Chapter Seven #3
Mom continues to complain about the other inmates, how much she’s suffering without us, and her fear that, basically, we’re out of her control.
She needs to realize that we’re grown up, but I don’t know if she’s ready for that.
As we get closer and closer to the trial, I worry more about what life’s going to be like when she comes home.
She says that she’s enticed some millionaire and is pinning a lot of her hopes on him.
I have sent her clippings about him. I’m worried about her getting herself in trouble again and I honestly can’t believe that this man has no idea who she is—or that if he doesn’t, that he’s going to remain ignorant.
When she does get out of jail, she is going to have to be more circumspect, something I’m sure she’s not going to be willing to do.
I can’t remember faces from high school. I ran into someone on the street who said he knew me. I told him that I was Barron’s twin and that I went to another school. I must study the yearbook.
Philip is as tedious as ever. He acts as though he is resolved to do what is necessary, but he isn’t.
It’s not just weakness but a continual romantic need to believe himself manipulated against his will instead of admitting he wants power and privilege.
He sickens me more each day, but Anton trusts him in a way that Anton will never really trust me.
But Anton believes I can deliver, and I doubt he can say that about Philip.
Maybe the money we get will be enough to control Mom for a while. By the time this is over, Anton’ll owe us everything.
The notes for today stop there, but glancing back over the past few weeks, I can see that he recorded random details, conversations, and feelings as though he expected to forget them.
I open the laptop gingerly, not sure what other weirdness I’m going to discover, but it’s set to sleep, with the page showing my YouTube debut.
The raw footage was taken with a cell phone, so the quality is grainy and I don’t look like much more than a pale, shirtless blob, but I wince when I look like I’m losing my balance.
I hear someone yell “jump” in the background, and the angle swings toward the crowd.
In that moment I see her. A white shape near the scrubby bushes.
The cat, licking her paw. The cat I was chasing in my dream.
I stare at the video and stare at her, trying to make some sense of how a cat from my dream—a cat that looks a lot like the cat that has been sleeping at the foot of my bed—could have really been there that night.
I take the notebook off the table and flip to the day the video was uploaded.
March 15th
Breakfast: Egg whites
Ran 1 mile
Upon waking, felt fine. Clipped nose hair.
Wore: dark blue jeans (Monarchy), coat, blue dress shirt (HUGO)
Logged into C’s email and found video. Clearly shows L. but no clues as to where she is now. C is at the old house, but G there and keeping an eye on everything. P says he’s going to take care of it. This is all his fault.
Beware the ides of March. Some joke. I found her collar, but no clue as to how she got out of it. P must have not clipped it on correctly. I have to find a way to use this to wedge P and A further apart.
I have to control the situation.
“Control” is underlined twice, the second line so heavy that it ripped through the page.
I stare at the entry until the words blur in front of me.
C is Cassel—the video must have been of me up on the roof.
P must be Philip. A could be Anton, since Barron mentioned him before.
I blink at G for a moment and then realize it’s for our grandfather.
But L? I immediately think of Lila, even though it makes no sense.
I grab the laptop and play the video of me again, frame by frame. We barely see any of the crowd; the camera pans over people too fast to catch anything but blurs. The only faces I can pick out belong to students. No Lila. No dead girls. No one that doesn’t belong. No one wearing a collar.
The only thing in that video that could be wearing a collar is the cat.
Only you can undo the curse.
The thought is so absurd that it actually makes me grin.
I walk toward the bathroom to splash water on my face, but as I pass a door, the strong smell of ammonia stops me.
It opens into a room, empty except for a metal cage that sits near the window.
The hinged wire door is open. The newspaper stuffed into the cage and the wooden floor around it is stained with what, given the sharp smell and the yellowing, is probably cat piss.
Thick crusted layers of it, like something was kept locked up for a long time and not cleaned up after.
I hold my breath and lean closer. Caught in a wire joint are a few short white hairs. I back out of the room.
Barron’s losing his memories. So’s Maura, and maybe me too. I don’t remember the details of Lila’s murder. I don’t remember how I got onto the roof. I don’t remember what happened to my memory charm.
Let’s say someone is taking those memories. I don’t think that’s too much of a stretch.
Let’s also say someone gave me that dream, the one where the cat was begging for help. If I were cursed to have it, that would mean someone had to touch me, hand to skin. The cat—the one that slept on my bed, the one near my dorm room in the video—did touch me.
So maybe the cat gave me the dream.
Of course, that’s ridiculous. Cats are animals. They can no more perform curse work than they can perform a sonata or compose a villanelle.
Unless the cat was really a girl. A girl who was a dream worker. Lila.
Which would mean something far different—not just that some memories of murdering her were stolen from me. It would mean she’s not dead.