Tarnished (12 page)

“What do you mean extinguished?”

A cold wind blew up from the lawn, making the curtains flap and the congressman’s shoulders stiffened.

“Why is the window open?” he asked, completely ignoring Penn’s question.

I scooted back from the window. The ledge was narrow, less than two feet wide, but I flipped around and pressed my back to the wall trying to make myself as small as I could.

Above me, the congressman pulled the curtains back with a
whoosh
and some of the light from the room shone out into the night. I pulled my legs closer to my chest, trying to make myself as small as I could. I looked to my left. The window to Ruby’s room was only about fifteen feet away. Maybe I could crawl along the ledge and make it back into her room before the congressman saw me…

“You can close it,” Penn said. “I woke up in a sweat. I just opened it to cool off.”

I was too afraid to turn my head. If I looked up would I see the congressman peering down at me? The seconds ticked past. One. Two. Three. An eternity of waiting. I waited to feel his hand tighten around my shoulders, tugging me back into the room.

Instead, the congressman sighed. Above my head, the window slid shut and the curtains closed once again. I didn’t have time to feel relieved. I scrambled back to the trellis.

When my feet hit the ground I bolted down the path toward the garden. The house disappeared behind me, replaced by arched branches of oak and ash. I moved farther down the path, past the hydrangea bushes and the gnarled tangle of the fruit orchard.

Despite the urgency of the situation, I felt at home. Penn and I had followed this same path down to the garden almost every night. Maybe my body kept the memory of this trail stored somewhere deep inside. It remembered the curve of the earth beneath my feet. It remembered the soft padding of woodchips and the crunch of gravel. I could have walked it blindfolded.

The tightness in my stomach began to release, just enough so that I could breathe. It didn’t make sense that fear and love could feel so similar, but they did: this pounding in my chest, the unsteadiness in my legs, the feeling that each and every nerve in my body was alive and on fire.

At the entrance to the garden I slowed, stopping in front of the wrought iron gate. Funny that a place could seem almost human, but the garden did. I hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye the last time I was here, but maybe tonight was for all sorts of good-byes.

I pushed on the gate and it squealed softly, welcoming me as I stepped inside.

“Hello,” I said under my breath.

The wind brushed across the tops of the walls, making the ivy flutter like a thousand tiny hands waving.

Around the perimeter, the flowers had mostly come and gone. Their tall stalks hung heavy with fading blooms. In the air, there was a new smell. The garden had always smelled of moist earth and blossoms and decaying leaves, but now it smelled like change. Summer was dying.

The top of the reflecting pond was littered with fallen leaves. I sat down next to it and ran my fingers across the surface. If I brushed away these leaves would I be able to see the memory of Penn and me reflected in the surface? I wanted to believe that we were still here somewhere. That we always would be. I wanted that one perfect moment to exist forever. For years to come this water would hold the image of me floating on my back staring up into the sky, up into the constellation of Penn’s eyes.

But maybe memories were the only things that could exist here now. Maybe I’d been wrong to come back. I was putting Penn in more danger. Clearly, things had changed since I left. His room was proof of that. His father had wiped away every trace of who he’d been only a few weeks ago and those were only objects. That was just a room. What must he have done to Penn?

The thought made me shudder. He couldn’t have changed him that much. The way he’d touched me. The way he kissed me. That was the real Penn. I’d felt him there, even if the outside had changed.

Behind me, the gate groaned softly.

I jumped to my feet and turned to see Penn. The moon lit his white shirt so that it almost glowed, framed by the dark outline of the gate behind him. He looked almost too beautiful to believe, standing there still rumpled from sleep.

“Ella?”

He said my name like a question he was too afraid to ask, staring at me from across the garden as if he’d seen a ghost.

“You came,” I said.

“Of course.”

He closed the distance between us in a heartbeat. Standing before me, he reached out and stroked the blunt ends of my hair.

“As I was walking down here, I wondered if maybe I’d dreamed you. If it wasn’t real. But here you are.”

With his thumb and his forefinger, he gently lifted my chin and pressed his lips to mine. His mouth moved slowly, tenderly. Time slowed. Melted. Broke away. The moments stretched, as fluid as water, flowing forward: a drop, a river, an ocean, until I was suspended inside it. Lost.

He pulled away and the world rushed back into focus, time crashing down around us.

“Your father—” I said.

He shook his head. “Don’t worry. He won’t follow me out here. No one will.”

“But inside… He knew!”

Penn shook his head. “He has the house bugged. He listens to everything: all my phone calls, all my conversations. He has a chokehold on me, but it’s safe out here.”

“What about those men?”

“His henchmen?” Penn chuckled, but it was a sad sound. “They won’t come, either. I’ve been coming out here almost every night since he hired them. They’re lazy. They got sick of following me after the first few nights. Once they realized that I was just coming out here to sit, they gave up.”

He pulled me into him again, holding me so tight against his chest I could feel the thrum of his heart against my cheek.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” I looked up at him and he turned away, his face contorting. “I thought about trying to come to you a thousand times, but I didn’t know how. My dad is watching the borders and I think he almost expected me to go running after you. But he never could have dreamed that you’d come back.”

“I came as fast as I could,” I said. “I saw you on TV. You looked so…” What could I say? So beaten down? So empty?

“But how? It’s hundreds of miles and…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head.

There was so much to tell him about: Missy, my escape from the refugee center, the train, the horrible things I’d seen in the black markets.

“There’s no time now, but I promise, I’ll tell you later.”

He sighed. “At least I got this chance to hold you one more time. To touch you. But you can’t stay. It’s too dangerous. If my dad knew you were here—”

“What has he done to you?” I ran my fingers through his cut hair. Even after he’d been sleeping on it, it looked too groomed, like his father had managed to suck the wildness right out of the top of his head.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I can handle it as long as I know you’re okay.”

“But I’m not okay without you.”

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t okay either.

“Come with me,” I said.

He swallowed. “Ella, he’s way worse now. I know he was a little obsessed before, but now… If he got his hands on you…” He shook his head. “I don’t think it would be enough to just own you again. He wants revenge. And if that means that he has to destroy you, it’s what he’ll do.”

I closed my eyes, trying not to imagine the photographs, but it was impossible. If the congressman got his hands on me, would I be next?

“That’s why we have to get out of here.
Both
of us,” I said. “This isn’t revenge? What he’s doing to you? I saw your room. Every piece of you is gone. You can’t last like this. You can’t keep pretending.”

“Well, I can’t just leave,” he said. “He’d find us. I never realized how strong his connections were, but since you’ve been gone, I’ve seen the worst come out in him. And it’s not like he’s just sitting home crying into a tub of ice cream. He’s got powerful people working for him. Police. Lawmakers.”

I lifted my chin. “Then we need to stop him.”

“He and NuPet have more than half of the government wrapped around their little finger.”

“So we just give up?”

Penn sighed. “At least you’re free. That’s something isn’t it?”

“Not if I can’t be with you. Not if terrible things are happening to girls like me all over the country.”

“We can’t help them, Ella.” His face looked so sad in the moonlight. Defeated.

“Come with me,” I said again.

“And do what?”

“You can’t already have given up,” I said. “We haven’t even tried yet.”

“I haven’t given up,” Penn said. “But I can’t just think about what I want. I have to think about you, too. Maybe the best thing is for me to stay, learn things from the inside. Maybe I can make a difference here. I’ll study law. I’ll make sure that his stupid bill gets overturned.”

“Are you listening to yourself? That would take years.
Years
. And he’d be controlling you the whole time.”

“No he wouldn’t. I’d—”

“You’d lose yourself,” I interrupted. “And you’d lose me, too. I know what it’s like to let someone else choose the course of your life. I know what it’s like not to have a voice. Not to have a future. And I won’t do it anymore.”

Penn took the smallest step away from me. His brow furrowed, studying my face as if I was some new creature that he’d never seen before. I didn’t care. I hadn’t come all this way just to have him give up on me. On us.

“And I don’t care if it’s dangerous,” I went on. “You need to stop trying to protect me and let me protect myself. I’m stronger than anyone gives me credit for and if that’s the one and only advantage I have to fight them with, fine. I’ll take it.”

I couldn’t read the look in Penn’s eye. It looked like fear, but of what, I had no way of knowing: fear of his father, fear of losing me, fear of losing himself. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the future. Maybe that’s all that life really was: the fear of moving forward toward events we had no way of truly knowing.

“When you showed up in my room earlier. It was like seeing a ghost,” he said. “The ghost of you. And for a second I really thought I was going crazy. I’ve seen you everywhere. In everything. It’s like my house was haunted and not just with memories of you. I’d walk into a room and I’d swear I’d see you there, sitting by the window or on the couch and then I’d blink and you’d be gone. But tonight… I blinked, and you were still there.”

He sighed. “Why can’t we just stay inside this garden forever? You and me? We could forget the rest of the world and be together.”

He wrapped me in his arms and kissed me long and hard, as if he truly believed that it could happen. If he wished hard enough, the magic of this place would envelop us and keep us safe.

“You wouldn’t really want that,” I said, staring up into the deep galaxy of his eyes. “You don’t want to be trapped. Even if it is with me.”

“I don’t know if I can lose you again.”

“Then don’t,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “Come with me.”

Three words, but my future hung on them.
Come with me
. They were a prayer. They were hope flung from my lips into the endless sky above us. They were a dream. They were a wish.

Come with me
.

“You want to leave now?” Penn asked.

I nodded. “I can’t stay much longer. It’s too dangerous.”

He looked down at his clothes. He still wore the white undershirt that he slept in plus a pair of jeans and shoes he’d slipped on before he came down. But that was it. He shrugged and shook his head as if he was realizing that if he chose to come he was now wearing the sum total of everything that he owned.

“It would kill my mom. And Ruby.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If there was any other way…”

“No, I know.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. It was impossible to hide the pain on his face. He’d already chosen to leave them once, but somehow this time it seemed worse. The permanence was more real. To leave now wouldn’t just be a strike against his father; it would be a declaration of war.

He opened his eyes. “Okay.”

Chapter Twelve

O
kay?
The word knocked the air from my lungs.

“You’ll come?” I whispered.

A smile broke out across his face, shattering the fear that had lingered there all night. “It wasn’t ever a question really, was it? Maybe we’re being stupid. Maybe we’re fools to think we stand a chance, but if it means I can be with you, I’ll try.” He looked down at his clothes again, then around at the garden. “So this is it then? I guess I can’t go back to the house and pack a bag.”

I shook my head.

“Well, at least I’ve got clean underwear,” he laughed, pulling me into his chest. “And I’ve got you. That’s all I really need.”

His warm lips rested on the top of my head while we stood in silence in our garden one last time. At the other end of the reflecting pool, the stone angel lifted her head skyward. It was a hopeful posture and I lifted my head to copy her.

S
tepping out of the garden felt like leaving one of Ruby’s fairytales. In it, I could almost believe magic existed and protective spells could keep us safe, but it was time to move into the real world.

The gate groaned a lone note, a good-bye song, and we stepped onto the path.

“We need to get away from my house as fast as possible,” Penn said.

I pulled him in the direction of the pine tree. “There’s somewhere we have to go first.”

How long had I been gone? It felt like the world had held its breath along with me. Since I stepped back onto the Kimbles’ property, I had lost all sense of time. Hopefully Missy was still waiting for me.

The pine tree was even easier to find than I’d imagined, but when I pulled back the bottom boughs, Missy was gone.

“What is it?” Penn asked, concerned.

I shook my head. How could I tell him? How could I say that even though I never really expected Missy to stay, I wanted her friendship to be real? I
needed
it to be real. She’d only promised to get me here and she’d done that. But even with Penn at my side, I felt lost without her. She was a pet, like me, and maybe that’s what I liked about her. As much as it irritated me, her strength and will, all the qualities that we’d been taught to push down, were the things that made me love her.

“He came?”

I spun around to see Missy emerge from behind a tree with her backpack dangling from one hand.

“
You?
” Penn asked, glancing from Missy to me.

She shrugged.

“I told you he would come,” I said.

The two of them stared at each other.

“Penn, this is Missy. She helped me get back here.”

She slung her bag up over her shoulder. “And now we’re here and we’ve got you. Isn’t that great?” she said. “Ella was so convinced that you were going to help. So now what?” She sized him up, but the look on her face told me that she didn’t have much confidence in him.

“You’re asking me?” Penn said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just woke up to a slight change in plans. It’s not like I’ve really had time to think things over.”

Missy looked down to the place where his hand held on to mine and rolled her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re happily reunited, but right now we don’t exactly have the luxury of time to mull things over, do we?”

“Enough,” I snapped. “You’re right. We don’t have time. They could find out any moment that Penn is gone.”

“And if they find him, they find us,” Missy said. “You still think it was such a good idea to come get him?”

“Look, I realize that none of this is ideal,” Penn said. “But I’m here and I’ll try to help, so let’s make do with what we’ve got.”

“And what’s that?” Missy asked. “Because it doesn’t look like you’ve got much of anything.”

“We’ve got each other,” Penn said hopefully.

Missy snorted. “A fat lot of good that’s going to do me. How about a plan? Do you have that? Or food? Or a car?”

Penn shook his head. “No.”

“What about a place to stay?”

He shook his head again.

“Well, I suggest we start walking,” Missy said. “Because it isn’t doing us any good standing around here waiting to get caught.”

She started tromping through the woods and Penn and I raced to catch up with her.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I need to make a quick stop,” Missy said. “Your boy didn’t come with anything useful, so we’re going to have to get creative.”

We clawed our way through the woods, finally scrambling up a small bank and out onto the quiet road.

“This way,” Missy said, turning left.

“But that will lead us right past my house,” Penn said.

“Then we better hurry.”

The street was silent, except for the sound of our shoes hitting the pavement. In front of us, the entrance to Penn’s driveway grew close once more. I slowed as we neared the dark hedges, every cell in my body screaming at me to run.

But first, there was something I needed to do.

I reached in my pocket and fished out the gold pendant. Without stopping to think it through, I ran up to the tall brick mailbox and draped the necklace over the handle.

“What are you doing?” Missy asked. “They’ll know you were here.”

“As long as I keep that, he’s going to own a little piece of me,” I said.

“So, chuck it in the woods. Flush it down the toilet. I don’t care. Something. But don’t let him know you were here.”

“No,” I said, stepping back from the necklace. “I want him to know. He’s going to figure it out soon enough. With Penn gone, he’ll know. And this way he can be sure. Let him know I was here. Let him know I slipped through his fingers one last time. He doesn’t own me anymore.”

I turned, heading away from the congressman’s house one last time. The others trotted along behind me, but I didn’t slow. The more distance I put between myself and that house, the more free I felt. The chains that had been holding me down for weeks, months, years, were finally falling away.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do when he finds that,” Penn finally said, catching up to me. “But it’s going to piss him off. He’s not used to people standing up to him.”

“Well, he better get used to it.”

Missy jogged ahead of us. “You see that bend in the road up there?” she asked. “There’s a ditch by those telephone poles. You two wait for me there, okay?”

I nodded. My gaze swept past the spot in the road that she was pointing to toward the smaller road that curved off of it. Even in the dark, I recognized it. She was heading home.

“You’re not going to do anything stupid are you?” I asked.

“Not any stupider than anything you’ve done.”

Her words sounded tough, but a hint of worry wavered beneath them. “Be careful,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “If I’m not back in an hour, I want you guys to leave. Understand?”

“No, we’re not just going to—”

“Don’t argue with me,” she interrupted.

Penn grabbed my hand, leading me toward the side of the road. “Fine,” he said. “One hour.”

Missy paused, studying him, and the smallest smile lifted the corners of her mouth before she spun on her heel and took off at a trot down the road.

Penn held my hand to steady me as I slid down the steep embankment. He followed after me and settled down amid the tall dry grass, patting the ground next to him. I folded myself into his side. As good as it felt to be with him, it didn’t feel right to let Missy go off by herself.

“So Missy, huh?” Penn said. “I’ve got to say, it seems like an unlikely match, the two of you.”

“That’s putting it nicely.” I laughed. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to strangle her.”

Penn chuckled. “She doesn’t like me much, does she?” he asked, gesturing back in the direction that Missy had disappeared.

“I’m not sure if Missy likes anyone.”

“She must like you. Why else would she have come?”

“Honestly, I don’t really know,” I said. “I sometimes wondered if she was just leading me back to some trap that your dad set up.”

Penn raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think—”

“No!” I shook my head. “No, I don’t.” How could I tell Penn about the things I’d seen? The things she’d done to get us here? Missy had proved herself to be a brave and honest person, even though the reason she’d chosen to help me might always be a mystery.

I snuggled into his side. The warmth that he gave off made me want to close my eyes right there. This peace that I felt next to him was at such odds with the constant worry that had taken up residence inside me. If only for a few minutes, I wanted to let the anxiety of being found fall away, peeling back so many other fears with it. If only I could let myself forget that pets were dying, that girls were languishing in black markets that only valued them for their bodies, that now I was responsible for Penn’s safety as well as my own. If only I could let those thoughts drop away and focus instead on the heat from Penn’s hands, on the closeness of our bodies.

“Is it crazy that this feels right?” Penn asked. “I mean, we’re in a cold ditch on the side of the road, basically running for our lives,” he said, “and I still think that there’s no place in the world I’d rather be. Tell me that’s not crazy.”

“Maybe it’s a little crazy.” I smiled. “Or maybe it’s…” I searched for the word. “Masochistic.”

Penn snorted. “It is, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “You know, you never cease to amaze me. People underestimate you, don’t they? Your whole life they’ve told you that you’re just a pretty face. They thought they taught you to parrot big ideas, but that’s never what you were doing. You soaked it all in. You remembered it all. All their big words. All their big ideas. And now you’re going to crush them with it.”

“I am?” I giggled, a little terrified and a little thrilled that he thought so much of me.

“They aren’t going to know what hit ’em.”

I
shouldn’t have worried about Missy being gone for long. Hardly half an hour passed before we heard the slap of her feet against the pavement as she appeared on the road above us. The moon lit her from behind, making it impossible to see her face as she kneeled down next to the side of the road.

“Come on,” she called down to us. “We’ve got to get a move on.”

Penn and I scrambled up the side of the hill. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“Unless you want to sleep in that ditch, I think we better go find a place to stay.”

Already, she was a few yards ahead of us, moving briskly. The two of us quickly brushed off our pants and shook our stiff legs, then rushed to catch up with her.

“Do you have a place in mind?” Penn asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “And believe it or not, you’re actually going to come in handy.”

Penn shot me a concerned glance. “I don’t have any friends we can stay with, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve already run the whole thing through my mind a million different times. If there were someplace I could go, someone that would actually help me, I would have already gone. But believe me, my dad would find us in a heartbeat.”

“I’m not stupid,” Missy said. “I don’t know your friends and I’m not sure if I’d trust any of them anyway. They’re probably all rich and arrogant and entitled like everyone else around here. We’re going to stay at a motel. I’ve already slept in these woods once and I really don’t want to do it again. There’s no way someone would give a room to me or Ella, but they’ll give one to you.”

“That’s nice, but I don’t have any money,” Penn said.

In front of us, a pair of headlights rounded the corner and, together, the three of us dove into the bushes, pressing our bodies as flat as we could against the ground. The car didn’t even slow as it passed us. We all waited in silence until the red of its taillights had disappeared before we stood again.

Penn and I turned to go. “There’s probably someplace that we can sleep. Maybe there’s a groundskeeper’s shed at the country club we could sneak into.”

“We need someplace safe,” Missy said. “Ella and I need sleep. We need a bed. We’re going to the motel.” She bent over her backpack. “Anyway, money isn’t something we need to worry about. Where’d you think I went, anyway?” she said, pulling a thick stack of bills out of her bag. She fanned the wad of cash in front of her face.

“You just stole that?” Penn asked. “God, as if we weren’t in enough trouble before. How much is that anyway? That’s, like, thousands of dollars.”

“Don’t get all dramatic,” Missy said, shoving the money back in her bag. “I only took one little stack. He has dozens of these. He’s not even going to notice until he sits down to count his treasure and reconfirm to himself that he’s the most powerful, potent, mighty man in the world.” Her shoulders relaxed. “It’s actually kind of funny when you think about it.”

Penn gave me a sideways glance, raising one of his eyebrows as if to say that he seriously doubted it.

A cool breeze rustled through the trees and Missy chuckled just a little before she started talking again.

“My old master is kind of obsessed with his money. To say he’s compensating is an understatement. So maybe if he was a little bit less obsessed with his net worth and was a tad more observant, he would have thought twice about opening his safe in front of me.” She snorted. “I can’t tell you how paranoid he is about his safe. He keeps it hidden behind a false panel in his study. He’s gone to all sorts of trouble to make it so no one but him is able to open it. I’m not sure his wife even knows it’s there, but I do. That’s the funny part. You know what I mean, Ella. You’re a pet. You know what it’s like to be overlooked. But at least it paid off.”

She patted her bag.

I smiled. So we had another thief amongst us. “So you just snuck in and opened the safe? There wasn’t an alarm?”

“Oh, I knew the code to that, too,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

Penn’s mouth dropped open, but I just laughed. She’d stolen way too much money, but I loved her fearlessness, her tenacity, her irrepressible belief that she was right.

Our whole lives, we had been bred to give.