The Third Lie's the Charm (3 page)

“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. See 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.

She raised her chin, and her eyes were puffy and red, but despite everything in our history, despite the fact that she was the only other person in the entire world who could even come close to understanding what it was like to lose Grace, I couldn't go to her. It was as though she'd turned invisible, and I could see Bradley straight through her, his rich skin ashy and his golden eyes vacant.

“That's it?” Maddie whispered as I moved around her.

I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing or why I couldn't see her standing there, but she was right. That was it. Maddie's eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head and rushed away. I don't know if I was still angry or if there was something inherently wrong with me, but I couldn't bring myself to follow. She fell into Seth's arms at the end of the hallway, lowered her head on his shoulder, and I caught a flash of disappointment in his green eyes. Everyone hated me. I was losing them, letting the only people who truly cared about me go, and powerless to stop any of it. There was just something about Bradley Farrow.

A year ago, Bradley had been my first crush. A year ago, I would have given anything to see him standing in front of my locker. But things had changed since then. I didn't trust him. He didn't trust me. I wanted him. He pretended to want me. The whole thing was kind of a mess, but right now, none of it seemed to matter because Bradley Farrow was broken, and looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. His face had been rearranged by grief. He was still beautiful, but now he was more Picasso than Rembrandt, and I wanted nothing more than to slide his features back into place. To change him back into the Bradley he was before Alistair died.

“This was no accident.” His voice was hoarse, urgent. “Someone killed him, Kate.” He looked around the halls, ran his hand over his closely cropped hair.

“I know.” My words came out soft, soothing, and I didn't recognize my own voice. “I can help.” My fingers reached instinctively toward my neck and I tugged the pearls out from under my uniform shirt.

And I knew it was true. I could help. His face crumbled into something that looked like relief before rearranging itself back into the stark grief I'd seen when my eyes first landed on him, and I knew Bradley Farrow was the reason I came to school today. Maybe if I could fix him, I'd finally be able to fix myself.

“He called me thirty-two times.” Bradley's voice was barely above a whisper. “Thirty-two times and I didn't answer one of them.” He turned away from me and swiped the backs of his hands over his eyes. “They're saying it was a suicide. The truck driver said Alistair was speeding and he just blew right through the stop sign.”

I knew Alistair had died in a car accident, but I hadn't heard any of the details until now. The truth was, I didn't want to know the details. I didn't want any of this to be real. But it only took one look at Bradley's red, swollen eyes to remind me that no matter how much I tried to wish that this was all a huge mistake, Alistair's death was very, very real.

“He called me too.”

Bradley didn't move his head. It was like he didn't hear me. I reached over and touched his shoulder, lightly, remembering how I felt in the after-Grace. Remembering how my mother's fingertips burned my skin when she reached out to hold my hand at Grace's funeral. Remembering the way I had recoiled when Seth tried to hug me when he found me sitting on my porch swing hours after we'd gotten the official phone call.

I told myself not to be hurt when Bradley's muscles tensed at my touch. I promised myself that I'd never invade his space again if he pushed my arm away. But Bradley let himself sink into me until his arms were wrapped around me like I was the only piece of driftwood in the middle of a tsunami.

“Twenty-one times. He called me twenty-one times.” I said the words into his neck, and I felt his shoulders shudder and heave in a silent sob as tears from my own eyes wet his uniform shirt.

People were staring at us. I could feel their eyes on me. On Bradley. On the two of us clinging to each other, barely afloat in the sea of students. I shot daggers at the kids who dared to meet my eye. I gently pushed Bradley away and took a small step back from him. This moment was too personal for the hallway.

“You wanna get out of here?” I remembered my dad's words this morning, how my mom called in an absence, how we could escape without consequence. It didn't matter; I'd take the fifteen demerits, but it'd be easier this way.

He nodded once, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him out the nearest exit of the school. The earthy, wet spring air greeted us the second we left the building. I took a deep breath and steered Bradley toward the gardens.

The small stone bench sat in the middle of a riot of daffodils and irises that were just beginning to poke tentative buds above ground. As usual, the seat was cool in spite of the bright sunshine, and the moment I sat down, I got goose bumps. I used to tell myself that the constant chill of the bench must mean Grace haunted it, that she could see the flowers and hear my voice. But now I wasn't so sure.

Bradley sat next to me and cradled his head in his hands, palms rubbing his eye sockets.

“The funeral's tomorrow… I wasn't supposed to come to school today, but sitting at home… I just, I had to leave.” He let his voice trail off.

“I know.” And then I remembered how much I'd hated it when people pretended to understand what I was feeling about Grace. “I mean, I don't know. Not really. But I remember what it felt like for me. After Grace.” I paused and ran my fingers over her name engraved on the back of the bench. “It's going to be awful.”

I remembered Grace's funeral in smells, tastes, and sounds. It was like I had gone blind for the day. Or maybe I'd blocked out her tiny casket and the hordes of students who had been there pretending to know her. Pretending to care. Instead I remembered the bitter taste of the cough drops my mother had dug out of her purse for me to chew on. I remembered the constant wet heat of tears on my cheeks. I remembered the grotesque, medicinal smell of the funeral home. I remembered wishing I was dead.

“How did you do it?” He picked his head up and looked me in the eyes for the first time that day.

“Do what?” I stared back. Willing myself not to cry. Remembering how much I hated it when other people cried for Grace when it was obvious they barely knew her, that their pain was nothing compared to my own.

“How did you…I mean, survive? I guess I want to know how you keep waking up. How did you get out of bed?” The palms were back in his eyes, rubbing and swiping the constant stream of tears away. “How do you even walk around with all of these people staring at you? All of this…”

I could have filled in about a million different feelings where Bradley trailed off. Anger, sadness, hurt, disgust, grief, depression. Loss.

“It gets lighter.” I answered with the truth and regretted the glib taste on my tongue. “I mean, it never goes away. The feelings. They never stop, but it gets…I don't know…livable, I guess. Like when you break a leg, at first it's excruciating and you think you're going to die. But eventually after you've had time to heal, it kind of fades into this constant, dull ache.” A faint breeze whistled through the leaves of the trees and plants surrounding us and tickled the back of my neck like cold fingers. “You never walk the same again, but eventually you do walk.”

I needed him to know that he could survive this, to understand that eventually he'd see a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, and it would open up.

“He didn't even leave me a message. Thirty-two calls and no messages. If he was going to kill himself, wouldn't he tell me why? I was his best friend. He wouldn't…he couldn't…he would have told me something. I know it.”

I looked at my feet, not knowing how to tell him that Alistair had left me a message, that I might have his last words on a tinny recording on my cell phone. “I…wait…” I unearthed my phone from the bottom of my bag. “You need to listen to this.”

I pressed Play and pretended not to notice the way Bradley looked like he'd been punched in the stomach when he heard Alistair's voice.

“I'm at the Heart of Brown and I know exactly what I have to do. I won't let them hurt him.”

Bradley was off and running toward the old buildings that lined the fringes of Pemberly Brown's campus before I even had time to switch off my phone. Back in the old days, Pemberly Brown was two schools. Pemberly Academy was an all-girls school and the Brown School for Boys was all boys. When they merged in the '50s, an architect redesigned and expanded Pemberly's campus to work as a coed institution, and the old Brown buildings had sat unused ever since. There was one building called “the Heart of Brown” that the Brotherhood had used as their meeting place.

I raced to keep up with Bradley's long strides, but his legs were trained, his muscles taut after years of lacrosse practice, and were no match for me and my riding boots. By the time I got to the building, the front door was already ajar and Bradley had disappeared inside.

I yanked up the collar of my uniform shirt to protect myself against the dust, and I followed him into the darkened hallways. At first it wasn't bad because I had the light from the door to guide me, but when I saw that the trail of footsteps made a right at the first hallway, I knew it would be nothing but darkness from this point forward, dust covering any visible windows, classroom doors shut tight.

I put one foot tentatively in front of the other, willing myself not to panic in the dark. My hand shook as I reached into the pocket of my uniform skirt for my phone. God bless the flashlight app. The light of the screen momentarily blinded me, and I felt something graze my ankle.

“Oh my God!” Something scurried off in the other direction, too fast for the glow of my phone. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back to the safety of the bright April morning.

But then I heard Bradley's voice echo through the halls. “Kate! You gotta come see this. I think I found something.”

I followed the sound of his voice and the thin stream of light from my phone into a large, cavernous room down one of the winding hallways. When I finally made it to the door, I saw Bradley kneeling on the ground with his own phone blazing.

“Here, take a look,” he said without looking up.

Bradley handed me a piece of card stock. The texture of the paper was butter soft. Scrawling calligraphy in bright red ink covered the front of the card.

My Brother,

Alistair, your bravery will be tested. You must perform a
Factum
Virtus
, a feat of strength to prove your worthiness. Each act of bravery is a test as our Brothers taught us. Should you decline to participate, another Brother will be sacrificed in accordance with tradition.

We'll be watching.
Tenetur
per
sanguinem
, Bound by blood.

A Friend

“I don't understand,” I said, handing the card back with shaking hands.

Bradley narrowed his eyes at me, which reduced me to three inches tall. “It's a Sacramentum.” As soon as his eyes began glistening, he turned his head. “They used to use it back when they first formed the Brotherhood. Whenever a Brother was threatened, you had to be willing to lay down your life for him. You had to be willing to sacrifice yourself. They stopped doing it when some kid died on the railroad tracks trying to save one of his friends from getting kicked out after he was found with a Sister.”

I had no choice but to tell him.

“The night Alistair died was the night of my initiation.”

“So you're one of them now, is that it?” Bradley stuffed the card in his pocket and started back toward the winding hallway.

“No, God no. I'm doing this for Grace, to make them pay.” I rushed to keep up with Bradley.

“Whatever, Kate.” His narrowed eyes flashed. “You really think you'll keep that up? Just ask my sister. No one can resist the call of the Sisterhood. Not for long anyway.”