Annie and Fia (Mind Games 0.50)

It’s a secret, like most things, but I hate Clarice with a burning intensity that scares me sometimes. I don’t know why. It’s not the same way I hate Ms. Robertson. I can’t help it. It’s like the feeling I get just before something bad happens.

Clarice is that feeling.

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Miss Rosen?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

An eyebrow rises, but she ignores my back talk. “In here.”

She leads me across the hall into a small room. There’s a fire in the fireplace, and soft leather couches, but the warmth and the potential of this place is gone now and I know with a sinking dread that the wrong from the school has followed me here.

“I have a project for you.”

“I thought this was a vacation.”

“For the other girls. But surely you know how expensive the instructor we hired for your sister is.”

“We didn’t ask for that. I can ski with her, or hang out with her here.” I step toward the door, desperate to get away from this conversation. “We’ll go back to Chicago. It’s fine.”

Her smile is colder than the air outside. “None of these things are free, Fia. The medical consultations? The private instruction? The specialized technology? Do you think your aunt is paying for any of it? Do you think she would be willing to if the scholarship dried up?”

Mention of Aunt Ellen makes the hollow space in my stomach gnaw at itself angrily. No. Clarice is right—she knows she’s right. No one else will do these things for Annie. No matter how I feel, no matter how awful the school is, Annie loves it and I love Annie.

I hate Clarice. I hate her so much it hurts. I wish she were like Ms. Robertson and could pick the thoughts out of my head, or, better yet, like Eden, so she could feel what I am feeling because I want to hurt her. I want her to feel how she makes me feel.

She sighs, stares distractedly out the window. “They say it’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. But sometimes flies refuse both, so you have to resort to smashing the life out of them.” Her gaze focuses back on me with a chilling intensity. “There’s a man staying here with two teenage sons. I’ll point them out to you tonight at dinner. What we need is simple. At some point in the next two days, you take this,” she holds up a small jump drive, “and upload the contents onto the man’s laptop.”

She hands me the drive and I think it should burn me but it’s lifeless plastic.

“Why?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Well, why have me do it? Why can’t someone else?”

“Because I want to see what you come up with. Think of it as an exercise in practical problem solving. Extra credit. How do you manipulate one adult man and two teenage boys into givin

g you access to their rooms? More important, how do you do it all with nothing pointing back to you for blame?”

“And if something goes wrong?”

That smile. I want to punch holes in her perfect white teeth because they are wrong, they aren’t what she is really, she’s a monster.

“If I were you, I’d be very careful to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

ANNIE

One Year Before Keane

“—DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS. I FEEL LIKE MY ENTIRE FUTURE has been stripped away, you know? I haven’t even finished my research grant applications, because what’s the point?”

I freeze in the hallway, certain that I am not supposed to be hearing Aunt Ellen’s phone conversation. Ice clinks in her glass, and then she sets it back on the coffee table with a resigned thud.

“No, he’s out of the picture now, too. Turns out neither of us wanted kids, but he had the option to get away. I know I shouldn’t blame my half sister for dying, but seriously, it was really selfish of her.” She laughs bitterly.

I back slowly toward the room I share with Fia, trailing my fingers against the wall even though I know this small apartment well enough by now. Fia stirs in her sleep, whimpering, and I climb up to the top bunk and squeeze in next to her. It’s not enough space for two people.

There’s not enough space for the two of us anywhere, I guess.