No One Knows Us Here(72)

“How do you know all this?” I asked Leo.

Leo unfastened his seat belt and pulled out his backpack from under the seat in front of him, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, as if this were the end of any other trip. “I like to keep an eye on things,” he said.





CHAPTER 23


At the airport, my suitcase arrived first. Leo retrieved it from the conveyor belt and extended the handle for me. When he craned his neck to look for his own bag, I slipped away. Just—slipped out the door and into a taxi. “Drive!” I commanded, ducking down in the back seat like I had just robbed a bank.

Once we pulled onto the highway, I sat back up. I felt silly. Leo wouldn’t follow me. He loved me, or he thought he loved me. Maybe I should sit him down, have a rational conversation with him. I had misunderstood the rules of the game—that was all. Maybe we could just have a normal breakup, like any other couple.

No. That didn’t seem possible. That had never been possible.

“Where are you headed?” the driver asked, and I realized I hadn’t given him a destination. I couldn’t go home; Leo could find me there. I couldn’t get Wendy; I didn’t know where she was. I couldn’t call her or text her. Leo was watching. Listening. Anything I did, he would know. My hands were trembling. “I don’t know,” I said. “Just drive.”

I needed to stay calm. Figure out what I was dealing with, exactly, so I could formulate a plan.



I went back home. I didn’t know where else to go. Anywhere I went, he’d follow. He’d know. Wendy wasn’t there. I knew she wasn’t there, but I walked through each room anyway, calling her name. I sent her a text and told her I was back, that I had returned a couple of days earlier than expected. Come home, the text said. Leo could be reading it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We’d figure it out when she returned. Put on disguises and escape through some back door, some secret passageway.

Something felt off about the apartment. Maybe it was the fact that it was clean. I’d tidied up before I left, but it seemed . . . cleaner than before, somehow. Every surface polished to a shine. The recycling bins emptied.

In the kitchen, I dumped the contents of my purse onto the counter. There was the Mirror, shining, smudged with my fingerprints. I picked it up and opened my Lookinglass account.

You have 10,540 watchers.

My fingers stabbed at the various prompts, trying to make my way around it. Because I watched only one person—Leo—my feed was quiet. Nothing appeared on the screen.

Finally I found what I was looking for: Delete account.

Are you sure you want to close your Lookinglass account?

Yes.

We’ll miss you! All your preferences and settings will be saved.

There was no way out of this, no way to erase myself from it forever. I wondered if it would do me any good, deleting my account. Surely Leo had planned for this, had found a way to watch me anyway.

He could have bugged the Mirror; he could be tracing my calls, tracking my moves, spying on me through the camera. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I set a pot of water to boil on the stove. While it heated, I recorded a new outgoing message for my voice mail: “You’ve reached the voice mail of Rosemary Rabourne. Don’t bother leaving a message. I am no longer able to make or receive calls. If you want to talk to me, try to find me.”

If the Mirror had a battery, I couldn’t find it. It wouldn’t open up. I placed the silver disk on my John Boos cutting board. Then I smashed it with my chrome meat tenderizer. Flat on one side, for poultry. Ridged on the other side, for beef. I’d never used it before. I pounded and pounded, using all my strength, grunting each time the mallet made contact. When I finished, I was breathing hard. My hands were clenched so tightly around the handle, the whites of my knuckles were visible. The silver exterior of the Mirror had suffered a few dents. On the other side, the screen was still intact. There wasn’t a scratch on it. I dropped it into the pot of boiling water and watched for a few minutes.

I felt better. I was fixing things. I just needed to wait for Wendy to come home. That was all I could do. I tried not to panic, thinking of everything that could go wrong, that had already gone wrong. I tried not to think of her, my little fourteen-year-old sister, with her weird twenty-year-old “friend.” I tried not to think of the fact that I had no idea where she was, but Leo did. Leo did. My body slumped down into a chair by the kitchen table.

The shriek of the fire alarm woke me. I must have drifted off. The Mirror was black and smoking at the bottom of a dry pan, releasing a horrid, noxious smoke. I leaped up to switch off the burner and pry open the window. I stared into the pot, the heat scalding my face. Now I couldn’t call anyone, and no one could call me. Now I would never get a hold of my sister. I hadn’t exactly thought this through.

“Wendy!” I yelled out once again, this time in exasperation. I wondered if she and Hannah had been hanging out here while I was away. That would explain the slight sense of unease, the impression that items had shifted in my absence. A ninth grader and a twenty-year-old. Why would a twenty-year-old become best friends with a freshman in high school? Maybe she was some sort of predator. Maybe they were having a twisted love affair. If Hannah had been a guy, I’d be freaking out even more than I already was. This would certainly be a crime. Wouldn’t it? Another wave of guilt washed over me. I’d let her hang out with Hannah, spend the night. I had never called Hannah’s parents. But that was normal. I had convinced myself it was normal. What would a diligent parent do, run background checks on everyone who wanted to hang out with their kid? Yes. That was probably exactly what they would do.