“About what?”
“The checks you gave me. Oscar was looking over the family accounts and spotted my excesses. He tried to blackmail us both—me for embezzling, Marlow for being incompetent. We had to do something!”
“Faraday. You should have come to me.”
“You were in the hospital—with staples in your head.” She took another sip. “Oscar made me and Marlow hand over our credit cards, or he’d tell Mother!”
“So you…broke his finger?”
“We did the whole thing—the heavy blanket, the squishing, with help from friends of Marlow’s. We paid them in beer. They kept giggling, though, which I told themnotto do. Also we broke a lamp—a Tiffany, so ugly. Which is maybe why it didn’t stick.”
I rested my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands. Faraday had executed a wrack on her little brother. This was unprecedented. There would be repercussions. “What do you mean, it didn’t stick?”
“Oscar went crying to Mother! We denied it, of course. And since Marlow and I never agree on anything, Mother didn’t believe a word from Oscar, who told the worst whoppers when he was little. At least, she didn’t believe we broke his finger, or the lamp.” Faraday sighed. “But she checked the bank accounts, and put our credit cards on hold—all three of us!”
“So Oscar hasn’t gone to the police?”
“No, he’s gone to Harvard. I think the lamp bothered Mother the most. She loves those things.”
I sighed. “Then you’re probably fine.”
“Fine? I can’t live on myallowance.”
“You’ll have to scale back, until your mother cools down.”
“But this is senior year! Can’t your family do something?”
“You don’t want to involve them. Not after what you did.”
“But I’ll explain everything.” A sweet smile played on her face. “I only took over to spare you. Because you seem so unwell.”
And I saw how this would end—Faraday spilling to my family about me, transformed into not-me. She might be only half aware she was doing it, but this was blackmail.
“What do you need?”
“Another letter to the bank. From Mother this time.”
I nodded. Gertie could handle that part.
“If I help, you have to promise you’ll never, ever do anything like that again.”
Faraday held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
Then she pulled on one to make a littlepop, and giggled. She knew this was blackmail.
Had we Mortons eaten her soul, or had she already been rotten? Had our families made the world like this, or only greased the wheels?
It didn’t matter—the gears of the machine ground just as fine.
“By the way, dear,” Faraday said. “Did that girl ever visit you?”
I shook my head. “What girl?”
“The one you liked, in New York. Did she come to see you in the hospital? Or was it not that kind of thing, in the end? Where someone takes a long, boring train ride, comes to sit and hold your hand while you jabber with staples in your head. Like I did.”
I stared at her too long, more than a hesitation. A kind of lifetime, one that didn’t happen.
Finally I shook my head. “In the end, it wasn’t that kind of thing.”
