Still Point (18 page)

“Hi,” Justin said. His eyes were warm but careful, like he was afraid the surprise would make me relapse into shock. He was acting like I was back in the detention center after a blackout.

“I missed something, didn't I?” My mind reversed to Scott's apartment. The last thing I could piece together was getting off the train.

Jax, Clare, and Scott trickled in. Clare and Scott hung back by the door next to Justin, but Jax walked over to me and handed me a mug with a tea bag string hanging over the rim. Our eyes met, and so did our fingers. His skin felt as warm as the mug.

Everyone was quiet as they stared at me like I was a mental patient on home leave. Jax sat next to me on the couch, and my mom sat on my other side. She pointed to the tray on the end table, and Jax picked it up and set it between us.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“Like somebody tried to make a tossed salad with my brain,” I said, and sipped the green tea.

As I helped myself to toast, Justin explained what happened.

“You were followed last night. Do you remember anything?” he asked.

I squinted as I tried to focus on any memory. I slowly shook my head.

“Why didn't you tell anyone you were leaving Scott's?” he asked. “We could have taken you home.”

I looked down at the floor. I remembered why I'd left, but now wasn't the time to get into it.

“You were drugged,” Justin said, and I looked up at him.

“Vaughn?” I asked, and he nodded. I leaned my head against the couch cushions. “I really hate that man.” A few broken pieces of memories flashed back. A black car parked near the train stop. Running and diving past a train. Everything else was foggy.

“Did you catch him?” I asked.

Justin shook his head, his jaw tight. “They had backup waiting.”

I pieced together what he was saying, but one detail wasn't clear.

“How did you find me?”

In the same instant a memory flooded back of Justin holding me and setting me down inside a car. My eyes must have charged with anger because Jax grabbed the tea out of my hand before I spilled it all over my lap. Or threw it. My heart convulsed and I tossed the blanket off the couch and jumped to my feet, my knee stinging with the sudden movement.

“How long have you been working for my dad?” I jabbed my finger at him and my voice echoed in the room.

His eyes were calm. “I'm not.”

“Don't you dare lie to me!” I thought back to when we'd first met, when I found out that the reason Justin was seeking me out was to get close to my dad. What if he had been working with him all along?

“Have I ever lied to you?” His eyes dared me to remember a single time. I looked at my mom; she was watching us.

I stuck my hands on my hips. “It's a little too convenient, you popping up to save me, not that I don't appreciate it. But only my dad can track me.”

“And it turned out to be the best thing,” Justin stated, his voice as calm as a still lake. “He saved your life.”

“So you
are
on his side?”

Justin stepped closer and held out his hands. “No, Maddie. I can't believe you have to ask me that. Your dad called my phone last night,” he said. “He saw your signal zigzagging all over the road. He knew something was wrong. He talked me through your location so I could find you.”

I thought about this. “How did he get your number?” I asked. “You're not listed.”

“I was a little too distracted with your being kidnapped to ask him that.” Justin threw up his hands. “He's your dad. He probably has FBI agents pulling information for him, or magic wizards—who knows? He can find anything.”

I believed him, but it still didn't make sense. “I'm sorry,” I said. “But why you? Why didn't he just call the cops?”

“I don't think your dad trusts the cops. I think this was his way of saying he trusts me.”

I sat back down, staring at the wall in front of me. There was a mosaic mirror hung on the wall. Even the cracked and broken pieces spun a beautiful pattern.

“He trusts you?” I asked.

“I think so,” Justin said. “Actions speak pretty loud.”

“Do you trust him?” my mom asked, finally speaking up. She was looking at Justin.

“No,” he said. “I don't.”

Justin explained that they'd picked up my mom and Baley the night before, in case Vaughn was watching the house. “We're going to have you guys stay here for a few days. Until we find Vaughn.”

I looked around the studio apartment and at Jax. “We're staying here?”

“It's the only safe house in town,” Justin said.

His phone beeped, and at the same instant Clare's, Scott's, and my mom's phones jingled. They all looked down at their screens. Justin's eyebrows straightened out. My mom and Clare looked shocked.

“Did they catch Vaughn?” I asked. My mom shook her head and Clare bit her bottom lip. Scott squinted at his phone like he was trying to decipher a cryptic code.

“What is going on?” I asked, my tone demanding.

“They just announced the DS vote will be held Friday in Portland,” my mom said. She read the breaking news story as it unfolded on her screen. “‘The central offices of Digital School, Inc., will determine whether DS remains a national law or becomes a state-by-state decision. Each state will be given two votes. Economists are predicting a unanimous decision to continue DS, an educational policy that has been one of the most successful in history, developed by Kevin Freeman sixteen years ago. Fourteen countries have switched to a digital school venue, although the U.S. is currently the only country to have it in place as a national law. U.S. students currently score highest in the world on academic standardized testing. If passed, the law would keep DS a mandatory nationwide program for the next ten years.'”

She set her phone down in her lap.

“It's already Wednesday,” Clare said.

“Where's Dad?” I asked, my voice wavering. I was close to tears. “He promised we would talk before any of this happened. He promised he'd work with me.”

My mom looked almost as devastated as I felt. “I'm sorry, Maddie. Your father can't control the government's agenda. I think he's doing all he can.”

“He hasn't
done
anything!” I shouted. I jumped up again and headed out the side door because I needed to scream. When I stomped down to the garden, I had so much forward momentum, I kept going. I headed for the gate, my feet grinding the rocks below me.

“Talk to me, Maddie,” Justin said when he caught up.

“Take me to my house,” I said, my eyes on the fence.

“It's not—”

“Now,” I demanded.

He walked around my side and blocked me at the gate. I glared up at him.

“We don't know if it's safe,” he said, his face taut.

“Get out of my way. Please.”

He regarded me. A worry line formed a crease between his eyes because he knew better than to tell me no. “Fine,” he said. He unlocked the doors of a blue van parked on the street, and I sat down in the passenger seat. Scott, Clare, my mom, and Jax, who had followed us, all climbed into the back.

The van was silent as we drove. I could feel the anxiety inside, the shifting, toe-tapping, finger-drumming spiked energy as we all imagined the next two days. I kept my eyes glued out the windows. My hands were folded tight in my lap. My mind was stuck in a desperate repetitive prayer.
He did not let me down. He did not let me down.

When the van stopped, I jumped out and Justin hurried after me to the front steps, like a bodyguard.

“There has to be something here,” I said. “I know he left me something.” I refused to believe my dad would go back on his word. My heart was breaking and I needed proof that he loved me. I needed proof that he cared. My eyes burned as I opened the door. I walked inside and scanned the foyer, looking for a note. The room was clean, not even a spot of dirt on the shiny laminate floor. I ran upstairs to my room and threw the door open. My bed was made. My carpet was recently vacuumed. Not a single pillow was out of place. No note. I turned on the wall screen to see if he'd left a personalized message. I scanned my finger. Nothing. I searched the other wall screens in the house for messages. My fingers shook as I turned on the screens. Nothing.

I stormed down the hall, anger climbing through my chest, down to my fingertips. My parents' master suite bedroom was big enough for twenty beds. I searched the floor for something. Anything. But nothing was out of place.

I turned down the hall and walked downstairs, slowly, taking one step at a time and trying to think. I barely saw the crowd gathered in the foyer, looking up at me. They were an audience watching the worst scene of my life unfold.

I looked in one more place, his office, where he spent more time than any other room in the house. I walked around the oak desk, my father's domestic throne. I had the urge to smash everything in the room, every gold-framed piece of evidence and ostentatious award of Digital School, Inc.

I sat at his desk and opened the top drawer, the only one that was unlocked. There was nothing inside but a few DS brochures.

I looked up. Everyone had walked into the office.

“I'm sorry, Maddie,” Justin said. “I know you wanted to trust him.”

I looked up at my mom and it gave me one more idea. I ran upstairs, into my bedroom, and looked inside the bookshelf. There was a blue sticky note inside, pasted to the bottom of one of the shelves. It was handwritten, in old-fashioned cursive.

Maddie, I was trying to protect you. Ignorance can be a shield. The truth has thorns. I'm sorry.
—
Dad

I reread the note before I crumpled it in my hands and squeezed until my fingers burned.

“I hate him!” I yelled through the empty room, and my voice echoed down the hallway. “I hate him.”

I bolted downstairs, my mind filled with so much anger I couldn't see straight. I needed fresh air—it felt like the air in our house was toxic to my lungs. I fumbled with a lock on the patio door and slid it open. I walked outside and stopped for a moment to look for the sun, but it was hiding under thick, gray clouds. It was always hiding these days.

This had all been pointless and worthless and useless. I had wasted weeks staying home, all for nothing. And my dad had known all along. He'd never wanted to help me. He'd only wanted to isolate me, to cut me off from the fuel of my friends in order to trap me.

Everyone walked outside in silence.

I wanted to cry or scream or kick a punching bag. I wanted to rip something apart.

Scott looked nervously around. “Anybody have a sedative for her?” he asked, only half joking. “Or maybe some Midol?” Clare slapped him on the back of his head.

I narrowed my eyes at the plastic roses and climbing morning glories. I stared at our small outdoor yard with a high brown fence tucked in around it so we wouldn't have to see another soul. So we wouldn't have to connect to anybody. I walked around the soft plastic grass, and I wanted to pull it up and yank it all out of the ground. I looked over my shoulder at Justin, Jax, Scott, Clare, and my mom standing on the patio watching me like they were watching a ticking bomb. But I could hardly see them. My eyes were turned inward.

Why plant these fake flowers? What was the point? We were never out here. No one was. Why make it look homey when it wasn't? Why look like we appreciate nature when we don't? It was all lies, it was all aesthetics, it was all bullshit.

My finger touched a thick plastic thorn, and I looked down at the rosebush that was closest to the porch steps. I remembered what my father had told me when he saw me outside a few weeks earlier.
Don't touch that one.

I couldn't believe it. I looked at the note in my hand.
The truth has thorns.
I bent down and pulled off a layer of red bricks that were weighting down the ground around the bush. I tossed them to the side.

“Um, what is she doing?” I heard Clare ask.

“Is this really the time for landscaping, Maddie?” I heard Scott say.

I ignored them. My mind was screaming.

I worked on the plastic tarp around the rosebush. My dad had anchored it in with spikes, but I twisted and pulled them loose. I pried the tarp off to reveal plastic mulch. I buried my fingers inside, feeling the cool, smooth substance. I flung the mulch into a pile next to the tarp and ripped the stapled plastic roots out of the ground. I threw them aside and dug into the hole until my fingers hit real, cool dirt, and then I stopped.

It felt like I was finally connecting to something I'd lost.

I took deep breaths and tried to get ahold of the emotions flooding through my veins and controlling my mind and my movements. When I looked up, my eyes shot straight to Jax's. He was the only one smiling, which made me feel better. I needed someone to remind me I was normal. Or maybe that I wasn't alone in my insanity.

I sat there with my fists in the cold ground, and there was something soothing about it, so I held my hands in. I looked at my mom.

“I don't hate Dad,” I said quietly.

“I know you don't,” she said.

My eyes started to fill with tears. “I want to hate him,” I said. “But I can't. I've been so angry with him for so long. But I can't hate him.”

“Then let it go,” my mom said. “Vaughn isn't the enemy and your dad isn't the enemy. Anger is always the enemy, Maddie.”

I pulled my hands out of the ground and examined the black earth under my fingernails, staining the tips gray. I looked at the sweat glistening on my arms. I took a deep breath and squinted up at a slit of blue sky fighting for a path through the clouds.

“Maddie,” Justin said. I glanced up, but he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were pinned to the ground by my feet.

There was a corner of a white envelope lying in the heap of mulch I had moved. It must have gotten tossed up in my manic garden maintenance. I stared down at its plastic surface, shiny against a dusting of dull brown dust.