The Third Lie's the Charm Read online

  “I just…I had no idea.” It was the truth. I had no idea about how close this was to my house. I had no idea that in spite of the ruins, in spite of the flames and the smoke, I’d actually be able to force myself to go through with this. I had no idea.

  “It’s almost like they’ve forgotten it even happened, you know?” Naomi’s voice was barely above a whisper and she looked around nervously, scared that someone might overhear.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Sometimes being here, I just wonder if maybe there’s a way that we could honor her. Make it so she didn’t die for nothing.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You think there’s any possible way to make Grace’s death okay?” My voice was shrill and loud. I couldn’t help it.

  “Shhh…they’ll hear.” Naomi backed away from me slowly, regret written all over her face. “That’s not how I meant it at all. I just…there’s bigger stuff going on here, you know?”

  It almost sounded like she might share my goal of destroying the Sisterhood. Bradley Farrow, the former leader of the Brotherhood, was her brother, after all. But before I could respond, she disappeared into the woods. Naomi Farrow was either my biggest enemy or my closest ally. Something told me it wasn’t going to be easy to determine which.

  I wove my way through the clusters of girls. Quiet. Listening. Trying to get my bearings, collect information.

  I paused near Bethany Giordano whose back faced me, her body hunched toward the thick trees and whatever else lay beyond.

  “…Need to be disabled…already in place…Brotherhood…eliminated.”

  I could barely hear over the music but I recognized Dorothy Bower’s sharp voice drifting out from Bethany’s phone. Formerly Ms. D., PB’s badass security guard, Dorothy now went by “Headmistress Bower,” and despite her more powerful position, she maintained serious ties to the Sisterhood. After the Brotherhood was overthrown, the Sisterhood managed to secure Ms. D. the headmistress position at the start of the spring term.

  Our previous headmaster, Mr. Sinclair, and I weren’t exactly BFFs, but as faculty leader of the Sisterhood, Ms. D. stood for everything that was wrong with PB. Oh, and she was one of the only adults I’d ever trusted until she lied to me and manipulated me to get the Sisterhood back in power. Minor detail.

  Bethany looked up before I could walk closer and catch any more words. “Hey, Kate,” she purred. Her voice was raspy like she’d smoked a pack of cigarettes and spent the entire night screaming conversations in some dirty bar. “I don’t think I congratulated you yet.” She swiped off the phone, cutting Ms. D.’s voice in half. “So…congratulations.” Her smile pulled at all the wrong places.

  “Thanks.” My voice held the sick sweetness of sugar-free syrup. Hopefully you catch more flies with aspartame. “I’m so glad we’re Sisters now. You can tell me all your secrets.” I gave her a hard, “playful” punch on the shoulder.

  Bethany rubbed the place where my small fist had bitten into her arm. “Ooh, you’re so right. In fact, I’ve got a secret for you already.” She bent down and put her mouth to my ear. “You can cover up your nasty hair with a white hood and you can say all the right things in Latin, but you’ll never be a real Sister.”

  She said it to hurt me. She couldn’t have known it was exactly what I needed to hear. I repeated the words in my head.

  I’ll never be a real Sister.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up the next morning to sunshine and the grinding buzz of my phone vibrating on my nightstand. I slapped at the phone to silence it and pulled my thick, down comforter back over my head.

  It had been after 4 a.m. when I finally got back home last night, and already the choice I’d made felt scarier, more real in the light of day. Parading around with the Sisterhood at night was one thing, but the idea of joining their ranks in the halls of Pemberly Brown on Monday made me burrow deeper into the safety of my bed. At least for the weekend.

  My phone buzzed again. It was probably Seth, my neighbor who doubled as bodyguard, lap dog, or best friend, depending on the day. He’d want details of last night. Excruciating details that he’d be able to write about on his weirdo conspiracy-theory, secret-society-obsessed blog. I needed an IV drip of caffeine before I’d be ready to deal with any of it.

  Or maybe it was Liam.

  I’d already been over hundreds of different scenarios in my head.

  Me: Hi, Liam.

  Liam: Hi, Kate.

  Me: I miss you.

  Liam: I miss you too.

  Me: Let’s get back together.

  Liam: Awesome. So you’re done with that whole obsessive revenge thing? Whoo-hoo!

  Me: Um, yeah, about that…

  Liam: *Click*

  There’s a version where he asks me to marry him, a version where he drives to my house and tries to whisk me away to Paris for a romantic weekend, and my personal favorite, a version where he decides to get my likeness tattooed on his chest, radioactive hair and all.

  But every fantasy ends the same way—Liam wanting something I can’t give him.

  Reality really sucks sometimes.

  I threw the covers off and kicked myself out of bed in one quick motion. I wasn’t sure if it was yet another Liam fantasy or my craving for coffee that got me out of bed. Did it really matter? Either way, I was up.

  I snatched my phone off the nightstand and headed into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  Thirty-four missed calls. Jesus. Seth must be on a mission. I began scrolling through the names after I stuck the toothbrush in my mouth.

  Seth cell (4)

  Maddie (1)

  Naomi (2)

  Seth home (3)

  Alistair (21)

  My eyes widened as I scrolled through an almost endless list of missed calls from Alistair. Twenty-one calls. Whoa. It’s not like he and I were besties. I didn’t even realize he had my number before last night. I had totally forgotten that he called, and even if I hadn’t, there was no way I would have called him back. It had been so late and it just didn’t seem important. I took a gulp of water, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and dialed his number.

  One, two, three, four, five rings.

  “Yo, it’s Alistair…”

  Voicemail.

  I thought about leaving a message but hung up. It couldn’t have been that important if he hadn’t bothered to pick up his phone. I headed downstairs to find my parents sitting at the table with matching coffee mugs and vacant stares.

  They both straightened up and exchanged a meaningful look when they saw me walk into the kitchen. Shit. I was in trouble. I had to be. They never lounged around in robes on the weekend. If they weren’t volunteering or starting some house project, they were buried in notes preparing for some epic case that would require as many hours as they could possibly bill in a week.

  “Um, good morning…” I moved as quickly as I could to grab a coffee mug and filled it to the brim. Something told me this conversation would require a major caffeine buzz.

  My mother’s arms were around me before I could even turn back around. “Oh Kate, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  “Um, hey…wow…” My voice was still light, but a pit began to form in my stomach, small, hard, and impossible to ignore. “What’s going on?” My mind flashed to all the missed calls on my phone.

  “Oh God, you don’t know.” My mother pulled back and rested her hands on my shoulders. “It’s Alistair Reynolds.”

  The pit in my stomach grew until it felt like I’d swallowed a softball.

  “Alistair? What about him?” I raised my hands and took a step back from my mother, watching her expression carefully. The slack muscles around her mouth and the way she closed her eyes and took a deep breath told me everything I needed to know.

  “There was an accident, honey.” My father’s voice was calm. Unemotional. If I hadn’t seen th
e way his jaw clenched and twitched, I might have believed that everything was going to be okay, but instead, the now basketball-sized lump was caught in my throat. I dropped the steaming coffee, hot liquid splattering on my bare legs, shards of glass biting into my feet, as I ran back upstairs. Back to my phone.

  I swiped Alistair’s name again.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  “Yo, it’s Alistair…”

  I hung up and redialed.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  “Yo, it’s Alistair…”

  The next time, I stopped listening to the rings and began counting. I watched the timer tick through the seconds and counted just like I’d done after Grace. Only this time as the phone rang, I stared at Alistair’s face and counted.

  Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.

  “Yo, it’s Alistair…”

  I paced back and forth in my room, calling over and over again only to hear the same stupid message. By the time my parents managed to unlock my door, I was on my twenty-first call. The exact number of times that he’d tried to call me last night.

  “He’s gone, Kate. It happened last night around 3 a.m. We didn’t find out until this morning. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

  I pushed past her, locked myself in the bathroom, and dialed one more time, staring at Alistair’s straight nose and wavy hair.

  Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.

  This time, I left a message.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped into the phone. “I’m so sorry.”

  And then I threw up.

  Chapter 4

  “You don’t have to do this, sweetie,” my dad pleaded for what had to be the millionth time. “It’s too much. Stay home. Your mom already called in an absence. We’ve booked you an appointment with Dr. Lowen for this afternoon. You should see him before you jump back into things. He’s warned us that losing another student so suddenly might trigger some pretty intense feelings for you.”

  I stared past his eyes at the curve in the road. He hated when I did that. Dr. P.—short for Dr. Prozac, as I called him—had spent entire sessions discussing the importance of eye contact. But I couldn’t do it. Not today. I’d spent the entire weekend locked in my room, screening calls, trying to pretend that Alistair wasn’t dead. Trying to convince myself that it wasn’t my fault. But it wasn’t working.

  Alistair and I hadn’t been close. In fact, technically I should probably have been happy he was dead, or at least relieved. He was one of the people instrumental in what happened to Grace. If he hadn’t been there that night, she’d still be alive.

  But he wasn’t a murderer. Not really. He was just a stupid boy who made a mistake that ended up costing my friend her life. I hated him for it, but I hated myself too. Besides, Alistair dying wasn’t going to save other people from being hurt. The societies were the root of the problem. They made people crazy. They made them do horrible things.

  And Alistair was no different. But all I could think about was the fear in his voice when he called me last night. He had been scared. He had been scared, and I’d been too busy to find out why.

  I had to get out of the house. I felt myself sinking back into the blackness that surrounded me after Grace’s death, and I had to claw my way back to the surface or I’d be lost forever. I had to go to school and at least pretend to be normal.

  “At least let me drive you.” Dad physically moved to try and meet my eye, but it didn’t work. I knew if I looked at him, I’d start crying for Alistair Reynolds and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to go to school, nod off in my classes, and pretend that everything was normal. I heard a telltale screech of brakes that meant the bus was turning onto our street. Thank God.

  “I’m fine, Dad…it’s fine.” I forced myself to meet his eyes with my exhausted ones. He’d never let me go if I didn’t. And before he could put his hand on my shoulder all dad-like or pick me up and tuck me back into bed the way he used to do when I was five, Seth Allen erupted from his front door like a volcano.

  “I’m gonna miss it… I got it! Mo-om, I’ve got it!”

  Seth’s hair was already mussed and his uniform shirt half tucked in, which explained the “I’ve got it,” as Mrs. Allen was famous for her drive-by tuck-ins. He rushed down his driveway, tripping over his neon white Pumas, his roller book bag flipping off its wheels. Seth was a hot, hot mess and I loved him for it. He shot my dad an “I’ve got this” nod when he saw me, and I wondered if maybe he really did. Seth had pulled me out of the darkness before, and if anyone could save me from slipping back down, it was him.

  The bus screeched to a halt in front of our driveways, and we boarded with all the other humiliated passengers without licenses or cars or rides to school. My dad looked deflated through the fingerprinted bus window, so I managed a smile before we pulled away. This didn’t need to break him too.

  “So your mom called my mom and they’re all worried about you with this Alistair thing and supposedly it’s going to create a whole new psychotic break in your hormone-addled brain. Want to talk about it?” Seth asked as he slid a Pop Tart out of his blazer pocket. The noise of him opening the foil wrapper almost drowned out his voice, and I willed myself to be patient. The thing about Seth was that he never had an ulterior motive when it came to being my friend. He always just wanted to help.

  “I’m fine.”

  My hand went to my neck, but I’d hidden Grace’s pearls beneath my shirt. Normally I’d roll the perfect spheres between my fingers and count each of the sixty-three pearls as I figured out how to respond to Seth, but instead I clenched my teeth. Seth knew me well enough to know that the pearls meant trouble, and I didn’t want to worry him.

  “I mean, it’s not like he was my best friend or anything.” I failed to mention all those missed calls, the guilt, the way this whole eerie scenario took me right back to the days following Grace’s death last year.

  I looked around at all the other kids on the bus. They weren’t crying or even whispering. Maybe this was all some weird rumor. Maybe Alistair would amble up to my locker and tell me my roots were showing and explain in detail how my undercover plan was going to fail in that charming way of his, and everything would be normal. He’d be super pissed that I hadn’t returned his calls, but my nightmare would transform into a mistake and I’d be able breathe again.

  The bus turned a corner onto the tree-canopied lane that led to our school. Pemberly Brown sat on a hill at the end of the drive, all red brick and manicured landscaping. Every morning, the school’s refined beauty greeted me like an aging socialite with a restrained smile and a cupped wave. Ivy covered the brick, vivid green since the spring rain, and the first of PB’s famous flowers were sprouting in the beds around the building. I reminded myself to walk through the gardens after school. I could visit Grace’s bench and see if the crocuses had begun to push through the earth. They bloomed early, pushing through the snow even, so if you blinked you could miss them. I never did.

  My stomach dropped when I saw a group of suits unfolding themselves from expensive cars in the visitors’ lot. Men straightened ties and women shrugged into blazers as they gathered together before entering the building. It was happening. When I’d finally returned to school after Grace’s death, I’d learned that with the loss of a student came the addition of all sorts of important-looking adults. Grief counselors, board members, administrators from the lower and middle schools, pinch-faced psychologists only Dr. P. could appreciate.

  “Kate! Wait up.” I’d wandered off the bus without waiting for Seth, who struggled with his roller bag. I didn’t have the energy to inquire why he even bothered with it. Roller bags were discriminated against in all high schools, as they should be. Bus steps, flights of stairs, narrow turns, crowded hallways. They all stood waiting to kick Seth in the proverbial balls on a day-to-day basis.

  “Sorry, I’ll catch up with you later. Gotta finish calc. S
ee you at lunch?”

  Seth’s face dropped, and it broke my heart. He was worried about me. Everyone was. I guess everyone should be. This hit too close to home. All of it. But I had to get to my locker; I had to push past the huddles of crying people. I had to shove through whispers and “did you hears?” and awkward, inappropriate hugs from teachers. I had to ignore the way my mouth watered in that just-before-you-puke-your-guts-out way and calm the heaving of my stomach. If I didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge any of it, was it really happening? If a phone went unanswered twenty-one times, did it ever make a sound?

  I touched the bronze plaques at each of the stations I passed, letting my fingers linger for a beat on the cool surface.

  The main entrance, Station 1. Aut disce aut discede. Either learn or leave.

  The computer lab at the end of the hall, Station 4. Liberae sunt nostrae cogitationes. Our thoughts are free.

  Detention, near my locker. Station 5. Abyssus abyssum invocate. Hell invokes hell.

  My name was called, but it sounded warped and distant. It could have been anyone—Seth tailing me, one of my new “Sisters” searching for someone to cry with, one of the grief counselors who barely recognized the girl with the faded blue hair as the preppy brunette who lost her best friend over a year ago.

  But my body moved forward in spite of the crowds and distractions, pulled toward some magnetic force who stood waiting at my locker, his skin ashen, his head lowered. Was I imagining him here? Had Bradley Farrow really come to school after the death of his best friend?

  I heard my name again from behind me, the word pulled and stretched.

  “K…a…t…e…”

  I turned this time, spinning in slow motion to find the source, and found Liam frozen at the end of the hallway, a sea of students shifting and flowing around him. It was just like all of my fantasies, and like in all of my fantasies, I knew our conversation was doomed. I gave him a sad wave, and when I turned, Maddie was a few feet away from me, her head lowered, her hands balled in fists. I hadn’t thought about her, hadn’t considered how the news of another student’s death would impact Grace’s other best friend.