I had no idea who The Five was, but Jeremiah had been right about this much: Teacher had once been a performer.
The computer’s home screen loaded and requested a password. Panicked, I opened the top left drawer of the desk. It was full of hanging file folders. Halfway back was a tab for each IC member, filed alphabetically like Jeremiah had promised. The one with my name on it called to me. I ignored it—I wasn’t here to pore over my file. I only wanted to see if Jeremiah’s story was true.
For two weeks I had agonized over what to do. I’d stopped talking to Jeremiah, knew I should report him to Teacher—the confession sat on the tip of my tongue—yet something stopped me. I didn’t know what she or Gordon would do if they found out who Jeremiah was. Their punishments tipped toward drastic more often than not.
Every day I kept this from them, I was putting Teacher’s well-being at risk, but as I watched Jeremiah go about his routine, I couldn’t picture him hurting her. The reality was he’d gotten nowhere with his zany theories. Maybe I could let him ride out this last week and return home without anyone getting hurt. I found myself eating less and less at mealtimes, unable to stomach my own duplicity. I was weak for wanting the easy solution, a traitor for betraying Teacher.
I brought my attention to the front of the drawer. The first folder was labeled “Passwords.” I reached in and scanned the tidy spreadsheet. Teacher must have made this—no way would Gordon have okayed a printout containing all of Wisewood’s security information. I found the random password he had assigned the laptop and entered it with my breath held. For half a year my face had not been bathed in the glow of LED light. I hated myself for breaking my fast.
The desktop loaded.
I clicked on the Chrome app and typed Gabriel Cooper. More than eighty million results popped up. I tried Madame Fearless instead. The first entry was a Wikipedia page. I clicked the link and scrolled to the career section.
Fearless. Suffocated. Dark. Split. Alone. Entombed. Awake. Upright. Aflame. Frozen (canceled).
Some of the performances included photos. Under Aflame was an image of a younger Teacher and a sturdy man, his arm slung over her shoulders. He had the same crooked nose as Jeremiah. I glanced at the caption: Madame Fearless and assistant Gabriel Cooper before Aflame, 2000.
I swallowed. I wanted this ill-fated man with floppy hair and golden eyes to have nothing to do with Jeremiah. Yet I couldn’t ignore their similar smiles, the dimpled chins.
The Frozen section was shorter than the others, with no accompanying photos:
On January 3, 2005, Madame Fearless attempted to break the record for time spent submerged in thirty-five-degree water. A tragic accident and lack of safety crew led to the drowning of her assistant and the cancellation of the performance. She has not performed since. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
I scanned the page again, but there were no other mentions of Gabe, nothing to confirm Jeremiah’s wild ideas. I didn’t doubt he believed his hunch with all his heart—he wouldn’t throw his life into disarray otherwise—but his certainty didn’t make it true. Then again, had he ever given me a reason to think he was unhinged? Recent confession aside, I’d known Jeremiah to be a rational guy—smart, thoughtful, and composed. Even now he didn’t strike me as the conspiracy theorist type.
The question I’d firmly shoved to the depths of my subconscious wriggled its way to the surface: was it so hard to believe Teacher would manipulate someone to extremes?
I sat for a minute with my hands on my knees. Slowly I reopened the top drawer, then found the file with my name on it. My hands shook as I flipped through the pages. First were copies of official documents: my birth certificate, college transcripts, the three speeding tickets I’d gotten as a teenager. Next came the lists: distant relatives, former employers, and old addresses—my childhood home in Tempe, the San Diego condo Mom and I moved into after her diagnosis, the Brooklyn studio I fled to once she’d passed. There was also a Boston residence. That must have been a mistake. I’d never even been to Boston.
The last was a copy of a death certificate. I squinted at the tiny print. Name of decedent: Margaret. Ann. Collins. I felt pinpricks at the backs of my eyes. I had never seen this.
I was examining the second row—date of birth, age, sex—when a bold headline halfway down the page caught my eye.
CAUSE OF DEATH
Immediate Cause: CEREBRAL METASTASES
Underlying Cause: SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA OF LEFT MAIN BRONCHUS
Inside the Cause of Death box, someone had used a blue pen to add a note in small, neat letters. I recognized the handwriting from the to-do lists Teacher dictated to him: Gordon.
DDMP2.
He had vehemently circled the characters. I stared at it, trying to crack the code. When I couldn’t, I turned back to the laptop.
The first search result for DDMP2 was a pdf entitled “Preparations for the Last Day” from the End of Life Washington website. The second was an Atlantic article: “How Aid-in-Dying Doctors Decide Which Drugs Actually Work.” The third was titled “The Complicated Science of a Medically Assisted Death.”
I stopped breathing.
I clicked the first link and read as fast as I could. I flew past words like “diazepam,” “digoxin,” “morphine,” and “propranolol” until I understood—DDMP2 was a drug, a mixture of four medicines that made terminally ill patients fall asleep, slip into a coma, and die.
I slammed the laptop shut and clutched my chest. If Gordon was right, Mom hadn’t died because it was her time. She’d died because a doctor had given her some pills. I squeezed my eyes shut, picturing her gaunt in bed, staring down eternity alone.
I reopened the computer, head spinning. After clearing the browser history and cookies, I powered down the laptop and shoved it back into the drawer.
But she hadn’t been alone, had she?
I traveled back to that patch of concrete on the Vegas strip. The aftertaste of Bacardi coated my tongue—I hadn’t been able to stomach rum since. I was vaguely aware that my knees were skinned and bleeding as I clutched my phone. What had Nat said? How had she reassured me?
I’ve been by her side the whole time. She didn’t go alone.
She knew, then. They both did. Mom knew. Natalie knew. They had made a pact, a plan to get rid of me, and then they jumped, hands held, leaving me behind.
Everyone I trusted had lied to me.
“Sick” wasn’t a strong enough word. I pushed the chair back from the desk and jammed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. I choked back a howl, but a whimper escaped.