“Through there,” he said, directing her to a doorway at the end of the hall. She went toward it, feeling as though her body temperature were dropping by a degree with each step. The room inside was windowless and completely dark. She froze and nearly retreated. She’d never been scared of the dark before, but was beginning to suspect Skin Island would change that.
“Scared?” Nicholas said. He closed in on her from behind, standing so close she could feel his breath. “Tell me, what does it feel like to be scared, Sophie Crue? I have always wondered.”
“Everyone gets scared,” she breathed.
“Not me.” His hand reached around her, and for a moment she thought he was going to grab her, but he only flicked a light switch on the wall. A glass globe in the middle of the ceiling blinked on with a high whine. She felt a flash of terror, as if expecting to see a dead body or some nightmarish monster, but it was just a small studio with three chairs facing three mirrors and a row of hair-drying seats. The huge dome dryers were polished clean, which surprised her. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the room had been recently cleaned and redecorated. Rows of pictures hung on the wall. Unlike the posters in the hallway, they were untouched by humidity and age. They looked like magazine clippings and all showed different shots of New York City. On the floor sat half-used candles, playing cards, a croquet mallet, and boxes of crackers. Nicholas opened a small refrigerator in the corner and took out two grape sodas. He tossed one to Sophie, cracked his open, and fell into one of the dryer seats, taking up the slack in the cord by wrapping it around his wrist.
“That’s New York City,” he said, nodding at the pictures on the wall. “Corpus is based there. We’ll go there, when we leave this place.”
She looked around the room. It looked like a hideout. Maybe this was where Nicholas snuck away to with Mary and the others.
“You didn’t have to kill him,” she said. “We were trying to help you. He was going back to Guam to get help, you know.” She leaned against the wall and stared unseeingly at the calendar from 1994 hanging opposite her with a picture of a half-dressed cowgirl seductively draped over a John Deere tractor. Her eyes slipped shut, releasing the first tears. “Jim was . . . he was my—”
“Jim, Jim, Jim—shut up!” He jumped to his feet and rushed toward her. She pressed against the wall and held her breath, heart lurching, as he stood over her and gripped his soda can so hard the metal dented. “I’m sick of hearing about Jim! You hear me? Sick. He’s gone! Forget about him!”
Nicholas stepped back, drained his soda, and tossed the can into the corner. He drew a deep breath, let it out with a sigh, and then smiled. It wasn’t a cruel smile, but a charming, slightly mischievous one. Sophie didn’t know what to think. It was like looking at a completely different person. He moved from emotion to emotion as if he were changing hats, as if the expressions were mere masks.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not really angry. See?” He spread his hands wide and bowed.
He’s insane, Sophie thought.
“C’mon, Sophie. Sit down. I’m just messing with you, you know. That’s all. Sit down and I’ll tell you about yourself.” But he didn’t let her sit. He kept her pinned to the wall with his body, and as he tilted his face down to look into hers, his hair fell forward, creating a kind of curtain around their conversation. She felt as if he’d sucked her into his own small, dark world.
“I know everything about this island,” he said. “Every room, every key, every secret. I know when the tides come and go and where to find the seagulls’ nests and how many steps it is from north to south—and I know everything about you. I know that you think you’re special, because you’re Moira Crue’s daughter. You think you’re better than us. But you’re not. You’re not as special as you think, Sophie Crue.”
Suddenly he kissed her, hard and rough and greedily, and she pressed her hands against his chest and shoved him away. He stumbled backward, dropping the cord, and Sophie leaped forward. But he caught her by her hair, pulling her backward, and she screamed and dropped the soda she’d been holding. His arm snaked around her waist, and she grabbed it and bit it. With a shriek, he let go of her hair and she darted forward again. This time she scooped up her soda can, whirled, and smashed it into the side of his head. Grape soda sprayed all over the room, splattering the mirrors and staining the carpet. He hissed and dropped to his knees, his hands pressed to his temple. Before she could make a dash for it, he grabbed the cord and pulled her feet from under her. She fell heavily to her knees.
He shook his head as he stood up and gave her a pitying smile. “Look at you. You’re pathetic,” he said. “Now look at me.” He spread his hands wide; Sophie had never known anyone else who could strut while standing still, but Nicholas pulled it off. “They say psychopathy is a ‘condition,’ a handicap, a thing to be cured and treated. But it’s so much more than that, Sophie. It’s a gift! It’s ultimate freedom—freedom from the stupid conventions of conscience and guilt. It’s the true ticket to happiness, you know. I mean, look at me! I can blow up your sad little boyfriend—pow!—just like that and not think twice about it! I can do anything!”
She stood up and slapped him, leaving a cherry red mark on his cheek. He froze, then laughed.
“You can’t make me mad,” he said. “I don’t get upset. I don’t cry. I don’t care, Sophie. That’s what it all comes down to. I don’t care about your pilot being blown apart into a million tiny pieces of skin and hair and bone and scattered all over the ocean for the fish to eat. I don’t care that you hate me for it. I don’t care if you think it’s wrong or evil.”
“You’re twisted,” she hissed.
“It’s so liberating.” Nicholas’s tone took a dreamy timbre. “You don’t get held back by feelings. You can do whatever you want and never feel bad about it. It doesn’t make sense to me, you know? How people like you can hurt someone and think, Oh, man, I shouldn’t have done that. It makes me feel so bad. So wrong . . . What’s it like, Sophie? Is it like wearing a collar all the time, having some invisible moral hand yanking you around, dragging you away from the things you really want?
“You know what I think?” Nicholas went on. Does he never shut up? Sophie wondered. “I think you people aren’t as good as you say you are. Okay, okay, stop.” He held up his hands. “I know. I have an idea. Close your eyes.”
She glared at him.
“Oh, come on, just do it! Just close your eyes.” When she still refused, he pushed her roughly into one of the dryer seats and wrapped a hand around her throat, choking her just enough to make her panic a little. “Close your eyes,” he insisted.
She closed her eyes.
“Good! Now, just imagine, just think about this: Have you ever wanted to lash out at someone but you knew you couldn’t because you’d get in trouble? Or maybe you wanted to just take something from someone because you knew they didn’t deserve it? Ever want to just cut out all the crap and the fakery and the shallow politeness and just be who you want to be?”
She refused to let him into her mind, and instead pictured herself somewhere else; on the soccer field, pouring all her strength into strikes on goal and cheering with her team the way they had after they won regionals. The fantasy was strong, but it didn’t block out his voice, not enough.
He released his grip on her throat, and she opened her eyes. “See,” he said softly, contemplatively, “I don’t buy this whole conscience thing. At least, I think it’s a kind of last defense. Like, you already want to do something terrible, and you probably think about how you’d do it and how you’d get away with it. But then your conscience steps in and is all, ‘Oh, Sophie, you can’t do that, that’s wrong.’ And so you don’t. Or even if you do, you feel bad about it. Your conscience beats you for it for days, right? But, see, what if committing that terrible thing in your mind is the real crime? Maybe there’s not such a difference between you and me. Maybe the only differe
nce is that I have the guts to do what you’ll only think about.”
He dropped to a whisper and ran his hand over her hair and her cheek, studying her with consuming intensity. “Are you really so noble? So good? The urge is in you to do terrible, unspeakable things. It’s in everyone. It’s part of us, like a monster in our heads. Are you really so different from me?”
“You are completely obsessed with yourself,” she said, narrowing her eyes in frank, horrified fascination. “You really are. You think you’re some kind of enlightened messiah, don’t you? Unlocking the secrets of the universe, discerning the core of the human psyche. But you’re just a delusional, lonely little boy inside who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way.”
Nicholas stepped back as if she’d slapped him again, and he scowled. “You’re the child, Sophie Crue! Not me.”
“Really? What do you honestly know about the world? You grew up on this island, isolated from real society. What, do you watch movies? Read books? You must have some kind of Internet access to have sent me that e-mail. Do you really think you know what people are like, when you can count the number of people you know on two hands? Oh, the other Vitros don’t count—they’re just shadows of people.”
“I’m going to leave this island,” said Nicholas, “and I’m going to take whatever I want.”
“If you’re trying to impress me, the only thing I’m impressed by is how ridiculously stupid and narcissistic you are.”
His hand rose to slap her, but she blocked him and raised her knee, driving it into his groin. Nicholas gasped and doubled over, and she jumped out of the chair, but he tackled her from behind, cursing and hissing threats. He flipped her over and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back and then covering her mouth with his other hand when she started to scream.
“Enough,” he whispered in her ear. “You want to know why I brought you to this island?”
She twisted, trying to throw him off, but he was sitting on her stomach and when she moved he just pulled her hair; her eyes flooded with tears of pain, and she could only moan.
“I watched you grow up, Sophie Crue,” he said. “Oh yes. You’ve been watched your entire life. Photos, videos, medical records, even artwork and school reports you sent to your mom. She keeps it all in a little room behind her office, and I am the only person who knows about it. I found a way in. I know every corner of this island, down to the forgotten rooms and the spaces inside the walls themselves. I know every secret on Skin Island, and you are the best-kept one of all. I know everything about you.”
He smiled. Her skin crawled; even if he was lying, just the thought of him stalking her from the other side of the planet was enough to chill her to the bone.
“I know you hate your stepmother,” he murmured. “I know you broke your arm when you were ten by trying to run away, and they put you on medication to keep you from trying it again. I know you had a yellow parakeet named Popcorn, but your stepbrother strangled it with dental floss when you were twelve and hung the body over your bed, and when you tried to tell his parents about it he said it was you who’d done it, and they put you back on the meds.”
Sophie froze from head to toe, her heart icing over. “Mmph,” she groaned, but he didn’t stop.
“I know that when you were thirteen, your stepsister Emily stole your journal and read it aloud to all her friends, and when they laughed at you, you hit Emily so hard you broke her nose. They said there was something wrong with you, didn’t they?” He chuckled. “They said you weren’t normal. They even whispered things like antisocial, didn’t they? Funny.” Nicholas’s grin widened. “That’s just almost like saying you’re a psychopath.”
She stared at him, transfixed with horror. He knew everything, every dark secret she’d buried deep in her memory. Every part of herself she kept most hidden he dragged out and pinned to the wall. She felt as if he were vivisecting her right thereon the ground.
“Mmm,” she groaned, and he finally let go of her mouth. “I’m not a psychopath!” she shouted. “It wasn’t me—none of that was me! Yeah, I hit Em, but she deserved it, and it was Noah who killed Popcorn! You are the psycho, not me. Get off of me!”
“Don’t you think they knew that?” he asked. “According to this, they did.” He rose up and hooked his foot under a drawer in one of the dressing tables, pulling it open. Then, keeping an eye on her all the while, he lifted out a thick binder packed with papers.
“What is that?” she whispered.
He turned it so she could read the label on the folder: Sophie Jane Crue.
Her blood froze over.
“This folder,” he said slowly, crouching beside her and rubbing his hands over it, “contains the story of your life.” He opened it, pulled out a photo, and showed it to her: It was her and her mother, kneeling side by side as they did a tea ceremony at a restaurant in Osaka. Sophie had been ten on that trip. It was still one of her favorite memories, but pinched between Nicholas’s fingers, it suddenly sickened in her mind, like a leaf turning brown and ugly before dropping away.
“What—what is this?” she asked. “My mom will kill you for—”
“Oh, come on!” He gave her a disgusted look. “You don’t need her to defend you! Why can’t you stand up for yourself? Is this what you’ve been your entire life—a whiny, needy brat who blames all her problems on her absent mom? Look. There’s just one rule, just one basic law that everyone lives under: Take control or be controlled. That’s what it comes down to, Sophie Crue. You’ve been controlled your entire life, haven’t you? By your mom, by Corpus, by your fake family.” He shook his head and gave her a pitying look. “They tried to control me, too. But not anymore. I’m taking control now. Why won’t you? The first step toward being free is recognizing that you’re not.”
“She loves me.”
“Oh, oh, yes she does, I’m sure. And guess what? She loves me too, in her own way—because she created me. I’m her project; she doesn’t love me, but the reflection of herself in me.”
He crumpled the photo in his fist and dropped the folder, making it fall open. Photographs, every one of them a memory Sophie held dear, scattered across the floor. Sophie at twelve, smiling from horseback in one of the expensive riding lessons her mother had paid for. Sophie at fourteen, holding up a third-place trophy from some soccer tournament. One photo caught her eye in particular and cut her like a knife: her fifth birthday, a photo of her blowing out the candles on her Little Mermaid cake—and a tiny, freckled Jim Julien behind her, holding up bunny ears over her head and grinning impishly. She stared at it with wide, unblinking eyes, a crescendo of grief roaring in her head, searching for a way out.
“What is this?” she said hoarsely. “Where did you get these?”
“You should be more like me, Sophie,” Nicholas said. “You should be that person they said you were. If you were—if you just stopped following their idiot rules—you’d realize how stupid they all are. How fake, how shallow. You’d be free like me. You’d finally be in control of your own life—isn’t that what you want?”
“I don’t want to be anything like you.” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the photo.
“We’ll see.” He stood up and hauled her to her feet by her hair. She blinked away tears, biting her lip so hard she drew blood. “It’s all about the control, Sophie. You don’t even know what you are.”
“What do you mean? What do you want from me, Nicholas?” Exasperated and bewildered, she could only stand helplessly lest he wrench her hair out by its roots.
“I want you,” he said, his smile dropping, replaced by solemn steadiness. “You think I don’t know anything about the world, but I know one thing—I know you. And I have dreamed of this day for years.” He pulled her close, his one hand still tangled in her hair but the other pressed against the curve of her lower back, thrusting her against him. When he spoke, his breath was a hot cloud against her forehe
ad and the tips of his long hair brushed against her eyelashes. “You are my window to the world, Sophie. Everything I know about what lies beyond this island, I learned from you. And now we’re going to leave together. We’ll take the world together. You’ll be mine as you’ve always been mine, only now you know it.”
“Creep!” Sophie choked. “You’re insane!”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, unperturbed.
“I’ll never go anywhere with you!”
“What else are you going to do? Go back to your stepfamily? Stay here with your so-called mom, who’s been lying to you your entire life? Run off with your pilot boyfriend— Oh. Wait.” He smirked. “That’s right—I killed him.”
She roared like a wild animal and began beating at him with her fists, managing to knock his jaw and his temple before he caught her wrists and wrestled her into submission again. This time he drew more cord from his pocket and twined it around her wrists, so tightly that it bit into her skin and red welts began to show. She twisted and fought, but he was too strong for her, and she only succeeded in wrenching her hurt shoulder and doubling her pain.
“You don’t even know what you are,” he said again. He almost looked genuinely sorry for her, though she knew it was all an act, every bit of it. He could change emotions as if they were masks he carried in his pocket. “Poor little Sophie. You’re a very special girl, you know.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, though when he said it, she suddenly felt as if she had always known the truth, that it had been hidden inside her from the start.
He reached for the folder and drew out a photograph. Before she showed it to her, he studied it closely, his head tilted to the right. Then he turned it around, a slow smile spreading over his face. It showed a wide-eyed baby with light blond curls that Sophie recognized as herself, held tightly by a much younger Moira Crue—who was standing in the same lab in which Sophie had first seen Lux. Nicholas ran his thumb over the baby’s face and stared intently at her.