Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time (7 page)

“I see you.” Macey sat up in bed. The light from the full moon fell through the window. Her eyes looked especially big and blue.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t know anyone was awake.”

“I know you didn’t,” Macey said. “That’s why you decided it was safe to come in.”

I sank onto my bed, but it felt strange—too soft compared to the cot at the convent. “I’m sorry, Macey,” I said. “I don’t know how many times I can say it. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you left or sorry you got hurt?”

“Both,” I said. “And I’m sorry everyone is mad.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Macey threw her covers off and stepped barefoot across the floor. “We’re not mad because you left.” She practically spat the words. I wondered if Liz or Bex might wake up, but neither stirred. “We’re mad because you didn’t take us with you.”

I wanted to tell her that I’d do it all differently if I could. But that wasn’t true, I realized. They were still alive, and that was what I’d wanted most of all. So I just looked down at my hands and admitted, “No one seems happy I’m back.”

“You are back, Cam.” Macey went into the bathroom and started to close the door. “Which means for the first time since you left, it’s okay for us to be mad at you for leaving.”

M
ost teenage girls look forward to the weekend. Even at the Gallagher Academy, that is universally true. After all, who are we to deny the awesomeness of free-lab days and all-campus sparring competitions—not to mention the waffle bar and Tina Walters’s legendary movie nights? But that weekend was something of an exception.

For starters, there’s nothing like missing over a month of school…AT SPY SCHOOL!…to put a girl behind academically. Also, you don’t really realize how much weekend time is actually hang-out-with-your-friends time until the aforementioned friends are acting all weird around you.

But that Saturday after lunch I didn’t want to think about any of those things as I made my way to a closed door that, always before, had led to an empty office. The support staff had used it to store broken chairs and unused desks, but when I knocked, the door swung open and I could see the room had been completely transformed.

There was a tidy desk and an old wooden swivel chair like Grandpa Morgan kept in his office on the ranch. I saw a long leather couch and a cushy armchair beside a roaring fire. I hadn’t realized how cold the rest of the mansion was until I stepped closer and lowered myself into the chair.

There were no diplomas or pictures, nothing personal at all, and I wondered if that was a Dr. Steve thing or just a shrink thing. Or maybe a Blackthorne thing. But the room was cozy and peaceful nonetheless, so I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the fire washing over me.

“Cammie.”

I heard the words but didn’t want to open my eyes.

“Cammie, it’s time to begin.”

Then I started, bolting upright.

“I’m sorry. I…”

“You fell asleep, Cammie,” Dr. Steve said, taking his place at the end of the leather sofa. “Are you having trouble sleeping in general?” he asked, but didn’t really wait for an answer. “Do you wake up tired? Is your sleep fitful, erratic?”

“Yes,” I said, realizing it all was true.

“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Steve said, reaching for his glasses. “That’s quite normal, you know.”

“I think I would sleep better if I knew if my memory would ever come back—if it
can
come back. Can you tell me that much?”

Dr. Steve put his index fingers together, making an upsidedown
V
against his lips. He seemed to weigh his options carefully before admitting, “I don’t know.”

“Then can you make me not dangerous?” I asked.

“Well, as I’ve already said, we don’t know that you
are
dangerous. I need you to understand that you’re not here to remember, Cammie. Your mother and I agree that it is important for you to talk about last summer—for you to come to terms with all that’s happened.” He took a deep breath and leaned slightly closer. “Can you do that? Can you wait? Can you work? Can you trust?” He sounded like he didn’t know I was a Gallagher Girl. But then I realized I wasn’t exactly
acting
like a Gallagher Girl.

So I nodded and said, “Yes. I’ll do anything. How do we begin?” I asked, standing. “Should I lie down or…”

“Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. We’re just going to talk for a while.” He leaned back on the couch and crossed his legs. The fire crackled. There was a window to my left, and I found myself staring out at the kind of fall day where the wind is cold but the sun is bright. The sky was so clear and blue it might as well have been late June. But the leaves on the trees were turning, and the forest was laid out before me like a patchwork quilt.

“What’s on your mind, Cammie?”

“It’s supposed to be green,” I said softly, as if speaking to the glass. “I keep thinking that it’s the start of summer. It
feels
like the start of summer.”

“I’m sure that’s very confusing.” Dr. Steve sounded sympathetic enough, but the problem wasn’t that I was at risk of forgetting my jacket or not being prepared for Halloween.

Outside, girls were lounging on blankets by the lake; people ran laps around the woods, enjoying the sun while it lasted. And that was when I saw them, Bex and Zach leaving the P&E barn, both drenched in sweat, passing a bottle of water between them. And a part of me couldn’t help but notice that they made a very striking couple (no pun intended).

“I think Bex and Zach are…together.”

Okay, just to summarize, I had amnesia, a concussion, a knot on my head the size of a golf ball, half a semester’s worth of work to make up, senior pictures to take,
and
an international terrorist organization that may or may not have still been after me at that moment. And yet, all I could say was, “He spent the summer with her family because…well…I guess he probably didn’t have any place to go. He spent the summer with her,” I said again, more for my benefit than Dr. Steve’s.

“I know,” Dr. Steve said. “I was a part of that decision.”

“You were?”

“Do you think that was a mistake?” Dr. Steve asked.

“No.” I shook my head and remembered that I had been the one to run away from home. But Zach…Zach didn’t have a home to run to. Or from. “I’m glad he had someplace to go. It’s just…he spent all summer with her family.” Outside, Bex was sitting on Zach’s ankles while he did sit-ups. With his shirt off. I felt my heart sink.

“I think I lost him,” I said, and just then I realized that wasn’t the half of it. “And her. I think I’ve lost them.” Then I felt exhausted and turned from the window. I sank down into the chair and admitted, “But I guess they lost me first.”

“And how do you feel about that?” Dr. Steve asked.

“Like maybe I had it coming.”

“Do you think your friends are punishing you?”

“I ran away. I did something…stupid.”

“Was it stupid?” Dr. Steve asked. It was the first time anyone—especially an adult—had said anything of the sort. “You must not have thought so at the time.”

“No,” I said, tugging at the memory. “It wasn’t stupid. I was just…desperate. He said it first, you know—about leaving. About going away to try to find answers. Zach said it first.”

“But you didn’t take him with you,” Dr. Steve said, and I shook my head.

“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“And yet
you
got hurt.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I leaned back in my chair. I wanted to close my eyes and curl up into a ball, sleep until my memory returned, but I knew that wasn’t an option.

“That’s a pretty tune,” Dr. Steve told me, and I bolted upright.

“What?” I asked.

“That song you were humming. I like it.”

“I wasn’t humming,” I said, but Dr. Steve looked at me as if I were crazy (a fact made far scarier because it might very well have been his professional opinion).

Then he shook his head and said, “I guess not. That must have been my mistake.” He closed a notebook I didn’t even realize he’d picked up, screwed the cap on to a really nice pen, and placed it in his pocket, then rose from the leather couch. “Very well. I think that’s enough for today. It’s getting late.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, turning to the window, but the bright sky was dimmer. Dusk had come and I hadn’t even known it.

“This time of year the days start getting much shorter, Cammie. I imagine—like the trees—that’s something that would sneak up on you. And you slept for a long time.”

“Oh,” I said, standing. “Right.”

“It will get better, Cammie,” Dr. Steve said, stopping me in the door. “You’ll get some rest and some space, and eventually it
will
get better.”

I
don’t know if it was all that talking, or the studying, or maybe the crash course that Courtney Bauer agreed to put me through in the P&E barn, but that night, going to sleep totally wasn’t a problem. I mean, I’m fairly sure I managed to put on pajamas and brush my teeth, but I don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow before I was one hundred percent out of it.

And dreaming.

There are a lot of kinds of dreams. Liz and her books about the brain have told me that much is true. There are “it’s finals week and I just remembered a class I haven’t been to all semester” dreams. Then there are “my friends and I are the stars of a popular sitcom” dreams. And, of course, there are the perfect day, perfect moment, perfect life dreams that come sometimes and make a person hit the snooze button for hours, trying to go back to sleep and make the perfect moments last.

This wasn’t like that.

At first, it felt like the school must have been on fire, because the smell of smoke was so thick and real. I was too hot, smothered. Everything was crashing down around me, pushing in from all sides, and yet my arms couldn’t move. I struggled against the bonds, heard talking and laughter, and fought harder.

I had to escape—outrun whatever it was that was chasing me—before the fire of the tombs caught up to me, before the smoke became too strong.

And then the fire was over. I was suddenly cold, and my feet were bare. My blood felt warm as it ran over my skin, but I kept running anyway.

I
had
to keep running.

There was something rough against my hands, and yet I kept clawing, fighting, trying to find my way out.

“I should have known you’d be here.”

The words were new. They didn’t belong there. And because of them I had to stop. To think.

“The least you can do is look at me when I’m talking to you.”

And that was when I knew the dream was over. I turned to see Bex twenty feet away, arms crossed, staring daggers.

“Where am I?” I asked, but Bex just rolled her eyes.

“Yeah,
you’re
lost. You know every inch of this mansion, Cam. If you expect me to believe that you of all people are lost—”

“This is the basement,” I said, looking up and down the darkened hallway. I knew there was a narrow staircase behind Bex, leading to the foyer above. To my left I saw the old Gallagher family tapestry. Behind it lay my favorite secret passage, and beyond that, the world.

“What am I doing here, Bex?” I asked, suddenly afraid. “What time is it? How did I get here?!”

But Bex didn’t answer. She just looked down at my bare feet and said, “If you’re running away again, you might want to remember your shoes.”

She was starting to walk away when I yelled, “I’m not leaving!”

And then she spun back to me. The cold indifference was gone, replaced by a terrible rage as she shouted, “Then what are you doing wandering the halls in the middle of the night? What are you doing down here? Why…You know what? Never mind.”

“I don’t know. I was asleep and—”

“Sleepwalking?” Bex asked, then gave a short laugh. “Likely bloody story.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Bex,” I heard myself shouting. “I have never lied to you.”

For a second, her expression changed. My friend was there, and she believed me. She missed me. She was as terrified as I was. But whatever she was going to say next was drowned out by the sound of pounding feet.

“Cammie!” Abby appeared at the end of the hallway. “Rachel, I have her,” my aunt yelled, but she didn’t stop moving until she held me.

“Don’t do that,” Abby said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. It was the first time anyone had dared to touch me since I’d tried to kill Dr. Steve. “Cammie, don’t leave your suite in the middle of the night again. Do. Not. Do. That.”

And then my mother was there, pushing past Bex, pulling me from my aunt’s arms and into her own. “Cammie, sweetheart, look at me. Are you okay?”

“Of course she’s okay,” Bex said.

“Bex,” Abby warned.

“She’s fine! She’s just a…” Bex started, but she stopped when she saw my mother’s eyes.

“Cam”—Mom gripped my arms so tightly it almost hurt—“what are you doing here?”

At the end of the hall, Professor Buckingham and Madame Dabney were rushing closer, both of them in housecoats, their hair in curlers. It might have been funny. I might have wondered if the two of them had been in the middle of a sleepover, complete with mani-pedis and facials, if Liz and Macey hadn’t arrived by then too. I saw Liz shaking, trembling in a way that probably had nothing to do with the drafty hall.

“I came here,” I said, and I instantly knew it was true. “I came here last spring.” I felt myself pointing to the tapestry and the passageway that lay behind it. “That was where I left.”

“Impossible.” Buckingham pulled her robe tighter. “That corridor was closed last December. I oversaw the work myself.”

“There’s a branch no one knew about. You missed it,” I said, but my gaze never left my mother. “I remember coming here.…I came here and then…”

“What happened next, Cammie?” Liz asked, inching forward.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” Liz said. “You know. You just have to—”

“Liz,” Aunt Abby warned. “It’s okay. She doesn’t have to remember.”

“Yes I do!” I yelled, but my voice faded, frustration replaced by fear as I faced my mother. “I know you don’t want me to remember. I know you think I can’t take knowing what happened to me. But don’t you see? There’s nothing worse than
not knowing
.”

“Cammie,” my mom started. “You’re home now. It doesn’t matter,” she said, but I pulled away.

“It matters to me!” The hallway was too quiet for so many people. “You say I don’t want to remember—that it’s best not to know. Well, this”—I held up the raw, bloody fingers that, moments before, I’d been using to try to claw through the walls—“this is what not knowing is doing to me.” My hand began to shake, and I couldn’t stop myself. I yelled, “Why didn’t you find me?”

There are so many things the Gallagher Academy trains us to do, but the most important, I think, is to watch. To listen. And when my mother looked at my aunt, I saw the faintest hint of something pass between them, a thread I had to follow and pull, even if it meant unraveling everything I’d ever known.

“What?” I asked, but Abby was shaking her head.

“It’s nothing, Squirt.”

“What?” I demanded, turning to my mother. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“We did find you, Cammie.” Mom looked down at the ground. She seemed worried and afraid and ashamed. “We were just a little too late.”