AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I lift the phone and wave it slightly, like it’s to blame. “The doctor needs me to go back for some more tests.” Lie until even you believe it—that’s the real secret of lying. The only way to have absolutely no tells.
Too bad I’m not quite there yet.
“I thought it might be something like that,” he says with a deep sigh. I wait for him to call me out, to say that he’s already talked to the doctor or that it’s been clear to him from the start that I’m full of it. He doesn’t say any of those things; he reaches into the pocket of his jacket and tosses me the keys.
My amulet isn’t on the floor of Grandad’s Buick or stuck in the crease of the driver’s seat, although I do find a crumpled-up take-out bag. I stop for gas and buy more coffee and three chocolate bars. While I wait for the guy to come back with my change, I program Barron’s new address into the GPS on my phone. The place is in Trenton, on a street I’ve never been.
I don’t have much more to go on than a hunch that all the weird things—my sleepwalking, Maura’s contradictory memories, Barron’s dropping out of school without telling anyone, even the missing amulet—are related.
But as my foot presses on the gas and the car speeds faster, I feel like for the first time in a long while I’m heading in the right direction.
* * *
Lila had her fourteenth birthday party at some big hotel of her father’s in the city. It was the kind of thing where lots of workers got together, passed around envelopes that only theoretically had to do with the party, and talked about things that were better not overheard by the likes of me. Lila pulled me into her hotel room an hour before it was supposed to start. She had on a ton of glittery black makeup and an oversize shirt with a cartoon cat face on it. Her hair wasn’t pink anymore; it was white blond and spiky.
“I hate this,” she said, sitting down on the bed. Her hands were bare. “I hate parties.”
“Maybe you could drown yourself in a bucket of champagne,” I said amiably.
She ignored me. “Let’s pierce each other’s ears. I want to pierce your ears.”
Her ears were already hung with tiny pearls. I know if I scratched them against my teeth, they’d turn out to be real. She touched an earring self-consciously, like she could hear my thoughts. “I got these done with an ear gun when I was seven,” she said. “My mom told me that she would give me ice cream if I didn’t cry, but I cried anyway.”
“And you want more holes because you think pain will distract you from all the annoying celebrating? Or because stabbing me will make you feel better?”
“Something like that.” She smiled enigmatically, went into the bathroom, and came out with a wad of cotton balls and a safety pin. After setting them down on top of the minibar, she pulled out one of the tiny bottles of vodka. “Go get ice from the machine.”
“Don’t you have friends—I mean, not that we’re not friends, but—”
“It’s complicated,” she said. “Jennifer hates me because of something Lorraine and Margot told her. They’re always making up stuff. I don’t want to talk about them. I want ice.”
“You are kind of a bully,” I said.
“I have to be able to order people around someday,” she said, her gaze steady. “Like Dad does. Besides, you already knew I was a bully. You know me.”
“What makes you think I even want my ears pierced?”
“Girls think pierced ears are hot. Besides, I know you, too. You like to be bullied.”
“Maybe I did when I was nine,” I said, but I took the bucket into the hall and brought it back full of ice.
She walked over to the dresser, hopped up, and pushed a pile of CDs, underwear, and folded-up notes onto the floor.
“Come here,” she said, her voice hushed, dramatic. “First you light the match, and then you run the pin through the flame. See?” Lila struck the match and twirled the pin in its fire. Her eyes shone. “It goes black and iridescent. Now it’s sterile.”
I pushed up the shaggy black mop of my hair and tilted my head like a willing sacrifice. The press of the ice made me shiver. Her legs were slightly apart and I had to stand between her knees to get close enough.
“Hold still,” she said, her fingers cold on my skin. I watched melting ice running down her wrist to drip off her elbow. We both waited, quietly, as though this was a ceremonial rite. After a minute or so she dropped the cube and pressed the pin against my ear, slowly stabbing through.
“Ow!” I pulled away at the last moment.
She laughed. “Cassel! The pin’s sticking half out of your ear.”
“It hurt,” I said, half in astonishment. But it wasn’t that. It was too much sensation—the feel of her thighs holding me in place mixing with the sharp pain.
“You can hurt me worse if you want,” she said, and pushed the pin through with a sudden, savage thrust. I sucked in my breath.
She slid off the dresser to fetch new ice for her own ear from the bucket. Her eyes were glittering. “Do mine up high. You’re going to have to really press to get through the cartilage.”
