Secrets (2 page)

Rae obeyed, surprised she still had complete control over her body when her brain was sizzling with panic.

“You see it?” Yana asked.

Rae searched the wall, fighting the urge not to look, to just grab Yana’s hand and run as fast and faras she could.

But she didn’t see anything out of place. Just the…

“You mean the security camera?” Rae asked, shoving the words through her tight throat.

“Yeah.” Yana grinned, the tension slipping off her features. “I guess I meant we
should
be being watched,” she
explained. “Somebody’s going to get their butt fired. They should have been all over your girlfriend.”

A bark of laughter escaped from deep inside Rae. Then another one. She sank down onto the floor, laughter
jerking out of her, so sharp edged, it brought tears to her eyes.

Yana sat down next to her and gripped Rae’s shoulder tightly. “You okay?”

Rae couldn’t answer for a minute. “Yeah,” she finally managed to say. She let out another machine-gun burst of
laughter. “But you should have heard what was going through my mind. I was thinking-I was thinking-” Laughter
took her over again, cramping her stomach, making the inside of her throat feel raw.

Suddenly Yana winced. “Oh, Rae, I’m sorry,” she said. “You were thinking what it’s completely normal to be
thinking. You were thinking I meant we were being watched by the psycho who tried to kill you.” Yana gave Rae’s
shoulder a squeeze. “I shouldn’thave joked around like that. Not with everything you’ve-”

“It’s okay,” Rae interrupted, all desire to laugh suddenly sucked out of her. “I don’t want you to treat me like a-”

“Like a delicate prep school flower?” Yana cut in, using her fingers to comb her bleached blond hair away from her
face.

“Exactly,” Rae answered. “Now, let me change. Wait until you see the outfit I’m picking out for you. I’ll get my
revenge for your little joke. Don’t you worry about it.” She turned around and made her way back into the dressing
room, the door giving its horrible squeak again as she closed it behind her.

“Oh God,” she muttered, catching sight of her reflection in the dressing-room mirror. Her mascara was halfway
down her cheeks. She licked her finger and started wiping it away.

What a total idiot I was,
she thought.
Yeah, okay, some strange, weird, and very bad stuff has happened to me. But

things are smoothing out a little. None of my friends has been kidnapped in weeks. It’s been even longer since the

attempt on my life. There hasn’t been a pipe bomb waiting for me anywhere.

Rae shook her head. What normal person was relieved just to say nobody had been trying to kill them lately? But
still, her life
was
calming down. Shehadn’t even gotten one of those
gifts
from… whoever the hell it was that had
sent her the box filled with cremated remains.

Rae forced a smile at her reflection, then licked her finger again-and froze.

Don’t do this. Don’t you do this again,
she told herself.
Don’t have another freak-out over nothing. You should still

be in the walnut farm if you do.

She pulled in a long, shuddering breath. “Just check it out,” she said out loud. “It’s going to be nothing, but you
have to look.”

Slowly, jaws aching, she opened her mouth as far as she could and peered inside. There, there near the back of
her tongue, was a spot of… Rae leaned closer to the mirror, her harsh, hot breaths immediately clouding it up. She
wiped the mirror with her sleeve. “It’s not nothing,” she whispered. There was definitely a small spot of fungus
growing on her tongue.

She flashed on her mother’s medical records, the memory of reading them so clear, it was as if the words had
materialized in front of her face. One of the nurses had made a notation about a fungus on her mother’s tongue. It
was one of the first signs of her deterioration, of the wasting disease that progressed so quickly, she was dead
before the doctors had the slightest clue what was happening.

So that’s it,
Rae thought. She knew she should feel more surprised, but this had been her fear for so long. She
didn’t want to be like her mother in any way. But she was, she was so, so much like her. And now she was going to
die in exactly the way her mother had.

How long did she have? Months? Weeks? If it went exactly the way it had with her mother, Rae might only have
days.

She felt the hysterical laughter begin to build inside her again.
Whoever’s trying to kill me might not even get the

chance,
she thought wildly.
My own body might beat them to it.

Anthony Fascinelli shut his bedroom door, locked it, checked that it was locked, then checked it again. He walked
over to his closet and opened it slowly. A bunch of flannel shirts. A corduroy shirt. A for-losers-only suit his mother
had bought him a couple of Christmases ago. Anthony slammed the closet shut. He glanced over at his dresser but
didn’t bother to open it. He knew what was inside. Tshirts, mostly brown or blue. A couple from concerts. Plus that
Backstreet Boys one his little sister, Anna, had given him.

“Can definitely eliminate that, at least,” he muttered. He opened the closet again and jerked the closest shirt off the
hanger. He yanked off the sweatshirt hewas wearing and managed to get on the shirt, although he buttoned it
wrong-twice, then let out something between a grunt and a groan and stepped in front of the mirror above his
dresser. He tried to look at himself like a stranger would, a stranger who went to Sanderson Prep.

Short.
That was the first word that popped into his head. Well, he couldn’t freakin’ do anything about that. He
forced himself to keep looking. Was the shirt okay? He tucked it in, pulled it out, tucked it in again. “How the hell
should I know?” he exploded.

He tried to remember what the guys-the ones he’d seen when he’d picked up Rae-were wearing. But all he could
picture were their cars. The SUVs, the Beemers, the-Anthony ripped off the shirt. A button pinged across the floor and rolled under the bed.

Screw it. He couldn’t believe he was actually trying on clothes and checking himself out in the mirror like a girl. No
matter how he dressed, it would take about a second for anybody at the friggin’ school to know he didn’t belong
there. Oh, man, why had he let Rae talk him into this?

I could call her up,
he thought.
Ask her advice.
Anthony rolled his eyes. He could just imagine that conversation.

Rae, I just don’t know what to wear to my first day of school. Do you think the tan T-shirt or the navy T-shirt? I just

can’t decide what I look better in.

But his feet headed toward the door, anyway, and a few seconds later he was standing in the kitchen, staring at the
phone. His stepdad, Tom, had the game blaring in the living room, so nobody would hear him-if he decided to make
the call.

Like there was any
if
about it since his finger was already punching in her number. He stopped after the fifth
number, because Tom barged into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge. Anthony hung up the phone and
grabbed a bag of chips out of the closest cupboard.
Just go on back to the game,
he silently told Tom.

Tom shut the fridge door, a couple of beers under one arm and a hunk of cheese already halfway to his mouth.

“Those are mine. I bought them for the game,” he told Anthony. He plucked the chips out of Anthony’s hand on his
way to the door.

Fine. Just go,
Anthony thought. He did not need to be making conversation with Tom today.

As if he sensed that Anthony wanted him gone, Tom turned back when he reached the doorway. “So you start at
that fancy ass prep school tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah,” Anthony answered. Not much else he could say.

“You better be friggin’ brilliant on the football field, that’s all I can say.” Tom took a big bite of the cheese, leaving
his teeth marks in the cheddar. “And you better not get injured. It’s not like they want you for your brains-you do
know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Anthony said again. He’d get rid of Tom faster if he agreed with him. Besides, as much as he didn’t want to
think of Tom being right about anything, everything the jerk had said was true. Anthony wouldn’t be surprised if he
ended up having to stay in the equipment closet whenever there wasn’t a game or a practice. Which wouldn’t be so
bad. At least then it wouldn’t matter what he wore.

“Just didn’t want you to go walking in there with any delusions in your head,” Tom said. He popped one of his
beers and wandered off.

“Thanks, buddy,” Anthony muttered. “Good to know you care.”

He waited until he heard Tom start shouting at the tube, then he grabbed the phone and dialed Rae’s number. As
soon as Rae got out a hello, he started talking. He had to, or he wouldn’t be able to get the words out.

“So, um, Rae, I was wondering-you know I’m starting at Sanderson tomorrow-” He stopped, cringing. He sounded
like a complete idiot. He decided totry again. “What kind of-” He cut himself off again, then let out a growl of
frustration.

Rae didn’t say anything.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she answered. That was it.
Just yeah.
And normally he couldn’t get the girl to shut up.

“You know I’m starting at Sanderson tomorrow,” he repeated.

“Uh-huh,” Rae mumbled. “Right,” she added, her voice getting a little stronger. “So are you nervous?”

“Well, I’m calling to ask you what I should wear,” Anthony blurted out. “Does that tell you anything?”

Rae didn’t laugh. Or tell him not to worry about it. There was just another silence. “Um, that tan T-shirt looks good
on you,” she finally said. “It’s not really a big deal.”

“Okay. Well… okay. See you tomorrow.” Anthony hung up without waiting for a reply.

She’s more freaked than I am,
he realized. He slumped down in one of the kitchen chairs.
It’s like it just actually hit

her that I won’t just be going to Sanderson, I’ll be going to Sanderson
with
her.
She could hardly even stand to talk
about it.

A little snort of laughter escaped from him. He’d actually been thinking that maybe when he and Rae were at the
same school, things might end up beingdifferent between them, like in a guy-girl kind of way. Clearly not going to
happen.

Anthony scrubbed his forehead with both hands. If Rae didn’t want him at Sanderson Prep, nobody would.

Rae positioned her largest sketchbook over her knees and stared down at the blank sheet of paper. Sometimes
she thought better when she drew instead of wrote, like her thoughts ended up coming from a different, deeper part
of her brain. And she needed to think right now-as hard as she could. There wasn’t room for anything else but
figuring out the truth-what was happening to her.

She frowned as she remembered the way Anthony had sounded over the phone. She’d never heard him like that.

Scared was nothing new after everything they’d been through together. But he was seriously rattled about coming
to Sanderson. She felt bad that she hadn’t been much help, but she needed all her energy to focus on this.

Okay,
she thought, looking down at the sketch pad.
My only shot at beating this thing -at staying alive-is to find out

everything I can about my mom. Maybe there’s something about her that can tell me why she got sick, something

that can tell me how to…

“This is hopeless,” she whispered. But she picked up a pencil, one with a nice, soft lead, and sat up a little
straighter, leaning against the pillows she’d propped against her headboard.

Okay, I need places to get more information about Mom.
Her pencil started moving before a thought was fully
formed, and in seconds she had a rough sketch of Scott State Prison at the top of the pad.

There was definitely someone at the prison who knew something about her mother. Rae’d picked up a thought
from a fingerprint while she was there. Someone had been looking at Rae and wondering if she was born while
Rae’s mother was in the group. But Rae didn’t know which of the prisoners had left the fingerprint. The thought
could have come from any of the men who’d touched the basketball during the game going on when Rae’d toured
the exercise yard. She didn’t even know one name.

Okay, next,
she thought. She doodled a little, writing her name and her mother’s name side by side, then
impulsively drawing a mental hospital around them both. They hadn’t been in the same hospital, but hey, a little
artistic license was allowed. Rae could go back to the hospital, have another chat with her mother’s doctor. He’d
beennice. But Rae didn’t have the feeling he knew any more than what he’d told her-and what she’d read in her
mother’s chart when he was out of his office.

There’s Dad,
Rae reminded herself. She did a little sketch of him pulling the sword Excalibur out of the rock. It was
hard to think of her father without thinking about her dad’s beloved King Arthur.