Perfect

  But then I realize why. One word pops up beneath their pictures.

  MISSING.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THEY’VE BEEN MISSING for two days. Logan’s religious parents are pointing the finger at me for their son’s disappearance. They give Flawed TV the exclusive interview.

  Raphael switches off the TV. “Everything is stacked against you. How exactly do you think I should move forward, bearing in mind that everybody who knows about this is now missing, and you had a lovers’ tiff with your only remaining witness?” He looks around at his kids and for the first time I see nerves.

  Susan ushers us back outside so we can continue, muttering, “I don’t wanna know. I don’t wanna know.”

  I need to win him back over. I need to give him more. “Judge Sanchez is on my side. Don’t ask how or why, she just is. My plan was to find you and reopen the case. When faced with the footage, Crevan would have to take back the wrongful sixth brand, and if he has made one mistake, then he’s made more. That would make him Flawed himself. He’ll have to apologize, and the entire Flawed system will be questioned. Crevan will be humiliated, will have to step down, which is what Sanchez wants.”

  Raphael smiles and looks at me with what I think is admiration. “You want to accuse Crevan of being Flawed?”

  I chew on my lip nervously. “I know it’s not conventional.…”

  “I’m not a conventional kind of man. But I’d have to see the footage first.”

  Ah. “There’s one problem.” I swallow. “One big problem. I don’t have it.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Berry’s husband says that I have it. He told me over the phone. Crevan overheard the conversation; our phone lines must have been tapped. But I don’t have it. I have no idea where it is.”

  He looks quite close to wanting to wrap his fingers around my neck and squeeze tightly, but thankfully he doesn’t. He breathes in and out a few times.

  “Did Mr. Berry visit you at your house after the trial?” he asks.

  “No.” Those early days were difficult, my coming in and out of painkiller-induced sleep, but I know that he didn’t visit me. I could count on one hand the number of people who did. The doctor. Angelina Tinder.

  “Tina visited,” I remember suddenly. “She was one of the guards. A nice guard.”

  “Then she must have given you the footage.”

  My mind races. I think back to four weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime. “No. She brought cupcakes. Her daughter had made them. I remember thinking it was selfish because I couldn’t eat them. Only one luxury a week, and one cupcake alone was over the permitted calorie intake.”

  “There was something in the cupcake,” he says.

  “No. I gave them to my little brother to eat.” I stand up and pace. “I think we’d have noticed if he swallowed a … a … I don’t know, Mr. Angelo, what are we even looking for? A file? A disk? A chip?”

  “I’d imagine it’s a USB,” he guesses. “Or the memory card from Mr. Berry’s phone.”

  Fifteen minutes until I have to leave.

  “She must have given you something else,” he says.

  “I didn’t even see her.” I rack my brain. “I wasn’t well. My mom wouldn’t let her in to see me. She didn’t think it was appropriate.”

  “It wasn’t really, was it?” he says, thinking about it. “No, it was a completely inappropriate visit, and a risky one for her. There must have been a purpose. She must have given the footage to your mother.”

  “There was a snow globe,” I remember suddenly. “A Highland Castle snow globe. When you shook it, red glitter fell down, like blood. I thought it was the most horrific, disgusting gift anybody could give me after what happened to me in there. I wondered why she would give it to me.”

  “It’s in there,” he says, standing. “It must be in the globe. Where is it?”

  I view him suspiciously now, wondering if I can trust him. I have told him everything, but have I told him too much? If I lose the footage, I lose all the power.

  I feign disappointment. I lay my head on the table, and it’s not difficult to make the tears come; they were already close to the surface anyway.

  “I threw it away,” I lie. “I threw it against the wall. It smashed. Mom put it in the trash. That was weeks ago. It’s gone.”

  Raphael seems angry, but I think he believes me. All the time, my mind is racing over how I can get the snow globe back. If I call my house, I’m sure they’ll be monitoring the calls. That’s how Crevan learned about the footage in the first place, through my conversation with Mr. Berry’s husband. How foolish I was then!

  Ten minutes left until I must leave.

  Raphael seems anxious. He slowly sits down. “Unconventionality is my way of thinking, of being. That is my strength, Celestine. You don’t get to my age looking as I do without having had to toughen up and fight. When you’re a teenager, what makes you different can be the worst thing in the world. The older you get, the more you realize that it’s your weapon, your armor, your strength. Your gift. For me it is thinking in a nonlinear way, which means doing the very thing you think you must not do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What have you been doing for the past two weeks?”

  I frown, mulling his question over. Running, hiding, crying, feeling sorry for myself. Losing my virginity, but I’m sure he doesn’t mean that. I look at him suddenly, fearing what he is going to say. “Avoiding Crevan.”

  “Exactly. Now you and Crevan must meet.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  PLAN MADE, RAPHAEL goes back into the house to get me the car keys. He’s left his phone on the table. I grab it. After calling Judge Sanchez and Whistleblower Kate on my secret mobile, I don’t want to call Juniper on it, too. It might not be safe any longer. Through Granddad I learned that Juniper was working in a café in the city. It’s weird how other people’s lives move on, how they have to move on, while mine stands still.

  When someone is accused of being Flawed, that person must hire a lawyer to help represent them. If they’re found not guilty, the Guild pays the court fees; if they are found guilty, the Flawed must pay the fees. Mr. Berry was the best and most expensive lawyer in the Guild, and I know that paying for his services depleted all of Mom and Dad’s savings.

  As well as that, since Mom is a top fashion model, she lost some contracts, and left some of her own accord, no longer happy having to live up to the perfect standards that the products advertised. I doubt she has any money coming in. Dad works as an editor at TV network News 24, but I’m sure he is completely under the thumb of the new management, Candy Crevan, Bosco’s sister. She won’t want Dad deciding the direction of the news, particularly when his daughter is much of the story.

  So Juniper is working. It is summertime, we both would have had to get summer jobs anyway, before college started, but I know things must be tight at home. Despite Juniper’s being older than I am, we are less than a year apart, and people always think we are twins. During the weeks when the media was swarming our house, we often used Juniper as a decoy, sending her outside to be trampled on by photographers while I made a swift exit out the other side. We may look alike, but we’re poles apart in personality.

  I loved school, excelled at it; Juniper hated it and always had to work harder because of her dyslexia. But while I got better grades, Juniper was always smarter than me. She is more savvy and has a greater understanding of people and situations, as though sitting back and observing was teaching her a whole lot more than me, who was always involved.

  Juniper was the more vocal one whenever Crevan visited; I thought she had the same conspiracy theory brain as Granddad. It is like we switched roles on the bus that day: It should have been her to help the Flawed old man. I think, in a way, she would be happier if she was Flawed, because she has always felt on the fringes of society anyway. Being Flawed would almost be a badge of honor to Juniper. There is a multitude I should learn from her. I miss her so much.

&nbs
p; I called Juniper at the café twice from Granddad’s house. She picked up only once. I just wanted to hear her voice—I never spoke; I couldn’t get her in trouble, but I knew that if the Guild was looking at Granddad’s phone records, it wouldn’t seem odd that he calls his granddaughter at work.

  Now I dial the number again.

  “Coffee House,” a man answers.

  “Glory, please.” I’d also learned she’d changed her name. No one wants to hire someone whose sister is on the Guild’s Wanted list. Glory and Tori were the fake names we used to give each other when playing as children. We used to stick cushions up our T-shirts and pretend to be two overweight ladies who owned a cake shop. We’d spend hours making cakes from mud in the back garden, sprinkling them with petals and grass, and serving them to our imaginary customers, usually Ewan, who attempted to eat them much to our amusement and Mom’s panic.

  “No personal calls,” he says.

  “Her grandmother died,” I snap, and he quickly gets off the phone.

  “Hello?” She sounds nervous.

  “Glory. It’s Tori, from the cake shop.”

  She pauses. “Is that you?” she whispers.

  “Yes,” I say, and I want to cry. There is so much I want to say to my sister, but I’m afraid to give too much away. I’m running out of time and I need to leave now, before Raphael gets back and before the Whistleblowers get here.

  “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  “Yes. I need your help, though. I need something from the house. Can you get it to me?”

  “I’ll try.” She lowers her voice. “It’s difficult. They keep coming to the house. For searches. And she took everything from your room. I’m so sorry. We couldn’t stop her.”

  Instantly I know exactly who she’s talking about. Mary May.

  “The day after you left she came and trashed your bedroom, then after Granddad … well she took everything. All your stuff. They’re looking for something, and most of the time I don’t think it’s you.”

  “You’re right,” I say simply. “Where did she take it?”

  “I don’t know, but she wasn’t in her uniform and she drove her own car. She just packed away everything in garbage bags and left.”

  She did this when Granddad was taken away, when they couldn’t find me at the farm. So this was only two days ago. But they’re still looking for me, which means they’re still looking for the footage. I just hope she hasn’t discarded the snow globe. Knowing Mary May, she hasn’t.

  I hear Raphael returning and I wrap it up.

  “That was a great help,” I say hurriedly. “I love you.” I end the call and place the phone back on the table.

  “I’ve left a message with Crevan’s secretary for him to call me urgently on his return,” Raphael says, placing a glass of water down on the table for me. “I’m sure he’ll know what it’s about, he will have been alerted to your presence here. And any phone call from me is deemed urgent.”

  He seems nervous by what he’s just taken on. Or who: Judge Crevan.

  I’m not waiting around for Crevan to call me back, to be a sitting duck for the Whistleblowers. It is impossible to know who to trust anymore. Instead of thinking of the uncertainties, I need to deal with the facts.

  I know who I can’t trust.

  I know exactly how to get to Crevan in one swift phone call.

  FORTY

  “ART, IT’S ME,” I say, phone to my ear as I rattle down the bumpy mountains in Raphael’s Mini Cooper. My heart is banging in my chest, I feel it thudding in my ears, the hot anger. I want to scream at him, I know who you’ve become!

  “Celestine?” he asks, surprised.

  I put him on speakerphone and place two hands on the wheel to concentrate as the Mini steams down the mountainside.

  “Where are you?” His voice crackles.

  “I need to meet you,” I say firmly. “I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Video. Of your dad and me.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll meet you in two hours. Our usual place.”

  He’s silent as he thinks about it, then, “Okay.”

  I end the call.

  Carrick was right about one thing. Art is bait.

  FORTY-ONE

  I HIDE AT the top of the hill, under the cover of darkness, feeling sick to my stomach. Susan insisted on feeding me something I still couldn’t taste before I left the house, to give me some energy, but now it’s threatening to revolt. I wait on the summit that overlooks the city, my old nightly meeting place with Art. It’s the first time I’ve ever been earlier than him; he was always here waiting for me—just another telltale sign that our situations have reversed.

  The moon is high in the sky, not a perfect full moon like that last moment I was here with Art, the night he gave me the anklet with the three circles signifying geometric harmony, perfection, the night before my life changed forever. Maybe the moon wasn’t perfectly full, maybe I just thought it was, because I can see now that I thought a lot of things that weren’t true. I think back to who I was then and see how naive I was, thinking I knew it all, thinking I could plan it all, thinking that I could have every solution to every problem. Thinking I could trust people.

  I’m still wearing the anklet that Art gave me. There was only one occasion when I thought about ripping it off and throwing it away: the moment I saw him dressed as a Whistleblower. But just like the sixth brand that is seared into my lower spine, the anklet gives me power. Now I know it was given to me by a Whistleblower, the son of the man who branded me. It labels me as Perfect. They’re all hypocrites.

  I hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel and I pull back. Jeans, a dark hoodie, that mop of playful blond curls, the soft face, the gentle eyes, the lips that sit as if every word that passes them is a joke. Art. I wait to see if he’s alone. I leave him waiting one minute, then two. Nobody else is in sight, for now.

  I step out from the shadows.

  “Hi,” he says, like he’s afraid of me. He looks me up and down. And then he looks around, nervous he’ll be found. I wonder if Crevan will jump out and catch me now, or if he’ll wait until after our conversation. If Art’s task has been to get the information from me, or if he even knows he’s being used at all. Poor Art, I feel a flash of sympathy for him, trapped in the middle of all this. But then the sympathy dies, because he chose the wrong side.

  “Hi,” I reply, sounding much softer than I’d intended to.

  I hear footsteps behind Art and I prepare myself. I’m surprised to find that I’m disappointed Art and I didn’t get any time together. There’s no big crew, no SWAT team of Whistleblowers in their riot gear. It’s just Crevan, as I suspected. I knew he wouldn’t bring an army to listen to me talk about the footage. He doesn’t want anybody to know about that. He’s wearing jeans, a hoodie—an older version of Art, on an unofficial visit.

  “Dad!” Art says, spinning around, and I’m glad to see that Art is genuinely surprised. “What are you doing here?” Then he asks angrily, “Did you follow me?”

  “I got your message,” Crevan says to me, ignoring Art, smug as if he got one up on me. He places his hand on Art’s shoulder. “Son, you go back to the house now. I’ll take it from here.”

  “What’s going on? What do you mean you got the message?”

  “I’m sorry, but now that you’re a Whistleblower, the castle has access to your calls. The phone call from Celestine was flagged straightaway. We can talk about it later,” he says firmly, and then turns to me. “Art can’t stay up too late, not like he used to, not with the new job,” he says, smiling, eyes crinkling at the sides.

  I look at Art angrily, then back at Crevan. “You must be so proud of your son. He’s just like you now.”

  Art looks down at the ground. He’s happy to get away from me now that he knows I know he’s a Whistleblower. He takes a last glance at the two of us, then quickly disappears.

  “Ironic, ho
w your misdemeanors did me a favor, bringing my son back to me. We’re closer than ever now,” Crevan says, taking a few steps forward.

  The breeze carries a familiar smell of mint. Peppermint. Or an antiseptic smell. I can’t place it. Maybe he’s chewing gum. Perhaps it’s a familiar smell of Crevan from my previous life, when we were friends, almost family.

  “He would never have gone into the family business if it weren’t for you betraying him, going on the run, becoming an evader.”

  I want to run at him and punch him, kick him, I want to scream so loudly at him, vent all the most disgusting words I can think of, but I know it will have no effect. He is impenetrable. Any emotion or affection he had for me died a long time ago. Now I think he sits for hours thinking of ways he can simply destroy me and the connection his son has with me.

  “So you wanted to show Art something.” He enjoys seeing the look on my face. “I assume this is the so-called secret footage. Hand it over.” He tries to act cool, but I can tell that he is nervous. He has searched the width and breadth of the country for two weeks for this.

  I smile. “You actually think I’d bring it with me?”

  His smile fades.

  “I called Art presuming he’d tell you we were meeting. Do you think I didn’t know he was a Whistleblower? Of course I know. But I didn’t think Art would actually keep us meeting from you. That father-son bond isn’t as strong as you think it is,” I say, enjoying hurting him. “I’ve changed a lot since you branded me. I got smarter. Ironic, how you’ve done me a favor, too.”

  His face darkens as he realizes that he’s fallen into my plan.

  “I’m not here to show Art the footage. I’m here to talk to you. I’m here to tell you that you’ve made a mistake. I think you know that already. You’re trying to cover your steps, but you can’t. The guards, the students, a journalist, a lawyer … don’t you think you’re going a bit too far? Do you think nobody’s going to notice? That nobody will eventually put it all together? You can’t brand everybody, Bosco.”