“Why don’t you ever talk about him?” I challenge her. I wish Shep hadn’t left so fast. He’s always been able to voice what I can’t.
“Why are you bringing this up now?” She squints at me until I squirm.
“I just wonder…. Do you even miss him?” I miss him desperately. I’m losing him; everything I remember about him is turning fuzzy and dim.
“Of course I do,” she says, but she doesn’t sound like she misses anything. “I just can’t live in the past.”
I can’t live at all, I think. I turn my back on my mother, wishing there was a way to construct a bridge between us. Dad used to be that link, the one who would step in when Mom’s eyes turned fiery and my siblings and I cowered.
“Fine,” I say, dropping the subject. She can’t live in the past, and all I want is to go back in time to the life I used to have before Dad and Chloe died.
“Saige—” she starts, but her voice is still freaking cold.
“It’s fine.” I snatch my backpack, not caring if the schoolwork I need is inside or not.
Mom moves out of my way with displeasure written in the downturn of her mouth. “I will be calling Sarah Jane’s to check on you.”
“Fine, whatever.” I get the heck out of there before she changes her mind and drags me to the emergency room, or worse, back to the mental health facility.
At Sarah Jane’s, she reviews compounds and isotopes, the periodic table and solutions. I obsess over what I may or may not have heard. I stare at the study guide for the chem final, seeing nothing but wispy shapes that look like smoke.
“I can’t wait for summer,” Sarah Jane says, drawing me out of the haunted place in my mind. “No more studying. Just sleeping in and going to the pool.”
I “mm-hmm” for her, but I’m dreading summer. Three months with nothing to do, nowhere to go, no escape from my mother? No thanks.
Sarah Jane flips through a magazine, her brown hair falling over the edge of the bed. She’s been my best friend since seventh grade, when Candace Jolley and her posse teased her relentlessly after she wouldn’t go into the boy’s bathroom. They called her a chicken for weeks, while I watched from the locker next to hers. When they broke a dozen raw eggs in the bottom of her locker, I flipped out.
I’m still not sure why. Maybe because it happened on the anniversary of Chloe’s memorial service, and I knew what it was like to be afraid. I knew what it felt like to fear something so much, you’d do anything to avoid it.
So I scooped up that yolky mess with my bare hands, and I dumped it over Candace’s head right there in the hall while her friends laughed.
Sarah Jane and I have been inseparable ever since. She told me about the first boy she’d kissed, and what she and her boyfriend do on their dates. I told her about my secret crush on Jordan Burns.
We double-dated for our junior prom. We hung out with Sarah Jane’s college-age brothers when they came home to visit and gossiped about what they did in their frat houses after they left. We slept over at each other’s houses and told each other everything.
Well, almost everything. I sneak a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. Sarah Jane has an open, round face that wears a smile easily. She wasn’t around when Chloe disappeared, so she wasn’t here when I vanished inside myself during sixth grade, taking every anti-hallucinogen on the market and pleading with Mom to home school me permanently, to move to another state, another country.
I’ve never told her about that. I don’t want her to finally understand why Candace calls me Prozac or why everyone acted like I was also new in seventh grade. I’ve done a good job of coming back. When I see Chloe, I just ignore her. She doesn’t hurt me; she doesn’t try to talk to me. There have never been any strange sounds or voices—until today.
I want to tell Sarah Jane about the breathing in my bedroom and the voice I heard this morning, but I’m still trying to figure out what it means to me.
Dread settles over my shoulders. I’ll need to think of something to pacify my mother—and Sarah Jane could help me come up with the cover story….
I glance at her again. Her eyes zip across the magazine. There’s no indication that she’s anything but confident and friendly and perfectly adjusted. Would it freak her out to hear me talk about my presumed-dead sister like she’s alive? What would Sarah Jane think if I told her I’d seen Chloe just this morning?
I almost want to keep Chloe close to myself, where she can’t get hurt,
where I can’t either.
So I pretend to care about the dating quiz in Sarah Jane’s magazine. I agree that my perfect boyfriend will be six inches taller than me. I eat two slices of banana bread, and roll my eyes with Sarah Jane when her mom reminds us to clean up after ourselves.
I file the breathing and the voice into my folder of secrets, determined never to speak—or even think—of them again. I can’t quite stuff Chloe into the same place, because she’s all I think about. She’s all I want back. If she came home, everything would return to normal.
Normal, I seize on the word. I am perfectly normal. Maybe if I recite it enough, it’ll be true.
At home, I park the car in the garage, prolonging the moment when I’ll have to enter the house. I feel like someone’s watching me, and the walls of the garage feel so thick I’ll never be able to breathe again. I wonder if Dad ever felt like this when he arrived home from work.
I put the car in reverse and let it slink into the driveway. I stop again, and wait with my hand on the door handle, listening.
For what, I’m not sure.
“Stop it,” I command myself, a sizzle of fear skimming just under my skin. I’m teetering on a precipice, and with a breeze, I could topple either way.
My face feels hollow, and I’m not sure how to ease the hold fear has on my stomach. I have a file in the game room I haven’t looked at in a long time. Years, maybe, yet I still know every name in it, can see each picture clearly in my mind.
They’re all the people that went missing the same year Chloe did. The police wouldn’t listen to me. I couldn’t blame them—I couldn’t find a connection besides when the victims disappeared—at night, without any evidence of kidnapping or breaking and entering—and that their bodies had never been found. They’d simply gone missing. Disappeared.
Erased.
I’d put the file in the game room, because we don’t use that part of the house anymore. It bleeds Chloe from the very foundation. I can hear her laughing as she teaches Shep to play pool, see her curling into the beanbag, watch her drinking bottles of water and leaving them on the counter for me to clean up.
Sitting in the car, a safe distance from the game room, I contemplate retrieving the file to spend an hour flipping through it. But I don’t know if it’s good or bad to be the Saige I was before. To be Prozac and spend hours sifting through yellowing photos and brittle newspapers. Before I can decide, a flashing light pulses from my bedroom window. I see the shape of a person behind the curtains. Perhaps Mom is in there, but what she’s doing with a light as bright as the sun, I can’t imagine. The unearthly silver glow is so bright, it actually punctures the June sunshine pouring from the sky.
I’m not hallucinating, I think. The silhouette disappears, but that light is real, whether I’ve seen it before or not. I’ve never heard breathing or voices before today either. Something’s changed, I think again, though I’m unable to think of what.
I pretend the car shields me from any danger. When Mom opens the front door and stands on the porch, the freaky pulsating light bobs against her dark hair. She doesn’t seem to notice that the world is about to end, with our house the first to be sucked into oblivion. Maybe Mom brought a laser home and it’s malfunctioning. Or maybe she’s just used to neon, flashing lights because of her job.
She waves at me to come inside, but I clench my teeth and shake my head. She gets a look on her face I recognize. She thinks I’m having another episode. She might be right.
I’ll do anything to prove her
wrong—or at least keep her from questioning me mercilessly about how I feel. I unbuckle my seat belt and jump out of the car like nothing’s happening. After collecting my backpack, I follow Mom into the house.
“Ready for the test?” she asks, maneuvering through the foyer with its two-story vaulted ceiling, where her Chinese vases sparkle in blue and white, and into the living room, which holds her carefully selected antique furniture. My mother spends more time trying to impress people than she should.
“Yeah, ready.” My answer pacifies her, and she moves into the kitchen and starts cooking. The vases reflect the burning light as it continues to pulse in the front yard. When I close the door behind me, there is a brief respite. I scurry away from the door, and the light continues to dim. I pass through the living room and stop near the entrance to the hall, casting a furtive glance toward the section of the house we call the relaxation wing. Mom studies her research notes in her office—her brand of relaxing—and Shep escapes to the TV room on evenings when Mom and I can’t find a kind word for each other.
The bathroom is next to the game room, with its battered pool table, old Pac Man arcade console, and the beanbag that has a permanent Chloe-shaped dent. I wonder if the files I made as a twelve-year-old will show the seventeen-year-old me something new. Something I didn’t understand five years ago, but that would make sense now. Something that would explain what’s changed, and what the breathing and voices and flashing lights could mean.
I check on Mom in the kitchen, watch her knife as it dices green peppers into even cubes. She doesn’t glance my way. Silent, I head through the living room, bypass the office, the TV room, and the bathroom. I turn the corner, and stall in the semi-darkness of the doorway.
Dust coats everything in sight. I flip on the light and trail my fingers along the wall as I enter. Cue sticks stand straight in their holders. The pool balls are triangled in the middle of the table, which bears a small rip in the green felt near the left corner pocket. Chloe did that when she’d tried to teach Shep how to make a ball jump.
Pac Man sits dormant, its blank screen beckoning me forward. Next to it, I can practically see Chloe lounging in the indented beanbag. I avoid it, moving to the large window in the opposite corner instead. It faces the backyard, but I don’t see any evidence of a lase-like lights now.
The silence almost sounds too loud, like this old house has secrets you can only hear when you listen really hard. Here, in this rarely used room, the secrets are straining against their seams. They whisper through my head, but I can’t distinguish any words.
I open the mini fridge on the counter, finding it filled with bottled water and orange Fanta. I close the door, wondering what Mom has planned for this room. Without Chloe, does she think I’ll host parties here? Invite friends over to play pool and eat video game ghosts and drink soda?
With a pang of loneliness, I realize that’s probably exactly what she envisions. But Chloe’s gone, and I have only one friend. Not exactly party material. I’ve taken three steps along the counter toward the cabinet where I stashed the missing persons file when I suddenly halt.
White noise fills my ears as I turn around, echoing around me as if I’m standing at one end of a tunnel and a jet is taking off at the other.
I blink. My eyes work.
I reach out and touch the counter. It feels cool and smooth beneath my fingers. I’m awake.
A half-empty bottle of water waits on the counter. Even as I watch, a bead of condensation slithers down the plastic.
Price
I HEAR MYSELF EMIT THE whine of a little boy as I slap at my Link station, trying to get it to shut down before Dad sees it. He could’ve been watching while I slept. I hadn’t shut down my system, encoded it with my sequences—which means everything I want to keep hidden from my father is still running. I only let him see what I want him to see: Turning in my homework, researching for my senior project, innocent chats.
Everything else I conceal behind a constantly changing code-stream that would take him at least an hour to decipher. And an hour is all I need to delete undesirable chats, illegal log-ins, and everything pertaining to the Black Hat.
But now…. He could’ve seen anything. I curse myself for falling asleep and manage to power down the Link. I knock several pieces of hardware to the floor as I hastily reach for my flatpanel to cancel the jamming signal that keeps my “awake” status set to “asleep.” A handy feature Newt helped me with so we could chat in the middle of the night.
“Sorry.” I tap on the screen to get the flatpanel to wake up. “What time is it?”
“Just after eight,” he says, appraising me from the doorway leading to the hall, where he retreated while I freaked over the Link station. I’m nearly as tall as him now, maybe two inches below his five-foot-eleven height. I haven’t quite filled out in the shoulder and bicep yet, so I still look boyish while his muscles testify that he’s clearly a man. He’s twisting something in his hand, and I realize he’s got my holoswitch.
Fantastic. Sharp fear squeezes my stomach, and I wonder how long he’ll toy with it before he pulls out the “You shouldn’t have this, and oh, I saw you were talking to an unknown identity, and hey, what was with that warped-glass girl rising out of your body?” card.
He says nothing, and my flatpanel shows an empty contact log and a dormant security system. I frown. I didn’t clear my log. Maybe Newt cleaned up for me.
Dad makes an impatient noise, and I discard my flatpanel on my desk. My muscles feel too tight when I look at him.
I study him like I’ll discover what—if anything—he saw. I look a lot like him, but everything of mine is just a shade darker. My eyes are closer to slate rather than his too-light blue, and my hair closer to chestnut. He’s dressed in strange clothing for eight in the morning: Jeans, heavy boots, and a dark technofoil jacket similar to what the Hoods wear.
He tosses my holoswitch from his left hand to his right. I’d do almost anything to get him to put it down and forget about it. I clear my throat to speak, hoping the words I need to get him to drop the holoswitch will come.
“Just thought I’d check and make sure you didn’t want to go into the Bureau,” he says, saving me from blurting something I’ll regret later. He stills his hands, and I look at my switch.
I hesitate. I find myself leaning toward walking that perfect line he wants me to, going into the Bureau with him, and attending his vid-con meetings. Anything to get him to return the holoswitch and ignore the fact that I have it. He’d need government permission to use the switch too—they’re illegal for everyone unless registered.
“Well—” I start, still at a loss for a plausible excuse for why I can’t go into the Bureau with him. My flatpanel flashes a calendar reminder: Outdoor practice in ten minutes.
“Crap. I’m late for practice.” I suppress a sigh of relief as I strip off my shirt and hunt for my outdoor uniform. For every minute I’m late, I’ll have to stay two extra minutes. Outdoor practice is mandated for everyone, no matter age or occupation. It’s the city’s way of ensuring we don’t live our lives completely on the Circuit—which is hella ironic because they want us on the Circuit as much as possible.
I can’t even run when I want to. I have to do so when the government says, and for how long they prescribe. They pretend it’s a freedom, when really it’s just another way for them to dictate the content of my life. I think it’s a complete joke, though I like running and swimming.
I dress and swipe my flatpanel into my pack, all while Dad flips my holoswitch from one hand to the other. Left, right. Left, right. I feel like snatching it from him, but stuff my hands into my pockets instead. My frustration about the switch combines with the annoyance that rises every time I’m required to do something according to the government’s schedule.
“Need a ride?” He looks at the Receiver embedded in his palm, where the time drifts across the screen. “We could probably make it if we take the bike.”
“That uses gas,” I say, u
nsure. “I can walk. The instructor might count that as part of my mandated time.” This is a lie. Our instructor only accepts a certain number of minutes of physical activity outside of practice, and because of my lengthy “walk” with Cascade yesterday, I’ve already earned all mine.
“I’m the inventor of fiber optic Receivers for human use,” he says. “I can use my motorcycle whenever I want. It’s on the way.”
I don’t meet his gaze. I know who he is; I know what he invented.
Again, I hesitate. When Dad leaves the house, so does his security detail. I don’t need that scene when I show up at the outdoor practice facility. I used to go everywhere with my parents. Because of his inventions and government job, Dad has a reputation he has to maintain. That means political dinners and community appearances. He used to choose my clothes and instruct me in my hairstyles so we could play the part of the charming, happy family.
The press love Dad, and everywhere he goes, someone wants an interview. I don’t need all that hype just to put in my exercise time, yet I want to be on his good side so I find myself saying, “Yeah, okay.”
Dad smiles, and I know I’ve made the right decision. Pleasing him used to be as easy as being interested in technology. Now, I have to work much harder, but it’s worth the effort if it means he’ll drop my holoswitch.
He moves to my desk and places the switch on it. He gives me a meaningful look as he straightens, but I remain silent. “Let’s go.”
I dash past him and down the stairs. As he follows me, worry gnaws at my insides. It’s getting harder to keep secrets from Dad, and I can’t believe he didn’t demand to know what I’m doing with an unregistered holoswitch. I feel like we’re playing a game, one where I don’t know the rules. I do know one thing: Dad always wins. Him leaving my switch without a word doesn’t make sense.