Breaking Page 16

  Would I do it, if it were possible? Take everything that he feels for myself and leave him a shell? Steal his emotions for myself?

  Jack pulls away, leaving me gasping.

  “I love you,” he says.

  I stare at him, dumbfounded. It’s the first time he’s said that since Ariel died. If I’d heard those words months ago, I’d have felt wonderful and guilty and terrible all at the same time. I’d have felt like flying. Like falling.

  Jack lifts a hand to my face, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. I let my mind travel through every inch of my body. I don’t feel like flying. I feel hollow. I feel nothing.

  “My parents are going to that gala at the Med Center tomorrow night,” he says. “I’m supposed to go with them. Be my date?”

  Outside, it starts to rain. Drops hit Jack’s window and, for some reason, I shiver. They sound hollow and empty. Like I feel.

  “Sure,” I say, and Jack kisses me. I keep my eyes open, staring at the rain-streaked glass behind his head.

  I wonder if I’ll still be here tomorrow night. I wonder if I’ll still be anywhere.

  I wake up hours later, Jack’s bedspread tangled around my legs. The sky outside is dark, rain tapping against the window. I groan and find my cell phone: 11:12. We must’ve fallen asleep.

  I lean over to shake Jack awake and tell him I’m leaving, but he isn’t there.

  “… see why that matters …,” someone is saying.

  I sit up in bed, suddenly wide awake. The voice came from the other side of Jack’s door, but it sounded like it was right next to me. I push the blankets off my legs, standing.

  “I hate this,” Jack is saying. I cross the room and press my ear to the door. “Can’t I—”

  “Do you have any idea how hard we worked to get you in?” The new voice sounds like Jack’s father, but why would his father be at Weston in the middle of the night?

  Jack moves, and the wood creaks beneath my ear. I picture him leaning against the other side of the door, his knees pulled up to his chest, but, hard as I try, I can’t picture his father standing out there with him.

  “I know,” Jack says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Be smart.” Jack’s father’s voice sounds the tiniest bit mechanical. My eyes widen as I realize what’s going on. It’s a phone call. I can hear both sides of a phone call Jack is having with his father out in the hall as clearly as if they were both standing right in front of me. This is deeply disturbing.

  “I know,” Jack says. “You’re right. It’s just that we were talking earlier, and she already seemed to know what was going on. I had to lie right to her face.”

  My chest clenches. He’s talking about me.

  Jack’s father sighs. “If Dr. Gruen chooses to share the details of the program with her daughter, that’s her business …”

  Dr. Gruen. For a second, the entire world gets put on Mute. I hear only the sound of my own breath hitting my teeth. The flap of my eyelids blinking open and closed.

  If Ariel were here, she’d laugh at my surprise. She’d say this was obvious.

  I have to remind myself to start listening again. “… I will not have my son violating the terms of the program,” Jack’s father is saying. “Not after everything else that’s gone wrong this year. Do you understand?”

  A pause, then “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, when is your next dose?”

  “End of the week.”

  I back away from the door. That’s enough. As quietly as I can, I grab my bag and slip my feet into the leather ballet flats lying next to Jack’s bed. His window is cool to the touch, the glass slick with rain. I push it open and climb outside. Shadows stretch their long fingers across the dirt, leaving the trees around me dark and mysterious. Wind makes my skirt flutter, but I don’t shiver.

  I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and dial Mother’s number. It just rings and rings. Her voice mail picks up after a minute, and a recorded message tells me her mailbox is full.

  I stare at her photograph on my screen for a long moment, trying to place the emotion bubbling beneath the surface of my skin. It’s like anger and betrayal and fear and hatred, all tangled together, their ends tied in knots. But though I can place it, I can’t quite feel it. It’s like it’s behind a layer of glass.

  I hear Jack’s father’s voice echo through my head: If Dr. Gruen chooses to share the details of the program with her daughter …

  I squeeze my phone so tightly that a long crack snakes across the screen, splitting her face in half. It occurs to me that this is odd. I shouldn’t be able to break a phone with my bare hands, but that hardly seems to matter. All this time Mother knew what had happened to Ariel and Devon. What’s happening to me. And she said nothing.

  That ends now.

  Zoe still isn’t in our dorm when I get back. It’s probably better that way. I drop my bag onto the floor and dig an old math textbook out of my closet and flip it open, revealing a carved-out space in the middle of the pages. Mother’s keys to the Underhill Med Center sit inside. I stole them during last Christmas break, when Dev and Ariel thought it would be fun to sneak inside after dark and look for painkillers. Mother had too much bourbon after dinner and fell asleep on the couch, some CNN special blaring from the television across the room. I slipped the keys out of her purse and into the pocket of my robe. The next morning I took them to the hardware shop around the corner and had copies made. Mother never even knew they were missing.

  I take the keys out of the book and slide them into my pocket. If Mother won’t answer my calls, I’ll have to find the truth my own way.

  The Underhill Medical Center runs on a skeleton crew after midnight, but the lobby and first floor appear to be deserted. I study Mother’s keys. The largest is for the main doors, but there are two others on the ring: a smaller office key, and an even smaller key that looks like it opens a file cabinet or briefcase. I pick out the middle key. No one’s allowed inside my mother’s office unless invited. She’d disown me if she knew I was thinking of breaking in.

  “She’s out of town,” I remind myself, digging the pad of my thumb into the key’s metal teeth. I should be scared. I should feel nerves crawling along my skin, dread pooling in my stomach. But all I feel is impatient.

  Mother’s office is on the second floor, around the corner from long-term care and outpatient facilities. I take the stairs so I don’t risk running into anyone in the elevators. There are patients up here and nurses wandering the halls. I slip my shoes off to keep from making any sound. I stop at the end of the hallway, listening at the wall for footsteps or the soft shuffle of scrubs. I don’t hear anything, so I creep around the corner.

  A nurse steps out of the last room on the left. I freeze. She’s staring at her clipboard, so I don’t think she’s seen me yet. I duck into the nearest room and pull the door almost closed. I watch the hall through the crack, holding my breath to keep from giving away my location.

  She walks past my door and disappears down the hall, her shoes padding quietly against the tile. I wait until I’m sure she’s gone, and then I push the door open. Mother’s office is around the corner and to the right. I move like a shadow, my bare feet pressing into the floor without a sound. I slip her key into the lock and turn, pushing the door open.

  The light is on, which is strange—Mother never forgets to turn off her light. The closet door hangs open, and a pair of shoes lies in the middle of her floor. I spot bloodred soles and realize they’re the Louboutin heels—her favorites.

  I step farther into the office. Everything feels a little off, a little wrong. Her samurai sword is still crooked on its shelf. Mother used to shout at me when I’d touch it, warning me about how valuable it was. I reach out and straighten it now, careful not to let it fall from its stand. It’s heavier than I expected it to be, the leather handle sleek and cool to the touch.

  A half-full coffee cup sits on her desk, her lipstick smudged around the rim. There’s a stack of newspapers
beside it, and Mother has circled one of the articles: “Wildfire Rages Through Franklin County,” the headline reads. She didn’t write anything beside the article to indicate why she thought it was important, just circled it with a thick black pen. She pressed down too hard, ripping the paper.

  I search her desk first, shuffling through outdated invoices and phone messages, and a few more newspapers. There’s nothing about mysterious volunteer programs or vitamin supplements that make you feel numb. Nothing about Ariel or Devon or Zoe. I slam a drawer closed, frustrated, and the crash of wood against wood echoes through the room. I cringe, waiting for someone to storm in and check on the noise. No one comes.

  The file cabinet is next. I drop to my knees and pull open one of the drawers. There are a few folders with scribbled names of corporations I vaguely remember her mentioning, and several more files with dates scrawled across the labels. I open a folder and find pages and pages of Med Center tax documents.

  I close that drawer and tug open the one above it. It’s empty except for a stack of glossy brochures. I take a second to stare down at the smiling, happy girls on the front. They’re all wearing lab coats and huddling around a table covered in microscopes and test tubes. I reach for one—then pause. I smell something.

  I sniff at the air. It’s gas station cologne, heavy and sweet. I hear something, too. The muffled sound of footsteps on tile. Someone’s coming.

  Ignoring, for the moment, the extremely disturbing fact that I could smell someone from down the hall, I nudge the drawer closed, glancing over my shoulder at Mother’s office door. Still closed. And there’s only one drawer left to search. A silver lock winks from beneath its handle.

  The footsteps come closer. I pull Mother’s key ring out of my pocket and slip the tiniest key into the lock. I turn—

  The office door slams open, and the keys slip from my fingers. I swear and kneel to grab them when a hand clamps down on my shoulder. Someone spins me around.

  A security guard glowers at me, one hand resting on the nightstick dangling from his belt, the other holding tightly to my arm.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, miss,” he says, his mouth settling into a hard line.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The security guard’s fingers dig into my arm. His beady eyes scan my face. Any second he’s going to recognize my mother’s straight nose and sharp cheekbones and realize that he’s getting his grubby hands all over the boss’s daughter.

  I shift my face down so he’ll stop looking at me. I’m not sure how much trouble I’m in, but getting my mother involved can only make things worse. His grip tightens and, for a second, I consider yanking my arm away. My muscles feel firm beneath the surface of my skin, my blood hot. I’m stronger now. I could hit him and make it out the door before he had a chance to recover.

  I let the guard lead me out of the office without a fight. A teenage girl with super strength isn’t someone you just forget. It’s better not to chance it.

  “I’m going to need to see some ID,” he says.

  “I don’t have any,” I lie. This guy might not recognize my face, but he’ll definitely recognize my last name.

  “Young lady, if you can’t show me any ID, I’ll have no choice but to call the police.” He pronounces the word “poe-lease,” his voice barely a whisper. He casts a wary glance back at the office door, and I realize something—he doesn’t want my mother to know someone was snooping around her office any more than I do. “Do you want to spend the night in jail?”

  I squirm under his grip, trying to think. Jail. Or Mother. The choice is surprisingly easy.

  “Cuff me,” I say, holding out my hands.

  It seems to take the police forever to get to the Med Center, but it’s probably not even an hour. I spend the time slumped in a folding chair in a tiny gray office, staring at a wall calendar from 2014. Someone wrote Debbie’s birthday on the twenty-second and circled the date in red. Finally, the door opens and some guy who looks like he graduated from high school last week walks in, wearing a loose-fitting brown uniform and cap. He looks more like the UPS guy than an officer of the law. He slaps a pair of metal cuffs around my wrists and leads me out of the hospital, loading me into the back of his car so carefully that you’d think he was taking me to prom.

  “Thanks,” I say before he closes the car door. He actually blushes. I bet he’d rob a bank right now, if I asked him to.

  The junior cop leads me to a small concrete cell. I slump on the wooden bench, letting my head fall back against the wall. Cold air uncurls from the concrete and wraps itself around my arms. I glance down, watching goose bumps ripple over my skin.

  I don’t shiver. I barely even feel the cold.

  “You get a phone call.”

  I open my eyes, flinching at the sudden brightness in my cell. It’s morning. Sunlight trickles through the barred window above me.

  I stretch, cringing at the stiffness in my back. “What?”

  “Your phone call?” The junior officer dangles my phone between the bars of my cell. “The Med Center isn’t going to press charges, but you need to call someone to pick you up.”

  I take the phone, murmuring “thank you” before the cop ambles away. I pull up my contacts list and stare down at the screen. There are only three people who might accept a phone call from me, from jail, first thing in the morning. Jack, Zoe, and Mother.

  “Decisions, decisions,” I mutter, staring down at the short list. I let my finger hover over Jack’s name, thinking.

  I press my finger to the screen, and the phone begins to ring.

  Zoe has a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid wrapped around her middle finger.

  “Cute,” I say, and she uses the finger to flip me off. I climb into her car, and she slides into the driver’s seat next to me. She doesn’t smile as she starts the engine.

  “You going to tell me why you broke into the Med Center?” she asks, pushing her glossy black hair behind one ear.

  “You going to tell me why you ran out of the library yesterday?” I counter.

  Zoe pulls her car out of the police station parking lot, studying me through narrowed eyes. Her eyeliner comes to razor-thin points. It looks deadly. “You found something, didn’t you?”

  I give her my best robot face. She groans, slapping the steering wheel with one hand. “Fine. Your info for my info, okay? My cell is in the bag by your feet. Get it. I want to show you something.”

  I pull her bag onto my lap and dig out her phone. Zoe takes it from my hand and keys in her password with her thumb, eyes never leaving the road. “Voilà,” she says, dropping the phone into my hands.

  A doc fills the screen, displaying three columns of names and numbers. I zoom in, narrowing my eyes to read the tiny type.

  Darla Miller, 122

  Kevin MacAvoy, 118

  Steven Franklin, 131

  They go on like that for pages.

  “Are these IQs?” I ask.

  Zoe nods. “Remember how we had to submit a test as part of our application?”

  “Lots of other crap, too,” I add, remembering. “Physical, grades, teacher recommendations.”

  The light turns red, and Zoe pulls her car to a stop. “These are the IQ scores this year’s freshman class submitted before they started at Weston,” she says. “Now scroll down.”

  I scroll to the next page, and find the same group of names.

  Darla Miller, 135

  Kevin MacAvoy, 129

  Steven Franklin, 147

  “They’re higher,” I say.

  “Yeah. Those are from three months ago. Weird, right? A year at Weston and your IQ goes up ten points? And it’s not just that. I found physicals reporting lower weight and improved agility and strength. And there are reports from teachers that detail behavioral improvements in class.” She nods at the phone. “It’s all in there.”

  I slide my finger over the screen to scroll through the doc. There are pages and pages of information. It would take hours to read all of it. �
��Where did you get this?”

  “Byron’s computer. I went back later and found his password on a Post-it under his desk.” The light changes. Zoe starts driving again.

  I chew on the inside of my cheek, thinking of students bent over textbooks in the cafeteria, the daily announcements listing one impossible achievement after another. Shiny hair and clear skin and perfect teeth. I suppose I should have found it strange that they were all so beautiful. But I always felt like I was the strange one. I was doing something wrong. “So you think every student at Weston was given the serum?”

  “No. I think every student at Weston was given something. A diluted form of whatever we got, maybe.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this at the library?”

  Zoe presses her lips together. I can practically see the gears grinding away inside her head.

  “Before, when we were about to break into Byron’s office, you asked me if I felt anything anymore,” she says after a moment. “The truth is, I haven’t felt anything in weeks. I kept hoping it would come back, but …” She glances down at her bandaged finger resting against the steering wheel. “I thought if I tried cutting myself that something would—”

  “You cut yourself? On purpose?”

  Zoe curls her fingers around the steering wheel, so I can’t see the bandage anymore. “Just a knick. There was hardly any blood.”

  I think of the tiny pink pocketknife in her underwear drawer and feel sick to my stomach. “Well?”

  She works at her lower lip, never moving her eyes away from the road in front of her. It takes a long time for her to shake her head. “Do you really think Devon and Ariel killed themselves because of something in the serum? That it was inevitable?”

  My throat feels suddenly dry. “Why else would they have killed themselves?”

  Zoe jerks her shoulder up and down. The shrug is trying too hard to be casual, and all at once I realize how badly she wants there to be something else. Something we’ve missed.

  But I saw Ariel floating below the water. I found the idiotic clues she left behind for me, like a trail of bread crumbs leading to God knows what. “Ariel didn’t have any other reason to kill herself,” I say. “Devon, either.”