Duplicity (17 page)

“Had a little more time to think, gorgeous?”

“You thought I was going to say ‘no.'”

“You didn't answer right away. Same thing.”

“No, it's not.” Dammit, my arm. Splinters of bone jut through the skin like maggots. What looks like churned hamburger forms the muscles underneath. I turn my head away. “I didn't answer right away, because I realized I was going to say ‘yes.'”

Silence. Then, “Why?”

“Why?” I laugh. I don't want to think about why, don't want to think that for all Seb's quirks I know he trusts me, and as much as I want to use that to my advantage, I can't. Something's changed and I can't.

And until I'm sure what that something is, Seb can't know either.

“You're better than nothing, that's why,” I say.

The pit bulls flash forward two feet and freeze. I shriek and cling to Seb's legs and before I know it I'm talking, saying things I shouldn't— “Okay, Seb, I'm sorry, I need you, because I can't get out of here alone and you're all I have and
please don't let them eat me again!
”

Seb smiles as the farmhouse and the dogs and the zombie-dotted wheat fields liquefy into emerald blades of meadow grass. Snow-whipped mountains rise around us like a scene from
The Sound of Music
(school project, I swear that's the only reason I know that). Sunshine beams from thousands of edelweiss flowers, the petals channeling it directly, far too bright to be natural. I mend my arm and sigh in relief. Sprawl on my stomach in the grass and just lie there where it's safe. How Seb became safe, I don't know. He sits beside me, still grinning.

“Gosh, that was painful,” he says. “Do you ever say anything you mean without being threatened?”

I think about that. About the arguments with my parents, Emma's demand that I tell her to leave if I didn't want her, JENA using Emma against me to get me to work.

I chuckle. “No.”

Seb lies down and props his arms behind his head. “You know what I love about you? Your honesty.”

“You know what word you're never going to use around me again?” I snap. “Love.”

Seb snickers. “I forgots, we're only on day three of the Brandon project. We'll get to that later.”

“Not likely.”

“'Scuse me, I just saved your life. You owe me your unending affection. I don't even think I heard a ‘thank you, Seb.'”

“Your stupid caffeine drink is the only reason I'm even in that situation. Plus, I would've respawned.”

“You want to go backs?”

I start a little. “No.”

Seb turns to his stomach, pushing his hat up with one finger so he can look across at me. “I'll wait.”

I realize what he wants and grimace. “Oh, come on.”

The peaks flicker, revealing the storm-dark sky of the farmhouse.

I clench my teeth. “Thank you, Seb.”

“For?”

I roll my eyes and turn on my back. “Saving my life.”

“I'ma let that sass go this time, Kathy, but you just remember who's got your back.”

The sun feels good. Having the only danger be how close Seb's scooting feels good, too. I want to sleep, and not the fake kind JENA forces me into, but something deeper, something with dreams. Maybe I can convince Seb not to work today. I just want to lie here, with the warmth and grass and—

“You almost look innocent when your eyes are closed,” Seb says dreamily.

“Mmmph.”

“Ready to work?”

“No.”

Pause. “How about now?”

“Still no.”

“You didn't open your eyes.”

Fearing the worst, I pry one eye open, but it isn't to the sight of Seb in drag—it's to four familiar walls and a window. Lavender comforter beneath me on the bed, sliding glass doors hiding the closet. Pictures of Emma and her family cluster the dresser by the door. It's not the shadow version of the room, but one colored by rays of afternoon sun in such detail that I ask if we're on the mirror server.

“No, silly,” Seb says, examining a tiny clay handprint on the wall. “We're still on my game server. I thought this might juice you up since we can't use caffeine.”

I swing my legs off the mattress and move to the dresser with the picture frames. Emma at six years old with her hair in pigtails, riding a bike Tanner is pushing. The family smiling in front of the castle at Disney World. Emma in last year's homecoming dress, a short blue thing that looks like it would sway very nicely on her hips.

“Mmm, girl has great legs,” Seb says, picking up another picture. “Wish I could wear heels like that.”

I don't want him thinking about Emma so I pull the photo out of his hands, glance at those great legs, and put it back in place. Back between the angel figurine and a snow globe from North Dakota. Everything as I remember it.

I look at Seb across the dresser, and at how perfectly he's remade Emma's room.

“Er…” I clear my throat. “Thanks, Seb.”

He shrugs. Like he does this every day. “Sure.”

I watch him peruse Emma's toy horse collection. He catches me and must not like the look on my face, because he winces when he asks, “What?”

“Did you really kill your last partner?”

A quiet laugh. A nervous one. “Yes.”

“On purpose?”

The room disintegrates. We don't go back to
The Sound of Music
mountains or the zombie fields, but to plain, shapeless white—no floor, no walls, no ceiling—and it makes my stomach jump because I feel like we should be falling. I look instinctively for JENA, but it's just us.

“You're going to think I'm a monster,” Seb says, fidgeting with his cuff link.

“I'm not exactly a saint,” I say.

I wait. Seb watches me, maybe weighing what he should tell me. He removes his fedora and presses his fingers along the rim.

“He lied to me,” he says.
Press, turn. Press, turn
. “But oh, they were pretty lies, Kathy. How brilliant he thought I was. How talented. He was sharing all his secrets with me, he said, double promise he was, and that when we got out of here he wanted to stay together. He'd never met anyone like me.”

His avatar flickers to the bodacious blonde, then the tiny cheerleader, then back to himself. He's smiling, but it's the kind a gunman wears before he pulls the trigger.

“I gave him everything.
Everything
. Next thing I knows, he's halfway swapped to the real world without so much as a good-bye kiss.” A quirk of that wicked smile. “So I tipped JENA off.”

I know I asked for it but I wish he'd make a floor or something else to look at. His smile fades. Honestly, I thought he was going to say it was an accident and that he's all talk.

“That … really sucks,” I say, edging away, though I don't think I'm actually getting anywhere.

Seb's terrible grin comes back. “That's not the worst part.”

His avatar shifts, squares of color spinning from a fedora to a red ponytail, a suit to a red T-shirt, dress pants to a black skirt, loafers to bare feet. A teen version of the willowy redhead, another skin to hide behind.

“The worst part,” Seb says in the girl's voice. “The worst part is … I don't even regret it. I thought once the anger wore off, I'd feel guilty for what I did. But I don't.” She laughs. She's cracking.
“I still don't.”

She flashes closer, and before I can move her hands are twisted in my shirt like she could lift me from the ground, except there
is
no ground, there's nothing, nothing but her green, crazy eyes searching mine.

“That's why I need to know you, Bran Bran. I need to feel like I can still care about someone, that I can still
feel
something, and that someone could maybe…” She swallows. She doesn't seem to be finding what she's looking for in my face. “That someone could maybe care what happens to me.”

I don't dare move. Her gaze drops to my chest. She lets go of me and pulls her hands over her heart instead, breathing deep, even though she doesn't need the air.

I keep rolling that last part over in my head, because it sounds dangerously familiar.

“You're still angry about it,” I say. “That's all.”

She looks up. “What?”

“You trusted him. He stabbed you in the back. You don't regret it yet because you're still angry.”

She thinks about that.

She comes back, a little.

“You don't…?” she says. “You don't think I'm a monster?”

I don't know what it is about girls who are about to cry that makes me go into panic mode, but as soon as Seb starts blinking I can't stop myself. I know, I
know
it's Seb, and I have a feeling I'll be denying this happened later, but for now it doesn't matter. I put my arms around her. Rest my chin on her head and try to hold her together. She can't crack on me.

“I think the Project's trying to wear you down and not succeeding,” I say. “I think a real monster wouldn't care if he was a monster.”

“I can't lose someone else.”

That punches me square in the heart. I hold her at arm's length and look her in the eyes.

“You won't have to,” I say. “We're going to get out. Both of us.”

“Do you promise?” she whispers. “Because I've heard that before.”

I shift my feet. From being this close for so long, for hating the word “promise” and everything it is. But I say it.

I say, “Yes.”

The smile on her face is almost worth the bone-crushing hug that follows. She's way crossing the touchy-feely line, and I know she knows it, but it doesn't stop her from grabbing my face and pressing her lips to mine just long enough for me to shout and not long enough to shove her away. While I'm spitting, wiping my mouth, and wishing I could peel off my skin to wash it, Seb spins away in a ripple of squares, back to pinstripes and loafers.

“Seb!” I yell. “God
why
?”

It's a while before he stops giggling enough to talk.

“I was in the moment,” he says.

“We don't have
moments
, Seb, we have get-out-of-here pep talks.”

“Oh, was that what that was?” He snickers. “I was too distracted by your arms around me.”

A pack of zombie children would be welcome right about now.

“Hey,” he says. “Seriously, thank you.”

I sigh as he brings up the gray walls of the mirror server. Seb, with his stupid pinstripes. With his dozens of avatars. With his infuriating need to be
close
, and his one fear …

His one fear that's the same as mine.

 

16. WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO?

“WE CAN START
in Emma's room again if you like,” Seb says.

Still chuckling.

I'm blocking out the last ten minutes as a repressed memory.

“No, we need to try an actual swap.” I pace the gray walls, remembering Emma's angel figurine. If I knew her room well enough to replicate it, the rooms in my house will be cake. “I'm going to call up our dining room mirror, see what time it is in the real world.”

I think about our mahogany table shipped in from Germany, the overpriced crystal in the display cabinets on the walls, the handmade pot from India in the corner. The intimidating high-backed chairs with corners that could gut you, but which looked nice enough, I guess, though they're crap to actually sit in. I think most about the grandfather clock across from the wall-wide mirror.

The shadow version of the room hums around me. The backs of the chairs, the lip of the pot, the corners of everything lined in liquid blue, and across from me, the mirror. On the other side, the real room glows pale yellow under the chandelier. Six ten read the hands of the clock. The sun's setting in the windows. That's enough for me to know Obran's probably in my room. I'm thinking about my bedposts when I hear, “Brandon is working, dear. Do you have something to drop off?”

From the foyer around the corner. Mom, talking to
her
.

“Actually, I was hoping I might bother him. Just for a minute. It's about school.”

“And you couldn't have texted him?”

A pause.

“I … well, no. I mean, I guess I could have, but I drove all the way here … Please, Mrs. Eriks, it's important.”

Another awkward pause. I can picture my mother's unhappy face, her fingers thrumming along the sides of her smartphone as she weighs whether or not she has the time to deal with someone who isn't paying her.

“All right, maybe it'll do him some good. He's been in quite a mood this week. Come in, dear.”

Footsteps toward the dining room. I panic a moment, looking for somewhere to hide, before I remember I'm locked in a mirror.

“Brans,” Seb says. “We don't have time for—”

“We're making time,” I say.

And there she is. In a sexy purple tee and jeans, hair curled the way I like it, looking around our
Better Homes
dining room with the kind of wonder that, for a second, makes Mom smile. But real smiles on Mom's face have the frequency of falling stars, and the duration, too, and soon she's grim again, the day's makeup settling into the wrinkles around her frown. Emma looks toward the stairway out of view, but Mom steps in her way and gestures to the table.

“Amelia, can I talk to you a moment?” she asks.

“Emma.”

“What?”

“My name—nevermind.”

Emma sits, rigid as a board, glancing at the table like she's afraid to touch it. Mom sits in the head chair and squints at her phone before setting it down.

“Brandon won't talk to me about the fight at school,” she says. “Do you know anything about that?”

Emma swallows. “Yes.”

Mom waits. Or she might be reading a text on her phone, I can't tell. All I know is when she purses her lips at Emma, the floodgates come loose.