Confessions of a Murder Suspect (31 page)

Harry went straight to his studio
at Lincoln Center to burn off some steam, but Hugo walked home with me. As we passed a corner bodega, he stopped in his tracks.

“Hey, Tandy,” he said. “Let’s do something crazy.”

“What?” I asked, baffled. I was more than a little worried about all of Hugo’s newfound anger and how he was planning to channel it.

“Come in here,” he said, dragging me into the bodega. “Let’s get something we were never allowed to eat at home.”

And that’s how we ended up back at the Dakota, eating a box of instant macaroni and cheese for lunch at about 10:30
AM
.

“This is vile,” I commented, reading the ingredients on the package. “I have to agree with Malcolm and Maud on this one. Like they always said, ‘You are what you eat.…’ ”

So, what was I, then? What were my brothers? What was my sister Katherine before she was run down in Africa? What were the ingredients in our father’s pills?

Not knowing what I’d been swallowing every night for the whole of my life made me question every single thing about myself, down to the size of my feet and the length of my eyelashes.

“So what do we do now?” Hugo asked me.

“Want to help me with my investigation?” I asked him in response.

I didn’t have to ask twice.

I grasped the key to my father’s home laboratory, which I’d hung from a cord around my neck, and slid it back and forth. I planned to keep the key with me until I had searched Malcolm’s lab and computer and found out precisely what the pills were made of and what their side effects were.

I opened the laboratory door and hit the lights. Hugo scooted past me, opened a small refrigerator, and took out a bottle of lemonade. I figured he’d been spying on Malcolm for so long that he knew where everything was in this place.

“What did Matthew tell you about this operation?” I asked Hugo.

“Don’t make me snitch on Matty,” Hugo said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Whatever they are, whatever they do, I
like
my pills. I’m going to keep taking them. I don’t want to change. I like myself the way I am.”

I had to laugh. I liked him, too.

“We don’t know what the long-term effects are,” I said, moving toward the computer.

“The short-term effects are that I whooped Colin Baxter’s butt. He’s not going to mess with any of us ever again.”

“Either that or the next time he runs into you, he’ll be armed.”

“Oh,” Hugo said. “Good point.”

The computer was still on and its documents still open, just as Harry had left it. I went directly to the memo file and skimmed many years’ worth of the back-and-forth exchange between Peter and Malcolm.

One e-mail from Peter to Malcolm read: “Tried adding four RepX on 4/13. No sign of side effects. Will keep an eye out and increase three Genner2.0 to force results.”

Malcolm’s response read: “Agreed. May decrease focus to increase Genner2.0, but can compensate with one Plav.”

It was chilling to read how casually these “supplements”
were discussed. My siblings and I were mentioned, but the memos weren’t explicit enough to tell me what I really wanted to know. After another two hours of document review, the question remained: What exactly were our pills made of, and what had they done to us? Could it be reversed?

And if so, was that what I wanted to happen?

Being a “normal” girl had only gotten me into trouble before. Was I ready to try it again now that Malcolm and Maud were out of the picture? I trembled at the memory that was itching to be recognized, relived. My failed attempt at normalcy.

One investigation of mine might be hitting a wall, I thought, but I knew exactly where I had to go to start confronting the mystery of my own history.

I left the lab with Hugo in tow and shut the door behind us.

“Hugo, I think I need to be alone for a little while now,” I told him. “Are you okay hanging out by yourself?”

“Sure,” Hugo said. “Are
you
… okay?”

I smiled. “Fine, Hugo. In fact, I think I’m about to have a breakthrough.”

And I knew exactly where to start: that file in the cabinet I’d stumbled on earlier while searching Samantha’s room. The one labeled
J.R.

It was time to get real.

71

I would be lying to you
if I didn’t say that it was very, very hard to go back to that filing cabinet, where I knew there could be reams of documents detailing things I wasn’t ready to face.

So once I had the folder marked
J.R.
open, I took my time. Slowly, slowly, I leafed through the thick stack of pages of my own calligraphic replica of the poem “Maud,” one of several Big Chops I’d had to do after I ran away.

I forced myself to read every word of the tortured, dense Victorian poem all over again. A delaying tactic. How much did I want to find what else Maud might have tucked into this folder?

I could delay no further when a newspaper clipping fell
out. Before I could read the headline, I saw a face in the accompanying photo.

Now it was no longer a hazy face in my memory, struggling to come into focus. It was plain as day, the handsome face of the young man I’d run away with. Dark blond, longish, straight hair—and the smile that had in an instant taken me in. Won me over. Made me believe in him. In fact, it had been the only thing I believed in, for that short period of time: that he would save me. That we could save each other.

There it was, in black-and-white. He was a real person. He was beautiful, yet frightening to me somehow. And he was missing.

SON OF STORIED FINANCIER, 18, DISAPPEARS UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.

My hands were shaking so hard they crumpled the paper. Or maybe I was crumpling it up on purpose. I didn’t want to read any more.

Buck up, Tandy. Read it.

I took a deep breath, opened the clipping, and got only as far as the first two words:

James Rampling.

72

I’m going to apologize to you
, friend—with a true heart. I’m getting better at that, aren’t I?

I just want to say that I’m sorry if I’ve been confusing you. I don’t mean to; it’s just that I’m confused myself. And if I could ask a favor, please? I need you to help me understand my own story, even if it takes a little time. Or a long time.

Okay. Now that I know you’re on my side, I think I can go on.

I uncrumpled the paper and smoothed it out over and over again, almost as if I were stroking the mysterious face of James Rampling, hoping it would tell me something.

For countless minutes, I didn’t even read the article. I just felt myself fall deeper and deeper into those eyes.

Slowly, hypnotically, they took me back to the night of the party.

CONFESSION

I didn’t go to normal teenage parties
—just adult events, or parties where their kids happened to be around. I stopped getting invited to
real
parties some time ago. But a while back, I heard about a no-adults party a senior was throwing in celebration of his early-admission acceptance to Harvard. It was a silly reason for a party as far as I was concerned, but I decided that I was going to try to go to it. And enjoy it.

Almost as if it were an experiment, or a test.

You see, at school I’d been learning about freedom movements all around the world, from the American Revolution to the Arab Spring, and I’d been thinking a lot about the benevolent dictatorship in which I was being raised. I’d been questioning
how benevolent it was. And I was pretty sure I wanted out. At least, that night I was sure.

I saw all the other kids at the party drinking whatever they could find, and in order for this to be a true experiment, I had to do what they did. So I drank, first with caution, then with abandon. I don’t even know what it was. Given that I was already under the influence of Malcolm’s special cocktail of pills, who knows how it all might have interacted.

It was in the most mundane of places that I met James: standing by a keg. He appeared to be staring at my chest, which didn’t exactly make me comfortable.

“Sorry,” he said with an embarrassed smile, once he realized what he was doing. “Really. I swear. I was just noticing your necklace.” Before I could reply with a skeptical comment, he proved himself honorable. “From Tibet, right? Have you been there?”