Revelations (10 page)

She reached for the shell of her cashmere twin-set, careful to use the hand with the unstained fingers. A sound
that was half whine and half gasp escaped from her throat when she pulled the shell free. It was streaked with
bright red blood.

No. Not blood. Calm down,
she ordered herself.
It’s nail polish. Only nail polish.
She checked her sweater and skirt.

Those bastards. They’d splattered nail polish all over everything. Even her boots.

Rae threw the broken lock into her locker and slammed the door. She rushed out into the hall and immediately
headed toward the principal’s office. Not that she planned to try to sic the principal on the government people. Rae
wasn’t that derangedyet. But she needed a pass to get her out of the school and home, where she could get some
fresh clothes. She was already getting some looks for walking around in her gym clothes outside the gym. But the
looks were nothing compared to what she’d have gotten if she’d gone out in her hi-I’m-Carrie outfit.

Rae turned the corner, and two guys actually stopped walking and stared at her. Hadn’t they ever seen a girl in
gym clothes before? What, had they been living in a cave somewhere? She walked past them, ignoring the itchy
feeling on her back that made her pretty sure they were still watching her. Losers.

When she reached the door to the principal’s office, she took a moment to fluff her hair and straighten her T-shirt.

Then she grabbed the door handle-and froze. Her eyes had locked on a bright red flyer posted on the bulletin board
next to the door.

This is why people were staring at me,
she realized, her stomach bunching up until she could feel her lunch
knocking against the walls.
They read this. They know my secret, the secret I’ve been keeping, God, almost my

whole life.

She took a step closer to the bulletin board, her eyes locked on the words written on that flyer. It wasall there-every
disgusting detail. Melissa Voight, accused of killing her best friend, Erika Keaton. Found mentally incompetent to
stand trial. Sent off to die in a mental institution. Crazy. Insane. A killer.

And Rae Voight’s mother.
It was right there, in clear print.

They think I’m the daughter of a lunatic murderer,
Rae thought, her pulse racing.
Even though my mother didn’t do

anything like that, they think she did.

Why wouldn’t they? Everyone does. The lawyers. The judge. The reporter who wrote the article. Of course

everyone at school is staring. I’m surprised they aren’t running screaming at the sight of me. I mean, they already

know I’ve had a breakdown. They’re probably expecting me to grab an ax or an Uzi and go on a rampage any

second.

She let go of the doorknob she’d still been clutching and ripped the flyer free. Another reminder from the
government agency? Or could Anthony be right? Could someone else hate her enough to do this?

Maybe it’s only been on the board for a few min utes,
Rae thought. No one in gym had seen it. She would know if
they had. She jammed the flyer into her pocket.
Maybe just three or four people saw it. Those two guys and the
-

Rae heard footsteps behind her and then soft, hissing whispers, whispers that she’d heard all the time after The
Incident.

Maybe it’s not about you,
she thought. She forced herself to turn around. The two girls-sophomores she knew
only by sight-suddenly sped up. But Rae had time to see that they each held a red flyer.

How many of these freakin’ red flyers are there?
Anthony thought as he walked through the hallways after school.

He spotted one of the flyers taped to the trophy case, lunged toward it, ripped it down, and added it to the pile under
his arm. “It’d be easier to torch the whole school,” he muttered, snatching another flyer off the floor. And he’d be
happy to light the match, especially if a couple of people who’d gotten their rocks off talking about Rae and her
mom could somehow be trapped inside. Long enough to get a little singed, anyway.

Anthony pushed the image of the burning school out of his head. He needed to stay focused. Because, yeah,
there was a red flyer sticking out of the backpack of the guy who’d just stepped away from the drinking fountain.

Anthony picked up his pace and yanked the flyer out of the pack. “What in the hell are you doing?” the guy
demanded. He spun around, and Anthony realized it was Chris McHugh from thefootball team.

“Why are you reading this crap?” Anthony demanded.

“It’s interesting. What’s your problem?” McHugh said.

“My problem is that Rae is-” What exactly was Rae to him? “She’s Salkow’s girlfriend, man,” Anthony continued,
because that was the only thing that he could think to tell McHugh. “Do you think Salkow really wants everybody in
the place walking around with one of these?” He added McHugh’s flyer to the pile.

“Yeah, well, maybe Salkow should think about if he did the right thing, getting back together with Rae,” McHugh
answered. “You weren’t here last year. You didn’t see her lose it. But I did. She was completely wacked. And now
this comes out about her mom. What if it’s one of those like-mother-like-daughter deals? Salkow could wake up
some morning without his head.”

All Anthony wanted to do was grab McHugh and mop the floor with him. It definitely wasn’t one of those times
where he’d be pissed off at himself afterward, either. He would bet any amount of money that thinking about having
pulverized McHugh would end up one of his best memories. But every minute he spent dealing with McHugh was a
minute hewouldn’t be on red-flyer patrol. And getting rid of the flyers would do Rae a lot more good.

“Ignorant butt hole,” he muttered as he walked past McHugh, allowing himself a hard shoulder knock on the way.

“What did you say?” McHugh called after him. Anthony didn’t answer. He’d spotted a red flyer sticking halfway out
of someone’s locker. He tore it free and added it to his pile. Then he charged on. When he reached the corner, he
swung left. His eyes zoomed immediately to Rae’s locker. She was standing there. He knew she was almost as tall
as he was, but she looked so small standing over there right now.

Anthony felt like a dozen fishhooks had just jabbed into his chest, going deep, digging into his heart. And then he
was reeled in, reeled straight over to Rae. He was pretty sure she didn’t want him over there, but he couldn’t stop
himself, not without doing some major damage to his body.

“Hi,” he said. Because that’s the kind of idiot he was, the kind who couldn’t come up with anything better to say
than “hi.”

“Hi,” Rae said back. But she didn’t look him in the eye. She tried to make it seem like she was. But she was really
focusing on his eyebrows.

This is bad. If she can’t even look at me, she’s a lot worse than I thought she’d be,
Anthony thought.
I mean, crap, I

already knew everything about her mom. And she knows I don’t care. How could I care when my dad-

Maybe you should actually attempt to spit out a few more words,
Anthony interrupted himself. “Um, Rae, look,
screw them all.” He tore his stack of flyers in half.

Rae laughed. The sound made Anthony’s stomach turn. There wasn’t anything… anything
happy
about the laugh.

It was like Rae was some freaky robot person from one of those movies about artificial intelligence. Like there was
nothing real inside her. Nothing Rae.

“I mean it,” Anthony insisted. “If they can’t understand that what your mother did has nothing to do with you,
forget them.” He tore the flyers in half again. Rae still didn’t meet his eyes. But at least she didn’t let out another of
those freaky laughs. “That’s what you told me, at least basically, remember? When you found out that my dad killed
someone in that armed robbery. You said it had noth-”

“She didn’t even do it,” Rae said softly. It was like she was talking to herself more than she was talking to him. “My
dad gave me this letter from her, a letter she wrote before she died that was for me on my sixteenth birthday. She
said she didn’t kill ErikaKeaton. And I touched every inch of the paper, and I didn’t get one thought that told me she
was lying.”

Anthony blinked. “Are you serious?” he said, understanding just how huge this was for Rae. God, if he could find
out that the deal with his dad killing someone was all some kind of crazy lie…

Not about you,
Anthony reminded himself. “Rae, that’s great,” he said. “So then you really shouldn’t care about
this stupid stuff. You know the truth. Tell them all to go-”

“Rae,” someone called. Anthony glanced over his shoulder and saw Marcus coming toward them. Maybe that was
good. Anthony wanted to finish what he was saying to Rae, but it’s not like it was getting through to her. Maybe
Marcus could yank her out of the bad place.

“Get your stuff,” Marcus told Rae. He gave Anthony a nod, barely seeming to care that he was there. “I’m taking
you out for a pizza. With all the veggies it can hold, just the way you like it.”

“Okay,” she answered. “Okay, yeah, that would be good.”

Anthony turned away and threw the ripped-up flyers into the trash. At least he’d done something for Rae. Not that
she actually needed him to.

*

“Crowded,” Marcus said.

“Yeah,” Rae answered, even though the pizza place was only about half full. It was easier to agree. And God, what
did it matter if half the tables were empty when most of the people who
were
in the place kept taking these
sneaking, darting glances at Rae? She was pretty sure the group two tables away were hunched over a copy of the
red flyer, getting every juicy, sordid detail about Rae’s mother. What did she expect, coming to a place two blocks
away from the school? But this was where Marcus had wanted to go, so…

She shot a look at Marcus. He was studying the menu, although they’d already ordered. And although he had to
have the thing memorized. They’d come here a million times.

Marcus must have felt her watching him because he dropped the menu and smiled at her. “You look nice. I like that
sweater.” His forehead wrinkled a little. “Is that what you were wearing at lunch?”

He was such a guy. “No. I, uh, spilled something, and the principal let me run home and change,” Rae answered.

Why go into it? The whole nail-polish-spattered clothes incident seemed pretty minor now.

“Oh. Well, you look really nice.” Marcus picked up the menu again.

“Are you thinking about dessert already?” Rae asked, her voice coming out sounding a little tooloud and a little
too cheerful to her own ears.
Maybe that’s ’cause you’re putting on a show for everybody,
she thought.
The Look at

How Rae Isn’t at All Bothered by Having a Killer Mom Show.
That was the best she could do. It wasn’t like she
could tell Marcus or anyone else that she was sure her mother wasn’t a killer because Rae’s fingerprint-reading
power had told her so. “You know you’re going to have the monster cookie sundae, just like you always do,” she
went on, just as loud, just as cheerful, unable to stop the performance.

“Maybe this time I’ll surprise you,” Marcus answered, still reading the menu.

Didn’t he have it memorized after all this time? she wondered again. Then it hit her. Like a punch to her gut. Marcus
wasn’t reading the menu. He was
hiding.

And I did this to him,
she thought.
I put him in a position where he has to hide from people who are his friends or

who at least wish they were his friends.
Usually he was like a movie star in this place. He’d get asked for autographs
if people weren’t afraid of looking like losers.

“Be right back,” Rae said. She didn’t wait for an answer. She stood up and hurried over to the counter. “That pizza
we ordered. We decided we want it to go,” she told the girl behind the register.

Two minutes later she was holding a hot pizza box in her hands. “Marcus,” she called. When he looked over, she
jerked her chin toward the door.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he fell into step beside her.

“Why don’t we go someplace more private?” She forced a smile. “I don’t feel like sharing you right now.” If she
told him the truth-that she could tell it was torture for him to sit in the pizza place with her-then he’d insist she was
wrong. And he’d insist that they stay to prove it.

“I never feel like sharing you,” Marcus answered. He pulled open the door for her, then took the pizza and carried it
to the car. “Where to?” he asked when he and Rae were both buckled into their seats.

“The park across from Lee Elementary,” Rae answered. “We’ll have a picnic.” The little kids who hung out in the
park wouldn’t know anything about Rae’s mother. So there’d be no stares, no stress.

“Great idea.” Marcus grabbed Rae’s hand and held it all the way over to the park.
Maybe we could live in the car.