Gypsy (The Cavy Files Book 1) (22 page)

“Go on. It sounds like your friends are around back. I’ll be inside.”

I nod and step onto the grass, which is just starting to brown in anticipation of winter, as my father goes inside to introduce himself. All of the parents and guardians decided today would be a good chance for them to get to know each other, to talk over any concerns over taking in a bunch of teenagers they don’t know. The twins promised we’d be left alone outside or that we can walk into town, and it kind of helps make this life feel right, that our families will know each other, too.

Two picnic tables perch at the edge of the marsh, shaded by more giant live oaks. They’re big enough that they blot out the sun, leaving a bite on the breeze, but it refreshes me after two hours in the car. Haint sees me first, her striking face breaking into a smile. We hug, squeezing hard, and it gives me hope to see her looking better. Less shell-shocked. The twins grab me next, squishing me between them until I can’t breathe, then locking their hands in a circle to trap me. I fall back on a tested method of escape and crawl out on my knees, sighing at the wet, muddy spots on my new jeans when I get to my feet.

Pollyanna doesn’t get up, but the contentment on her face makes me
want
to hug her, which is saying something. Mole’s at one of the tables, his shoes off, picking pine needles off the ground with his toes. I sit next to him, feeling so full of rightness that the buttons might pop right off my clothes.

Reaper wanders over from the bank of the river and flops down on the opposite side of the table, next to Polly. The twins squeeze next to them, almost knocking the girls to the ground, and Haint sits on my other side. Geoff’s not here, and neither is Prism.

Haint takes the reins, her long fingers splayed flat on the table. “You first, Gypsy. You told us the test results were negative but details would be good.”

“Dr. Ashley didn’t find anything out of the ordinary except a common retrovirus. Like the flu or whatever, but since I don’t have any symptoms, he didn’t give me anything.”

“Which is good, except we have to assume they didn’t inject us with
nothing.
It had to be something, but maybe it’s innocuous to most people. Just not to us.” Goose, aka Hosea, inserts the logic quietly, so unlike his typical demeanor that it catches everyone’s attention.

“
Just not to us
meaning they knew whatever it was would change our mutations.” Reaper pinches her lips together, eyes far away. They snap back to the present, sparkling with excitement. “It’s the Philosopher. He’s found a way to help us after all and doesn’t want to leave us out here without protection.”

It kills me to disagree with her, even though ten arguments against her theory pop into my head in the first thirty seconds of silence. Starting with the fact that, according to Jude, the Philosopher and everyone else have disappeared. Ending with the fact that the alterations aren’t all good—Haint’s still having trouble staying corporeal and Reaper almost killed her father’s dog when it snatched her hot dog the other day.

Mole rebuts her suggestion, voicing my thoughts. “He wouldn’t do that. For one, we don’t know that these changes
are
enhancements or that they’re even safe. Second, who would he trust with our secret?”

He’d told us on repeat for years that we could trust no one but the staff at Darley. Which brings us back to the fact that someone else knows about us, and maybe how to help us improve.

“I don’t know, but isn’t it possible he had a backup plan?” Reaper insists.

“Maybe. Maybe he had a backup plan for people to watch out for us in the event that something happened to him, but what about our mutations? If he had this magic serum that would make them stronger, why hide it? You know he would have tested it on us a long time ago.” Athena supports Mole without much enthusiasm, and Reaper crosses her arms over her chest, looking glum.

“I think it’s possible we don’t know
anything
about our lives at Darley. Not really.” Haint’s jaw clenches, the muscles in her face tensing. “The people with the syringes have knowledge we need, and the Philosopher can’t help. We need to figure out the answers on our own.”

The silence goes on for too long, evidence that not one of us has any idea how to go about that. A chilly breeze tickles the limbs of the oaks, making them shimmy with giggles. Whitecaps frost the river, which, according to the twins, will be a mudflat before noon.

“Okay, well, Polly and I did find out something when we talked to Sandra yesterday.” Mole breaks the silence. “She gave us the name of the Catholic alternative school where we were both born, according to state records.”

“And, since we learned our births
are
state record, you should all be able to get the same information,” Pollyanna adds, her attitude suggesting we’re all idiots for not figuring that out sooner.

“If we were all born at the same place and sent to Darley from there, it’s possible they know something about our abilities.” Haint looks to us for agreement but finds mostly blank stares.

Goose finally picks up her train of thought. “And it’s a long shot, but there’s also a chance they might know something about other people with those same gifts. They would have had to do some kind of research to find Darley, right?”

Mole shrugs. Nothing but more silence greets Goose’s question.

The Cavies are smart, but our brains aren’t trained for out-of-the-box problem solving. We’re linear thinkers. We need more of the sequence to deduce the answers. It’s frustrating, but a week or so isn’t enough time to change the way we think. The way we learn.

We’re sitting at the table, some of us staring out at the water, others examining our hands or staring across the table, when Flicker lands hard on the wooden planks between us.

Goose and Athena fall backward off the bench. Reaper shrieks, attempting to muffle it with her hands at the last minute. My mouth falls open so hard my jaw aches. Even though I recognize her face in an instant, she looks different—and not just because of the blood soaking her abdomen through a cherry-sized hole in her shirt.

Sweat sticks her fiery red hair to her forehead, and her brown eyes wrestle with intense pain and panic so potent it squeezes my heart in a death grip as she tries to speak. Her voice is raspy, weak, and she blinks out of existence before we catch anything.

Then she’s back, still attempting to talk, and I feel us all hold our breath.

“They’re not going—” She breaks off, coughing and gasping, the agony in her face overtaking everything else. “—going to let you go.”

“Who?” Pollyanna demands, her face white.

Seeing her that way doubles my own fear. Or she’s sharing it.

“They… they’ve had me. Making me do things. Hurt.” Flicker’s eyes roll back in her head. “Others. Must… Greene… knows.”

“Who, Flicker? Who has you? What others?” Reaper jumps in, recovered from her shock and painted with desperation.

Flicker fades to a silent outline, then fills in again. Her lips form a word:
help.
It must be help.

Then she’s gone. No matter how long or hard we stare at the slick of blood she left behind, she doesn’t come back. Everyone’s mouths are open, an array of confusion and fear twisting each face.

I am not those things, even though my worry for Flicker can’t be measured.

I am cold, from head to toe, frozen solid from shock. She said Greene.

Greene knows
.

Chapter Sixteen

It’s too hot. There’s too much adrenaline coursing through my limbs. My heart races, and I can’t say anything because there’s sawdust and glue coating my tongue. Everyone is freaking out, talking at the same time with giant eyes and loud voices.

Flicker hasn’t been avoiding us or incapable of returning to Darley due to her issues with uncontrolled teleporting. Someone kidnapped her. They’re using her, and whoever it is knows about the rest of us, too.

She says a man named Greene might have answers. I know a man named Greene who has been
searching
for answers, at least for the past several months.

“Who are these
others
?” Haint asks, mimicking the question banging around my brain. “She said ‘They aren’t going to let you go.’”

“So?” Pollyanna challenges.

“So, what if that’s a clue? To let us go, they’d have to first
have
us, right?”

“You’re suggesting the Philosopher or other Darley staff have had Flicker this whole time?” Athena sounds as skeptical as I feel.

It’s not them. I just know it.

“They’re missing.” Mole gazes out at the water, the wheels in his brain turning almost audibly.

I’d already told them what Jude said, about our caretakers disappearing. There has been nothing in the news, no follow-up regarding their arraignments or trials or anything at all.

Haint’s dark, thoughtful eyes go around our circle. “Not the Philosopher. Think about it. Maybe I could believe one man could afford all of the technology and staff and other costs of operating Darley, if researching genetic mutation were really his thing. I’m
not
convinced he could hide that place, and us, and all that activity for almost twenty years. Not alone.”

“So
they
are the ones really
behind
Darley. Funding the Philosopher and his research,” Pollyanna muses. “That makes sense. If they were paying for everything, they’re invested in us. The cops busting the Philosopher wouldn’t change that.”

“And they’re the ones who attacked us the other day? Why not just come forward and reclaim us? Why leave us out here on our own?” Goose makes the leap from the money men to the homeless attackers, but the string between the two is pretty thin.

“
Why
doesn’t matter, you guys. We have to help Flicker. She’s one of us, and they’re hurting her.” Cold fear puddles in Reaper’s eyes, bright with tears. “We
have
to.”

“I know a man named Greene,” I whisper.

“What?” three or four of my Cavies gasp at once.

Haint snatches the floor. “How? Who?”

“He’s the reporter, the one who found Darley. And he’s still looking for information on us. He doesn’t believe the story the cops got is the whole thing, based on what he saw out there.”

“How do you know this?” Pollyanna asks, her gaze as level as her voice.

“His son is the kid who came over to check on me after the stabbing. The one I saw dead. He befriended me because his dad wanted him to try to get close to me, see if I’d say anything.” It sucks admitting the kids at CA were only interested in my background, but not more than the helplessness over Flicker.

The only person who didn’t seem interested in pumping me for juicy gossip was Dane. And look how that turned out.

I don’t want Dane to matter, but after Mole’s ability failed with him, too, and what we overheard, I can’t shove it to the side any longer. “There’s more. There’s another boy at school. When I touch him I don’t see a number, and when Mole shook his hand he couldn’t find any fire. It could be that he’s like us and has some kind of opposite mutation. Or it could be that he knows about us, that he’s part of whatever group knows how to change our abilities.” I pause. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

The revelation about the word
cavy
sits on the back of my tongue, gagging me with its vile, sour connotation. My love for the Cavies smothers the definition. It hurts, and they don’t have anyone but the Philosopher to believe in, to cling to as a good guy. We need good guys, and I can’t take that away from them.

They know about Dane, and Jude’s dad. That’s good enough.

“We start there, then,” Mole declares, everyone falling into silent, obedient line under his leadership. “Find out what Superstar Jude’s dad knows about Darley and its past that we don’t. Keep an eye on Dane Kim, see if he’ll slip up. Especially after he mentioned cavies on Friday night.”

I close my eyes as another wash of disbelief slaps me from six different directions, wishing there had been a way to silently encourage Mole to be as sensitive as I was trying to be on the subject.

Too late now.

“We heard him use the word in a phone conversation but he swore it had to do with a science project.” It sounds as lame and unbelievable coming out of my mouth as it had Dane’s.

“How could he know that word? It only refers to the ten of us.” Pollyanna looks like she wants to be confused but she’s smart enough to dread what’s coming next.

Mole grips the edge of the table, then blurts the rest. “It a type of guinea pig. Lab rat. It’s pretty clear that the Philosopher and everyone else at Darley only pretended to give a shit about us, y’all.”

“A type of
guinea pig
?” The tears in Reaper’s eyes, already a strange enough sight, spill down her cheeks. “That’s all we were to him, isn’t it? All we are to the people hurting Flicker. Something to figure out, so they can use us for some sick purpose.”

Her emotions bulge in her eyes, along her mouth, as though they’re trying to claw free from her skin, and fear numbs me from head to toe. “Reaper, calm down. You have to calm down right now.”

Goose and Athena get up, backing away slowly even though there’s nowhere we could go in Beaufort that will save us if she loses control. Mole and Haint and Polly don’t move, probably thinking that very thing.