Shade Me

  He’d seen Dru and Luna carry her away, joking about Peyton being groomed to be a soap opera star. He’d later seen them fighting with another blond woman. Dru. Luna. And Vanessa, I was sure of it now.

  I will take you all down.

  What had they done to blow her trust in them?

  Vee continued, “She moved into Fountain View, and even though it meant we couldn’t practice at the mansion anymore, we were all like, okay, this is going to be good, because now she’ll be living close to Gib.” She reached over and touched Peyton’s tattoo, running her finger along it like she was tracing the lines. “She and Gib even got new tattoos together. We thought this was a step in the right direction, because her family . . . Something was going on. She was bothered by it.”

  “What was it?” I asked. “Did she ever say anything about the name Rainbow?”

  Vee shook her head. “Not really. She loved rainbows—that was why she got the tattoo. She loved colors in general.”

  She loved colors. Shocked me. I didn’t realize until Vee said those words how much I’d come to hate colors over the years. I’d always equated them with bad things—sadness, death, worries, stress, bad grades, feeling like an outcast. It never occurred to me to embrace them, to see them as a gift. Look at what I was able to do—I was able to communicate with a comatose girl because of my colors. That was pretty amazing. Why was Peyton able to love her colors and I wasn’t able to love mine?

  Vee sniffed again, long and hard.

  “Tell her about the rest,” the drummer said softly. He seemed to be the quiet one of the group, but I didn’t dare mistake that for weakness. He was still hard as rocks.

  “I already told her,” Gibson chimed in, his voice stone.

  Vee glanced at him, then back at me.

  “She walked out on you,” I said. “And took all her songs with her.”

  Vee nodded. “And refused to cut a deal with her dad’s friend. She had gotten so weird. Cutting her hair, moving out. She got a new phone so none of us could get ahold of her. She never called anyone on it.” Not true, I thought. She called me. “She was all of a sudden so paranoid,” Vee continued. “It was like she knew this was going to happen to her.”

  “She did,” I said.

  Vee looked startled. “She knew?”

  “I think she did. That’s why I’m here. She knew, and she tried to call me right before it happened.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Vee said. “Who would want to hurt Peyton?”

  My mind swam. How many times had Dru said those very words? Only now I had no idea if he really meant them, or if they were a cover.

  It’s not like Peyton’s attacker is going to be hanging out at the hospital, Dru had once said, sarcastically. Though every moment it was looking likelier and likelier that her attacker had been doing just that. The question was, which one of them was it?

  I felt Gibson’s eyes bore into the top of my head. I reached over and grabbed Peyton’s hand in mine. “Turns out, a lot of people wanted to hurt her,” I said. “Too many to keep track of.”

  Viral Fanfare stuck around for a few more minutes. Mostly we sat in silence, only occasionally interrupted by loud sobs from Vee. The girl was taking this very hard.

  “We were like sisters,” Vee said, as she stood to go, propped up by the drummer. “She always said I was her third sister.”

  “Third sibling,” I corrected.

  She shook her head. “No, third sister. Peyton had two sisters. The blond chick who looks just like her, and another one. I never met her or anything, so I assume she’s older.”

  I froze, my hand gripping Peyton’s. Probably if she’d been awake, she would have winced under the pressure.

  There was another sister? One that Peyton, Dru, and Luna hadn’t mentioned? A secret sister? Was it possible?

  They headed for the door, a bundle of leather-clad sadness. I swiveled in my chair.

  “Did she say the other sister’s name?” I asked.

  Vee turned, looking confused. She shook her head. “She only really talked about her a few times.” Her chin crumpled and her lip quivered. “She said something about how they used to watch movies together all the time. They had a favorite. What was it called?”

  The drummer shrugged, but Gibson Talley spoke up. “Some Harrison Ford movie.”

  Vee pointed. “Yeah, that’s it. She said they’d watched it a million times and that they liked to sit in her sister’s window and smoke. Said her sister always chucked the butts into the bushes, and if anyone ever looked inside those bushes, they would be shocked.”

  They turned the corner, and I was left alone with Peyton, wondering how everything fit together. A sister nobody had said anything about? A Harrison Ford movie? I felt like these were important details, but I couldn’t quite put them together.

  I got out my phone and pulled up IMDB. I plugged in “Harrison Ford” and began scrolling through his acting credits. He’d been in so many movies, and I’d seen most of them. Everyone had. But none of them sounded important. None of them rang any bells or set off any alarms. Maybe Bill Hollis had produced one of them and I would have to go through, one by one, to discover which movie it was.

  “If this is another one of your clues,” I said to Peyton, “I’m missing it.”

  Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw it.

  My mouth hung open, and I felt like I was spiraling down a long tunnel. I could only sit there next to Peyton’s bed, my whole body numb, my mind racing, my ears ringing. The urge to sneeze pressed in on me, distant, familiar. The urge I always got when I saw the dusty word beneath.

  What Lies Beneath.

  Harrison Ford had starred in a movie called What Lies Beneath.

  I’d stared at that photo for more time than I wanted to think about. I’d looked so hard for clues, for anything to make sense of it. I’d assumed it was a mistake, a throwaway. But I should have known. In the clues that Peyton had laid down for me, there were no throwaways.

  They liked to sit in her sister’s window and smoke. . . .

  Dusty, sneezy beneath.

  I could see the image clearly in my head now, and it all made sense. The stucco wall, the pinprick of orange light, the bushes.

  That photo was a photo of me. Me, sitting in my window—my favorite place—and chain-smoking when I should have been studying for chem or history or God-knew-what.

  I felt like I was floating across the room toward Peyton, the crimson pushing, pushing, pushing in on me, tinged with whorls of confusion and spikes of anger and curling snakes of shock.

  It made sense. Of course it did. Synesthesia tended to be genetic, my doctor had told us. Had I had any siblings, the chance was good they would see colors, too. But I didn’t have any siblings.

  Or at least I didn’t think I did. Until now.

  Peyton saw colors. Peyton talked about a third sibling. Peyton took a photo of me in my window and then told Vee that her sister sat there, referencing a movie she’d titled that very photo. Peyton tried to call me moments before her attack.

  I know everything, her text had said. I could see the colors behind those words, the colors behind all her words. What Lies Beneath. I know everything. And in her Facebook post, Must get to the bottom of things. Nik. And when her friends had pressed her, she’d answered in a single word. A brilliantly colorful one: Family.

  Nik. Must get to the bottom of things. Family. What Lies Beneath.

  I was the third. The one who smoked on her window ledge.

  Peyton Hollis thought she was my sister.

  25

  I SANK INTO the chair by her bed and picked up her hand again. I didn’t realize tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t feel sadness. Not yet. I felt so many emotions, but sadness wasn’t one of them. They all tornadoed into something that was too big to label.

  I was bewildered more than anything.

  It didn’t seem possible. Peyton was wrong. She had to be. Just because we both saw colors
didn’t have to mean we were sisters. There were lots of synesthetes out there, all blissfully and beautifully unrelated. It couldn’t be. The odds against Peyton and me being sisters were just too astronomical. My parents were in love. I didn’t remember much about the time before Mom’s death, but I knew that much. They loved each other. They held hands and cuddled and smiled at each other and called each other babe.

  But if this were true—if Peyton and I were actually sisters—one of my parents had to have cheated on the other.

  Which one? My dad, who was still so devoted ten years after his wife’s death? No way. My mom? God, could my mom have had a baby with someone else? I refused to believe that could be true.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d misread the clues. Maybe Peyton was trying to tell me something else—that we were connected in a different way. Or maybe she was telling me that her sister—Luna—had two sides to her, almost like a third sister. That the dangerous side of Luna was who she’d been afraid of.

  But then I couldn’t help remembering what I’d found in the Hollywood Dreams office. The birth certificates, one set of which had the parents’ names whited out.

  I rubbed my hands over my temples, groaning. How would I ever know for sure what any of this meant?

  “Peyton,” I whispered. “Peyton, please wake up.” My nose ran, and I let it run over my upper lip. “Peyton, I need you. I’m so confused.”

  I hated crying. I prided myself on rarely shedding tears. Crying was for weak girls. Crying was for girls with dead mothers.

  Suddenly the lack of change in Peyton, the crimson that was her constant companion, was more than just an annoyance, more than just a reminder of a bad time.

  It was a reminder of the most devastating loss of my life.

  The last time I spoke to my mother, that last day before I went to my friend Wendy’s house, she was putting pigtails in my hair, humming a song while she worked. I loved the sound of my mother’s hum. I loved her voice. I wanted to sing like her someday. I imagined us singing together, two grown women with stunning harmonies.

  You are so lucky to have this beautiful hair, she’d said. I remembered that part clearly.

  It looks just like yours, I’d said, and I’d really believed it had. People told us all the time that we looked alike. You could be an older sister, they would say to my mother, and she would touch her neck shyly and laugh, a breathy laugh.

  Mine’s got all this ugly gray, she’d said, although I never could find any. My mom still looked like her high school photos, except the smile in her high school photos was wider than I’d ever seen her smile at home. Her high school smile was an easy smile. But you do have my nose and my thick eyebrows.

  I remembered examining my face in the mirror, leaning so close I could see the pores in my skin. Do you think if I had a sister she would look like me? I’d asked, and I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but remembering the moment now, I could see it plain as day. Her face had darkened. She’d faltered. She’d pulled my pigtail tight and patted me on both shoulders. You ready to get to Wendy’s? she’d asked. Was I remembering that darkening, or was I only imagining remembering it now that I was searching for lies?

  I knew that my dad didn’t see colors. He would have told me. He wouldn’t have been so confused by my ability. He wouldn’t have been so worried about it. But did Mom see them? I remembered asking Dad about it once, on our way home from the doctor’s office.

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” he’d said, hands gripping the steering wheel.

  “But wouldn’t Mommy tell you if she did?” I asked, unable to understand how someone could keep their colors secret.

  “I’d like to think so,” he said.

  “But how did I get it, if neither of you have it?”

  He’d glanced at me, reached down and patted my knee softly, and smiled. “You’re just special, I guess,” he’d said, and we’d let it drop.

  Since then, I’d learned that it was more than possible to keep your synesthesia a secret, and, with neither parent admitting to being the source of my “specialness,” I would never really know where I got it.

  If it was true . . . if Peyton was my sister . . . did that mean Mom was Peyton’s mom, too? How was it even possible? Or could Dad be Peyton’s dad? I tried to imagine him having anything to do with another woman, but all I could ever conjure were images of him holding Mom in a hug. Still, at least if Dad was the cheater, he could have a child resulting from a one-nighter and not know it. If Mom was the cheater, that would mean she knew I had a sister out there. She knew about Peyton. And had never said anything.

  If only I could have seen beneath the Wite-Out on those birth certificates.

  And I didn’t even want to begin to think what that meant my true relationship with Dru was.

  No matter who had done what, there was one truth—if I was Peyton’s sister, my life was a lie. A complete and total lie. My parents were liars. Cheaters. Abandoners.

  “Peyton,” I said again. I placed my hand on top of hers, sandwiching her palm. I rubbed it. It was so soft and warm. She was in there somewhere. “I need you to wake up. I need to know what you know. I don’t understand and I need your help. I’ve done everything I can.” I felt a tear slip down my cheek. “Please, Peyton,” I begged. “Please wake up.”

  As if on cue, just like in a movie, Peyton’s eyelids fluttered. My heart stopped. I held my breath and sat up straighter as the blue of her eyes began to show. Silver squiggles danced in the air. Her eyes rolled and then shifted to my face. When they landed on me, her lips twitched into a serene smile.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, letting my breath out. “Oh my God!” I shouted. “Peyton? You’re awake! Oh my God!”

  Just as quickly as they had opened, her eyes slid shut. I fumbled down the side of the bed, searching for the nurse call button, found it, and pressed, wiping the wetness from my cheeks even as startled new tears flowed. I pressed the button over and over, my thumb jamming it so hard I thought I might break it.

  “Can I help you?” a nurse asked, her voice bored.

  “She’s awake,” I said excitedly. “You need to come in here because she’s awake.”

  The nurse didn’t respond, but I soon heard footsteps coming down the hallway toward the room. A large nurse came in, belly first, and made her way toward the bed.

  “She woke up,” I said breathlessly, jumping back so she could get at Peyton. She did, picking up Peyton’s wrist and checking her pulse, then looking her over, attending to the monitors. “Her eyes opened,” I said. “She smiled at me.”

  “It’s not unusual for there to be involuntary muscle action,” the nurse said. “She’s been twitching for days.”

  “But her eyes opened. It wasn’t a twitch. They were open. She smiled at me.”

  The nurse shook her head. “I’m sorry. Not of her own volition,” she said. “You’re not the first one to be fooled, so don’t feel bad. Her brother was very excited for a few moments earlier this week.”

  I remembered Dru saying her eyes had fluttered while he was there, too. It had been nothing. It was still nothing.

  “But she smiled.” I could hear the whine in my voice, the disappointment, as the squiggles died out and fell to the ground like broken balloons.

  The nurse placed her hand on my arm. “Honey, it’s very important that you keep up this hope. Your positive energy might help a miracle happen.”

  “It’s not positive energy and hope,” I said, whisking my arm away angrily. “She woke up. I was talking to her and she smiled at me. I saw it. I know what I saw.”

  “Let me know if you see it again, and I’ll come check her out, okay?” the nurse said as she waltzed out the door, as if nothing astonishing had just happened.

  “I know what I saw,” I said to her back. Yes, Nikki, you know exactly what you saw, my brain supplied. The same thing you’re seeing now. A sea of blood so deep and thick you can’t help but think of your mom. You can’t quit going back to that last day. You’re se
eing it, Nikki. You can’t not see it.

  I pressed my fists into my eyes, shaking with rage, hating my synesthesia with everything I had. Hating Peyton for first making me fear her, then making me love her, and now making me face telling her good-bye.

  I wouldn’t do it. Not yet.

  I stumbled out of the room, crying, seething, leaving Peyton behind. Fuck it. Fuck her. You didn’t just become sisters with someone and never tell them. You didn’t leave a bunch of bullshit clues lying around in colors so that she would follow them like an ignorant dog. You didn’t set people up to be beaten and drugged, terrified. You didn’t do this to people, and the fact that Peyton thought you could was exactly what made her a Hollis rather than a Kill.

  If all this was true, either my dad had an affair with Peyton’s mom, or my mom had an affair with the wretched Bill Hollis. Either way, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know any of this anymore. I wanted out.

  I pressed the elevator button with the same force and repetition that I’d pressed the nurse call button. “Get me out of here. Just get me out of here,” I whimpered to myself as I pushed and pushed.

  The doors opened and I jumped on. As soon as they closed, I made a fist and punched the elevator wall. The car didn’t even shake from the impact, so I punched it again, harder. I felt the jolt through my fingers, my hand. I punched harder still to feel it in my arm. “Screw you, Peyton,” I said to the empty elevator. “Screw you and your involuntary twitches. Screw you and your movies. Screw you and your stupid pictures.” I pulled out my phone and called up her photo-sharing site. There it was, so obvious, as plain as day. I felt the urge to sneeze and scrolled away from the What Lies Beneath photo to the one of her family standing on a pier. I could see it. Something in her eyes. Something that set her apart from the rest of them. Something that reminded me of me.

  The doors slid open, and a familiar face greeted me from the other side of them. I let my head drop back against the wall in frustration. Of course.