White Cat

Lila frowns at me and looks around the train, but even after my outburst no one seems interested in us. Her voice goes low, to practically a whisper, like she can make up for my mistake through overcompensation. “They don’t kill anyone. They get their little brother to do it for them. He turns people into objects. Then they dump the objects.”



“What?” I heard her; I just can’t believe I heard her right.



“They’ve been using you as a human garbage disposal.” She makes a frame with her hands and looks at me through it. “Portrait of a teenage assassin.”



I stand up, even though we’re on a train and there’s nowhere for me to go.



“Cassel?” She reaches out for me, and I step back.



There’s a roaring in my ears. I’m grateful. I don’t think I can listen to much more.



“I’m sorry. But you had to suspect—”



I think I’m going to throw up.



I push my way through the heavy doors and onto the platform between the cars. The joining between the two cars swings back and forth beneath my feet. I am standing right above the hooks and chains that connect the train into its snaking shape. Cold air blows back my hair, then hot air from the engine hits my face.



I stand there, hands against the sliding metal, until I start to calm down.



I think I understand why all those workers got rounded up and shot. I think I understand that kind of fear now.



We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That’s why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.



For three whole days I wasn’t a killer. Lila had come back from the dead, and with her, the abatement of my self-loathing. But now the pile of corpses teeters above me, threatening to crash down and suffocate me with guilt.



All my life I wanted my brothers to trust me. To let me in on their secrets. I wanted them, Philip especially, to think of me as a worthy accomplice.



Even after they kicked the crap out of me, my instinct was to try and save them.



Now I just want revenge.



After all, I’m already a murderer. No one really expects a murderer to stop killing. I grip the metal bar on the rolling train, my fingers clenching around it like it’s Philip’s throat. I don’t want to be a monster, but maybe it’s too late to be anything else.



The door swings open and the conductor steps onto the platform and past me. “You can’t ride out here,” he says, looking back.



“Okay,” I say, and he opens the door to the next car, ready to collect more tickets. He doesn’t really care. I could probably stay where I am for a long while before he comes back through again.



I suck in another couple breaths of fetid air and then go back to Lila.



“Very dramatic,” she says when I sit down. “Storming off and all.” Her eyes look bruised around the edges. She’d found a pen somewhere and started doodling in ink on her leg, below the knee.



I feel awful, but I don’t apologize.



“Yeah,” I say, “I’m a dramatic guy. High strung.”



That makes her smile, but it fades fast. “I hated you, lying in your comfortable bed at your school, caring about grades and girls and not about what you did to me.”



I grit my teeth. “You slept in my bed. You really think it’s that comfortable?”



She laughs, but it sounds more like a sob.



I look out the window. We’re in woods now. “I shouldn’t have said that. You were sleeping in a cage. I’m not a good person, Lila.” I hesitate. “But I did—I do care what I’ve done to you. I thought about you every single day. And I am sorry. I’m grovelingly, pathetically sorry.”



“I don’t want your pity,” she says, but her voice sounds gentler.



“Too bad,” I say.



She gives me a wry lopsided grin and kicks me with my own boot.



“I’d like it if you’d tell me the rest of what happened. How I transformed you. How you got away. I’m not going to freak out anymore. I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.”



She nods and goes back to drawing on her leg. Swirls that spiral out from an ink blue center. “Right. So. There you are, pressing me down to the carpet.



“You look crazy, angry. But then you get this weird smile on your face. I’m scared, really scared, because I think you’re going to do it. You lean down and whisper in my ear. ‘Run.’ That’s what you say.”



“Run?” I ask.



“I know. Crazy, right? You’re still on top of me—how am I supposed to do anything? But then I start to change.” The pen presses against her skin, hard now. It’s scratching her leg. “It felt like my skin was getting tight and itchy. My bones twisted and I grew hunched, small. My vision blurred, and then I could crawl away from you. I didn’t know how to run on four legs, but I ran anyway.



“I heard you scream, but I didn’t look back. There was a lot of shouting.



“They caught me under some bushes. I made it out of the house, but I just couldn’t run fast enough.”



She stops drawing lines and starts punching the point of the pen against her leg.



“Hey,” I say, putting my gloved hand on top of hers.



She blinks quickly, like she forgot where she was. “Barron put me in a cage and he put a shock collar around my neck—the kind they use on little dogs. He said that it was better than if I was dead. I was out of the way, but he could still use me. I made people sleepwalk right out to you guys; it’s easy for a cat to slip into a house and to touch someone. I even made you sleepwalk out of the dorms to where your brothers were waiting.



“You looked at me like I was nothing. An animal.” Her nostrils flare. “I thought you’d been trying to save me. But you never tried to save me again.”



I don’t know what to say. I feel a deep, aching sorrow that hurts more than I know how to express. I don’t have the words. I want to touch her, but I don’t deserve it.



She shakes her head. “I know Barron worked you. I’m here now because of you. I shouldn’t say that.”



“It’s okay.” I take a deep breath. “I have a lot to be sorry for.”



“I should have guessed that they’d changed your memories. Barron’s so busy trying to make people remember what he wants them to and make them forget everything else that he doesn’t notice that he’s strip-mining his own brain. He can’t pull the strings because he’s forgotten where they are.



“It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up.



“In the beginning I tried to escape, but I guess after a while I just used up all my hope like I used up the stories.” Lila lowers her voice and leans into me, so close that the hairs on the back of my neck rise with her breath. “When I found out you were going to hurt my dad, when I overheard them, I realized escaping didn’t matter. I knew I had to kill you.”



“I’m glad you didn’t,” I say. I think of my bare feet sliding on slate.



She smiles. “It turned out Barron wasn’t watching me as closely as he had before. I wore down the nylon part of the collar enough. It was still hard to get it the rest of the way off, but I did it.”



I think of the blood crusted on her fur when I saw her that first time.



“Do you still hate me?” I ask.



“I don’t know,” she says. “A little.”



My ribs ache. I want to close my eyes. Somewhere on the train a baby starts to cry. The businessman two seats in front of us is on the phone. “I don’t want sorbet,” he says. “I don’t like sorbet. Just give me some damn ice cream.”



I think maybe I deserve for my ribs to hurt more.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN



THE LIGHTS OF ATLANTIC City glitter along the boardwalk, as bright as day. We finally get out of the taxi in front of the Taj Mahal hotel, both of us sleepy and stretching from the long trip.



I look at my watch. It’s about fifteen minutes after nine. She’s late.



“I guess I can take it from here,” Lila says.



Yawning, I take out a pen, her pen. The one she was writing on her leg with. I write my number on her arm, right above the top of her glove.



She’s watching with half-lidded eyes as ink marks stretch across her skin. I wonder what it would be liketo kiss her now, under the streetlight, with my eyes open.



“Let me know when you’re okay,” I say softly instead.



She looks at the number. “Are you going back?”



I shake my head. “I’ll stretch my legs and get something to eat. I’m not going anywhere until you call.”



She nods. “Wish me luck.”



“Luck,” I say.



I watch her walk off, a swagger in her stride, toward the hotel entrance. I wait a couple of minutes, then I start through the doors into the casino.



Inside I inhale the familiar smell of stale cigarillos and whisky. The machines sing and clank. Coins clatter in the distance. People hunker over the slots, big plastic cups in one hand and tokens in the other. Some of them look like they’ve been there a long time.



Two security guys peel away from the wall and start in my direction.



“Hey, kid,” one of them calls. “Wait a sec.” They probably figure I’m underage.



“Just leaving,” I say, and push through the back door. The sea air stings my face.



I stalk down the worn gray planks, hands in my pockets, thinking of Lila upstairs with her father. When I was a kid, Zacharov was a shadowy figure, a legend, the boogeyman. I met him maybe three times, and one of those times was while I was being thrown out of his daughter’s birthday party.



He laughed, I remember that.



At the back of the Taj Mahal a few old women lean over a railing, throwing something onto the sand. Some guys in tracksuits smoke near the entrance, calling to women as they pass. And a man in a long cashmere coat and silvery white hair looks out at the sea.



I touch my pocket with my phone in it. I should call Grandad, but I’m not ready to make excuses.



The white-haired man turns toward me. Glancing around, I notice two huge guys trying to look inconspicuous near a taffy shop window.



“Cassel Sharpe,” Mr. Zacharov says, slight accent making my name sound exotic. Even though it’s already dark, sunglasses cover his eyes. A fat, pale red stone glitters in the pin on his tie. “I believe a phone call was made to me from your cell phone.”



Turns out Mom was right about landlines after all.



“Okay,” I say, trying to act casual.



He looks around as if he’ll be able to pick her out of the crowd. “Where is she?”



“Up in the room,” I tell him. “Where she said she was going to be.”



There’s a deep-throated yowl, and I turn suddenly, my body jerking. My muscles hurt. I forgot how sore they already were.



Mr. Zacharov laughs. “Cats,” he says. “Dozens of feral cats under the boardwalk. Lila always loved cats. You remember.”



I don’t say anything.



“If she was in the room, my people would have called.” He tilts his head and slips a gloved hand into his pocket. “I think you are playing a game. Who did you get to pretend to be my daughter on the phone? Were you going to ask me for money? This seems like a very stupid game.”



“She said to meet her alone.” I lean toward him, and he holds out a gloved hand to stop me from getting too close. One of his goons heads toward us. I lower my voice. “She probably saw one of your people and split.”



He laughs. “You are a pathetic villain, Cassel Sharpe. A real disappointment.”



“No,” I say. “She really is—” The big guy jerks my arms back and up, hard.



“Please,” I gasp. “My ribs.”



“Thanks for telling me where to hit,” the guy says. His nose is permanently bent to one side. He’s a living stereotype.



Mr. Zacharov pats my cheek. I can smell the leather of his glove. “I thought you might turn out more like your grandfather, but your mother spoiled all you boys.”



That makes me laugh.



The guy jerks my arms up again. They make a sound like they’re popping out of their sockets, and I make a different kind of sound.



“Daddy.” Lila’s voice, pitched low and oddly menacing, cuts through the noise of the boardwalk. “Leave Cassel alone.”



Lila steps up from the beach. For a moment I see her as he must, half ghost and half stranger. She’s a woman, not the child that he lost, but her cruel mouth is identical to his own.



Besides, there can’t be that many people with a single blue eye and a single green one.



He blinks. Then he takes off his sunglasses slowly. “Lila?” He sounds as brittle as glass.



The guy relaxes his grip, and I jerk away from him. I try to rub some feeling back into my arms.



“I hope you trust your men,” she says. Her voice breaks. “Because this is secret. I am a secret.”



“I’m sorry,” says Mr. Zacharov. “I didn’t think you were real—” He reaches out gloved hands toward her.



She just stands there, bristling, like she’s fighting something wild inside her. She doesn’t go to him.



“Let’s get out of here,” I say, touching her arm. “We’ll get this sorted out in private.”



Zacharov looks at me like he can’t quite remember who I am.