When your entire life has been a lie, who do you trust?
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If you'd asked Jason Williams about his life, he would have told you it was fairly normal. Sure, his family moves at least once a year, and yes, his teenage sister needs a full-time care...
At first, Rachel ignored the dumb fire alarm, still sifting through the clipped newspapers and junk on the table. Most of the headlines were weird, sensational stuff. Lady Lifts Gas Tanker, Disappears. Psychic Solves 20 Year Old Cold Case. Locals Say Man Appears from Thin Air. In addition to studying urban myths, Jason's not-so-friendly friend appeared to be a political nut. He had a ton of clippings from the last election, complete with a whole stack of the VP's pictures. Rachel hadn't even known this lady was the VP before reading the headlines, but Wiles certainly didn't have that problem. Everywhere her name appeared, he had underlined the first part in messy, obsessive strokes: Viola Everdine.
Stalking didn't seem to be his only crime. Under all the papers, she'd already found a hodge-podge of loose cash, watches, wallets, tourist-bait keychains, and other things you get by dipping your hand into people's pockets.
Little Miss Creepy added her wail to alarm's. Rachel spun and stumbled back into the wall. Heart hammering, she cursed herself for being so jumpy. Ana was just a kid. But this kid had a scream that sounded like murder, like sticky red dripping through her hands, like eyes going cold. It chilled Rachel's blood. The kid's black hair framed her face like a widow's veil, and she screamed and screamed.
Rachel flicked her eyes to the bedroom door, expecting Jason to come and calm the black magic down. All she got from that direction was a thump and a scrape, muted beneath Ana and the alarm. Rachel darted over to try the knob; it didn't budge.
As Ana hit a particularly piercing, spine-tingling note, Rachel winced, then steeled herself. Hands out, she crept closer to the kid. "I'm not going to hurt you..."
Ana turned on Rachel, eyes as dark and sparking as black fire. Rachel's breath caught. Gone was the glassy look from yesterday. Gone was the timid, lead-by-the-hand girl. Something else had woken up beneath it. Something unhinged and animalistic. The scream twisted into a song, into notes that sounded like cold knives, like a hundred loaded syringes, like the taste of a metal barrel in your mouth—
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Ana's world was red. The alarm blaring made blood pound in her ears—red. The girl with the gun's wild, angry hair—red. Jason's thoughts and heart and temper—red, red, red. It was all red, and he had left her, left her to be hateful, to corner a mouse like a cat, to get blood on his white paws, and it. Was. Wrong.
It was all wrong, so wrong that it was broken and gone and lost and would never be right again. Ana's lungs and chest heaved with the loss of it, the weight of it, the neverending void that the world was falling into.
Keep my face in mind, just that, Dad had said. But he was gone, and Jason had abandoned her, abandoned what was good, and if he had, why shouldn't she? Dad was gone and Jason was gone and there was nothing holding her back.
Ana screamed and sang until her throat was raw. She ran, away from the red, the bad, the wrong. The walls flashed by her and the ground pounded beneath her feet. She ran until her legs were rubber and she didn't know where she was. She crawled, dirt smooshing into her fingernails. Leaves brushed her face, blocking out the red, flashing lights. She curled up in the shelter of a bush, face soaked, legs shaky, head aching. She curled up tighter and tighter, wishing the world away, away, away...
