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He can only be Adam Denting. She was right. I do like him. I ordered him dead, but I like him. I like his messy hair and kind eyes. I even like his ears.
He’s fidgeting, looking down and up and over his shoulder. He’s scared. Someone is talking to him. He’s nervously answering questions about who he is and what his research is, questions about who Sofia Rosen is and exactly what she told him about herself.
And a woman’s voice, from somewhere I can’t see, reassures him that he’s safe now that he’s with Lerner.
ANNIE
Two Years Ago
FIA’S IN MY ROOM. SHE’S BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR SO long, but lately she’s here all the time. It makes me happy.
And sad. Because it’s different. She’s quiet. She never laughs. I wish she could laugh and that it could be easy between us, that Eden could still come over when Fia’s here and we could all three just hang out.
I’m using the braille display on my new laptop. I’ve had speech-to-text technology for a while, but this way I can read everything instead of waiting for the computer to read it for me. This is one of the things I tried to get the public school system to bring in, but they never had the budget to aid one blind student. Now all I have to do is find the products and technology I want to try, tell Clarice about them, and within a week they’re here.
My fingers fly through websites for research on my senior project, an examination of adaptations of the Cassandra myth from ancient Greece. “This display is freaky cool, Fia.”
“Mmmm hmmm.”
“You doing homework?”
“Nope.”
“What are you doing?”
“Wondering if a fourteen-year-old who is an accessory to murder can be tried as an adult.”
My fingers stop midword. “What? Why would you wonder about that?”
“Just something to think about. It seems like for most crimes you won’t get tried as an adult, but murder they push the age pretty low.”
I frown. “Is this for a class?” Only Eden is left from her age group. Girls leave the school a lot for other programs run by the foundation or get kicked out because the curriculum isn’t working for them. I’m so relieved it’s never happened to us. Aunt Ellen hasn’t even written in two years. I worry about Fia getting kicked out—I literally have no idea what we’d do.
“Oh, I never go to class. Why would I go to class?”
I knock the braille display over as I whip around to face her. “You aren’t going to class?”
“Class comes to me. I read a lot. I sleep a lot. Nobody cares.”
“That’s terrible! I can’t believe this. What kind of curriculum do they have you on? I understand that they’re flexible, but that’s unacceptable.” I pause, not wanting to ask, needing to ask. “Are they…are you doing those weird self-defense things again?”
“Mostly running and strength training. You never know when you’ll need to sprint three miles. Besides, we’re focused more on breaking and entering now.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It really isn’t, is it?”
I stand and walk over to my bed, feel for her. Her head is hanging off the edge, upside down. Her hair has gotten long, longer than it was when I saw her in the vision on the beach. I wonder how else she’s changed.
“You aren’t happy, are you?” I’d been hoping she’d adapt, that whatever weird things were going on with her, whatever strange dynamic she had here would change. I swallow hard. I am a terrible person. I know she’s not happy. She hasn’t been happy in months. Years. But I kept waiting and hoping. Not because I thought she’d change. Because I needed her to be happy so I could keep being happy here.
Fia doesn’t sound upset when she finally speaks. She sounds far away. “I don’t even remember what happy felt like. I think it probably felt like that night I got really drunk with James. Soft and fuzzy, everything spinning and out of focus.”
I pull her up, pull her off the bed and onto my lap. She curls into me like a child, though she’s as tall as I am now, she has to be, all arms and legs. She rests her head against my shoulder, and it’s wet where her eyes are.
“Oh, Fia, Fia. I’m so sorry. I’m going to fix this.” How could I let it get this bad? She’s depressed. Obviously. There has to be something they can put her on, some sort of antidepressant, to make it better until we can figure out how to get her happy again. “I’m going to take care of you.”
“You can’t,” she says, and her voice is hollow. “It’s my job to take care of you.”
