Damselfly (12 page)

He exhaled. “I really thought you were furious. Are you okay?”

“My lungs are a little sore, but I’m good.” I forced a smile to make him feel better. “I really can’t believe I fell for your prank.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he admitted. “Your reaction was pretty impressive. You really held it together.”

“Yeah, up until my lungs rebelled.”

“I won’t do that again, I promise.”

“Go ahead and try! I’m not falling for any more tricks after that one!”

His gentle smile sent shivers down my arms, and I blushed and looked away. I was used to George’s concerned looks, but this was different. In Jack’s eyes, I wasn’t a child to be protected—I was a whole person with feelings and weaknesses and emotions I couldn’t share with anyone. He saw through my brave face and my jokes, and we both knew it.

“Are you really okay?”

I frowned. I suddenly had the urge to cry, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

He stepped closer. “You sure?”

“Yeah, but I think I need to go lie down for a little while. Can we talk later?”

“Definitely.”

“Okay, great. Thanks for the date. It was fun.” I needed to log off. The tears were threatening to push their way out.

“Right. Next time I’ll try not to give you an asthma attack. I really am sorry.”

“I know, Jack. It’s okay. Goodnight!”

I ripped off my halojector before I’d completely logged off. I cleared my throat several times in a vain attempt to stymie the tears. Why was I crying? I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d cried. I saw Jack’s eyes, full of compassion, over and over again in my head, and that broke me.

I ran to my room and jumped on my bed. I would not cry into my pillow. That would be stupid and cliché and I wasn’t that sort of girl.

Tears dripped onto my satin bedspread with whispered splashes.
Are you really okay?
he had asked me. I’d thought I was. But I knew he wasn’t just asking about the asthma attack. Unlike everyone else in my life, he wanted to see if I was okay with everything that was happening to me. And even though Jack didn’t know about half of what I was forced to put up with, the question felt like it applied to everything. Was I okay with the prank he’d pulled? Was I okay with being chased by huge falcons? Was I okay with having no friends my age, no freedom, no real parents?

No. I was not okay, and I’d never given myself permission to think that. Sure, I would whine and complain when I didn’t like the things I had to do, but I’d always prided myself in keeping a stiff upper lip and meeting the challenges head-on. But what if I didn’t have to do that? What if I could live a life where my being okay actually mattered to someone?

It felt like a lost part of my heart had ripped open at the seams and out of it poured sob after sob. I don’t remember when I stopped crying and fell asleep.

Chapter 13

The production assistant sets down the carrier inside my room and opens the door so I can fly out.

“Need anything?”

“I could use some dinner,” I say as I buzz over to my bed and belly-flop onto it.

She grimaces. “Yeah, the catering tonight was…different.”

That’s one word for quivering blocks of overcooked tofu and soggy veggies. Another word I might choose would be “horrifying.”

“I’ll be right back.” She keys her code into the door’s opening mechanism, and it swings open to reveal Susanna.

“Oh! Are you leaving? I just came by to help her get ready for bed.”

“Yeah, getting food. Do you want any?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.” Susanna steps inside, and the door closes behind her. “I have your stuff.”

“Awesome. I think I might need it after the horrible food. I only took one bite, but it’s already doing a number on me. Go ahead and toss it.”

“It’s kind of heavy.”

“And I’m kind of used to that.”

She tosses it hesitantly, lightly, and I fly up to catch it. It socks me full force in the chest, but I swallow my surprise at its weight. Mr. Coxworth sent more than I thought he would.

“How was the date?” Susanna asks.

I tear open the packaging and set aside the paper so I can read the note later. “It was interesting. Sort of what I expected. The art department made a really uninspired miniature version of the pyramids, and we pretended we were enjoying ourselves running across glued-on sand.”

“Who was this one with?”

“Crane.” I tug out the tiny vial that is, mercifully, not labeled. “Check this out.”

She squats next to me, and I pull out the cork and sniff the clear, gel-like substance in the bottle. Smells of grass and alcohol. Reaching my hand into the bottle’s neck, I poke at the gel, and it instantly sticks to my finger in long strings.

“Give me your finger,” I say.

“What for?”

“You have to feel this.”

“Is that peppermint jelly or something?”

“No, it’s essence of lightning bug,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. She won’t believe me because the truth is just too weird to accept. I tip the bottle onto her index finger until several drops of the goop are quivering against her skin.

“This reminds me of when I dissected a cow’s eye in school,” she says. “It feels like the clear stuff that comes out.”

I nod, even though I’ve never dissected anything larger than an earthworm and that was hard enough. She squishes her thumb against her finger and rubs the stuff in a circle.

I hop from one foot to another. “Pretty gross, huh? But if you really rub it in, it makes a great moisturizer.” Lies.

“Really?”

No.

She follows my suggestion and stares down at her finger. “I guess that’s why they put peppermint into lotions. I have that ingredient in a lot of the makeup I use.”

“Of course.”

She sniffs at her finger. “Doesn’t smell very pepperminty. How does it taste?”

“Well, this stuff is really, you know, distilled. Probably doesn’t taste like anything.”

“Oh.” A frown creases her forehead, and she stares at me as though she’s trying to figure out if I’m pulling her leg. “So tell me more about the date.”

I shrug. “There’s not much to tell. Crane was really, really nervous, and I had a hard time talking to him. They kept stopping the shoot to give us topics to discuss, and then they taped us walking through the desert a lot.”

“I wonder why they started with Crane. He’s not the cutest one in the bunch.”

“He’s Tom1, that’s why. Dr. Christiansen has a weird thing for numbers and going in order.”

“Well, now you’ve got a few days before the next date.”

“Yeah.” I sigh. I have a feeling this whole show is going to drag on forever.

The door opens, and the production assistant comes in bearing dinner.

“I had the kitchen make you some wheat salad. I figured it would be easy to eat?” She sets a thimble-sized bowl into my hands.

“It’s perfect, thank you.” And it really is. The grains are toasted just right, and the tomato bits look fresh. It’s something I would have made for myself in my old house.

She turns pink at the compliment. “Great! Well, see you tomorrow. Sleep well!”

“I’ll leave you to your eating,” Susanna says as she stands and stretches. “More promo pictures tomorrow.”

“Joy. I’m sure I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Bright and early. Goodnight!”

I watch as she keys in her code for the door. It swings open, and she gives me a little wave as she walks out.

I wait a minute to make sure Susanna is well out of the building, and then I set my dinner carefully onto the floor and fly over to the light switch. I kick it off, and the room falls into darkness.

And there, on the keypad, are four glowing fingerprints.

Chapter 14

I zoom up to the keypad, listening for footsteps in the hall, but I can’t hear anything other than the pounding of my own heart and the fluttering of my wings. There are Susanna’s fingerprints, plain as a lightning bug’s butt. I wonder how many of them had to die to make that gel. I’ll have to start my own lightning bug farm when I get out of here to make up for it.

I can’t hear anyone outside my room, so I take a deep breath and push my hand firmly against the fingerprints one at a time. One, two, three, four. Nothing happens. Must not have been the right order. I try it again and still nothing happens.

I groan. This could take a while.

On the fifteenth try, the door clicks open and I almost squeal with excitement. I quickly memorize the order of the code so I’ll be able to get back inside without any problems.

The hall is dark and far too clean for a home that’s supposedly lived-in. I fly down to the ground and peek around the corner. A single dim sconce casts a dull yellow circle of light at the end of the hall. Across from my room is another closed door, but this one doesn’t have a keypad.

Now all I have to do is try and turn the handle. I fly up and wedge myself between the door jamb and the handle and push up with my butt. The handle turns with a creak, and I shove as hard as I can. “As hard as I can” only gives me a crack that’s a couple of inches, but it will work. I slip through into a library without a single comfortable place to curl up with a book. Plain wooden bookshelves line the walls. The books are probably all sorted and alphabetized.

I bet there’s not a single work of fiction in this entire room. Curiosity gets the best of me and I fly along the shelves. There are books on ecology, psychology, and biology. Entire dictionaries on insects and birds. I have no idea why Dr. Christiansen insists on having books in paper form. Everyone else in Lilliput reads digital books. But then again, her best friend is a clipboard. Seriously, who uses a clipboard anymore?

I come to an entire bookshelf dedicated to specific psychological disorders. There’s one row full of books about the autism spectrum. The blood rushes to my face. Does she seriously think I have autism? For a woman with such brilliance, Dr. Christiansen can be real stupid sometimes.

There’s another door on the far side of the library, and I bet it leads to her office. I return to the door I came from to double-check the hallway. It’s still empty.

The naked quiet works its way down into my soul, making me uneasy. Back across the library, I press my ear to what I hope is the office door and listen.

Nothing.

I try the handle. It’s unlocked, and the door swings open easily. I peek inside.

Score.

There’s her gigantic monitor. I’m surprised it’s so big. I almost expected her to have something ancient, but this appears to be state-of-the-art. I just have to find the power switch.

I turn on the computer, and gray-blue light washes across the room. Simple desk chair, plain wooden cabinets, an extra set of clothes on hangers. Pretty much what I expected.

Now where does she keep her records?

I scroll through the programs on her computer, searching for folders that contain financial documents or anything related to the future of Lilliput. Anything about the TV show or cats or…

“Journal,” I whisper. I double-tap on the monitor, and the folder opens to reveal hundreds of documents, one for each week of the last several years. I’m not sure I should read these, but they’re my best bet in my quest to figure out why Dr. Christiansen is trying to ruin my life.

My guilt evaporates when I think about it that way, and I double-tap the most recent entry. It’s handwritten. She must pen all her journal entries by hand and then scan them in. And her writing is the only thing about her that isn’t very organized or neat. I scroll through the page.

There are notes about the show, mostly insignificant details such as uniforms, supply lists, contacts, and advertising plans. I flick my finger against the screen to scroll it again.

Show budget. There we go.

But even this is disappointing. There’s a list of major sponsors and the amounts they’re paying (pounds upon pounds of gold—eek), but nothing indicates where all of this money is going to go. The only clue is a payout to an animal shelter in Copenhagen. They could be buying animals for testing, or it could be for some future episode where one of the guys rescues me from the jaws of a pit bull. I have no idea.

Then I find a folder inside called
Cancelled Sale.
What does that mean? I tap the section open and skim. Looks like Dr. Christiansen arranged to sell Lilliput to some American company but changed her mind. Sell it? Lilliput is her whole life—her baby. Why would she ever do that?

Okay,
this
is interesting. About six months ago, the same American company withdrew their funding from Lilliput. Dr. Christiansen cancelled the sale two months after that. I never knew we were being funded by an American company, but I guess that makes sense since Dr. Christiansen is originally from New York. But which part of the former United States is this company from and why on earth are they interested in Lilliput?

I scroll down some more and come to a far more intriguing section: “Thumbelina Case and Lawyers.” Below the title, Dr. Christiansen has pasted in a letter from the European Union 12
^th
district court of Denmark. I scan through it and stop when I read this:

The first hearing for case entitled “People vs. Lilliput Project I Inc.” is scheduled for December 15, 2081 at the Copenhagen Courthouse.

Complaint: That the defendant did knowingly and willingly conduct biological experimentation that resulted in the deaths of the six “Thumbelinas” that died on an unknown date in 2066.

Oh my god. I sink down onto the desk, my fingers pressed so hard against my lower lip that I can feel my teeth biting into skin. How could… How is this even…

I cover my face with my hands, but I’m unable to tear my eyes away from the words on the screen. If I stop watching them, they will come to life and kill me, too.