Never Missing, Never Found (20 page)

At this point you’d expect Skywoman just to go ahead and end it already, but she stills. You can see the conflict in her eyes: she wants to end this, as she keeps saying, but she also wants to hear what the Blade has to say. “What does it matter?” she says unconvincingly. “You’re just going to lie anyway.”

The Blade slips the folder into her waistband and holds her hands in front of her, presumably to show that she doesn’t have any of her fingers crossed. “I would not lie about this,” she says, and something in her monotone must convince Skywoman, because Skywoman stops talking.

“Your parents were trying to destroy the world.”

The next panel shows Skywoman in shock: gaping mouth, wide eyes, eyebrows shooting up nearly to her hairline.

“The Silver Corporation tasked them with the creation of a weapon greater than the nuclear bomb,” the Blade says. “And they were almost there. I tried to convince them to stop. Talked to them about what the Silver Corporation wanted to do with the weapon.” No indication is given about how the Blade found out about the Silver Corporation’s supersecret plans, but I didn’t care (though critics did). “They still wouldn’t stop.” The Blade pauses and looks at the ground. If Skywoman really wanted to, she could dive forward and snap the Blade’s neck while she isn’t looking. She doesn’t, though. “I had to think of the world.”

“You’re lying,” Skywoman says, but her eyebrows are knotted in a way that says she isn’t convinced.

“Of course, the Silver Corporation didn’t stop just because the project’s two lead scientists had been assassinated,” the Blade continues. “I couldn’t let them complete the weapon.” She hesitates again, probably for dramatic effect. “They even put the police on the case. To guard the weapon. I tried to convince them to take my side, but…”

“My husband,” Skywoman says. “You killed him because the Silver Corporation employed him to protect the weapon.”

“He was in on it,” the Blade says. “Do you know what the Silver Corporation wants to use the weapon for?”

Skywoman shakes her head. Her mouth hangs open. She looks like a guppy. A beautiful guppy.

“First they’re going to set it off in a city nearby. Not Silver City. A different city.” The Blade’s eyes are flat. “Kill everybody within a ten-mile radius. Gruesomely. The weapon isn’t just about death; it’s about suffering. A million people or more will bleed through their pores and feel their bones crumble and eventually choke on their own bodily fluids.”

“My parents would never have taken part in something like that,” Skywoman says, but the shivery way her dialogue is written makes it clear her voice is shaking.

“Once they’ve slaughtered all those people, the Silver Corporation will come forward and claim responsibility. Tell the government it was only a demonstration of their power, and they’ll do it again. They’ll have the whole world at their knees. They’ll be able to do anything they want to.” The Blade shakes her head. “I couldn’t let that happen, even if it meant I had to sacrifice people I cared about.” She looks up and off into the distance. “Even if it meant I had to sacrifice everything I’d ever hoped and dreamed of, and even though it meant everybody I cared about would hate me. Even you, Augusta.”

Skywoman jolts at the sound of her name. “It’s been a long time since I heard that name,” she says. She doesn’t ask why the Blade didn’t just come clean years and years ago, which would have saved everyone a whole lot of pain and heartache. Critics did, though.

“I’m sorry that I had to hurt you, but I’m not sorry for what I did,” the Blade says. She holds out her hand. “Augusta. Will you join me? Will you help me take the Silver Corporation down?”

Skywoman stares at the Blade’s hand, the hand that slit her parents’ throats and shot her first husband to death. “Can you prove what you’re telling me?”

“I can.” The Blade doesn’t waver. “I can’t do it alone anymore, Augusta.”

Skywoman stares at the Blade’s hand for another moment, another very long moment…and then takes it.

This issue was a game changer. It turned readers’ assumptions on their heads and caused months of outcry and speculation as to the future of the series, now that the Blade had brought Skywoman over to the “dark” side.

It was my favorite issue. Skywoman wasn’t all good, and the Blade wasn’t all bad. Until that issue, Skywoman had saved lives and protected Silver City, but she’d also unknowingly enabled evil. The Blade had killed innocent people and terrorized an entire city, but she’d also saved millions of lives and kept the country from being pressed under the thumbs of people who wanted to do it terrible harm.

You can be a good person and do bad things. And sometimes it may look like someone is doing something bad, or evil, but when you look more closely at the situation, you realize your assumptions were wrong, and that whatever’s happening may not be so bad or evil after all. It may be warranted. Maybe even good.

As I head home, with Katharina in the cabin, tied to the windowsill and spitting mad, a gallon jug of water and some granola bars I stored there long ago at her feet, I feel like I might sprout a cape and fly away.

I don’t get out of bed all the next morning. I’m supposed to work, but I don’t remember until after my shift’s supposed to have started. I may get fired, but I can’t stop picturing Katharina’s face as I left her behind.

I can’t leave her in the cabin forever. Eventually she’ll need more food and water. But I also can’t let her out. I can’t let her back into my life, not after what she did to me. After what I did to her.

The person who gets me out of bed, finally, is Melody, whom I haven’t spoken with since the incident on the Blade’s Revenge. After I’ve spent the morning hiding under my covers, she marches through my door and throws open my curtains. I squint at the sudden influx of light.

“You missed work today,” she says abruptly, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s in workout attire, T-shirt and yoga pants and hair off her face, so it must be the afternoon. There’s a clock just behind me, but I can’t be bothered to roll over to check.

“How do you even know that?”

She uncrosses her arms and lunges forward, stripping my covers off and tossing them on the floor. “My God, Scarlett, you’re disgusting,” she says. “What is that? Crumbs?”

I can’t be bothered to roll over to check that, either. “Go away.” I lean over the side of my bed to pull the covers back—the real world is cold!—but she neatly jerks them away with her foot.

“Five Banners has called the house, like, eight times,” she says. “You didn’t show up this morning. If you don’t show up, you’re going to get fired, and then Dad is going to murder you.”

Maybe I can shame her into silence. “That’s awfully bad taste to joke like that, considering what just happened to Monica.”

“Oh, you shut up,” Melody says. “That’s so not what you’re moping about. I told them that you had car trouble and your phone had died, but that I’d let you use my car, and they said they won’t penalize you this once if you go in now. Get up and go to work.”

“Let them fire me.”

“You can’t let them win,” Melody says. “Get out of bed and go to work.”

“No.” I can’t get out of bed because I can’t see the people who might be panicking over Katharina’s disappearance. I can’t look into their eyes and know that I’m the one who caused their panic and their fear. That I’m the one who inducted a new member into the society.

“Just leave me alone,” I say, and roll over. I still have a pillow to bury my face in.

“No.” Melody yanks my pillow out from under me, sending my head thudding to the mattress below. It doesn’t hurt, but I wince anyway. “I laid out your uniform. All you have to do is put it on. And maybe shower. You kind of smell.”

Without my pillow, I am exposed. Naked. I sit up. “Why aren’t you siding with Katharina? Don’t you think I’m crazy? That I tried to push Cady?”

“No.” Melody doesn’t hesitate, or flinch, and her eyes don’t dart away. “I think Katharina was wrong. Now get out of bed.”

“You think she was wrong? Like, she made a mistake?” Melody’s belief in me bolsters my spirits enough for me to slide to the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. The floor is cold.

“No,” Melody says. “I think she lied. Now get up. You definitely need a shower.”

I get up. I’m not used to standing after so many hours in bed, and I sway a bit on my feet. “Why would she lie?”

“I don’t know.” This time her eyes do dart away. She’s lying. She knows. But I can’t bring myself to press harder, to cut deeper, not when she’s saying she believes in me. “Am I going to have to drag you out by your hair?”

“I’m coming,” I say, and I am. I totter to the door, where she’s so helpfully stacked my uniform pieces. I take a sniff of my armpit under the pretext of cracking my neck. God, I’m rank. “Why do you even care?”

I didn’t expect her to come in and wrest me out of bed in the first place. I didn’t expect her to tell me she believes me over Katharina.

Most of all, I don’t expect her to burst into tears when I ask her such a small question. She sobs so hard her shoulders shudder and her ponytail comes undone; I feel awkward standing there, like I should be gathering her into my arms and telling her everything is going to be okay. Finally she lifts her head and wipes her eyes. “Because you’re my sister,” she says. “That’s why I care.” And somehow that sets her off again; she sinks down onto the edge of my bed and places her face in her hands.

I don’t know what just happened, but I know I’m so overwhelmed I can’t even begin to process right now. “Okay,” I say. “Thanks for…this.”

By the time I get out of the shower, smelling like soap and something artificially floral, Melody is gone.

I spent the rest of the day Pixie found the knife convinced that Stepmother would decide to give us a random pat-down, or that the knife would slice down Pixie’s pant leg and clatter to the floor, flinging drops of blood into the air, but nothing happened. We finished our work, ate our dinner, and were ushered into the basement as usual.

Pixie sat down at one of our chairs and pulled out the knife with a flourish. “What should I do with it?” she said. She set it on the table and stared at it. I stared at it too. It stared back.

This was dangerous. “If she knows you have that, she could really kill us,” I said. “This isn’t a joke. Or a game.”

“I know that,” Pixie said, sounding insulted. “You could kill someone with this.” She stood and backed away from it, as if she wanted to consider it from a different viewpoint, see if it looked any less threatening from another angle.

I said nothing to that, because what was there to say?

Soon after that Pixie retrieved the knife, and we went to sleep. She tucked it carefully under her side of the mattress and lay on top of it. “Night, Scarlett,” she said.

“Good night, Pixie.”

When she woke a few hours later to pee, her fingers scrabbled instinctively for her prize. It was gone.

I was awake, my eyes scrunched firmly shut. My breathing was fast and shallow. I didn’t fool Pixie. “Scarlett, I can see you’re awake,” I could hear her say through her teeth. “Give it back.”

I gave up all pretense and sat up. “I don’t have it,” I said, blinking at her.

Pixie dove forward and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me so hard I thought my head would pop off. “Give it back!”

“It’s too dangerous,” I said. “It’s for the best.”

She shook me harder. Everything blurred, and something in my neck cracked. Her shaking slowed. “Give it
back
!”

I stared at her. She could shake me until my neck broke if she had to. I wasn’t going to let her get us both killed. “No,” I said.

She stared back at me. I stared back at her. And then the entirely unexpected happened.

Pixie buried her face in my shoulder and began to cry.

“Hey…hey.” I patted her gingerly on the head. It had been a while since she’d washed her hair, and it was almost sticky to the touch. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.” It turned into a chant. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

I petted her hair again. “Yes, you can. It’s going to be okay.”

She shook her head, and slime smeared over my arm. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Hey, hey.” She was making me uncomfortable, and I tried to edge away, only to have her scoot along with me. “Everything’s just going to be like normal.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” She seemed to have gotten stuck. I shook her a little, trying to jar her, but it didn’t stop the chanting.

I was going to hit her. I couldn’t hit her. I
could
distract her. “Hey,” I said. “Want to hear about my family?”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. An offer to hear about my life had never failed before. “I never told you about my sister’s fourth birthday party,” I said. “I thought she was cutting her cake too slowly, so I smashed her face in it.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

“What about the time my grandma died?” That was a sad story, but maybe Pixie needed to hear something sad. “She was in hospice and had Alzheimer’s, so she didn’t know who I was at the end and she thought my dad was her husband, which was kind of gross and weird. She kept saying,
‘Quiero hacerte el amor,’
and Melody and me knew it was wrong but we kept laughing anyway and we felt really bad.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

I sat back, defeated. I had nothing left. Nothing left I could tell her. Nothing left I could give her. “I wish you were different.” The words burst out before I could stop them, and they kept on falling. “When I asked Stepmother for a friend, I wish she had picked someone else.”

This stopped her. She stopped chanting midword and spun to stare at me, her head making a full revolution like an owl’s. She was already so close I could see the tears shimmering over her golden irises. “You what?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “Nothing.”

She stood, looming over me. “You
asked
her for me?” Her voice broke. “You’re the reason I’m here?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“You did this to me.” Her voice was stronger now. “You
did
this to me. This is
your
fault.” Her eyes were beginning to shimmer again, this time with anger, and her fingers had balled into fists. “This is
your fault.
”

Forget Stepmother.
Pixie
was going to kill me. Without breaking eye contact, I backed away and rummaged around in the dresser drawer where I’d hidden the knife, then walked back and handed it over.

Pixie took the knife back. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

I grab one of Melody’s homemade raisin bran muffins as I run out the door. It goes down in lumps and settles like a rock in my stomach. That’s probably why I feel so heavy; it’s not dread at all. I’m totally light and cheerful. The atmosphere inside my car is so warm and bright I might burst out of my chair and rise like one of Melody’s muffins in the oven.

I swallow hard. This campaign to psych myself up? Not working. I feel like every person is staring at me. That every one of them knows about me and Katharina.

I trudge through the employee parking lot and toward headquarters, where I’ve been sent today. I’m so wrapped up in my internal mantra—
everything will be okay, everything will be okay, everything will be okay
—that it takes me a while to notice the buzzing around me, the whispers that cloud the air like fog.

It makes me think, with an unpleasant jolt, of my first morning. The morning Monica joined the club.

By now everybody must know Katharina is gone. That was fast.

My mouth dries out more and more the closer and closer I get to headquarters, and the bits of muffin in my stomach get heavier and heavier; I feel like the bottom of my stomach might burst and my intestines will just drop right out of my body and crush my feet. I hope I hope I hope Connor isn’t working today. Of course, if Connor isn’t there, then Rob will be there instead, and I hope I hope I hope Rob isn’t there either. Maybe I’ll get spectacularly lucky and learn they both decided, on the spur of the moment, to quit and jet off to Tibet to shave their heads and become monks.

No such luck: they’re both there, in the back room, conferring before the whiteboard schedule.

Monks probably can’t have tattoos, anyway. Or freckles.

I wait for them to notice me. I can’t speak first. My tongue has swollen up and filled my mouth, roof to teeth.

When they finally do realize I’m there, neither of them will look at me. Their eyes are cockroaches and I’m a light; they skitter away whenever they get too close to me. Rob finally clears his throat. “You’re going to be in Wonderkidz today.”

I nod. I didn’t expect anything different.

Rob gathers up my cash drawer and papers while Connor stares at the wall and pretends not to see me. The muscles working in his jaw and throat say otherwise. I look at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at the wall, then at a shelf full of Skywoman figurines. She’s in various poses: one triumphant, her fist over her head; one fighting, her whip coiled in front of her; one pensive, staring off into the distance.