Mind Games (Mind Games 1)

Tears spill down my face, warm tracks. I don’t know what to do with myself. I bend and set the tray on the ground, then, on impulse, throw my arms in a hug around him. He is tall and solid, and being this close he smells even better. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but I’m not doing it for you.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I let go and back away, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

“James.”

“The beautiful boy with the booze?” I ask, horrified. That’s how Fia and I have referred to him ever since that night. And now he’s in charge of our very lives.

I wish I could take back my hug.

“Come on. Please? No one describes movies as well as you do.” I finish brushing Fia’s hair, but she still sits listlessly on the end of the bed. I moved into a bigger dorm, more like an apartment, last month.

James let me move her out of the secure wing and back in with me five days ago. She hasn’t seen him yet. I haven’t told her he’s in charge of us now. I still don’t know what that means, how that changes things.

But thanks to him, she’s off the sedatives. I just give her one at night to help her sleep. There’s almost no difference between heavily sedated Fia and normal Fia, though.

“You act like nothing changed,” she whispers.

“Why should I act like something changed?”

“You know what I did!”

I flinch away from her voice, but part of me is glad. At least I got a reaction. “It doesn’t matter.”

She laughs. It’s low and empty and I wish she wouldn’t ever laugh like that again. “You didn’t do it.”

“Let’s move on. Forget about it. You’re not going to be punished for it. Everyone understands. I talked with—I talked with Mr. Keane.”

“The Mr. Keane?” she asks.

“Yes. On the phone, right after. I was so scared they’d—they’d take you away. I told him everything, about what you saw, about why you—why it happened. He wasn’t angry!” Actually, he’d laughed, a silent whisper of a laugh. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was the only laugh I’ve ever heard worse than Fia’s dead-girl laugh. “So we move on. Back to our plan. The plan not to have a plan. Remember?” I nudge her, smiling hopefully. She needs to have hope. She needs to have something.

Ever since it became obvious that I knew what this school really was and that I wasn’t seeing anything other than the occasional glimpse of Fia, they’ve pretty much ignored me. I can do whatever I want as long as I stay in a few select (and guarded) wings of the building. But they don’t pretend to care about my future anymore—no new tech, no more visits from the doctor. I wonder if there ever was any hope for my eyes. Probably just another lie woven to keep me invested and Fia trapped.

Just another future I’ve lost.

“You can’t see my hands,” Fia whispers. There’s a noise, almost too quiet to hear. A tiny tap-tap-tap, like she’s playing a beat on her leg.

I try to reach out for her fingers, but she snatches them away.

“You can’t see my hands, and you didn’t see her face. Remember that night we fought? Just before? You said you’d be okay without me. Did you mean it?”

“Fia, sweetheart, let’s don’t talk about that. That was a long time ago.”

She sighs. “I want to sleep now.”

I leave her alone. I’ll figure it out. I try to research post-traumatic stress disorder online, but nothing fits. I don’t know how to help her. Nothing I’m doing is working.

And the thing is, I can’t ever tell her, but she didn’t need to do what she did. Just knowing that they’d kill me if she didn’t do what they wanted her to would have changed things. Killing Clarice wasn’t the only option. If she had asked me, if she had just waited and talked about it, I’m sure I would have told her not to do it.

I think she knows. She picked the first way to stop that vision from ever happening. But she didn’t pick the only way. The other way would have been doing whatever it was they wanted her to. I hope it was worse than what she did. I really do. Because the option she chose is destroying her.

That night when I go to get her sleeping pill, the brand-new bottle is empty.

“Please,” I say. “Get off the couch. We haven’t been outside since you were sick.” Since you ate a bottle of sleeping pills. Since you tried to leave me in the only way you could. “Let’s go walk the grounds.” The school is a square with an open courtyard in the middle. They let us go out there. Maybe if I can get her in the sunshine, maybe if we can feel it and she can see it, maybe it will help.

“Eden can take you.”