Flawed (27 page)

Juniper joins him, and the two of them side by side again angers me intensely once more.

“Don't you come near me ever again. Either of you. You both betrayed me once. I should have known you'd do it again.” I turn to Juniper. “You knew where he was hiding all this time?”

“Yes, but—”

“Up here?” I ask, shocked. I think of his hiding in one of the garden sheds and being cared for by Juniper, the very space I was imprisoned in and had to break free from. “I
knew
you were missing every night.” And then I realize. “I
knew
this was happening, but I just didn't want to believe it.… You made me look like a liar.” I know now why I was acting so cruelly toward her. I think I knew this but wouldn't admit it.

“No, Celestine, please, let me explain. I was just helping him!”

“Shut up! You're both liars!” I shout, and he backs down and looks away, not able to defend himself.

“This isn't what you think it is. She was just helping me hide out. We weren't, you know…” He runs his hands through his hair, in complete turmoil.

“You both looked very cozy to me,” I say, looking from one to the other.

“It's not like that,” he says. “I told you I can't go back to my dad. Not after what he did to you.”

“What
he
did to me? Don't you think you two had a part in it as well?”

This brings tears to Juniper's eyes, and Art's jaw hardens. I know it was a cheap jab, but I am so angry I want to hurt them both more than they have ever known, so that they can feel at least some of what I'm feeling now. I've wanted him every day, and every day she's known where he is, doing who knows what. She could have told me, she could have got a message to him for me, she could have helped me, but instead she helped him.

“Well, isn't this nice for you.” I look around. “Cozy. Guess what, Art?
I
don't have a hiding place. There is none in this world for me. I have to face it all,
every day
on my own. I don't have the luxury that you do, using people to make things better for you like you always do. But you can't stay here forever. Someday you will actually be a man and face it all.” That seems to deeply hurt him, and I'm glad. “You always said you'd be there for me, but you're nothing but a coward. Both of you.”

“Celestine,” he says, his voice cracking as it nears a sob. “I miss you so much.”

The emotion from him is real. It's raw. I might be stupid, but I believe him.

“Then why are you sitting here with my
sister
?”

“Let me explain,” he says, angrily now, frustrated that I won't let him talk. He steps toward me, and I back away.

“I can't.” I think of another face-to-face with Judge Crevan in his courtroom, and the fight within me returns. I'm not done yet. “I'm not going to let you two ruin my life again.”

I have four minutes. I turn around and run.

*   *   *

The next few minutes are a blur of leaves, branches snapping in my face, stones on my feet, and twigs cutting my legs, my breath loud as I run the fastest down the hill that I have ever run before. I don't look at my watch; I don't have time. I sprint to my backyard wall. I climb it faster than I ever have and land on our grass, which feels like fur in comparison with what I've trodden over tonight. I can see Dad, Mom, and Mary May in the living room. They are looking at the clock on the wall. Dad is pacing. Mom's hands are clasped by her chest, begging, praying as I was earlier for a miracle to happen. I push open the back door and fling myself at their feet, on my knees, panting and crying, unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to see, I am so dizzy.

I look up. The minute hand reads one minute past eleven.

I look at Mary May in desperation, unable to speak, still panting.

“One minute past eleven,” she says.

Mom and Dad explode with anger at her, at the injustice.

Then suddenly the watch on her wrist starts beeping. Confused, she lifts it and studies it, and I realize our timings are different. Surely, I will be judged by the Whistleblower's time. Mom and Dad must realize the same thing and freeze as they look at her for confirmation.

I look up at her from the floor, and I have a sudden fit of giggles. I start laughing, and it hurts my ribs where Logan winded me, but the pain makes me laugh even more. The three of them watch me on the floor, lying down and holding my sides, my head bleeding, my legs and arms scraped and cut, laughing like a maniac.

I did it.

I beat them all.

 

FORTY-EIGHT

MY PHONE RINGS
at 4:00
AM
, waking me in the middle of a terrifying dream. I'm standing in the viewing room, hands up against the glass, and Carrick is in the Branding Chamber, tied to the chair. They have forgotten to give him the anesthetic, and he is screaming so loudly, his face contorted in pain, the veins bulging from his muscular neck. Instead of Tina, June, Bark, and Funar in the Branding Chamber, it's Logan, Natasha, Gavin, and Colleen.

“There's something you didn't tell me, isn't there?” Pia says on the other end of the phone. Her voice is low and urgent, not her usual perky TV voice, and it takes me a moment to register what's going on, to differentiate between being asleep and awake.

“What? About what?”

“In the Branding Chamber. Your family was all sent away before the fifth brand, but there was somebody else in there who saw what happened. Wasn't there?”

I'm suddenly wide awake. I sit up and feel the pain in my body from Logan's kicks. I groan.

“Are you okay?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

“Celestine?”

“I'm here.”

“I know you were looking for Mr. Berry at the castle.”

She knows something. “He's my solicitor. There were things I needed to discuss with him about my case.”

“Why have you left seven urgent messages on his voice mail over the past few days?”

This stops me. How does she know that?

“Mr. Berry was in the Branding Chamber at the time of the sixth branding, wasn't he?” she says quickly, urgently. “He saw.”

I freeze. I don't know if I can let her know this. I don't know if I can trust her.

“Who's there with you?”

“No one.” It sounds like she's moving around. There's a clicking sound on the phone again. Her presence comes and goes. “I'm alone, I promise. Celestine, trust me.”

Goose bumps rise on my skin. This is the moment. It's either make or break. If I trust her and she's lying, I'm putting Mr. Berry in grave danger. And after tonight, there is no one that I can trust. Then again, I'm alone in all this, whom else have I got to help me?

“Pia, this can't all be on your terms,” I say. “I need to know why you're asking.”

She says something I can't hear properly.

“What? Pia, where are you? This is a bad line.”

“Doesn't matter.
Think
, Celestine. There's something you're not telling me and I need to know it.”

I'm sick of all this, sick of everyone taking from me. “Why the hell should I tell you?” I hiss, not wanting to wake anyone in the house. “So you can twist it in Crevan's favor? He's not going to let you print any of this. If nobody knows about this now, it's for a reason. He's gotten rid of just about everybody who's a witness to it. In fact, he's probably listening to us
now
. How do I know you're not trying to set me up? How do I know you're not working with him to make sure there's nobody left who saw what happened?”

“He can't hear this conversation,” she says through clicking noises, her voice coming and going. “And you can trust me. You have to trust me,” she says, more clearly this time. “Who else have you got, Celestine? Who else do you know can find out information for you?”

I think fast. “What do I get in return?”

“Celestine,” she almost shrieks, “I'm trying to help you here.”

“You're trying to help yourself.”

She sighs. “What do you want?”

“I want information on a person.”

“Who?”

“Carrick.” I don't even know his surname. “He was in the cell beside me in Highland Castle.”

“The Flawed boy? Why?”

“No questions. It's my own business.”

“Does he know something?”

“No!” I lie. “I just want to find him. Let's just say I'm running low on friends right now. I need someone who can understand what I'm going through.”

“Fine. I'll get whatever details I can, but I never interviewed him. It wasn't a story we wanted.”

This maddens me.

“I'll find out something and get back to you. Now you think for me, Celestine. I need something. I need more. Was Mr. Berry in the Branding Chamber? Did he see the sixth brand? The reports say he wasn't there after the fifth, that he was removed with your family. Are they wrong?”

A long pause.

“Yes, Mr. Berry saw the sixth brand,” I finally reveal. She's right, I need her help.

I picture that day again, in the Branding Chamber. I have tried so hard to block it out, but I can't. It comes to me in my nightmares, at certain times of the day when I'm least expecting it, the pain, the smell, the horror of it, and I want to escape it. It happens when my dad comfortingly puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He doesn't know it, but I tense up, immediately taken back to the chair, feeling Tina's touch before each branding. To willingly put myself back in that chamber, while in the comfort of my own bed, is against everything I have been trying so hard to do, especially after the events of tonight, when I'm scared and sore and want to forget it all. But I go there. The smells, the sound, the fear, my banging heart, the ache in my wrists and ankles. Crevan shouting at me in his bloodred cape, the angry spittle flying from his mouth.

“He wasn't thrown out with your parents?” she asks.

“He somehow made his way back in. He had a phone in his hand. He was recording.”

No need to mention Carrick being in there, too. I need to keep something further for myself.

“Recording? There's video? Oh my God. Okay, thank you, Celestine. Thank you.” She hangs up.

My heart is racing, anxious from reliving the moment, for revealing Mr. Berry's possible video, also for asking about Carrick. I don't want her to think that he has anything to do with this, and I don't want to get him into trouble, but I have no other way of finding him.

Now that I'm awake and have the Branding Chamber scenario firmly in my head, I can't go back to sleep. My head is pounding from hitting it earlier on the car, and I feel a large bump on my head. My mouth is dry, and I'm parched. I get out of bed, feeling shaky, and throw an oversized cardigan around my T-shirt.

I go downstairs to the kitchen, going straight to the fridge for water. As I open it, I sense a presence and turn around to see Mary May sitting in the corner of the room, in darkness, watching me. The overhead light of the oven fan is all she has to see by. She has a book, which she covers with her hands, the first time I've seen her flesh without the leather gloves. She smiles at my obvious fright, though she seems tired.

“What are you … I mean, why are you … you're staying the night?” I ask.

She takes me in, looks me up and down slowly, and it makes me wrap the cardigan around me tighter. This woman gives me the creeps.

“Bearing in mind the events of tonight, I thought it best I stay here. That's a fine bump on your head,” she observes.

My hand goes to it, and I wince. It's pounding. I need water and headache pills. I help myself as she watches.

“You're worried I'll have a concussion?”

“No.” She laughs, but it's not a joyous sound. It's cruel, like she's laughing at me, as though I'm the most stupid person she's ever met. “I wanted to make sure you stay where you should be. No rule breaking. I know about events like these, what they do to a person.”

“What do you mean?” I down the pills and water.

“Revenge,” she says, and I see the coldness and the darkness in her eyes, and I think back to what she did to her sister, reporting her to the Guild, and then to her entire family when it turned its back on her.

“Is that why you did what you did to your family?” I ask. “Out of revenge?”

“No,” she says, not blinking, not seeming bothered that I've asked a personal question. “I caught my sister with my boyfriend. Reporting her to the Guild was out of revenge.”

The story is too close to home for me right now, and I wonder if she's testing me. Does she know about Art and Juniper? She couldn't. If she did, the Whistleblowers would have found him by now.

“My family…” She looks away a little, and I detect a hint of sadness that is quickly covered up. “That was just necessary.”

I get the shivers from head to toe.

She looks me over again. “Dr. Smith says nothing's broken.”

“No. If you don't count my heart, my pride, and my complete belief in humanity.”

I hold her stare, her eyes black in the darkness, and I almost think she gets it.

“No,” she says, simply, going back to her book. I see a Jane Austen cover. “I don't.”

 

FORTY-NINE

THAT AFTERNOON PIA
comes to the house. Apart from the dramatic trip to the police station with Dad, I have spent the day in bed curled up in a ball. Still aching from last night's attack, I drag myself out of bed, pull on some loose dark clothes, and meet her in the library. I expect her to be seated in one of her crisp peach chic pencil skirts and blouses, but, instead, she's pacing. Her shiny black hair is scraped back sharply, and she's wearing jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie.