I’m not sure if Mara’s pulse kicks up or if I’m imagining it.
“I was hospitalised—my fevers were out of control. But a lot of the time the doctors and nurses would treat me . . . differently. Like they were seeing things around me. Sometimes they wouldn’t open the door to my room. I thought maybe they were seeing the same hallucinations I was, then wondered if I could make them see different ones. Project different images onto reality. Turns out, I can.”
“When did this happen?” Daniel asks.
“Seventeen.”
“Same as us,” I offer.
“And the rest of you?” Leo turns to each of us. “How did you figure it out?”
Jamie shrugs. “Basically, the same. I’m a year younger than you guys, so, still working my shit out. But I’d say something to someone, I’d get sick, then they’d do it.”
“And what about you, Mara?” asks Leo. Fuck. “What is it that you do?”
The air condenses in the room, thickening with silence. Stella says nothing. Something happened—something bigger than I’d thought. Stella’s eyes skim right off Mara and land on the floor.
The tension’s like having something growing in your chest, ready to claw its way out. And yet Mara seems the most relaxed of all of us.
“If I wish someone dead, my wish will come true.”
Goose exhales, a smile appearing on his lips. “Wish I could do that.”
“No,” Mara says. “You don’t.”
My poor friend has no idea how to unpack that. “So, just to be clear,” he says, struggling, “you’re basically saying you can kill any one of us, anytime you want?”
Mara doesn’t answer. Her face is stone smooth.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Stella says. “That’s what she’s thinking.”
Mara’s smile gleams like the edge of a razor. “Guilty.”
20
EACH OTHER’S MASQUERADE
STELLA LOOKS AFRAID AND POISONOUS at once. Mara looks satisfied. Daniel is watchful, Jamie thoughtful, and Goose is trying to pretend he’s unruffled by the revelations of the last hour and failing.
And I, I don’t know what I am. Mara talks a good game—she puffs up like a cat would to appear larger and more frightening than it actually is, and I usually find it just as hilarious because she looks so completely unmenacing, it’s hard to remember that she actually is.
So the fact that she wasn’t talking shit, but was thinking it? I can’t say it isn’t a bit unsettling.
Seems as good an opportunity as any to get to the point—my point, anyway.
“Are we going to talk about the person who killed himself in your home this morning?” I look around, but despite the paint colour, nothing else from that nightmare is familiar.
Leo stares for a blank moment, eyes watery and pale. “His room was down here. I’ll show you.”
I get up, and Mara follows without missing a beat. Jamie and Daniel are a bit slower, and Goose—
“Pardon? Did you say—”
I turn to my friend. “Goose. Mate. You’re going to have to choose, very quickly, whether to shut up and stay or go home.”
He closes his mouth, lifts his chin, and walks past. “Well?” he says, right behind Leo. “Come along, then.”
The rest of us follow as Leo walks me back into my nightmare.
The windows are tipped in gold and red stained glass diamonds, kaleidoscoping the scuffed, abused hardwood floor. Even time hasn’t quite managed to trample or fade the inlaid pattern in the wood that borders the room. The walls are the same colour, that faded mint green, the nightstand littered with the same smattering of partially filled glasses, some gathering more dust and mould than others. Then there are the bottles. The room smells like sick, but the bed’s been stripped, mercifully.
“This wasn’t Felix’s room,” Leo starts. “He came down here last night, after Felicity disappeared.”
A laugh escapes Jamie’s throat. “Wait, Felix? Felicity?”
Stella and Leo are quiet, and Jamie manages to rein himself in.
“How much do you know?” Leo asks me.
I glance at the stripped bed. “Pretend I know nothing.”
A smile twists Leo’s mouth. “I can’t do that.”
Stella looks back and forth between us and seems to make a decision. “Felix was our friend.” She takes out her phone, scrolls a bit, then hands it to me. A picture of four of them—Stella, Leo, Felix, and Felicity. He has longish light brown hair and freckles, and looks slight beside the girl—she’s taller than he, with curly ginger hair and an easy smile.
Stella turns to Daniel. “They’re both eighteen. Both Gifted.”
“Were,” Jamie says, and Stella shuts down. “Don’t you mean ‘were’?”
Her eyes harden. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“I’m sorry,” Goose says, “but shouldn’t the police be here?” He thinks for a moment. “Wait, they were here. They just left and let you lot hang out?”
Leo directs his words at me. “Your friend—Jamie, is it? He’s not the only one who can be persuasive.”
Jamie pulls a face at Stella. “And here I thought I was special.”
“I still think you’re special,” Mara says.
Mara, Jamie; it doesn’t seem to bother them at all that they’re standing in a room where someone ended his life.
Perhaps it’s easier for them, having been through worse. A boy committing suicide must seem like nothing by comparison. I’m growing irritated at them for coming, at Mara especially for bringing them, at Leo for being coy about it, and at the entire bloody world.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask Leo, and Mara’s head snaps around because as I say it, I realise she doesn’t know about the address he conjured for me to see. There’ll be fallout with her later, which I can’t even pretend to care about now.
Leo makes no move to speak, so I go on. “We know what you said—that Stella told you we were here, and you were curious about Goose’s ability, I’m sure. But I saw you watching that girl on the platform before she jumped, before Felix killed himself. Who was she? Why were you watching her?”
Mara refocuses her attention on Leo, with effort. “Did you know her? Did you know she was going to kill herself?”
Leo pauses, and I notice something—he has no tells. No nervous tics. Slick, that one.
“We didn’t know her,” Stella says. “But like we said, we’ve . . . been able to find others with Gifts. We knew she had one.” Her pulse is thready, heartbeat erratic. Stella’s lying about something; about what, I haven’t the slightest.
“We’ll never know now, because she’s dead,” Leo says flatly.
“A lot of us have been turning up dead,” Stella says.
“Turning up?” Jamie asks.
Stella’s eyes dart away. Leo, undisturbed, says, “Committing suicide.”
Mara exhales lightly, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Look at the house,” Leo says. “Notice anything unusual?”
Stella unfolds her legs from beneath her, heads to the kitchen table in back. She comes back with a small pile of papers. Printouts.
News reports of missing teens. She places them on the scratched-up floor in a grid. Arcel Flores, a Filipina girl with a flashing smile, left her parents’ two-bedroom in Queens to tutor a high school student in maths. Never came home. Jake Kelly, a lacrosse player with a dimpled chin, missed practice—his parents haven’t seen him since.
There were six more. Six more names including—
Sam Milnes.
Mara goes rigid. “You knew them all?”
Stella won’t address her directly. She puts down the last piece of paper.
Felicity Melrose, seventeen. Daughter of Chelsey and Peter Melrose of the Upper East Side. There are more details about her family, where she was last seen, but those don’t interest me. I’ve never seen this girl before—not hurt, not in pain. She’s just—missing.
Felix, however.
“How’d they do it?” I ask, though I know the answer already. “How’d they kill themselves?”
Stella and Leo exchange a look.
“You can’t tell me because you don’t know. They’re missing, not dead—”
“As good as,” Leo says, straightening his spine.
“Explain,” I say, leaning against the wall.
Leo appears to be editing what he plans to say, which reminds me—
“Stella, are you listening?”
She turns practically white.