I keep walking, and she trails after me, asking again. “Where are you g-going? The police are coming.”
I don’t answer until I’m sure we’re far enough away that no one will hear. “So what, we just run up to them in the middle of an accident scene? They’ll think I’m crazy, Mags. Honestly, until I see these drugs myself, I’m not sure they’ll be wrong.”
I hear the soft wail of a siren from the opposite end of the street. Maggie looks over her shoulder longingly before speeding up to keep pace with me.
Maggie’s yard is empty when we arrive. Neither one of us says a word. Talking about the Not Treasure Box is a little like talking about where we’re going to eat lunch. We just don’t. She grabs a shovel from the shed, and we run to the tree where we’ve spent countless summer afternoons burying sentimental junk or digging it back up.
It was supposed to be a time capsule. We’d created it in the second grade, some notes and a current newspaper, stuff like that. I’d put in my favorite pencil, and Maggie had included a pink plastic ring that she’d worn all year long.
She’d cried all night over that stupid ring. The next morning, I woke up early and trudged through the dew in her yard. I came back with muddy feet and a piece of pink plastic jewelry. It wasn’t technically a time capsule after that. But it was something else. Something good.
The ground is hard like clay beneath my shovel, but it isn’t buried deep. I chip away at the dirt until I feel my shovel strike something hard. This is it.
I wrestle it out, fingering the rusting latches with a sense of déjà vu. I pop it open and touch the black box inside. And then, just like that, the pieces of my lost summer snap back into place.
I remember being here. I remember burying this box and calling Adam. I remember everything before it too. The months slide back into place like a key tumbling in a lock. The afternoons in study group. The evenings with Blake. It’s all there. The hole in my mind is gone. Dr. Kirkpatrick’s hypnosis sessions. New friends. Cup after steaming cup of that damn lemon—
My head snaps up, tears clouding my vision. “The tea. Oh my God, they put the drugs in the tea.”
Maggie just watches me, one hand at her chest.
I leave the box where it is and lean back on my heels, letting out a long breath. It steams around my face and mingles with my tears as I remember my words to Maggie, my voice so awful and superior. I can see her like it was yesterday, back against the lockers and an expression of dark betrayal on her face.
I take a breath—so cold it stings my lungs. “Maggie…”
Snow is still falling thickly, but I can see the realization dawn on her face. “You remember, d-don’t you?”
I nod, swallowing thickly, wishing I could claw the awful images back out of my head. And maybe the memories of Blake too, his mouth on mine and hands under my shirt. I feel my throat close up, a gag rising through me.
Maggie grips my shoulders and shakes me. She isn’t gentle.
“D-don’t!”
I scrabble away from her desperately, away from the little black box and all the months I wish to God had never happened.
“Maggie, I said things—I did things—you and Blake and—” I cut myself off because I can’t even talk about the images running through me, the ugliness in these memories. Ugliness in me.
“You did things, Chlo. Past tense.”
I shake my head, ball my cold fingers into fists. “No.”
“Look, it wasn’t pretty, b-but there was drugged tea and creepy hypnosis, right?” She stops until she’s sure she’s got my attention. “Look, it’s time for you to let it go. Do you hear me? You need to move on. We b-both do.”
She puts the black box in my hands, and I feel the edges, clean and smooth. Smooth like Maggie’s speech used to be around me. Come to think of it, it’s pretty smooth right now. Is it really so easy? Am I forgiven, just like that?
I pull the latch open, finding four syringes like I remember them. The label on the syringe reads “High Concentration—Test Lot 1.” My fingers tingle as I read that. God, wasn’t it concentrated enough already?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they used this on us. They drugged us. They put this poison into our tea, maybe straight into us through needles like this. And now I can prove it. “Let’s get this done,” Maggie says, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “My phone is dying. We’ll c-call from inside.”
I close the box with a nod and tuck it in my pocket, not trusting my voice as I stand up. We slip back through her yard and up the steps. The idea of her warm kitchen is like heaven. The only thing that would be better than being warm would be knowing that Adam is safe.
But he is safe. He has to be. I can’t have come this close to lose now.
Maggie heads through the back door, and I’m right on her heels. Everything is warm and perfect. I take a breath…and Maggie screams.
Something’s coming at me. It hits fast and hard, and then there is nothing but darkness.
Chapter Thirty-two
The pain wakes me. For a moment, I think I’ll just go back to sleep. Or maybe I’ll get something from the medicine cabinet because my head feels like it’s turning itself inside out and my stomach is rolling in all the wrong ways.
I smell yeast and cinnamon, which tells me I’m not at home. I’m at Maggie’s house. On Maggie’s floor to be precise.
The memory of Maggie’s scream comes back to me, and I try to bolt upright. My body doesn’t comply. I groan and try to open my eyes instead, but my vision swims through the slits I manage. Oh God. I’m going to vomit. I’m sure of it. I breathe deep and will the nausea to pass. Around me, the muddy blurs try to slide into focus.
I see fragments. Maggie’s shoes. A pair of gray pants. Adam slumped on the couch.
Adam?
I sit up again. Too fast. The room spins, and I fall right back down.
“Oh, I think you should stay still for a bit longer, Ms. Spinnaker.”
The voice makes everything in me recoil. My body tenses, and I gingerly push up on my elbows.
What I see makes me wish I were still knocked out. Maggie, gagged and tied to a kitchen chair. Adam on the couch, eyes half-closed and arm extended. Daniel sits between them, pulling a needle out of Adam’s arm. The syringe attached to that needle is empty.
“Do you know why I love this drug?” Daniel says, capping the needle and putting it back in the case he’s holding. “I call it liquid cooperation. A little of this in your system, and you’re happy to think or do or remember anything I want you to.”
“How? He would never let you…” I trail off, dumbstruck that Adam just sat there, rolled up his sleeve and let Daniel pump a mind-altering poison into his veins.
“Well, I didn’t ask permission when I injected him the first time,” he says, smirking. “But your little boyfriend was feisty. An extra dose has made all the difference, hasn’t it?”
Adam blinks blearily, looking lost.
I lumber to my feet, wobbling around like a marionette. Daniel watches me from the couch. He knows he can take me if he needs to. I’d like to think otherwise, but he’s not small. Plus, he didn’t just get knocked upside the head.
I ball my hands into fists and try to look taller than I am. “What do you want from us?”
“I want you to show me where you put the drugs.”
“No way.”
He sighs like it’s really not a big deal to him. Then he opens the leather case again and pulls a new needle out. My eyes fix on that syringe, on the clear liquid inside it. “You know, this drug could change the world. Imagine criminals reformed. Students with perfect marks. Soldiers without fear. Do you know what governments would pay for something like that?”
“That’s what this was about for you?” I feel the horror twisting my face into something ugly. “This is why you killed Dr. Kirkpatrick? For money?”
Daniel looks up at me. “Killed her? Now, who would believe I’m the killing sort? That kind of crime takes someone with a dark side. A record, perhaps. Someone like your boyfriend here.”