The Cage(12)

“What? It’s my favorite color.”

On the wall, the photographs reset themselves mechanically into a different set of images. Now they were famous sites of the world: the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, along with outlines of various countries. Cora’s head was still foggy, but she touched the closest painting, the Eiffel Tower, and spun the one below it until she got to France.

Tokens rained out of the slot.

Rolf hurried over. “Ten tokens?” He blinked too fast. “That doesn’t make any sense. If anything, the game I solved was harder, but I only got one.” His blue-green eyes blinked in confusion.

Cora rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want them—you guys take them.”

“I’ve got all the nail polish I need, sweetheart,” Leon said.

Rolf ran his fingers over the tokens, comparing them to the one he had won. “It just doesn’t make any sense. It counters the philosophy behind conditioned responses. The most effective way to reinforce a lab rat’s behavior is through random rewards. For example, if a rat runs a maze ten times, you only reward it six out of the ten times. The uncertainty makes the rat focus harder.” Rolf frowned at Cora’s pile of tokens, versus his meager one. “But with a system of random rewards, you still have to be consistent from rat to rat. Even rats sense unfairness. It causes them to get extremely frustrated.”

“Maybe the people put us here aren’t scientists,” Lucky said. “They could just be twisted. This could be some sick kind of torture.”

Everyone was quiet. Cora eyed Lucky carefully, from the way he habitually popped his knuckles like they ached him, to the small scar on his chin. What had happened to him, to make his mind go to such a dark place?

“Don’t think like that,” she said. “At least not yet. Come on.”

The group filed back outside.

Cora shaded her eyes, looking down the row of buildings. “All the rest of the shops—”

“Hang on.” Nok cocked her head, pink streak of hair falling in her face. “Do you hear that?”

At first Cora heard nothing, but then faint notes reached her ears. A song. It sounded like recorded music, old-fashioned, that made her think of crooners dressed in tuxedos. Then the lyrics began.

A stranger in my own life . . .

It was coming from one of the shops. The diner. Lucky started toward it, but Cora clamped her hand onto his.

“Wait,” she whispered.

A ghost behind my smile . . .

A coldness started somewhere at the base of her skull and spread. The memory returned of riding in Charlie’s car, wanting so badly to reach that resort where their parents waited for them, her crumpled notebook in her lap, making up lyrics. Those lyrics. The same ones playing now. She whirled toward the source of the music with a feeling like the world was spinning just a little too fast.

Not at home in paradise . . .

Not at home in hell . . .

A sign flashed above the diner: THE GREASY FORK. It flashed again and again, beckoning them.

“Hey, you okay?” Lucky asked.

“This song.” Her voice came out hoarse. “These lyrics. They’re . . . mine.”





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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8

Cora

VERTIGO HIT CORA AS if the past and present were intertwining.

“You mean . . . you know this song?” Lucky asked.

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I wrote these lyrics. It was the last thing I was doing before I woke up here. Someone must have stolen my notebook, hired a singer, and recorded the song. That’s so elaborate. Why would anyone do that?”

Everyone was silent.

She reached for her necklace, and felt only emptiness.

Leon tugged off his tie and let it fall to the grass. “They’re twisted shits, that’s why.” He climbed the diner stairs with a look like he’d kill whoever was in there. After a minute, he stuck his head back out.

“There’s no one here.” He sounded disappointed.

Cora started up the steps. Inside, old-fashioned lamps cast a smoky glow over the red-and-white checkered tablecloths. There was a long counter, and three tables with two chairs each. A black window hummed from the wall, murky shadows floating behind it like ghosts.

“There’s the source of your music.” Lucky pointed to a jukebox against the back wall. “It must be programmed to play automatically at certain times.”