“It’s just the way I am,” I said, but my weakening resolve was clear in my voice. I huddled deeper into Ethan’s sweatshirt, suddenly feeling the cold.
“Are you sure?” Cliff asked. “Are you sure there’s not an explanation, one your parents have kept from you? Maybe because they thought it would be best for you?”
Well… when he put it that way… no, I wasn’t sure. But neither was I sure I trusted Cliff, at least not more than my own mom and dad. “If you know something, why don’t you just tell me? Why drag me down here to steal things?”
“You won’t believe me without proof,” he said. “Besides, I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to find. I just know we need to get our hands on those records. Specifically your dad’s… I think.”
“You think?”
Cliff sighed and leaned against the side of the building. “I told you, my visions don’t work as well as they used to. Even when I was alive, they didn’t tell me everything. They just sent me in the right direction. Now, it’s even more vague, like a dream I can’t quite remember.”
“A dream you can’t quite remember.” The eye-roll I sent his way was well deserved. “Then why should I-”
“We’re running out of time.” He cast a frustrated glance at his watch and then turned pleading eyes back to mine. “Please, Megan, let’s just get the records. If there’s nothing there, then I’ll admit I was wrong. I’m fine with being wrong. I just… I don’t want…”
“You don’t want what?”
“I don’t want you to die.” The desperation in his tone told me Cliff hadn’t been totally straight with me. Not about why he kept seeking me out, and not about his visions.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You’ve seen me die.” My voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, like I could keep the words from being true if I didn’t say them too loudly. “Those weird RCs kill me, don’t they?”
“No, I didn’t see that,” he hurried to assure me. “But I’ve seen things that make me worry. A lot. There’s a fire, girls screaming. I see you running and then… and then there are these hands… on your throat…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. “It makes me worry constantly. About you and about the people who will get hurt if you’re not around anymore.”
Our eyes held as we came to a silent understanding. We both knew I couldn’t afford to ignore his warning.
“So how do we do this?” I crossed my arms again, making it clear I still wasn’t thrilled with this plan. “I’m assuming you have experience with breaking and entering?”
Cliff smiled. “Come on, I think I saw something on the other side of the building.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me around to the front, pausing under a row of narrow windows about six feet off the ground. “I’m betting those are in a bathroom. What do you think?”
“No…” I closed my eyes, struggling to remember the layout of the Pleasant Mountain Family Clinic. “There aren’t any windows in the bathrooms. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I think these are in one of the doctors’ private offices.”
“Even better. They might have the files in there. Here, let me lift you up.”
“Wait a second, I-”
“Just push on the bottom of the window and see if it opens. Those look really old, and I’m betting they don’t lock from the inside.”
I sighed, but didn’t bother putting up a fight. I’d already agreed to do this-might as well get it over with. I stepped into the basket Cliff made with his hands, and for the second time that night let someone else boost me up into the air. The bottom of the window budged almost immediately.
“It’s loose. I think I can get in,” I said, not knowing whether to be excited or terrified. There was no way I’d be able to lift Cliff up high enough for him to slide in through the window. I was going to have to do it myself.
The knowledge made my heart beat faster, made my blood pump so loudly in my ears that I didn’t heard the footsteps until it was too late.
“Freeze! Little Rock Police,” a deep male voice ordered. Seconds later, the hands holding me disappeared. I was left dangling in midair, clinging to the window ledge as Cliff ran like a bat out of heck into the shadows surrounding the parking lot. He was gone before the men behind me could finish yelling for him to stop.
Great. My first act of juvenile delinquency and I’d not only been caught, I’d also been abandoned by my accomplice. Now I was going to get a ticket or thrown in the hoosegow or something even worse.
I dropped to the ground and turned around, hands in the air.
“We’re going to need your home phone number,” the second policeman said as he tucked his gun away in its holster. “We’re calling your parents.”
Yep, this was definitely something worse.
Too bad I hadn’t retrieved my parents’ files. It would have been good to have some dirt on them before they got the call from the police. Then maybe I would have had something to bargain with to keep from being grounded for the rest of my natural life.
“What the hell were you doing?” Mom asked through gritted teeth, the real interrogation starting before we’d even pulled out of the police station parking lot. Since I had a clean record, the cops had given me a stern warning not to trespass and sent me on my way. It had just been bad luck they’d spotted me and Cliff while they were out patrolling, and, strangely enough, I think they felt a little sorry for me for getting caught. I had nearly broken down three times while explaining that I’d never done something like this before and would never do something like this again.
In the end, I’d gotten mercy from the law, but I knew better than to expect the same from my mother.
“I had an Unsettled?” I winced when it came out as a question. I sounded like I was lying even when I wasn’t. This wasn’t going to go well, not well at all.
“So you decided to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night?”
“I didn’t think you’d let me go.”
“Damn straight we wouldn’t have. At least not alone. You could have been seriously hurt. What if there’d been another attack? What if you were-”
“I know. It was stupid. I’m sorry,” I said, sinking lower in the passenger’s seat. It was past two in the morning, but I wasn’t tired. Being in police custody had banished any shred of sleepiness. At this point, I was fairly sure I’d never close my eyes again. “He wanted to go into Little Rock to Rollerblade down this hill, and-”
“Don’t try it, Megan,” Mom snapped. “I want the truth, not some story about this boy falling and cutting himself and you needing supplies from the doctor’s office.” She jerked the car onto the highway with a squeal of the tires. Mom isn’t the best driver under normal circumstances, but when she’s angry… Well, we’d be lucky if we didn’t wind up in a ditch. “The police weren’t buying it and neither am I. Especially since I know it didn’t matter if that boy lost a leg on that hill as long as you got it back in his grave along with him.??
?
“Would you believe I had to use the bathroom?” I asked, stalling for time.
How could I tell Mom I was sneaking in to steal her and Dad’s medical records? Not only would the lack of trust freak her out, but I’d have to explain how I’d gotten the idea in the first place, and I really wasn’t up to telling anyone about Cliff.
“You’re lying.” Mom’s voice was chilly enough to make me shiver, even with the heat blasting in the car. “I’m not as stupid as you seem to think I am, and I don’t-”
“I don’t think you’re stupid. It’s just that… there are… things…” Crap, I sucked at this. I should just tell her the truth. Maybe she’d let me know what was in those records and it wouldn’t be any big deal.
“Megan, you know you can tell me anything, right?” she asked, her voice softer than it had been before. “If you’re in some kind of trouble, if you’ve… done something… even if it’s something awful. I will always love you. And I’ll-”
“God, Mom,” I said, that mix of anger and hurt rearing its ugly head once more. “You sound like Kitty. Do you think I’m guilty too?”
“No, of course I don’t… I just…” She trailed off and I did my best to stop sniffling. I really didn’t want to cry again tonight. “I just don’t want you to hide anything from me.”
I couldn’t have asked for a better opening. If I chickened out now, I’d never get a better chance. “And I don’t want you to hide anything from me. Even if you think it’s for my own good.”
Mom spun to face me. The car swerved off the road onto the rumble strip, making the entire vehicle shake until she regained control. It wasn’t the reaction of an innocent woman, and I felt the first real crack snake its way through the bedrock of my faith. I’d always taken my mom’s honesty for granted, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Neither of us said a word as the exit for Carol came up and Mom turned left onto Main Street. Finally she broke the silence. “Have you been going through my things?”
Oh God, Cliff was right. She did have something to hide. “No, but I guess I should have been.”
“Don’t smart-ass me. There are things you don’t understand.”
“Duh! And whose fault is that?”
“You’re still a kid, for God’s sake. You’re too young to know some truths.”
“I’m not too young to go to Settler prison for the rest of my life,” I yelled, no longer trying to keep a lid on my freak-out. Screw my withholding explanation-she’d been flat-out lying to me. The woman who had drilled the importance of honesty into my skull since I was practically a fetus had lied. And she was still lying. “I know Enforcement has been looking into your past.”
“So what? I’m your mother, I-”
“And I’m not deaf, either. I heard you and Elder Thomas talking. What the heck was all that about? What mistake was she talking about?”
“That’s none of your-”
“Tell me, Mom. Tell me what you’re hiding.”
“Some mistakes are better left in the past, Megan. Leave it alone.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out on my own, and when I do, I’m not going to-”
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” Mom snapped, turning to glare at me while the car veered toward the median. “I am still your mother and I have never-” We hit a pothole on the side of the road with a loud thunk that made the car rattle.
“Shit, watch the freaking road!”
“Don’t curse!”
“We’re going to have a wreck!”
“I’ve been driving for decades, Megan, I don’t need-”
“Yeah, driving like crap. You’re an awful driver, just ask Dad.” I didn’t know why I was taking the argument in that direction. I guess a part of me didn’t want to stay on topic, didn’t want to know the obviously awful secret she was keeping.
Still, my lips kept flapping, almost against my will. “Does Dad know? Does he know you lied to-”
“Leave Dad out of this,” Mom said, though she did turn her eyes back to the road and directed the car between the lines. “Your Dad and I agreed I should handle it. He’s not a Settler, and he doesn’t understand how sensitive this situation is.”
“Neither do I, and I am a Settler. Thanks to you I always will be, whether I like it or not.”
“God, Megan, don’t start that again. I am so sick of hearing you whine about not being normal. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway, and who wants to be-”
“I do!”
“Obviously. And you know what, I wish you were normal,” she said, her volume rising to match my own. “Then all you’d have to think about is clothes and makeup and boys and that fucking pom squad you’re so obsessed with, and you could be even more shallow and selfish than you already are.”
My mom had said “fuck.” To me. It was shocking enough to bring fresh tears to my eyes, even without the “shallow” and “selfish” comments.
“I am not shallow or selfish,” I whispered, fighting to swallow the cantaloupe-size lump in my throat. “I work hard, harder than you ever did when you were my age!”
“Really? And how do you-”
“I hardly ever get to see my boyfriend, I have no friends since my best friend tried to kill me over Settler crap, and I’ve risked my life at least four times in the past year to-”
“And how many of those situations were your own fault?” she asked, stopping at the red light two streets before our own.
“It’s my fault weird zombies keep attacking me?”
“I don’t know. Is it? You tell me, Megan.” I could tell she regretted the words as soon as she’d said them, but it didn’t matter.
“I’m walking home.”
“No, you’re not.” Mom grabbed my arm hard enough to make me wince.
“Whatever happened to ‘You’re such a great girl, I’m so proud of you’? Was that all bullshit?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean… I’ve never doubted-”
“Yes, you have. You just did, and so do Kitty and Barker and Elder Thomas. You all doubt me, even though I’ve done nothing wrong.” I was sobbing now, big, heaving, donkey sobs. Never had I dreamed my life would become this unfair.
I mean, I still felt guilty over hesitating a few seconds too long before invoking the reverto command tonight, but I had done my best. I wasn’t perfect, but I’d done everything I could to get rid of those RCs and every other OOGP that had ever stuck its decomposing nose into my life. That my mom could doubt that, even for a second, made me feel like my entire world was falling apart.
“Megan-”
“So don’t ask me what I was doing tonight,” I said, “or what I’m doing any night until I prove I’m innocent. If you think I’m such a bad person and refuse to be honest with me, then you don’t deserve to know.”
I wrenched my arm away, flipped the automatic unlock button, and threw myself out of the car. I was sprinting across the newly bulldozed lot next to the Sonic before Mom could roll down her window.
“Megan Amanda Berry, get back in the car!”
But I didn’t s
low down for a second. All I wanted to do was run. Run and run and run until I was far away from my mom, her doubt, and all our dirty family secrets.
Whatever those were.
I was still in the dark, but I wouldn’t be for long. I’d find a way to get those medical records and dig up every little last thing my mom and everyone else didn’t want me to know. And then I’d prove them wrong. All of them.
I’d make them sorry they’d ever doubted me, that they’d ever thought I was a murderer or a witch. I’d use all that stupid power I’d never even wanted and I’d show them what I could really do, how I could make them hurt, suffer, wish they’d never been-
“No.” I froze at the edge of the lot, where the road turned residential and tidy streets spun off toward organized little subdivisions, feeling like a dark, wretched thing intruding into the innocent land of suburbia.
The longing for revenge was understandable, but I’d never use my power to hurt people, not even people who had hurt me. I couldn’t believe the thought had entered my mind, no matter how upset I was. It made me afraid in a way I hadn’t been since all the weird zombie stuff started.
What if there was really something different about me? Something more than just being extraordinarily strong? What if, deep down, I wasn’t one of the good guys like the rest of the Settlers?
“Megan, please. I’m sorry. Get back in the car.” My mom pulled up beside me, but I didn’t turn to look. I couldn’t. Not right now, not when I suspected she might see a shadow of that bad person she feared I was still lurking in my eyes.