The Third Lie's the Charm (6 page)

From Grace Lee's Journal—September 9

Something
came
for
me
today. An invitation. As soon as I saw that it was addressed with my full name, I knew that it was going to change my life.

Grace
Ai-mu Lee.

No
one
knows
my
middle
name. Not even Kate. I told her and Maddie it was Anne. Cameron was there when I got it. Not sure if he saw it or not. Hopefully he at least missed my middle name.

The
invitation
told
me
to
wait. To tell no one. To find some special seal in the woods Friday during the Spiritus bonfire.

But
I've never been very patient, and the seal was just begging to be found. I ditched the girls, although they didn't seem to really care. Honestly, they both seemed a little distracted. Part of me expected to see Kate at the seal waiting for me with an invitation in hand. We both love a good mystery.

But
when
I
finally
found
the
seal
at
Station
11, the old chapel, it was just me. I'd never noticed the bronze plaque on the ground before. Dirt and leaves partially hid the antique-looking symbol. I have no idea how I missed it.

The
crest
looks
almost
identical
to
our
school's except for the S at the center and a different motto below.
Audi, Vide, Tace
. “Hear, See, Be Silent.”

I
still
can't believe that I saw it. I can't believe that it's real. The Sisterhood is real.

I
had
a
favorite
babysitter
when
I
was
little. Sarah Hartwell. I loved when she came, all blond hair and perfect makeup, dressed in pretty clothes like she was going to a party instead of babysitting for a loser nine-year-old. She'd bring magazines I was never allowed to look at and teach me how to put on makeup or talk to boys.

I
never
wanted
to
go
to
bed, and she'd let me stay up until my eyelids weighed a million pounds and were impossible to keep open. And when I lay in bed and begged to go back downstairs, she'd tell me stories. About a group of sisters who held the key to everything. They wore a special necklace and their only rule was to Hear, See, and Be Silent. She'd touch her finger to her lips as she said it. I remember her sparkly nail polish catching the glow of my nightlight. Shhh.

But
then
she
stopped
coming. My mom found a new girl who was awful. She just talked on her phone all night and put me to bed early so she could watch trashy TV without me ratting her out to my parents. I begged for Sarah to come back but I was ignored as usual. Eventually I just stopped asking.

But
this
one
day
when
I
was
shopping
with
my
mom, I saw Sarah. She wore dark sunglasses and her hair looked dull and stringy, but I knew it was her. I rushed over to her right away and yanked on her blazer. She bent and pulled me in for a hug, and I noticed a dark scar that ran down one cheek. I knew enough not to stare and instead told her how much I missed her, how my new babysitter was mean, how I wanted to hear more stories.

“They're dangerous. The stories are dangerous,” Sarah whispered.

My
mom
dragged
me
away
without
letting
me
say
good-bye. I saw her eyeing Sarah's scar, but she didn't ask her about it. Part of me thought that had to be worse than people just asking the questions. The noticing and then the silence. If it were me, I'd rather answer their dumb questions. Seems like it would be better than letting them guess.

Anyway, I never saw Sarah again. Honestly, this is the first time I've thought of her in years. But I know there's something dangerous about these words.

Audi.

Vide.

Tace.

I
need
a
plan.

The muscles in my legs gave out and I let myself sink into the mound of dirt surrounding our mailbox, last year's mulch biting into my knees through my black pants.

Reading those words in her barely legible handwriting with the orange pen she never went anywhere without was like talking to Grace. The real Grace. Not the Grace everyone remembered. Not even the Grace I remembered. There was no silk screen hiding her flaws or opinions or all the stuff that made Grace, Grace. I couldn't believe that I'd forgotten how awful her spelling and grammar were. Or the way she obsessed about her stupid babysitters and tried to memorize everything about them that made them cool. I couldn't believe she'd lied to me about her middle name.

Tears rolled down my cheeks. Reading her words in her handwriting the same day we buried another Pemberly Brown student felt exactly like the time Naomi Farrow aced a tennis serve straight into my stomach. It took my breath away and left only raw pain in its place. I couldn't help but hunch over.

I wished I could call Maddie back, tell her how sorry I was, let her read, let her in, but she was already gone.

“Kate! Kate! Are you okay?” Seth shimmied down his tree-house ladder in record time and stood over me all wide eyed and worried.

“I'm fine. I just need information about the boy. That's it. Can you help? Please?” The tears shining in my eyes must have worked in my favor, because within seconds, Seth was sprinting into his house to get his laptop, squealing promises about online databases and friends from his weird online conspiracy club.

I started picking at the grass by my feet, just to give myself something to do. Something to focus on. I wanted to read Grace's journal entry again more than anything, but I was a little afraid that if I read it again, there would be something else in there. Something I'd missed the first time. I wasn't sure I was ready for any more of Grace's secrets right then.

And then his voice.

“I'm sorry about earlier.” It was Liam. I recognized his beat-up Converse, the pleading in his voice.

Go
away. Go away. Go away.

Every piece of grass I plucked from the ground was a wish. I wanted him to disappear. Even though he was still over three feet away from me, the scent of him met me—laundry detergent, a bar of soap, his cologne that had all but worn off.

“Can we talk?”

I didn't look up when he spoke the words. I couldn't stop smelling him, but that didn't mean I had to look at him. Because I knew that if I looked at him, I'd cry. Or cave. I'd want to give up everything and just be his. “There's nothing going on with me and Bradley, okay? I'm just trying to be there for him. It's fine. Really.”

“It's not, though. I don't…I just…you worry me, Kate. God, is it so awful that I care about you? That I want you to be safe?” He was pulling at his hair again, and I shifted my attention back to my patch of grass. “If you would just let me help…”

Every muscle in my body tensed. God, sometimes his incessant desire to fix everything was exhausting. Liam never just let me be sad. He never let me make mistakes. He's a fixer. And I'm a breaker. No wonder we never worked out.

“I just need to be alone.” It was such a stupid thing to say, didn't really mean anything, but I didn't know what else to tell him. I needed him to leave if I was ever going to fix anything else. Liam cared too much; he was too close. It was one or the other. I couldn't have both. And I'd made my choice.

“But…”

I choked on the tears. “Please.”

I didn't look up to watch him walk away, but I heard his footsteps on the driveway and eventually the engine of his Jeep turning over in the street.

It was better this way. It really was. I needed to let him go.

As usual, Seth was heard before he was seen.

“Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.” I heard him chanting the words as he raced down the stairs inside his house, flung open the screen door, and sprinted toward my post at the mailbox, his laptop tucked beneath his arm.

Sweat was dripping down the sides of his face, and there was still a tiny smear of Cheetos remnants on his chin. I tried to ignore both of those things and focus on what a great friend Seth was, but I had to admit the Cheetos shrapnel was a tiny bit distracting.

Seth stared at me and wheezed for a second.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah…just….” He wheezed some more.

“Do you have more information on the boy?”

“Yes.” Wheeze. “That's.” Wheeze. “Why.” Wheeze. “Running.” Wheeze.

“Seth, seriously…are you okay?” Now that I was looking at Seth closer, he seemed pale. Maybe this was more than just him being out of shape. “Let me go get your mom.” I hated to involve Mrs. Allen, particularly when Seth had information on the death, but the last thing I needed was another tragedy on my conscience.

“
No!
” Seth sucked in some more air and the color started to come back to his cheeks. “I mean, no thanks. I'm fine. Really. It's just…” He opened his computer. “You're not going to believe this.”

There was an article from an old newspaper on the screen, and this time there was a picture of two boys.

A local boy was struck and killed by an oncoming train near the Arthur Road tracks early Saturday morning. Andrew Carrington was 16 years old and was first thought to be half brother Richard Sinclair because he was carrying his wallet and identification. The mistaken identity was quickly sorted out by local police when Sinclair arrived at the police station with his parents. Carrington's death has been ruled an accident.

I stared for a moment at the blurry photograph next to the article. Wrinkle-free beady eyes and smooth cheeks, but the same air of asshole surrounded the guy in the picture, even at the tender age of seventeen.

“Headmaster Sinclair?” The computer shook a little in my hands.

“Headmaster Sinclair.” Seth nodded.

I lowered myself onto the soft, green grass and stared up at the late afternoon sky, twisting Grace's pearls between my fingers.

Oh, Grace, Grace. What does all of this mean? Why is an antiquated Sacramentum suddenly starting again more than fifty years after it killed our ex-headmaster's younger brother? Is he somehow involved in all of this? Has he gone off the deep end since being demoted to security guard after the Brotherhood was destroyed? And who the hell is sending me your old journal entries and why?
I silently sent my questions up, up, up into the sky.

I had gotten over my habit of sending Grace daily emails, but that didn't mean I had given up hope on my dead best friend. Sometimes I pretended that if I could just ask the right question, she'd find me the right answer. But so far I was shit out of luck, and today was no different. The only response was the soft thump of Seth's head hitting the grass just inches from my own.

“What's going on, Kate? Whatever it is, you've gotta let me help.” His hand inched closer to mine, and six months ago, I would have been totally grossed out, but this was Seth. My best friend. Besides, he hadn't tried to kiss me for at least two months, and now that I'd seen him with Maddie, I was beginning to understand why. So when his hand grabbed mine, I knew that it was an offer of friendship. Pure. Simple. No strings attached.

“You've already helped more than you know.” I squeezed his hand lightly.

I did want his help. I wanted it so badly. But I wasn't sure what to even ask him for just yet. I needed more time to get my head around this entire situation. Everything was happening too fast. I needed time to process.

We lay there for a while watching puffy clouds shift and morph in the huge Ohio sky. And for a minute, I closed my eyes and tried to follow Dr. Prozac's advice to just let myself live in the moment, to let myself experience the present instead of constantly getting dragged back into the hellish fires of my past. But Grace's words were like lead in my pocket, pulling me back toward her, back toward the truth. No matter how hard I tried to move on, she was there. And now she'd been joined by Alistair, another casualty in the silent war that raged beneath Pemberly Brown.

By the time I sat up, the sun had moved behind a cloud, and Seth was snoring softly next to me. I had to keep moving. I had to take action. My present, my
now
, was haunted, and I owed it to myself to put my ghosts to rest once and for all.

I didn't quite know what to do with myself. There were only so many combinations of words I could plug into Google involving Sinclair's name and his sordid past. I'd read all the articles, examined all the pictures, saved all the information. It was dark. It was late. I'd have to wait.

So I paced. And my parents yelled at me to turn off the light. To sleep. They might as well have screamed at me to be normal. So I did what any other
normal
teenager with faded blue hair would do when there was entirely too much night left.

I decided to go red. Blood red. The color of revenge.

As I rinsed my hair, the water a watery pink and the strands bright between my fingertips, I felt whole again, completed by the promise of tomorrow, of uncovering new information with a new look. The shock of it all only added to the fire I felt in my gut.

The red definitely worked.

By the time light spilled into my room between my closed blinds, my hair wasn't the only thing burning. My eyes felt scratchy and deprived, my head cloudy with exhaustion. But it was time to work.

“You look tired,” my dad said over his newspaper, trying to disguise a flash of wide eyes and failing miserably. I tried to tell myself he wasn't trying to sound like one of the concerned parents on an ABC Family show. “And redder.” He tried to make a joke, but it fell about as flat as a bike tire with a nail in it.

“Thanks.”

“No, I just…what I'm trying to say is that I'm worried about you.” I looked over at him with his graying hair and his straight nose. He looked like the perfect dad. But a perfect dad wouldn't keep his eyes trained on the words in front of him. The perfect dad would know how to talk to his daughter, or at least know better than to tell her she looked tired.

When I sat with my cereal, he turned and looked at me. Really looked at me for the first time in as long as I could remember. My hands flew to my brand-new hair as if he wouldn't notice it quite so much if it was covered by my fingers.

“Kate, I have no idea what you're going through, but my guess is that it's not easy to see another student at your school die so suddenly and under such tragic circumstances. Talk to me.” The look in his eyes broke my heart a little. It was the same way he'd looked at me after I skinned both my knees on my roller skates. The same look he'd given me when I'd cried my eyes out after I found out Grace and Maddie had a sleepover without me in fifth grade. It was the same look I caught through my eyelashes when I pretended to be sleeping in the days, weeks, months after Grace died.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything to finally make my father stop looking at me like that.

But I turned back to my cereal instead, shoveling a spoonful in my mouth. And his attention turned back to the paper.

“I'm fine,” I said between bites. I'd said the same two words over and over again for the past year and a half. Two magic words that left no room for discussion, no room for feelings, no room for parenting. God, I loved those two little words.

My dad dropped the paper and brought his plate to the sink, let the water run as he bent over the basin, his eyes fixed on the yard beyond.

“Gotta go.” I cleared my dish, sure that if I caught that look on his face again, I'd spend the rest of the morning telling him everything that was going on.

“What?” His head shook and his eyes cleared as though he'd been dreaming standing up. “Oh, right. Okay.” He reached out to pat my shoulder. “I love you. You know that, right?”

I just nodded and rushed to the garage door. In spite of my parents' long hours and complete cluelessness when it came to my life, I knew my dad was telling the truth. They did love me, and if I were a different person or maybe even if I'd led a different life, we'd probably have some amazing ABC Family-worthy relationship.

But I am who I am. My life is what it is. And my parents are well-intentioned but mostly useless. I had come to terms with this a long time ago, and the fact that I was questioning it at 7:42 on a Tuesday morning was more indicative of my need for a cup of coffee than family therapy.

I made it to school and slapped the bronze plaque at Station 1 as I walked through the main doors of Pemberly Brown.
Aut
disce
aut
discede.
“Either learn or leave.” My eyes scanned the hallway for Bradley as my boots clicked on the dark hardwood floor to my locker. I couldn't ditch class again, but there was no reason why the two of us couldn't stop by Sinclair's office during Open period.

I'd debated about calling Bradley last night to discuss the latest development, but I just wasn't up for the conversation. Part of me knew he'd want to pick me up and go to Sinclair's house, and I was too tired. I needed more time to process the ex-headmaster's involvement. More time to try to figure out what it all meant.

“Nice of you to show up.” Maddie's smile was forced, and her uniform shirt was once again pulled tight across her chest. She looked so much like the Maddie before Grace died, before she'd starved herself to fit in with the Sisterhood, before she punished her body for her role in Grace's death, that I had to stop and look around the hallway to ground myself in the here and now. She pressed her books over her boobs and worked hard not to mention my hair. I appreciated the effort, but it annoyed me at the same time.

“You look tired,” she finally said. The comment didn't earn her any points, even though I deserved everything she said after the way I'd been treating her.

“So I've heard.” I started walking again. Maddie followed a couple of steps behind me and I tried to slow down, but then she sped up. We were off pace, as usual. As hard as we tried, we couldn't seem to figure out how to be friends in the after-Grace. Grace had been the third leg of our stool, and now that it was just the two of us, we kept falling down.

“I thought I could understand what you were going through, thought maybe I could help this time, but you keep pushing me away and I don't know what to do about it. I'm just, I mean we're all kind of worried about you. It's just hard to see you like this…” She twisted one of her springy curls around her index finger. “I mean, I know I wasn't there for you last time. After Grace, I mean. And everything that's going on, it just… I don't know. It's like losing her all over again. Kids are crying in the hallways. Therapists are talking in homeroom. You know?”

I did know. But I also knew I couldn't talk to Maddie about any of this. She had no idea that I'd joined the Sisterhood. And after what they'd done to her, she'd never forgive me if she found out. Plus, she was totally Team Liam with the whole “Kate should stay the hell away from the crazy secret societies and learn to deal with her grief like a normal person” scenario. The two of them should get T-shirts made up.

So I had no choice but to “I'm fine” her. I wished I could grab Maddie's arm and drag her into the nearest bathroom stall and tell her everything, but those days were long gone. At least until I'd figured out who killed Alistair and put an end to the Sisterhood. Surely, justice had to come before girl talk.

“Guess who, Sis?” a voice rasped from behind me as two large hands covered my eyes.

“How could she possibly guess?” Maddie hissed. This game was universally hated and only amplified with Bethany “Beefany” Giordano's paws pressed over my eyes.

She roughly spun me around. “How's my baby Sister doing?” Her sticky sweet voice was directed at me, but her huge brown eyes were locked on Maddie.

Maddie gave me a long look and then turned back to Bethany. I knew the minute she figured out what was going on, because her eyes got squinty and her lips went thin. It was the face she made right before she started crying. Without another word, she turned and began walking down the hallway at warp speed.

“Wait! Maddie! I can explain!”

“Explain what? That you're one of us now?” Bethany batted her eyelashes and smiled triumphantly at Maddie's back.

I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to collect myself before I laid into my new “Sister” and got myself kicked out of the stupid society I was trying to infiltrate.

“I was going to tell her eventually. You didn't have to do that.”

“What does it matter? You're with us now, right? You're not going to have time for losers like her. Not with us around.” Bethany looked down at me and gave me her most syrupy smile. While Taylor had always been eager for me to join the Sisterhood's ranks, Bethany was never quite so sure. She didn't trust me; I didn't trust her. It was kind of our thing.

After Grace died, I knew Taylor felt bad about what had happened. She was eaten alive with grief like the rest of us. But Bethany was a different story, and more and more it felt like she was the one pulling the strings. I knew it was her idea to stage her disappearance to get the Brotherhood kicked out. Taylor went along with it because she thought it was what was best for the society, but she never would have come up with it on her own.

And now, as if she was trying to prove that it was all worthwhile, Taylor was hell bent on creating a new and improved Sisterhood. And apparently I was part of her vision. I'm sure it was partly her guilty conscience, but I didn't care. Being a Sister was my only chance to end them for good.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Bethany was on to me.

“So, what have you been up to since initiation? There are all sorts of rumors flying around about you and Bradley.”

“Can't believe everything you hear,” I retorted.

“No, I just believe what I see. And I saw you holding hands at the funeral yesterday.”

“Do you even hear yourself? Holding hands at his best friend's funeral isn't exactly a hot date. His best friend is dead and I might be the only person who has even the slightest clue of what he's going through, so yeah, I held his freaking hand.”

“Easy there. No need to jump down my throat.” Bethany raised her long fingers and pretended to cower in front of me.

God, I hated her. She was intentionally trying to get me fired up, and it worked. And now it was time for her grand finale.

“Honestly, the only reason I asked is because I'm curious about Liam.”

I choked on air.

“Liam?” She had to be joking.

“Yeah, is he,” she ran her fingers through her long hair, “is he, like, available?”

I rolled my eyes at her. There was no chance in hell that Liam would ever go for a girl like Bethany.

“Totally. All yours. He's a free man. Bet he's just been waiting for the chance to get it on with you after you told the entire school that he has herpes and blackmailed him for months about what he saw the night Grace died. Good luck with that, B.” I gave her one last parting smile, slammed my locker shut, and started toward class.

“Good to know! I was hoping you'd say that.” Bethany flipped her long hair and adjusted the books in her arms. “Nice hair, by the way. Wherever do you get your color done?”

But she didn't wait around for an answer. I heard her snicker as she walked away. Bitch.

I slid into my homeroom desk right before the bell rang. As Verbum began, the morning announcements read by two kids I recognized from Concilium, I slipped my phone out of my backpack and sent a quick text to Bradley. Screw Bethany. I was on a mission.

1:12. Stacks.

I had a little over six hours to plan out exactly what we were supposed to do with this information about Headmaster Sinclair. Six hours to decide whether or not I should let Bradley hold my hand again. Six hours.