Skylar trailed off again and then beamed. “Excellent! Tell John Michael he’s never allowed to make fun of you for watching police procedurals again. See you in five.”
Skylar hit the key to end the call with more flourish than was purely necessary. “That was Genevieve,” she said needlessly. “She says that Reid and company should be able to track the incoming calls on this phone back to the locations from which they were placed even if they’re not listed. Same goes for the calls made from this number, so if Bethany’s dad has ever been to the facility where they’re keeping Zev, or if he’s ever gotten a call from them, we should be able to track it. Or technically, Reid should be able to track it, but Gen said she could loan me a couple of bugs, so we should be able to keep tabs on Reid.”
I tried to process Skylar’s babbles and came to an utterly ridiculous conclusion. “Are you actually suggesting we bug the FBI?”
Skylar held up her right hand, holding her index finger a centimeter or so above her thumb. “Just a little.”
“This is never going to work.”
“Kali, if I want pessimism and brooding foreheads, I’ll talk to Elliot. At least try to think positively.”
“Sure,” I said, forcing my fingers to let loose of their grip on the cell phone. “I guess it’s worth a try.”
I wanted to laugh hysterically—or possibly throw up. Zev was a lab rat, my mother was evil, and Skylar and I were discussing bugging the FBI.
“Yeah,” Skylar said, and she had the decency to sound a little sheepish. “It’s crazy. But sometimes, crazy is all you’ve got.”
She reached out to take the phone, and the moment her fingers touched mine, an odd gleam came into her eyes, like a candle bringing light to a jack-o’-lantern’s. For a moment, there was an unnatural silence between us, and I wondered what she’d seen.
“It’s going to get better.” Skylar’s voice was very quiet, very small. “But first, it’s going to get worse.” She played with the end of her T-shirt, avoiding my gaze. “And when it gets worse … well, just remember that it’s going to get better, okay?” She brought her eyes up to mine, and I felt like she needed something from me—acceptance maybe, or absolution.
“Sometimes, there aren’t any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard.” She blinked and then cleared her throat. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you really think about it, we’re all broken. That’s just what life does. It knocks you down and it breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don’t. You either do things on your terms, or you don’t.” She grabbed my hand, and I was surprised at the strength of her grip. “You let the bad things win, or you don’t.”
It would have been so easy to stay down, to deal myself out, to stop caring. There was a part of me that wanted to say that I’d been fighting since I was twelve, and look what it got me.
But I couldn’t. And even though I had no idea what Skylar had seen in our future, what she was holding back, the one thing I knew for sure was that she couldn’t, either.
Crazy, insane, impossible, broken—it didn’t matter. Some people were born to fight back.
Skylar squeezed my hand and then dropped it. “You know what the worst part is about being psychic?” she asked. In typical Skylar fashion, she didn’t wait for a response to continue. “You always know when it’s going to get worse. I get up in the morning and get ready for school, and I know that word is going to be written on my locker. I know that given half a chance, they’d write it on my face. Last year, when it first started, I knew—I knew it was going to go on and on and on; every day, every single day, it was just going to get worse. But you know what? Screw that, Kali. Whatever it is, whatever hurts so bad you can’t even unball your fists—you either let it break you, or you don’t.”
This was the first time I’d heard Skylar admit, even for a second, that she wasn’t invincible—that the things people said and did to her at school hurt. And maybe, compared to what I was going through, it should have seemed little and petty and so very high school, but it didn’t, because fighting, getting hurt, letting the baddies break my bones and tear my flesh—that was the easy part.
That had always been the easy part.
Letting people in, caring, wanting them to care about me—that was hard.
“That woman?” I said, my voice husky and low. “The one who was just here? I’m pretty sure she’s my mom.”
Skylar blinked. And then she blinked again. “Do you think she knows?” Skylar said finally. “That you’re involved in all of this? That you’re … you?”