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“How can you trust what you saw? You were on drugs.”
I shake my head, back and forth along the bath, then let it drift and rest against Cole’s shoulder. “Maybe. You’re right. You have to be right. She wouldn’t do that. Why would she do that?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Think,” Sarah says, her voice over the phone soft but insistent. She sounds exhausted. I want to ask if she’s been able to sleep yet, if she’s gone off the Adderall. What she’s seen. “Details. We need details. Names, locations, anything that sticks out enough for us to be able to find these girls. We only need one to confirm whether or not what you saw was real.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my head throbbing. This headache has lasted for two days now, and I think I’ll go mad if it doesn’t stop soon. “Amanda. Fia called one of the girls Amanda. And James said . . .” I play it over in my head, trying to isolate that single thread, but there are so many, so many faces and scenes and images. “Ms. Lafayette! He called her mom Ms. Lafayette.”
“Okay. You keep thinking and pulling out any more details you can. Rafael and I will find Amanda, if she exists.”
“But it worked for you, didn’t it? The pills. You’ve been seeing more.”
There’s a long pause, and when Sarah finally answers, she sounds haunted. “Yes. I’ve been seeing more.”
“So it works.”
Her laugh is bitter and harsh and nothing like the Sarah I’ve known. “Yeah, it works. I’ll call you when we know something.”
She hangs up, and I sit, holding the phone in my hand, hoping against hope that there is no Amanda Lafayette in the world. Please, please let her not be real.
Let it not be real.
FIA
Nineteen Hours Before
“WE’RE LIKE THE WORST COMIC BOOK EVER,” PIXIE says, scowling behind massive round sunglasses. Palm trees reflect from their lenses, the Tampa sunshine brutal and heavy. We’re sitting outside a café, though anyone with a brain would be inside with air-conditioning. Not us. We have to watch for a teenage girl whose life needs ruining.
Again.
“The Adventures of Sullen and Psycho. It has a nice ring to it.” I bounce my legs, buzz buzz buzz buzzing with energy. Not the good kind. The kind that warns I am too close to the edge, too far down the slope, in danger of sliding off and away and being lost forever. Oh, this is wrong, this is all wrong, everything is wrong so wrong.
“We should leave, then,” Pixie whispers.
I imagine invisible fishing lines, hooking the corners of my mouth and tearing at the skin there, pulling my lips back into a simulation of a smile. The same threads connected to my arms and legs, jerking me like a gangly marionette. Go here. Do this. Smile. Ignore the wrong. Make it work. Make it work.
“No, we have to do this.” They put me on a private plane with Pixie as soon as I said Sadie was viable. Sadie, Sadie, slipped through the cracks in the aftermath of Clarice’s murder. (Ha ha ha ha, tap tap tap tap, Clarice’s murder, I can think that like it was an episode on Law and Order, something that sometimes airs on cable channels and you think “Oh, I remember that, it was the innocent-looking teenager” right before you switch to something else, something safe, but nothing is safe not ever safe nothing is ever safe.) Then we found Sadie and then we lost her and now we’ve found her again.
Sadie. I hate her. I have never even seen her and because of her I am twice steeped in blood, like one of Annie’s teas, a rich dark red steaming into my face, bathing me in blood, always blood, and I can’t stop holding the cup, and—
“Fia,” Pixie says, her mouth twisted up. “What is your brain doing right now?”
Backtrack the thoughts. Slipped through the cracks. Sadie slipped through the cracks twice. But no one can avoid fate. I am fate. I am the pale, horrible hands of fate, and now I’ve come for Sadie again, and it’s wrong to be here but it’s wrong to be everywhere, so here is fine.
Pixie rubs her temples. Am I giving you a headache? I think.
“You are a headache.”
I grin. Lean back in my chair. It’s okay. This is fine. Just one more step, one more thing to do, I can turn it off, turn it all off. This has to be done. I think about James, instead, think about his lips to drown out the constant ringing of wrong in my ears, to reset my equilibrium. James said to do whatever they asked me to. I love James.
I love him.
We’ll make everything right.
Pixie mimes vomiting into the planter next to our table. “Please go back to the crazy-train thoughts. I can’t stomach hearing someone think about him that way.”
“Jealous.”
