The Year of the Gadfly (40 page)

“Somebody,” she began slowly, “sent Justin a copy.”

Veronica's face stiffened. “That bitch! Is Justin going to tell anyone?”

“He promised he wouldn't.”

Veronica's pupils hardened into small black stones. “You'd better make sure he keeps that promise.” Her voice closed up around the word “promise” like a Venus flytrap around a fly.

Veronica returned to the art studio, and Lily watched her through the window, conferring with her cohort. If she was angry with one of them, she didn't show it. Her calculated manner was unnerving; she was plotting a contingency plan. For the first time, Lily felt truly and deeply afraid of what Veronica might do.

DO YOU SWEAR
to the truth of the story you're about to tell?” Julia sat across from me on the bed. Syme sat beside her, holding up the video camera.

I nodded.

“Say it out loud, Iris.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now tell us what happened.”

I'd read through the script a couple of times, but I couldn't seem to make my voice cooperate. My insides felt drafty, swept through by a shivering wind. In my head, I begged for Murrow to come, pleaded for him to appear. But I didn't want the apparition of Murrow. I wanted the living Murrow, the one Julia and Syme could see. I wanted him to melt the camera with his relentless stare.

“Tell us,” Julia repeated.

He's dead,
I told myself.
He won't come to help you. He never has.

“Iris, will you please begin?” Julia said, but there was no politeness in her voice.

I took a breath and began to speak. “This past November, Mr. Kaplan asked me to meet him in the Trench. He said he had a special science project for me.”

“And you went?”

I nodded slowly, afraid of what was coming. “When I got there . . .” I swallowed. “I saw that Mr. Kaplan had set up a video screen and on the screen was Jimmy Cardozi.”

“And how did Jimmy look?” Julia said.

“Terrified. He was strapped into a chair and there were wires attached to his arms. I didn't understand what was happening.”

“So you asked Mr. Kaplan, and he said . . .”

“He said he was conducting an experiment—on me.”

“And what was the nature of this experiment?”

“There was a control panel in the room, and every five seconds I was supposed to press a button on it.”

“And then what?”

“That was it. Just press the button. So I did, and Jimmy yelped on the screen. I asked Mr. Kaplan if Jimmy was all right, and he said Jimmy was fine. ‘No matter what Jimmy does,' Mr. Kaplan said, ‘you must push the button.'”

“And what did you think about this?”

“I was scared, but Mr. Kaplan told me to push the button again.”

“And did you?”

I shook my head. “I refused, so Mr. Kaplan went over to the door and locked it. ‘You must continue the experiment,' he said.”

Julia was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning toward me, expectant. Syme was on his knees, with the video camera pointed up at my face.

“Look at the camera,” he ordered. I didn't move. “Look, Iris!” This time I obeyed.

“It's all right, Iris,” Julia said, her voice soothing. “We know this is hard for you.”

“After he locked the door, Mr. Kaplan walked over to me and pushed me into a chair by the control panel. Then he grabbed my hand.”

“And how did you feel?”

“I was terrified. And Mr. Kaplan . . .” I paused; Julia nodded. “He was hurting me. He was squeezing my hand so hard I thought he was going to break my fingers. And meanwhile on the screen I could see Jimmy twisting and struggling to free himself, but he was strapped in too tightly.”

“And then?” Julia and Syme said in unison.

“Then Mr. Kaplan pried one of my fingers free and started forcing it toward the button. And I was crying and begging him to stop, but he just kept saying, ‘You must continue, Iris. You must finish the experiment.'”

“And then?” Julia said, breathless.

Tears rose behind my eyes, and all I could manage to do was shake my head. To someone watching this video, I realized, my reaction would only confirm the story I was telling. “Mr. Kaplan . . .” My voice wavered. “Mr. Kaplan pushed my finger down on the button and held it there. And on the screen Jimmy's body convulsed and contorted. And I could hear screams coming from down the hall. But Mr. Kaplan just kept pressing my hand down on the button.”

“And he was speaking, wasn't he, Iris?”

“He was saying, ‘Look what you're doing to the boy, Iris. Look at the pain he's in!' And I struggled against Mr. Kaplan's hand, but his grip was too strong. I turned away, but he took his other hand and grabbed my chin and forced me to watch.”

“And?”

“And then Mr. Kaplan let go. And Jimmy slumped over in the chair, and he didn't move again.”

“And did Mr. Kaplan say anything?”

“He said I'd confirmed his hypothesis.”

 

Syme turned off the camera. “What are you going to do with that?” I asked.

“Keep it safe, my flower. Unless you turn on us.”

They left me alone and I sat on the bed, seeing images flicker in the air like a stop-motion film. I saw strange insects with poisoned stingers and alien eyes crawl across a powder-pink carpet; I looked at Veronica Mercy's black, liquid eyes, which melted into the single pupil of a video camera; I stared at the implacable oak tree outside my window and its maze of dark branches.

I was desperate for Peter. I needed to see that his face wasn't simply another mask. The others were slippery, but Peter had wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. The air had been cold, but Peter was warm. At that moment, as though by magic, the door opened and there he was. I nearly jumped on him.

“Do you want cupcakes or chips?” He produced two packages. Then I did jump on him.

“I love you!” I cried. “I mean, I don't love you. I'm just hungry. And happy to see you.”

Peter chuckled. “Yeah, I get it.”

I tore open one of the cupcakes and ate it in three big bites. Peter wrapped his arms around me, and in that moment I almost forgot where I was and what I'd just done. He didn't ask me about the video, and implicitly I knew we were to pretend it hadn't happened.

Julia walked in with a couple of sleeping bags. “Why don't you guys get some sleep. Bathroom's down the hall. And don't go sneaking off. We'll give you the grand tour tomorrow.” She nodded at Peter. “The papers are almost done.” I was hoping she'd say more about the
Devil's Advocate,
but she didn't.

When I slipped into the hallway, I thought about making a break for it, but I knew Peter would come looking for me. I peed in the girls' bathroom, crouching over the cold toilet seat.

“Climb in,” Peter said when I returned. I lingered in the center of the room, my arms wrapped around me for warmth. “Seriously, Iris. We're sleeping. That's it.”

“I'm not worried about you taking advantage of me,” I said. “I'm worried about contracting a disease from that mattress.”

“Fair enough.” He unzipped one of the sleeping bags and spread it over the bed. “I promise that not a millimeter of your skin will touch a millimeter of the festering mattress.”

I jumped on the bed, and the rusted metal frame made a sound like a trash compactor.

“I think you ate too many cupcakes,” Peter said, and I slapped him. He pulled me down and we curled up together. I should have been on guard, planning my next move, but I'd never slept next to a boy before and I wasn't about to squander the chance.

Peter turned off the desk lamp. He stretched out on his back—he was almost as long as the bed—and I laid my head on his chest. His arm curled under and around me, so that the tips of his fingers rested on my back. “You are so little,” he said.

“You're so long.”

He laughed.

“What is the newspaper going to say about Mr. Kaplan?” I said. “We don't know why he took Jimmy's money.”

“It's going to report exactly what happened. An accurate portrayal of events. I made it clear to the others that our intention is not to hurt Mr. Kaplan. With him, we're sticking to the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“You mean you don't always?” I sat up and the bed creaked.

“Sometimes, when we know something but we can't prove it, we have to engineer the right situation. To help people show who they really are.”

“You trick them?”

“People only do what's in their nature.”

I was too exhausted to ask Peter what he meant by this. We were quiet for a few minutes and then he said, “Remember I told you how the Party made me different?”

I nodded, but I was looking at the cloudy overhead light. A dark shadow spread along the bottom of the glass.

“It's like I belong now. We all feel that way—Julia, O'Brien, and Syme. And the others before us. That's why you're here, Iris. You deserve to be a part of this. To be inside for once.”

My eyes welled. What
was
I doing here? If being on the inside meant I was trapped, I didn't want any part of it.

“Think how awesome it will be . . .” Peter's fingers trailed up and down my back. “You and me, together at school. We'll be a real power couple.”

I focused on the shadowy light fixture to keep from crying. Tonight was the only night Peter and I would sleep beside each other. I didn't know how this was all going to end, but it would end. After tonight, he would never speak to me again.

“Iris, you don't have to be lonely anymore.”

“I wasn't lonely, Peter,” I whispered, and turned over to sleep.

LILY PERUSED
Marvelous Species,
trying to figure out what Veronica was plotting. Her appendix on the Studio Girls stopped just before the sleepover, but now Lily imagined devoting an entry to
Sacrificial Lamb,
discussing what the girls had done to her in clinical, scientific terms. It never occurred to her during the months she'd spent in the art studio that if she joined this world, she'd inevitably become part of the appendix herself. A marvelous life form, an organism to be studied. And that was what had happened. During the lost hours of her drugged oblivion,
she'd
become the specimen under the microscope.

A knock on the bedroom door startled her, and she prayed it wasn't Justin. She needed to study; her math final that morning had been a disaster. At first she saw only her father, but when her mother materialized, her body grew cold. They walked in and stood in front of the bed, her father in his trim khaki pants, pressed dress shirt, and tortoise-shell glasses. He looked like he'd been born with patches on his elbows. Her mother wore a long flowered skirt as though in defiance of the weather: rancorous and frigid for May, even for Nye. They looked young. Standing there on her pink carpet they could have been new parents, excited and afraid.

Maureen sat on the bed. Elliott remained standing. “Justin came to see me,” he said. “He told me about Veronica's party, the sleeping pill and the dye. Are those things true?”

Lily glanced at the disc among all the others on her dresser.

Her father knelt before the bed, as Justin had done the previous night. Her mother hovered specter-like behind him. “I want you to listen to me, Lily. We're not angry with you for drinking.”

Like her situation amounted to a common teenage infraction! But Justin was smart enough to keep the art project from them. They wouldn't have understood, and he wanted them focused on the important point.

And on cue her father said, “You were violated.”

“No, Dad. That's not true.”

Elliott blinked. “This is serious, Lillian. Were you or weren't you drugged?”

Maureen took Lily's hand, but she yanked it free.

“I knew exactly what I was drinking. I took the sleeping pill on purpose.”

Her father shook his head. “That's ridiculous.”

“Sweetheart, this isn't your fault.”

“It is!” She shrank away from her mother's weepy face.

“Stop saying that,” Maureen begged. “It's like—like you were
raped.
”

“No!” Lily screamed. “You're not listening to me!”

“We
are
listening, and we don't understand why you're not taking this more seriously. Who knows what else happened to you while you were passed out!”

Of course they'd believe only what Justin told them. She had to be the victim.

Abruptly Elliott left. Lily felt his absence like a cold wind.

“Listen, sweetheart.” Maureen edged closer to Lily on the bed. “We have to get you checked.”

Lily shook her head.

“Tomorrow morning you have an appointment with my doctor.”

“Nothing happened!”

“We don't know that.”

And her mother was right. The Studio Girls or Alexi could have done anything to her.

“I'm not going to any gynecologist!” Lily jumped off the bed and ran into the bathroom. Sixteen years old and she had no control over her own body. She made her own decisions. But everyone insisted she'd been manipulated and tricked. Outside the window, a violent wind whipped the tree branches, scattering spring petals across the pane. She watched them blow in the air like pink snow. Justin kept calling, so she turned off her phone.

 

“A little farther,” the gynecologist said, and Lily scooted down the rough paper. The metal stirrups of the examination table gripped her feet. She felt like an animal in a zoo. “A little more. I'm going to need you to come all the way down . . . That's right.”

At least it was a woman. At least she said nothing about the dye.

“Now I need you to spread your knees. All the way . . . That's right.”