Page 96 of Pretty Nightmare

“Like I said, this lock is a hundred years old. It’s a very simple mechanism.” Her little tongue darts out as she squints one eye and twists the thin piece of metal inside the lock. Then something clicks and she looks up at me with a smile. “Bingo.”

She pulls the drawer open, takes out a dirty plastic packet, and then gets up and dumps it all out on the desk. She’s already fishing straps of money out of the first yellow envelope inside by the time I walk over there.

“Money,” I say dryly. “How interesting.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty boring. It’s old too.” She squints at the printing date, then loses interest and goes for the second envelope. She spills this all out as well. “Hmm. Passports and papers.” She shuffles through them. “Standard fake identity stuff? What do you think?”

I pick up one of the passports and matching certificates. Birth and death. “Yeah. But…” I pick up a second set. Then the third.

“What?”

“Hmm. Interesting people.”

“How so?”

“We have a Machette. We have a Szabó. And an Ameci.”

“Who are they?”

“Well, the Machettes are an old inner circle family. Very Company. The Szabós are an old worker-class family. Slaves, really. And the Amecis—they got out fifty years ago.”

“Out? How’s that happen?”

“Um… yeah. It was a big fucking deal.”

“So why does Adam have these?”

“No idea. It’s probably not even important.” I pick up the plastic the folders were in and study it. “Looks very old. And it’s dirty. Might’ve been buried.”

“A mystery,” Indie whispers. “I love it.”

“It’s not a mystery,” I say, putting everything back the way we found it. Then I take it over to the open drawer and toss it in, kicking it closed with my foot. “It’s got nothing to do with us, so who cares.”

“Really?” She sounds disappointed. “Why are you so boring, Donovan? If Nathan was here, we’d make this into an adventure.”

“Well, Nathan’s not here. Is he?”

Her face flushes red and she narrows her eyes at me. “Asshole.”

I pull her towards me. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I’m sorry. I’m just… I feel like… unsettled. Or something. And I’m taking it out on you. It’s not fair.”

“Whatever.” She pushes me off her. “It’s fine.”

“Come on, it’s nearly eleven. We should go to bed. We’ll do something adventurous tomorrow. Maggie will love it.” I lead her out of the office, flick the light off, and then take her towards the stairs.

“What could we do? There’s no adventure around here anymore. It died. Just like Nathan.”

“There’s plenty of adventure left in your life, Indie. I promise. We’ll find it together. Tomorrow.”

I’m used to having Indie next to me in bed now. And it didn’t take me very long, after I moved back here, to realize that I miss her when she’s sleeping with Adam or McKay. She’s been a part of my life for so long, this shouldn’t take me by surprise. But it does. Because things are changing now. She’s not a child anymore. Maybe she was never a child? Maybe all those things McKay did to give her a normal childhood were just an illusion. Maybe none of us in this house were ever children?

I certainly didn’t have a normal childhood. It wasn’t filled with physical training, like Indie’s. It was all academic stuff. And drugs. They gave me a lot of drugs when I was little.

In fact, when I look back on my early years, this is what I remember most. I was always in some kind of emotional crisis. Always in therapy. And when I wasn’t, I was journaling. That’s probably why my first inclination when I have a problem is to write it down. Or find some way to document it. Turn it into something scientific instead of something emotional.

My body relaxes as I ponder this in the dark. Indie’s breathing has already evened out and the house around us is quiet. I can just barely make out the chorus of crickets over the low hum of the AC. And my mind relaxes into the hypnagogic state I’m so familiar with. It usually starts with a geometric pattern inside a tunnel. It’s a very fast-moving animation of falling into a vortex.

Sometimes the geometric pattern inside the tunnel is a small checkered pattern. Sometimes it’s triangles, arranged so that all sides are connected to another triangle, the way hexagons are arranged in a beehive. And then, sometimes, but not often, the tunnel morphs into a blinking pattern. If I don’t fall asleep, or become too aware, then it might turn into moving pictures. Like I’m watching a movie. Sometimes it has sound. Sometimes not.