The Lies That Bind (6 page)

The night of the fire last fall, I hadn’t just lost Grace. I’d lost Maddie. She’d sworn off food, sworn off the truth, but most of all she’d sworn off me. Too bad secrets never stayed buried and best friends were impossible to ditch.

“Maddie?” I couldn’t stop her name from sounding like a question, even though I had no doubt that it was her. “I thought you were at…”

“I’m done with the program.” She stepped forward now and caught the dim glow of one of the lights illuminating the path. She looked different than she had two months ago. Her hair was curly again, and even in the dark, I could tell that she had color in her cheeks. And while she was still thin, she looked good. She looked like Maddie. I was torn somewhere between wanting to hug her and wanting to hate her for not being Grace.

“I’m glad you’re…” I hesitated, unsure how to finish the sentence. Here? Home? Healthy? There was so much I wanted to say.

I didn’t get the chance to finish because a car horn tore through the silence. Seth’s red head hung out the driver’s side window. “Kate! Liam!” Seth screamed, cupping his hands over his lips. “I’ve been looking for you guys everywhere! Maddie’s back!” His voice cracked on the word “back.”

“He doesn’t miss a thing, does he?” Liam whispered, which made me smile and eased the tension that filled the frigid air between Maddie and me. She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“We were just going to get something to eat. You want to come? I mean, if you don’t have anything else to do and you’re…um, hungry.” I couldn’t believe that I’d broken out the h-word in front of a recovering anorexic. I couldn’t believe I’d even invited her.

I should hate her. I should ignore her. But I couldn’t do either of those things, because a long time ago we had been best friends. And maybe if I could figure out how to swallow the lump of anger that seemed to clog my throat whenever I thought about all of the screened phone calls and unreturned emails I’d sent her after Grace died, maybe we could be friends again.

“Sure?” Maddie tugged at the hem of her wool coat. Her eyes were still haunted, and she looked like she’d rather be lost in the graveyard alone than stuck in this awkward conversation. I wanted to say something to make things normal again.

“Awesome,” I replied, nodding so hard I might have slipped a disk. Wow. Awesome? Really? That’s what you’re going with when your ex-best friend comes back from rehab?

“Awesome!” Liam said, with a smirk in my direction. “You guys choose the place and we’ll follow. But let’s go. I’m starving.”

I punched Liam in the arm and caught Maddie smiling a little. She laughed as I rolled my eyes for her benefit. It was a moment like millions of others we’d shared when Grace called her boyfriends dopey nicknames or when my dad insisted on bringing me my lunch on the school bus in his bathrobe. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

As we made our way to Liam’s Jeep, I snuck a quick peek back to see if Taylor was still looking for Bethany, but no one was there. Just the black rolling hills dotted with graves and statues that glowed in the moonlight.

The scream that had shattered Obsideo still echoed in my head and I shivered, goose bumps snaking up my spine. Tonight I’d found my best friend, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that someone else had been lost.

The Imperial Wok was completely empty except for two women in their mid-fifties wearing matching blue nylon tracksuits and reading romance novels with shirtless men in compromising positions on the covers. The walls were covered with dingy red wallpaper, and the black enameled tables were chipped and sticky with soy sauce. Fortunately, what the restaurant lacked in glitz it made up for in deep-fried cuisine.

The four of us were seated awkwardly in a horseshoe-shaped booth with cracked vinyl cushions spewing foam batting. Liam twirled his straw around in his water glass. Maddie tugged at her sweater while glancing longingly at the exit. I cleared my throat, trying to figure out how to break the ice. The only person completely unfazed by this dinner of epically awkward proportions was, of course, Seth. He hadn’t stopped talking since we walked into the restaurant.

“Well, I just want you to be prepared in case some guy runs up to you and tells you his baby isn’t breathing and tries to lure you into his van. You remember my friend ConspiracyLuvR? He just sent me an email, and this guy’s killed like twenty girls in the past month.” Seth shook his head and frowned, an action that made him look like a very tiny fifty-year-old man. “We all heard the scream tonight. Maybe it wasn’t a joke.”

I rolled my eyes. We’d already discussed the scream ad nauseam. Maddie said she saw girls messing around behind one of the mausoleums, and Liam said he’d bet all the money he made last month designing band posters that it was some upperclassman screwing with the social underlings of the school. All of that—on top of the fact that this was the fourth or fifth cautionary tale Seth had shared with our table tonight—made it physically impossible for me to bite my tongue.

I took a deep breath, gearing up as Liam shot me his “Go easy on him, tiger” look. “Seth, you know that’s just an urban legend, right? I mean, I’m guessing that if some lunatic killed twenty people, the paper probably wouldn’t have run that story about the weatherman’s new baby on the front page.”

I heard a tiny laugh from Maddie’s direction and began talking faster. “And why do serial killers always use vans? If I were a serial killer, I’d totally go for a Prius or something. No one expects a serial killer to be environmentally friendly.”

“Oh, ha-ha, Kate. Very funny. For your information, serial killers use conversion vans because there aren’t any windows. Duh.” Seth sounded like he was quoting from Serial Killer 101. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him.

And then I heard it. Maddie snorted. The sound whooshed me back to eighth grade during one of our sleepovers. Grace had just pulled off one of her legendary “Singers Anonymous” prank phone calls. I could almost smell the fabric softener Mrs. Greene used on the pillowcases that Maddie and I had to bury our faces in to muffle our laughter.

And then I remembered another Maddie. The girl I’d seen outside the computer lab the morning after I’d dyed my hair pink for the first time. Grace had only been dead a couple of months at that point and I was drowning, clawing at Maddie with texts, voice mails, emails, praying that she’d help keep me afloat.

I’d walked toward her that morning wondering if she’d remembered Grace’s fifteenth birthday, praying that she’d look at me, that we’d finally be able to talk about the pain of losing our best friend. But she was flanked by Taylor Wright and Beefany Giordano. I saw Beefany gesture wildly at her hair and hiss something at Taylor and Maddie.

And time stopped.

Something about the fact that they were talking about me—my hair, my complete inability to move on and fit in at this miserable private school—turned my legs to stone. There was a brief moment when Maddie didn’t respond at all. Her eyes were full of something that looked like an apology, but before I could even register what was happening, she began to laugh. The sound was hard and cruel, so far from a snort that it almost sounded like it had come from an entirely different person. I guess maybe it had.

The combined weight of both of the memories knocked the smile off my face. And all of a sudden I was angry again. I vaguely heard Liam asking if I was okay, but I ignored him and slid out of the booth, heading for the front door. It was all too much. Having Maddie there with me and Seth and Liam. Sitting at our table. Snorting at our jokes. After all this time, after all she’d done, was it so wrong to think that she didn’t deserve us?

The frigid winter air was like a slap on the face. I sat on the curb outside the restaurant, the wet concrete soaking through my still-damp jeans. I rested my head on my knees and took deep breaths, an exercise that would have made good old Dr. Prozac proud. Too bad my parents had finally agreed that I could stop seeing him now that I was “showing signs of reengaging with the world.” If they could see me now, they’d have my butt back in his office faster than you could say “Zanax.”

I felt a timid hand on my shoulder, too delicate to be Liam, too hesitant to be Seth.

“Kate?” Maddie’s voice trembled a little as she bent beside me. “You okay?”

I slowly lifted my head and willed myself to look at her. Her hair was back to a frizzy brown halo of ringlets, and her eyes were warm, a light honey brown, just like when we were little. But her face was now gaunt, and the deep circles under her eyes reminded me that a lot had happened since our days of sleepovers and best-friend necklaces.

“I’m fine. I guess I just needed some air. I…” I wanted to say more, to tell her the truth. That she’d hurt me and I couldn’t wrap my head around how to forgive her. But the words wouldn’t come.

“I’m supposed to talk about stuff. Part of the program,” Maddie said.
That makes two of us
, I thought as I watched her pick old polish from her nails. “I know we can’t go back to the way things used to be. At least not right away. But I miss you.” She now pulled at a loose string on the sleeve of her sweater, still unable to meet my eyes.

“My parents didn’t want me to come back to PB, you know. They thought it might be easier if I had a fresh start. Somewhere new.” She looked up and over my shoulder, shook her head, and then finally looked at me. “But I had to come back. I messed up. I have to at least try to make it right.” Her eyes were shiny in the light streaming out the restaurant windows.

“I miss you too, but…” I cleared my throat, trying to force the words to come. “I don’t know. It’s just hard having you back. You remind me…” I let my voice trail off. I didn’t need to finish that sentence for Maddie. She knew better than anyone what it was like to try to live your life with a piece of your heart missing.

“I know. But promise me you’ll try, okay?” She grabbed my arm and pulled me up off the ground. “We’re the only ones who really remember her.”

I placed my hands beside me on the cold concrete, about to push myself up from the curb, but stopped short.
Someone
has
to
remember.
The words from the book were eerily similar to Maddie’s. As it registered, I cocked my head, completely focused on processing this new information.

But Maddie was already standing, her hand outstretched to help me up, her eyes glassy after mentioning Grace. It must have been a coincidence. A fluke. So I let her take my hand. I let her help me up. And I let her hug me.

Because regardless of who had left me that book, I needed Maddie. She was that last thread, however frayed and weakened, that bound me to Grace. Surely I could figure out a way to make it stronger.

“Now, promise me you aren’t gonna stare at me while I eat, okay? Everyone does that now and it totally freaks me out.”

“Only if you pretend not to notice my roots.” I bowed my head and displayed my inches of brown in their full glory. As much as I loved the pink, maintenance was a bitch.

“Eh.” Maddie shrugged her shoulders. “You could pull anything off. Besides, rumor has it pink is the new blond.”

We were both laughing as we walked back to our table in the restaurant.

“Girl problems?” Seth asked between mouthfuls of mu shu pork. Mental note: Time to think of a new excuse.

“Something like that.” I gave Liam’s thigh a quick squeeze as we sat down.

“I saved you a fortune cookie.” Liam tossed a cookie onto my plate and cocked his head in Seth’s direction. “This guy went to town on the rest of them.”

“What? My mom always says it’s good luck to eat them first.” Seth had a piece of pork stuck between his front teeth.

“Really?” That struck me as a very un–Mrs. Allen opinion.

“Yeah, I totally made that up. But it sounds true, right?” Seth grinned and I pulled on my ear, our agreed-upon code for when he had food stuck in his teeth. He turned ten shades of red and excused himself to the bathroom while I cracked open my fortune cookie and popped a piece of the sweet, papery cookie into my mouth.

But the cookie turned to sandpaper when I recognized Grace’s loopy orange handwriting on the tiny slip of paper curling between my fingers.

Another Sister gone while the Brothers walk free.

A piece of cookie lodged in my throat as the words on the fortune played over and over again in my mind. I managed to choke down some water and get the coughing under control right around the same time Seth returned from the bathroom and threatened to administer the breath of life—again.

“Better?” Liam asked.

Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I was pretty sure my complexion was as pasty as the rice Seth was semi-successfully shoving into his mouth with chopsticks.

“No,” I managed to croak. “I…don’t feel good.” Story of my life.

Liam dug a twenty out of his pocket and threw it on the table, ushering me out of the booth. He apologized for both of us and left Maddie and Seth appearing a little shell-shocked. I was too freaked out to care. I had to get out of there, and I wasn’t prepared to explain why. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be.

“What’s wrong?” Liam asked for the tenth time despite me repeatedly mumbling some lame excuse about a headache. He reached across the dashboard to turn down the volume on the local college radio station.

“I just need to lie down, that’s all.” I stared out the window, knowing that if Liam saw the look on my face he’d see right through me.

“Look, I saw everything. We need to talk.”

A wave of relief washed over me. I didn’t have to do this by myself. He’d seen the fortune. He’d help. I began to launch my explanation about the fleece, the book, the fortune, everything. “I don’t know where the mess—”

But Liam interrupted me. “But you do know, Kate, that’s the whole problem. As far as I’m concerned we got off easy when we made it out of those tunnels alive.” His fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “I know how you must feel about Grace, but I see the way you look at those girls and it has to stop. It’s too risky. They’re dangerous and you already know too much.”

The fortune was damp in the palm of my hand, and I did my best to keep the flash of anger out of my voice.

“You have no idea how I feel.”

Liam pulled into my driveway and yanked up the parking brake on his Jeep. He shook his head slowly and grabbed my hand.

“I have no idea?” His eyes grew wide, and even in the darkness I could tell they were more gray than greenish-blue. Anger had muddled them once again. “What’s done is done. There’s nothing you can do to bring her back.”

My back stiffened and I reached for the door. There’s no way I was going to sit there and listen to Liam pretend he knew what this was like for me. As if he knew how it felt to watch the people who had killed Grace mess around at parties every weekend or how it felt to be tricked, fooled, and made to feel like an idiot.

But Liam knew me too well, and before I could open the door, he’d already grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him.

“It would kill me if something happened to you. You know that, right?”

I nodded and examined the salt crusting around the toes of my riding boots. I knew Liam cared about me and I knew he wanted me safe, but there were some things he would never, ever be able to understand.

His lips brushed against mine, but I pulled away. He had good intentions, but his words still stung. Unfortunately, my move didn’t go over well.

A short laugh left his lips, even though none of this was funny, and he shook his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?”

“Sure. Whatever,” I answered at the same time I pulled the handle on the door and stepped down. I knew he was upset, but the tiny slip of paper in my palm meant I had more important things to deal with at the moment. I just needed some time to think. If I could figure out what was going on and pull together some type of plan, Liam would understand eventually. He’d have to.

“I’m sorry,” I said before closing the door. Those words were never quite enough, and I could tell by the way he reversed down the driveway that we weren’t done discussing any of this. I stood outside until his taillights disappeared down my winding street and then headed into the house.

My dad’s voice rang out when I was halfway up the stairs. “Nice try, Kate.” He flipped on the hall light, illuminating his disappointed face—a combination of wrinkly forehead mixed with narrowed eyes, his chin lowered slightly.

“Oh, sorry. Did you want to talk?” My dad had majorly cut back his hours at the law firm after my involvement in uncovering the truth this past fall. Apparently, underground sword fights raised a few red flags. Although, I wasn’t entirely sure if my dad’s recent interest in my life was because he was genuinely worried about me or if my mom had somehow guilted him into it. Probably a combination of both.

“You know you can invite Liam in every once in a while instead of steaming up the windows of his car every night.”

He did
not
just say that. I kept walking up the stairs. “Noted.”

“Is that Kate?” My mom’s voice sounded distant. She was probably already in bed. Her life was made up of work and sleep, rinse and repeat.

“Yes, Beth, she’s home,” he called up the stairs. Lowering his voice, he said, “Did Mrs. Allen see you two necking?” My dad looked furtively up the stairs as I tried to hide the fact that his use of the word “necking” had triggered my gag reflex. “Your mother will kill me if Mrs. Allen calls again.”

I chose to let a fake vomiting noise serve as my response. I was pretty sure my dad mumbled something about respect and figuring out how to breed a culture of fear in our home, but I couldn’t be entirely sure, because I’d already slammed the door to my room. Daddy-daughter conversation could wait. The slip of paper burning a hole in my palm, however, could not.

I sat down at my computer and immediately pulled up Amicus. Pemberly Brown would be buzzing about whatever had happened tonight at Obsideo.

I scrolled through some new messages—one from Maddie asking if I had plans for tomorrow, one from my super-annoying lab partner, Ben, and a couple from Seth hypothesizing that perhaps I was allergic to MSG. Apparently, his dad was and always had to run to the bathroom after eating Chinese food. Pretty much TMI defined.

But the last message made my breath catch, my pulse quicken a beat after.

Taylor’s name was foreign on my message page. It looked out of place beside Seth’s and outright foreboding next to the subject line, which read, “We Need to Talk.” I couldn’t click fast enough. But when I did and the message expanded, the body of the message was entirely blank except for Taylor’s signature—her name typed in pink cursive. A familiar feeling took root at the base of my stomach, wrapping tightly around my insides like ivy. Fear.

Something was wrong, really wrong, if she was sending me emails. I thought of the fortune I’d gotten at the restaurant and couldn’t suppress the tiny shiver of déjà vu that tickled the back of my neck. I closed her message and clicked on the All-School tab. The page was littered with mini-conversations about Obsideo, and they all revolved around one event: the scream.

I heard a first-year was raped.

I saw someone wearing a mask.

Has anyone talked to Alyssa Jacobs?

Someone told me it was a fourth-year prank.

I heard a gunshot as everyone ran away.

Who’s talked to Alistair?

A bunch of us are missing money! Check your purses.

Bethany, message me if you see this.

Most of the messages were the usual combination of nonsense and drama found on Amicus, but the last message stuck out like a scholarship student at the “cool” table. Taylor never posted on All-School. In fact, she almost never posted anything on Amicus at all. As PB’s reigning queen bee, she tended to keep her distance from the commoners. While everyone else posted details of what they ate for lunch or random pix of their friends, Taylor had offered nothing except for her plea to Bethany.

I clicked on the link to Bethany’s page, and again my head began buzzing. Apparently all of Bethany’s friends were looking for her.

B, where are you? Return my texts, you biatch.

If you’re hooking up with you-know-who, I’m gonna kick your ass.

Bethany, CALL ME.

Um…is this a joke? Where are you? We’ve been waiting an hour.

I hope you got a ride home. Almost missed curfew and had to leave. Where were you?

Bethany, hellooooo? You there?

The messages spanned pages, and I felt the fear creep higher up the back of my throat. The scream from Obsideo rang in my ears again. If Bethany really was missing and the scream belonged to her…No. It was all just a misunderstanding. It had to be. Beefany was more than capable of taking care of herself.

My phone buzzed on my desk and I jumped. I had one new message from an unknown number, making my stomach muscles heave.

I closed my eyes for a second. If I opened the message, there would be no turning back. I’d be in. But if my finger slipped and hit Delete, it’s not like things would go back to normal. Another text would come, or someone would show up at my house, or I’d start seeing people who weren’t really there or getting emails from Grace. For whatever reason, I was involved.

My eyes opened and I clicked the message. I’d deal with whatever this was—for better or for worse.

For worse.

It was a picture of Bethany, her eyes wild, her mouth gagged.

End the Sisterhood, or lose another.

In that instant, a few things became clear as day despite my foggy brain.

Bethany could not take care of herself. What happened to Grace could happen to another girl. I had the power to stop it from happening. And more than anything else, I was going to need help.