “Did you know her? Did you know she was going to kill herself?”
Leo pauses, and I notice something—he has no tells. No nervous tics. Slick, that one.
“We didn’t know her,” Stella says. “But like we said, we’ve . . . been able to find others with Gifts. We knew she had one.” Her pulse is thready, heartbeat erratic. Stella’s lying about something; about what, I haven’t the slightest.
“We’ll never know now, because she’s dead,” Leo says flatly.
“A lot of us have been turning up dead,” Stella says.
“Turning up?” Jamie asks.
Stella’s eyes dart away. Leo, undisturbed, says, “Committing suicide.”
Mara exhales lightly, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Look at the house,” Leo says. “Notice anything unusual?”
Stella unfolds her legs from beneath her, heads to the kitchen table in back. She comes back with a small pile of papers. Printouts.
News reports of missing teens. She places them on the scratched-up floor in a grid. Arcel Flores, a Filipina girl with a flashing smile, left her parents’ two-bedroom in Queens to tutor a high school student in maths. Never came home. Jake Kelly, a lacrosse player with a dimpled chin, missed practice—his parents haven’t seen him since.
There were six more. Six more names including—
Sam Milnes.
Mara goes rigid. “You knew them all?”
Stella won’t address her directly. She puts down the last piece of paper.
Felicity Melrose, seventeen. Daughter of Chelsey and Peter Melrose of the Upper East Side. There are more details about her family, where she was last seen, but those don’t interest me. I’ve never seen this girl before—not hurt, not in pain. She’s just—missing.
Felix, however.
“How’d they do it?” I ask, though I know the answer already. “How’d they kill themselves?”
Stella and Leo exchange a look.
“You can’t tell me because you don’t know. They’re missing, not dead—”
“As good as,” Leo says, straightening his spine.
“Explain,” I say, leaning against the wall.
Leo appears to be editing what he plans to say, which reminds me—
“Stella, are you listening?”
She turns practically white.
“To us. Our thoughts. Right now.”
She shakes her head emphatically. “That’s not what I’m doing,” she says, though her gaze flicks briefly to Jamie, Mara. “I have to concentrate, hard, to do it. And I hate it, so I take drugs to blur out the voices. Otherwise, it’s too much.” She looks at Jamie. “You guys know that.”
“Drugs?” Goose perks up. “What sort?”
“Prescription . . . ?”
“Actually,” Daniel says. “No offence, Stella—”
“He’s about to say something offensive,” Jamie stage-whispers.
“I’d be more comfortable knowing you’re not poking around in my brain either. I think that would go a long way toward trust, on both sides.” Ever the mediator.
Stella looks to Leo, and when he nods, I can actually feel her relief. Doesn’t escape my attention that she’s been looking to Leo for quite a lot. Codependent or . . . something more? Something . . . else?
Stella retreats to the bathroom, returns with some pills. Shows them to Daniel. “Do they pass inspection?”
He raises his hands up in defence. “You don’t have to show me. I know what you were going through last year. I know how badly you wanted a cure.”
A cure. Mara mentioned that in passing, that it was Stella’s main motivation for joining her and Jamie in their search for me. She’d hoped they’d find something that would stop the voices in her head. She’d hoped to find a way to be rid of her affliction.
A flush rises in Stella’s cheeks. She’s embarrassed. There’s a furtive glance at Leo as well. Is she not supposed to want it? A cure? Fuck. I’ve missed so much.
She shakes out a couple of pills. We stand silently in the dead room, waiting, but they start to work quickly. Her heartbeat grows sluggish, her chest rises and falls slowly. It’s possible she could still hear our thoughts, but when asked directly, she says no, and I believe her.
“Two days ago,” she says slowly, “Felicity just disappeared. We were sleeping in our bedroom”—she nods to the stairs—“and when I woke up on Saturday morning, she was just . . . gone.”
“Wait, she was here?” Daniel asks. “The paper says she lived with her parents—”
“She was Felix’s girlfriend,” Stella says. “He lived here, with us.”
“Did the rest of them?” I ask Leo. “Live here with you?”
Leo doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, Stella continues, “She told her parents she was staying with a friend Friday night, but then she just—”
A movement from Leo, slight, barely perceptible. But I notice, as does Stella.
“Obviously, Felix tried her cell phone, e-mail—Stella was listening, trying to find a trace of her but—”
“No,” I say, annoyed and suspicious. “That doesn’t track.” I have the room now. “You followed Beth to the subway because you heard her thoughts, yeah? But you didn’t know her ability.” Which she was thinking about before she died, and which Stella would’ve known if she really did hear her.
Silence from both of them—something’s off, but I don’t press, because I don’t want to admit to them that I heard Beth’s thoughts myself.
“And us?” I ask instead, directing a piercing look at Stella. “You just happened to know we were in the city? Knew we’d be at the Second Avenue stop heading downtown?” I gesture to the papers of the other missing teenagers. “You said it yourself, Stella—it’s hard to focus on one person in all the noise—and okay, yeah, I’ll buy that Goose has an ability and is amplifying yours or whatever, but that doesn’t explain why Felix would kill himself two days after his girlfriend went missing. So tell me,” I say. “Stop fucking around and tell me. What is happening to these people? And how do you know about it?”
Stella’s caught short by my aggression. Leo . . . isn’t. He’s considering, editing again.
“We know someone who . . . can identify people like us. Other Gifted.”
And there it is. He doesn’t go on, so Daniel tries to prompt him.
“And once identified, you bring them here?”
Leo shrugs. “Some people find us. Some people, we find. And we share what we know with the ones who stay here, practice with us—”
Jamie straightens up. “Practice? Practice what?”
“Using our Gifts.” Leo has Jamie’s full, hungry attention, which he knows, because he says, “I can show you, if you want,”
“Maybe later, thanks,” I say, interrupting. “Right now we want to know everything you know about everyone who’s missing.”
“And everyone who’s died,” Daniel adds. Mara is notably silent.
Leo draws himself up. “Let me ask you this,” he says to me. “How did you know her name was Beth?” All eyes on me. “You can find people as well, can’t you?”
“It’s not like that. I’m not hunting anyone,” I retort.
“We’re not hunting anyone either.”
“Oh, so the people you find, they want to be found?” I ask. Even Daniel quiets at this, and I’m rapidly losing the plot. “Tell me how it works. Tell me how you knew Sam.”
“Did you know Sam, Noah?” Leo’s tone is suggestive, accusing.
“No,” I say. But it takes effort to stay calm, dismissive.
“Why don’t you tell us how it works?” Leo asks, “How you knew to come here?”
“I can see and feel what they see and feel when they’re suffering, right before they die.”
“But you didn’t stop it,” Leo says, picking my scabs.
“Because it’s too late by then. I’m not there with them. I just see and feel. But this isn’t the case for you. These are your friends, no?” I pick up the papers. “Some of them lived here, but they keep going missing—”
“They keep dying.”
I round on Stella. “How do you know?”
Her eyes dart nervously. Before she can lie, Leo says smoothly, “One of us can . . . see connections. To other people with Gifts. And when one of us goes missing, the connection dies. They just—vanish. Wiped off the grid.”
“And who’s making these connections?”
“She doesn’t make them, she sees them. Or feels them, I guess. And it’s not for me to out her. If she wants you to know, she’ll find you.”
“So if they disappear,” Daniel says, “How’d you know where to find Beth?”
“She says they flare up right before they die. I guess that part of her ability’s familiar to you,” Leo says to me.
“You could’ve stopped Beth from killing herself,” I say, and then it’s out there. The reason I’m so angry. They actually could’ve done something to help her, and they didn’t—and without any guilt. I couldn’t have, but feel responsible anyway.
“We didn’t know.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “Stella could hear her thoughts.”
“I couldn’t. It was like there was something—cloaking them. She was . . . different, somehow.”
“And Sam?” Mara asks, the first thing she’s said since all this has come out.
“He was too far away,” Leo says. “For us to do anything about.”
Implying that there should’ve been a way for me to do something about it. I feel like hitting him. More than that.
But Jamie’s actually the one to move on this, surprisingly. “How about Felix, then? He killed himself in your house!”
“He chose to,” I say before catching myself. Leo’s pale eyebrows rise slightly.
“Meaning what?” Jamie’s focused on me now. “That the others didn’t choose to kill themselves?”
“It’s true,” Stella says, saving me. “And anyway we weren’t here when it happened.”
“How convenient,” Jamie says.
“It’s not like he’d have chosen a time when he could’ve been rushed to the hospital and had his stomach pumped,” I say without meaning to. Stella looks grateful, though I didn’t say it for her benefit. I shouldn’t have said it at all, as I’ve no interest in playing patient to Mara’s or Jamie’s armchair psychologist later—Mara’s expression is shadowed, and Jamie’s confusion has turned to suspicion. Daniel and Goose are both unruffled, knowing well enough to leave it alone. If Goose wasn’t actually present for all the injuries I tried to explain away in school, he would’ve heard about them.
Leo takes advantage of my having thrown at least half the room off-balance. “Look,” Leo goes on. “We all want this to stop happening, right?”
Daniel’s the only one to nod.
“And we know what you guys went through,” Leo goes on. “That place, Horizons. Looking for a cure. The experiments they were doing on you in Florida. The research you found.”
Goose turns to me and mouths, “The fuck?”
Did they know who ordered it all, though? Was that what the envelope was about?
I inhale. “So you showed me your address, sent the clippings to let me know you knew all about me, and led me here to help you find the rest of these people before they die too?”
“What clippings?” Leo asks.
I can’t tell if he’s lying. Not even with Goose here, supposedly amplifying his heartbeat or whatever.
Seeing me thrown, Daniel takes the lead. “Someone sent Noah an envelope with his father’s obituary and something about a poisoning in the NYPD.”
“That’s . . . random,” Leo says. I notice Mara direct her attention to Stella—all of her attention.
Stella, still refusing to look Mara’s way, says. “We didn’t send that.”
So, who did?
“Okay, question for another day,” Daniel says. “We want to pool what we’ve got, stop this from happening to anyone else. Right?”
“Yes,” Stella says. “That’s what we were hoping.” Leo nods once.
I’m trying to work him out. His breathing is even, heartbeat steady, but he doesn’t seem . . . right.
All of us have gone quiet, so Daniel steps up again. “All right, there’s a lot to . . . digest.” He twists back to the windows, which are now giving off only the faintest beams of light. “It’s late, and we should be getting back,” he says to Goose, Jamie, Mara, and me. We nod like puppets. “But do you want to exchange numbers?” he asks Leo, who withdraws his mobile from a back pocket. Daniel gives it to him. Leo looks at me next.
Oh, why not.
As they lead us out of the house, Stella reaches out to Jamie, “It’s good. Seeing you again.”
A single nod. “Yeah. We’ll catch up.”
“I’d like that.”
As Mara exits, Stella says nothing to her, nor Mara to Stella, though she does offer the slightest of smiles to Jamie and Daniel. The five of us assemble at the bottom of the stoop, raising a final glance at Leo. Stella’s already tucked herself back inside.
We walk back to the train, Jamie and Mara speaking in low voices, Daniel talking at Goose. I’m trailing slightly behind when my phone vibrates.
It’s Stella. I need to talk to you. Without Mara. LMK before 8.
And then another text, right after:
p.s. Please don’t tell her. Please.