Lost Girls(32)

I waved my hand, trying to push the covers off. “Where’s Mom?” I asked. She was the one who was supposed to take care of me when I was sick.

“She’s at work. Have you eaten anything today? You haven’t been eating lately, not since you came back—”

“Cookies, I think.” But I realized I’d forgotten to eat lunch, and now I had missed dinner, too.

“Here, put these on. Take it slow.” Dad handed me some dry clothes, then he and Kyle went into the kitchen where they whispered about me, all their words slurring together. I took off my wet jeans and tugged on a pair of sweatpants. Shivering, I removed my jacket and shirt, then pulled a long-sleeved flannel top over my head. For an instant I saw my reflection in a mirror that hung on the wall across the room, but it didn’t look like me. This was a strange, imposter me, a girl with dark circles beneath her eyes and short, dark brown hair that exposed her ears and her neck and her jaw.

“Who am I?” I whispered, thinking about that uncontrollable blood lust that would come over me when I least expected it, that desire to beat my fist against people I barely knew. And the way I had casually ordered Lauren around earlier today, how she had acted like it was completely natural.

The way Janie had fallen into the street when I slammed my car door open, how I had kicked her like I was a lethal weapon.

I moaned again. My hands were on my knees, my feet were bare and cold, and my head was down. It felt like I’d never be able to raise it up again.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder, Kyle sat beside me. One of them handed me a cup of hot soup and pressed it against my lips until I took one swallow and then another, warmth flooding my throat, my stomach. I looked up at Dad and pushed the cup away.

“I think I almost killed someone tonight,” I whispered.

He nodded. Kyle sat really still, like he was afraid to move.

“Who?” Dad asked, kneeling before me.

With halting words, my voice never rising above a whisper—like I sat in a confessional and didn’t want my words to carry—I told him everything. Janie’s name, where she lived, what had happened, how she came at me with a gun when all I’d wanted was answers.

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” I said. “Not at first. But then, when I did, when she was on the ground—”

Kyle’s eyes were big and his mouth hung open, and he didn’t move for a really long time, like he was afraid I’d notice him there.

“When she was on the ground, I was glad.”

Dad nodded again. He didn’t write down her address or name. He didn’t need to. He could remember things like that easily, like he had a whiteboard in his head and was secretly writing down everything with colored markers and arrows and exclamation points. “Don’t worry,” he said, a calm authority in his voice that chased away the chill that had crept into my bones. “I’ll take care of it.”

I glanced at Kyle from the corner of my eye and he was staring at Dad, with that same shell-shocked expression he’d had while I was talking. He didn’t move. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. My nightmarish past was taking over our house. It was going to swallow us whole.

“I’m sorry,” I said to my brother.

His eyes met mine and for the first time I realized he wasn’t afraid of me. Now that he’d recovered from his shock, his muscles were flexing and his jaw clenched, and his hands rolled into tight fists. “She’s lucky I wasn’t there with you,” he said, his words hot. “I’d have grabbed that bat from her the minute she walked out the door.”

I gave him a weak smile, looking at those eyes that sometimes reminded me of Mom and sometimes of Dad, but most of the time they just reminded me of all the years we had been together, him laughing and joking and playing pranks because that’s what little brothers were supposed to do. Him hiding in my closet and listening while Molly and I talked about boys, him drawing big smiley faces on my Barbies with black marker, him taking the last handful of cookies, even though I hadn’t had any yet.

Him saving his allowance for half a year to buy me new Barbies on my birthday, to make up for the ones he had wrecked.

“There’s more,” I told them as I held out that photo, still clenched in my fist. I told them about Nicole, how I knew she’d been a friend of mine, and that she was dead now.

Dad stood and began to pace back and forth while I talked. He was quiet for a long time, gears shifting inside his head, the muscles tightening across his cheekbones, his eyes taking on a glassy, faraway look.

“As much as I hated the idea at first, I think Agent Bennet was right to follow you today,” Dad said. “I know he wants you to start wearing a tracking device. He and I had a long talk about it when you were in school and we both agree—you need to wear it. I should also let you know I’ve activated a GPS chip in your phone. You need to keep it with you all the time. If there’s ever a problem, you can just send me a text. Okay?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I think you should take some Tylenol and go to bed,” he said to me. Then he glanced at Kyle to make sure he was listening. “And I don’t want either one of you to say anything about what happened tonight to anyone else—especially not your mother. She wouldn’t be able to handle it if she found out one of Rachel’s friends was dead.” He gave me a thin smile. “Your mother deals with death and pain on a daily basis at work, but that never translates into how she reacts when something happens to one of you.”