Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice

Hold On Tight

“It’s a long story...” I try to get out of telling Kitty and the other girls the truth. There are ten girls living in this house, most of them no older then fifteen. They’re like the fledglings that skyline bring in; all of them young, none of them have a real identity. Skyline keeps these girls invisible as insurance, so that they’ll never have any accountability for this. Nobody knows who these girls are or where they came from.

There’s Kitty and Tig, the oldest and the youngest, and eight girls in between. Lucy is the youngest after Tig, only ten years old with dark wavy hair to just above her shoulders and big brown eyes. Then there’s Katherine, Maya and Lily, all fourteen and surprisingly small for their age. Ellie, Lauren and Maxine are all fifteen, but with no visible similarities between them, unlike the others.

“Well start from the beginning, then.” Maya says with an unmistakable Philadelphia accent.

“Well, I don’t really know the whole story, so that could be a little difficult.” I’m just stalling and they know it. Failing in my efforts of getting out of telling the story, I launch into as good an explanation as I can give. “My name’s not really Jenny. My name is Emily Turner.”

“You’re that girl in the news that’s been missing for, like, twenty years?” Kitty asks with wide eyes.

“It was seventeen years, and yes, I am that girl. I saw the headline and couldn’t believe it was me, but there was really no way it could be anybody else. Turns out my real father worked for Skyline, and they chose his kid because his job meant he couldn’t really say much to the cops.”

“What did you do when you found out?” Maxine is leaning over the arm of the sofa in a strange kind of excitement.

“I went home and cried.” I sigh, but can see the disappointment on their faces at my answer. “But then I went to the Turner’s house.” And their faces light back up.

“What was it like going back to your family like that?” Kitty asks, now leaning towards me like Maxine.

“It was strange. There are pictures of Emily, of me, all over the house. And so much has changed that wasn’t mentioned in the article. My mom and dad are divorced now, and I have a younger sister. Her name’s Grace, she’s living with me at the moment because our mom is an alcoholic; that’s another thing that I didn’t find out from the papers. My dad got remarried and he’s got three more kids that I met when I went to his house for dinner.”

“So when did you start at Skyline? You look pretty young; it can’t have been that long ago, right?” Lily asks with the weak Philly accent of somebody that leaves the city a lot.

“I am young, I guess. I’m twenty one but I started at Skyline seven years ago when I was fourteen. It was after my parents died. I ran away and lived mostly in hostels for a couple of weeks before Wade found me wandering down the freeway and took me into Skyline as a Fledgling.”

Suddenly the door opens and a young boy and girl walk in. They stop dead at the sight of me and I realise something that could mean me getting into a whole world of trouble: I know these kids.

“Jennifer?” Cameron Lewis drops the gun she’s holding and stares blankly at my face. I turn to the boy that is looking at me in the exact same way. The boy is James, the inquisitive Fledgling from the team that used to be mine.

“What are you doing here?” I exclaim, taking a step back away from the gun that James still has pointed right at me. But the person that appears behind is the hardest face to see.

“Jenny?” She almost chokes on the gum she’s chewing.

“Maggie? How could you be involved in this?” I ask in disbelief that one of my best friends has been in on this operation the whole time.