Authors: Megan Shepherd
The Cage (2 page)
Count backward.
Ten . . .
She forced herself to look to the right, and nearly choked. Opposite the farm, a stony outcropping covered with sea-green lichen sloped into a valley of windswept trees. Enormous oaks, and firs, and evergreens; all covered with a dusting of white. Not like the leafless winter forests of Virginia, but an arctic tundra. A cold breeze blew, carrying a snowflake that settled on Cora’s sunburned palm. She shoved to her feet.
Screw counting.
She shook her hand wildly, pacing. Even more impossible was the slice of water directly in front of her. Gently lapping waves stretched to an ocean bay that made her stomach plummet like she was sinking. She spit out the phantom taste of salt water. An ocean didn’t belong here.
She
didn’t belong here.
Sweat poured down her temples, despite the tundra wind. On the far side of the bay, mountains loomed, and even what looked like a cityscape. A desert, a farm, an ocean, a forest—habitats that couldn’t exist right next to one another. It had to be a secret government biosphere experiment. Or a rich maniac’s whim. Or virtual reality.
The granite-and-ozone smell clogged in her nose, and she steadied herself until the sensation passed. She wasn’t a little girl—she could handle this. She
had
to. As her breath slowed, a dark shape appeared at the bottom of the hill, where the ocean lapped against the farm’s edge.
If she squinted, the shape looked like a person.
“Hey!” She tumbled down the path. Her feet tangled in the grass underfoot as the trail led between rows of peppers bursting with ripeness.
“Hey! I need help!”
The path gave way to a small beach. The person—a dark-haired girl in a white sundress—must have been panicked, because she was curled in the sand, frozen with fear.
“Hey!” Cora stopped short at the edge of the sea, as black-deep water and reality caught up to her all at once. The girl wasn’t curled in panic. Facedown in the surf, hair matted, water billowing around motionless legs.
“Oh, no.” Cora squeezed her eyes shut. “Get up. Please.”
When she opened her eyes, the girl was still motionless. She forced herself to step into the surf, wincing as it swallowed her ankles, and dropped to her knees. In Bay Pines, one of the delinquents had suffocated herself with a plastic shopping bag. Cora had been writing song lyrics in the hallway as the police wheeled the body away: glassy eyes, blue lips.
Just like this girl.
Except this girl also had angry bruises on her shoulder, like someone had grabbed her. For a few moments, all Cora could hear was blood pulsing through her ears. A tattoo flashed on the girl’s neck beneath the bruises, a collection of black dots that meant nothing to Cora and never would, because she could never ask the girl about them. Behind her, the forest was perfectly silent, with only the soft falling snow to tell her that the world hadn’t stopped.
She stood. The water seemed colder. Deeper. Maybe those bruises meant the girl had been murdered. Or maybe the girl had drowned trying to escape. Either way, Cora didn’t want to be next.
She raced out of the water. Stay in one place. Don’t fight back. That was the advice she’d gotten as a kindergartener. But how could she stay in one place, with a dead body?
Footsteps broke the silence. She whirled, searching the spaces between the trees.
There.
White clothes flashed between the branches. Two legs. A person. Cora’s muscles tightened to run—or fight.
A boy trudged out of the forest.
He was about her age. Cute, in a messy way. He wore jeans and a rumpled white shirt beneath a leather jacket, looking liked he’d stumbled out of a pool hall after a night of loud music and beer. As out of place as Cora—though he was barefoot, like she was. His dark hair fell around brown eyes that looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
The boy broke the tension first. “Aren’t you . . .” His words died when he saw the body. “Is she
dead
?”
He took a step forward. Cora scrambled backward, ready to bolt, and he stopped. He popped a knuckle in his left hand. Strong hands, Cora noted. Hands that could have held a girl under water.
“Back away,” Cora threatened. “If you touch me, I’ll claw your eyes out.”
Sure enough, that stopped him. He dragged a hand over his mouth, eyes a little glassy. “Wait. Do you think
I
killed her?”
“She has bruises on her arm. She struggled with someone.”
“Well, it wasn’t me! Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I didn’t kill anyone. My clothes are dry. If I’d done it, I’d be sopping wet.” He paced to the edge of the surf, where the water brushed his toes—not afraid of the water, like she’d been—and rubbed his temples. “She must have fifty pounds on you, so I doubt you killed her, but
someone
did. We should get out of here before they come back. Find a phone or a radio. We can try that barn.”
A phone. She longed to hear her father’s voice on the other end, telling her that it was all a misunderstanding . . . but a girl was dead. Whoever the girl was, those bruises were more than just a misunderstanding to her.
“I watch TV,” Cora said. “I know how this goes. You act all friendly and then strangle me behind the barn. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, digging deep into his scalp, as though his head splintered with pain too. “In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t TV. There’s no one but me and a murderer, so I suggest we help each other.”
Cora eyed him warily. Her first day in juvie, a gap-toothed girl had offered her a contraband Coca-Cola—a welcome present, the girl had said, to help her adjust. Two days later, the girl had punched her in the ribs and stolen her iPod.
You might have grown up in a rich-girl bubble,
the gap-toothed girl had told her,
but in here you have to learn the rules of the real world. First off: never trust a stranger—especially one who comes offering help.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
AFTER LUCKY WOKE IN
a snowdrift with a splitting headache, wearing someone else’s clothes and missing his granddad’s watch, he’d narrowed down the possibilities: either he was going insane, or someone at the mechanic’s shop had dropped a wrench on his head and this was some freakish afterlife. Now, standing opposite the girl with the wheat-blond hair, he knew.
He was definitely dead. And not just dead—he was in hell.
That was the only way to explain Cora Mason.
It had taken him a few moments to recognize her. Ever since waking, it had been all he could do to put one foot in front of the other, fighting the knife of pain in his head. Then, suddenly, there was a beautiful girl with hair so light it matched the sand. She might have been a vision, except visions didn’t dress like they were headed to a rave.
Then she’d looked up, and her features had rearranged themselves, and
shit
—he knew her. The senator’s daughter accused of manslaughter. He’d followed her story for the last two years, surrounded by her painfully pretty face on television, read reports about how the accident tore apart one of the country’s top political families.
It had torn him apart too. It didn’t matter that he’d never met her. He had been the one responsible for ruining her life. Only two people knew it: him, and her dad—a man who made Lucky’s fist ache with a desire to punch something.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He rubbed a hand over his chest, where the guilt was still tender as a sucker punch, even after two years. “I’m Lucky. From a little town in Montana called Whitefish. I woke up in the middle of a snowdrift in that forest a couple hours ago; before that, I was working on the busted throttle lock of my motorcycle. That’s all I remember.”
He stopped short, swallowing his words, the ache in his head pulsing like a second heartbeat. Memories of home played in the back of his head. His granddad’s sun-wrinkled face. The smell of chicken feed. Motor oil slick in the lines of his hand, so hard to wash away. He’d been fixing his motorcycle so he could drive to the army recruiting office in Missoula.
With your grades, college isn’t an option,
his school counselor had said, and slid a brochure across the desk: red, white, and blue font commanding him to do the right thing.
It didn’t matter if enlisting was the right thing. It mattered that his dad, and his granddad, had sat in that same damn chair and gotten that same damn brochure. It mattered that Afghanistan was a long way from the accident that had left his hand busted, and from his mother’s gravestone with the plastic flowers, and from Cora Mason’s face in the newspaper.
A wave pulled the girl’s body out to sea, and Lucky lurched for it. “Shit. Help me grab her. The police will want to check the body.”
Cora eyed the water like she’d rather step into quicksand.
“Okay . . . then we’d do Plan B. You stand there and look cute, and
I’ll
haul out the dead body.”
He approached slowly, giving Cora space as he waded into the surf. He’d never seen a dead body before. Would it be warm? Clammy? The dead girl looked foreign, maybe Middle Eastern, and she had to be close to six feet tall. An old scar marred her chin, in the shape of a lopsided heart.
He cracked the knuckles in his left hand. They were always stiffer when he first woke up.
“You ever done this before?” Cora asked.
“Pulled a dead body out of the ocean? Can’t say I have.” He grabbed the girl under the arms and hauled her to shore. As soon as he was out of the water, Cora helped. They laid her on the sand, and he watched as Cora did a quick check of the body.
“No wallet. No ID.”
The dead girl’s dress strap had fallen. Lucky fixed it, wishing his hands weren’t shaking. He stood up, dusting sand off his palms like he could wipe away the grit of death, and met Cora’s eyes directly for the first time. They were surrounded by dark circles in real life. The photographs in the newspapers hadn’t captured that.
“I’m Cora,” she said.
Now would be the time to tell her that he knew her name, and a lot more. He could tell her about September 3—the day he’d tried to kill her father.
It was two weeks after the accident. He’d broken into his dad’s gun safe. He’d driven to an airfield where Senator Mason’s son was learning to fly a Cessna 172. He’d parked the car and told himself he could do it. He had to. His mother was in the grave, and Senator Mason was patting his son on the back. Carefree. Guiltless.
He’d tried to open the car door, only to find two men in black suits on either side. They’d dragged him out and taken his gun.
Then they’d made him an offer.
“Nice to meet you, Cora.” He looked away, wiping his mouth. “I’m going to check the barn for a phone. You should come. We’re safer if we stick together.”
She glanced behind her toward the cityscape. “Yeah, but . . . don’t get too close.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender and climbed the path. It wound them through the orchard, where a stream ran between the trees, spreading an eerie calmness through the air. He ducked a hanging apple, and his stomach lurched. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Were the food and water safe?
“So what’s your theory?” he asked.
“Theory?” She held her arms tightly across her chest.
“Where we are. How we got here.” He paused. He really should tell her about that day in the airfield. But she cast a questioning look at him, all wide blue eyes, and he lost his resolve. “I mean . . . it’s snowing fifty feet away, and here it’s seventy degrees. There’s a desert over that hill that goes on for miles. And I swear that sun hasn’t moved since I woke up hours ago. The clothes you’re wearing . . . are they yours?”
She brushed the strap of the camisole. “No.”.
“Same for me. Why would someone change our clothes? And put us in these weird locations?” He raked his nails across his scalp to help him think. “I’ve been through every possible explanation: it’s a joke. An experiment. But it’s too weird, changing our clothes. That takes time and planning. Whoever is doing this is messing with us intentionally. I just can’t figure out why.”
“I don’t
care
why,” Cora said. “I just want to go home.”
Her voice broke, slicing into Lucky’s chest. He stopped. “Hey. It’s okay. To be afraid, I mean.” He gave her a smile, just a tug of one corner. “I am too.”
The barn was just feet away. He started for it, but she grabbed his arm. He flinched, not expecting her touch. Her fingers were smaller than he’d imagined. So fragile. Who would do this to a girl who’d already been through so much?
“Those markings on your neck,” she said. “The black dots. What do they mean?”
Lucky blinked. He had no idea what she was talking about, but her eyes dropped to the place just below his left ear. He reached up a hand that brushed hard bumps, like grains of sand embedded in his skin.
He dropped his hand.
For years he’d worn his granddad’s watch, even back when the strap had been too big, but it had vanished when he’d woken. He felt lost without its weight.
“I don’t know.” His eyes went to her neck. “But you have them too.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CORA’S HAND FLEW TO
her neck. Raised bumps, like a connect-the-dots game.
Pain throbbed through her head, and she doubled over in the sunflower patch next to the barn. She hadn’t imagined that anything could be more frightening than her first day in Bay Pines. Charlie had driven her there with the family’s lawyer, so that the press didn’t get photographs of Senator Mason checking his daughter into detention. The officers had patted her down for contraband and given her khaki clothes that smelled like they’d been washed with rat poison. They introduced her to the cinder-block dorm room she shared with a cornrowed Venezuelan, then threw her to the wild in the cafeteria. She’d been one of the youngest inmates, and the richest. They might as well have squirted a target on her back with ketchup and mayonnaise.
