Shade Me (25 page)

Nik. Must get to the bottom of things. Family. What Lies Beneath.

I was the third. The one who smoked on her window ledge.

Peyton Hollis thought she was my sister.

I
SANK INTO
the chair by her bed and picked up her hand again. I didn't realize tears were streaming down my face. I didn't feel sadness. Not yet. I felt so many emotions, but sadness wasn't one of them. They all tornadoed into something that was too big to label.

I was bewildered more than anything.

It didn't seem possible. Peyton was wrong. She had to be. Just because we both saw colors didn't have to mean we were sisters. There were lots of synesthetes out there, all blissfully and beautifully unrelated. It couldn't be. The odds against Peyton and me being sisters were just too astronomical. My parents were in love. I didn't remember much about the time before Mom's death, but I knew that much. They
loved each other. They held hands and cuddled and smiled at each other and called each other
babe
.

But if this were true—if Peyton and I were actually sisters—one of my parents had to have cheated on the other.

Which one? My dad, who was still so devoted ten years after his wife's death? No way. My mom? God, could my mom have had a baby with someone else? I refused to believe that could be true.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'd misread the clues. Maybe Peyton was trying to tell me something else—that we were connected in a different way. Or maybe she was telling me that her sister—Luna—had two sides to her, almost like a third sister. That the dangerous side of Luna was who she'd been afraid of.

But then I couldn't help remembering what I'd found in the Hollywood Dreams office. The birth certificates, one set of which had the parents' names whited out.

I rubbed my hands over my temples, groaning. How would I ever know for sure what any of this meant?

“Peyton,” I whispered. “Peyton, please wake up.” My nose ran, and I let it run over my upper lip. “Peyton, I need you. I'm so confused.”

I hated crying. I prided myself on rarely shedding tears. Crying was for weak girls. Crying was for girls with dead mothers.

Suddenly the lack of change in Peyton, the crimson that
was her constant companion, was more than just an annoyance, more than just a reminder of a bad time.

It was a reminder of the most devastating loss of my life.

The last time I spoke to my mother, that last day before I went to my friend Wendy's house, she was putting pigtails in my hair, humming a song while she worked. I loved the sound of my mother's hum. I loved her voice. I wanted to sing like her someday. I imagined us singing together, two grown women with stunning harmonies.

You are so lucky to have this beautiful hair,
she'd said. I remembered that part clearly.

It looks just like yours,
I'd said, and I'd really believed it had. People told us all the time that we looked alike.
You could be an older sister,
they would say to my mother, and she would touch her neck shyly and laugh, a breathy laugh.

Mine's got all this ugly gray,
she'd said, although I never could find any. My mom still looked like her high school photos, except the smile in her high school photos was wider than I'd ever seen her smile at home. Her high school smile was an easy smile.
But you do have my nose and my thick eyebrows.

I remembered examining my face in the mirror, leaning so close I could see the pores in my skin.
Do you think if I had a sister she would look like me?
I'd asked, and I hadn't noticed it at the time, but remembering the moment now, I could see it plain as day. Her face had darkened. She'd
faltered. She'd pulled my pigtail tight and patted me on both shoulders.
You ready to get to Wendy's?
she'd asked. Was I remembering that darkening, or was I only imagining remembering it now that I was searching for lies?

I knew that my dad didn't see colors. He would have told me. He wouldn't have been so confused by my ability. He wouldn't have been so worried about it. But did Mom see them? I remembered asking Dad about it once, on our way home from the doctor's office.

“I don't know, sweetie,” he'd said, hands gripping the steering wheel.

“But wouldn't Mommy tell you if she did?” I asked, unable to understand how someone could keep their colors secret.

“I'd like to think so,” he said.

“But how did I get it, if neither of you have it?”

He'd glanced at me, reached down and patted my knee softly, and smiled. “You're just special, I guess,” he'd said, and we'd let it drop.

Since then, I'd learned that it was more than possible to keep your synesthesia a secret, and, with neither parent admitting to being the source of my “specialness,” I would never really know where I got it.

If it was true . . . if Peyton was my sister . . . did that mean Mom was Peyton's mom, too? How was it even possible? Or could Dad be Peyton's dad? I tried to imagine him having
anything to do with another woman, but all I could ever conjure were images of him holding Mom in a hug. Still, at least if Dad was the cheater, he could have a child resulting from a one-nighter and not know it. If Mom was the cheater, that would mean she
knew
I had a sister out there. She knew about Peyton. And had never said anything.

If only I could have seen beneath the Wite-Out on those birth certificates.

And I didn't even want to begin to think what that meant my true relationship with Dru was.

No matter who had done what, there was one truth—if I was Peyton's sister, my life was a lie. A complete and total lie. My parents were liars. Cheaters. Abandoners.

“Peyton,” I said again. I placed my hand on top of hers, sandwiching her palm. I rubbed it. It was so soft and warm. She was in there somewhere. “I need you to wake up. I need to know what you know. I don't understand and I need your help. I've done everything I can.” I felt a tear slip down my cheek. “Please, Peyton,” I begged. “Please wake up.”

As if on cue, just like in a movie, Peyton's eyelids fluttered. My heart stopped. I held my breath and sat up straighter as the blue of her eyes began to show. Silver squiggles danced in the air. Her eyes rolled and then shifted to my face. When they landed on me, her lips twitched into a serene smile.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, letting my breath out. “Oh my God!” I shouted. “Peyton? You're awake! Oh my God!”

Just as quickly as they had opened, her eyes slid shut. I fumbled down the side of the bed, searching for the nurse call button, found it, and pressed, wiping the wetness from my cheeks even as startled new tears flowed. I pressed the button over and over, my thumb jamming it so hard I thought I might break it.

“Can I help you?” a nurse asked, her voice bored.

“She's awake,” I said excitedly. “You need to come in here because she's awake.”

The nurse didn't respond, but I soon heard footsteps coming down the hallway toward the room. A large nurse came in, belly first, and made her way toward the bed.

“She woke up,” I said breathlessly, jumping back so she could get at Peyton. She did, picking up Peyton's wrist and checking her pulse, then looking her over, attending to the monitors. “Her eyes opened,” I said. “She smiled at me.”

“It's not unusual for there to be involuntary muscle action,” the nurse said. “She's been twitching for days.”

“But her eyes opened. It wasn't a twitch. They were open. She smiled at me.”

The nurse shook her head. “I'm sorry. Not of her own volition,” she said. “You're not the first one to be fooled, so don't feel bad. Her brother was very excited for a few moments earlier this week.”

I remembered Dru saying her eyes had fluttered while he was there, too. It had been nothing. It was still nothing.

“But she smiled.” I could hear the whine in my voice, the disappointment, as the squiggles died out and fell to the ground like broken balloons.

The nurse placed her hand on my arm. “Honey, it's very important that you keep up this hope. Your positive energy might help a miracle happen.”

“It's not positive energy and hope,” I said, whisking my arm away angrily. “She woke up. I was talking to her and she smiled at me. I saw it. I know what I saw.”

“Let me know if you see it again, and I'll come check her out, okay?” the nurse said as she waltzed out the door, as if nothing astonishing had just happened.

“I know what I saw,” I said to her back.
Yes, Nikki, you know exactly what you saw,
my brain supplied.
The same thing you're seeing now. A sea of blood so deep and thick you can't help but think of your mom. You can't quit going back to that last day. You're seeing it, Nikki. You can't not see it.

I pressed my fists into my eyes, shaking with rage, hating my synesthesia with everything I had. Hating Peyton for first making me fear her, then making me love her, and now making me face telling her good-bye.

I wouldn't do it. Not yet.

I stumbled out of the room, crying, seething, leaving Peyton behind. Fuck it. Fuck
her
. You didn't just become sisters with someone and never tell them. You didn't leave a bunch of bullshit clues lying around in colors so that she
would follow them like an ignorant dog. You didn't set people up to be beaten and drugged, terrified. You didn't do this to people, and the fact that Peyton thought you could was exactly what made her a Hollis rather than a Kill.

If all this was true, either my dad had an affair with Peyton's mom, or my mom had an affair with the wretched Bill Hollis. Either way, I didn't want to know. I didn't want to know any of this anymore. I wanted out.

I pressed the elevator button with the same force and repetition that I'd pressed the nurse call button. “Get me out of here. Just get me out of here,” I whimpered to myself as I pushed and pushed.

The doors opened and I jumped on. As soon as they closed, I made a fist and punched the elevator wall. The car didn't even shake from the impact, so I punched it again, harder. I felt the jolt through my fingers, my hand. I punched harder still to feel it in my arm. “Screw you, Peyton,” I said to the empty elevator. “Screw you and your involuntary twitches. Screw you and your movies. Screw you and your stupid pictures.” I pulled out my phone and called up her photo-sharing site. There it was, so obvious, as plain as day. I felt the urge to sneeze and scrolled away from the
What Lies Beneath
photo to the one of her family standing on a pier. I could see it. Something in her eyes. Something that set her apart from the rest of them. Something that reminded me of me.

The doors slid open, and a familiar face greeted me from the other side of them. I let my head drop back against the wall in frustration. Of course.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Detective Martinez. I gestured to his suit jacket. “You're dressed like a cop this time, so I guess you're not here to spar.”

“I came to see how Peyton was doing.” He squinted at the streaks that the dried tears had left on my cheeks. “Are you okay? Did something happen up there?” he asked.

“She didn't die,” I said. “If that's what you're asking.”

“It wasn't.” A flash of yellow from his badge area. Whatever. Who cared anymore? “I meant did something happen to you?”

“Is it not okay for me to mourn the loss of a classmate?” I snarled.

“Yes, of course it is. But I thought you weren't friends.”

“Oh, if only you knew,” I said. The doors started to close, so I stuck my arm out to make them jump back, and then piled out of the elevator, which meant I had to slide way too close to Detective Martinez once again. This guy had serious personal space issues.

He reached out and took hold of my wrist. “I would love to know,” he said. “I've been begging to know. You could tell me.”

“What's the point, anyway?” I asked. “You've got all the
answers. Why even bother to follow another lead?” I started to walk away.

“You mean like Vanessa Hollis's little Molly enterprise?” he asked at my back. I stopped and came back to him. “Like Bill Hollis's ties to some very popular escorts? I'm not as in the dark as you think, Nikki. I haven't been able to pinpoint anything, but I'm getting close, aren't I? I can tell by the look on your face that I'm a lot closer than you thought I'd get.”

I licked my lips. The yellow was reminding me of lemonade and making me thirsty. It was emanating from his badge and dissipating into the air like gas. What should I tell him? Everything? Just open up and spill my guts, which would lead to discussions about my synesthesia, my link to Peyton, my mom? And what about Dru? In all of what Detective Martinez said, he was the only one whose name hadn't come up. And the one who Detective Martinez was so eager to pin this on. “You can't even begin to imagine the mess this is,” I said. “You're so not close, you're not even in the same stratosphere. I'll tell you again. I know nothing. Stay out of my life.”

This time when I walked away, I vowed to keep moving no matter what he said at my back. But it turned out he said nothing, so I was free to go.

I walked across the parking lot, unsure what I was going to do next. There was something Vee had said that
had perked my ears. Something about if Peyton's sister ever looked in the bushes she would be shocked at what she'd find there. Had Peyton hidden something in the bushes beneath my bedroom window on the night she was attacked? Was it really that straightforward?

But I didn't care. I didn't want to do this anymore. I wanted to walk away. If I looked in the bushes . . . if I found something there, I would only be enmeshed in this thing even further.

I kept walking, and when I turned the corner into the shadows of the parking lot, I noticed the light of my phone in my hand. Idly, I looked at the screen, at the Hollis family photo, taken on a pier. What had always stood out to me in this photo was Dru. He was so gorgeous, so at ease, so set apart from the rest of the family.