Deceived

  Deceived

  Julie Anne Lindsey

  F+W Media, Inc.

  Dedication

  To Bryan, my anchor

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  I shot upright, breathless and covered in a familiar sheen of sweat. The sweat I had expected, but the glass of water on my nightstand was no longer cold. That was unusual. I rubbed my eyes and peered at the soft, green glow of numbers on my clock: 4:27 A.M. I had slept for four hours, three more than I was accustomed to. Sleep hadn’t been part of my routine since puberty. Before that, I couldn’t really remember.

  Rise and shine for the emotional misfit.

  I tossed back the covers and listened. An engine revved to life outside my window. My breathing hitched. I pushed the curtain aside with one finger. The shadowy figure from my dream flashed in my memory. Outside, lampposts cast cone-shaped patterns of light onto the darkened street below. No one was there.

  My heart hammered. My body felt about 500 pounds too heavy. With only a few caffeine pills left in my drawer, I made plans to get more when the sun came up. Meanwhile, coffee and the treadmill would get me moving. I had worked out the formula in eighth grade: caffeine and adrenaline. That combo shook off the fatigue. Pills had come later, when my schedule was more than the original recipe could manage.

  According to a shrink I quit visiting two moves back, I had night terrors. He was wrong. I had one recurring nightmare. One I couldn’t quite remember, but I knew it was the same again and again.

  I forced myself into the kitchen to prepare the coffee and shook my hands out at the wrists. They trembled as always. Not from fear but addiction. These days, they seemed to shake with or without the caffeine, but mostly without. I rubbed them hard against my thighs and took a few deep breaths before I shoved my mug under the drip and moved the pot to the counter. Two mugs later, I climbed onto the treadmill and built a steady walk into a run.

  Someone in the senior dormitories must have had a friend sleeping over or a before-school job because the same engine had woken me every morning all week. A loud rumbling noise, followed by a squealing belt. I ran through a mental list of people I’d met who looked as tired as I did. It was a short list. Three miles later, I hadn’t come to any conclusions, but the sun had made its ascent. All the coffee was gone, and my heart pumped from adrenaline instead of fear, a welcome trade. I turned off the treadmill and grabbed a towel and my necessities. Time to get ready for school.

  Music from my roommate’s alarm blared over the noise of the shower, and I moved a little faster. My time alone was about to expire. Sharing a bathroom with her put me on edge. I thought of myself as modest, but she used the word prude. My new roommate rocked a nose ring and leather miniskirt most days. Her name was Priscilla, but she had asked me to call her Pixie. She was exiled to Francine Frances Academy three years ago when her folks split and neither wanted full custody. I sort of knew how she felt. Until a few weeks back, Dad was the only roommate I’d ever known. Fortunately for me, Pixie knew everyone and everything about the school. Privacy issues aside, I was lucky to have her. In the three weeks since I’d arrived, I’d learned to adore her larger-than-life presence. She said I was like the sister she never had. We were completely different, and it worked. Together we were a real-life yin and yang.

  “What up, Elle?” Pixie strolled into the bathroom as expected, as if I weren’t trying to get dressed. Nudity was utterly inoffensive to her. Very little offended Pixie. I often pictured her wearing tie-dyed tops, rose-colored glasses, and bell-bottoms. She would’ve made a great hippie.

  “Are you planning to call me that forever?” I knew the answer. Yes.

  Gabriella Denise Smith lent itself to plenty of nicknames. I’d been called Gabrielle, Gabby, Bella, D, Dee Dee, even Neecey. Leave it to Pixie to find another name in there.

  She rolled her eyes and sucked on a Blow Pop. Pixie’s aversion to eating had her surviving on lollipops, breath mints, and drinks, preferably energy drinks.

  I pulled my top and skirt on in a hurry, avoiding eye contact until I reached for my toothbrush and paste. I breathed easier fully dressed and with something to keep my hands busy.

  “Are you ready for it? Meeting the student body? Preparing for matriculation and such?”

  No. “Sure.” I scrubbed my teeth a little longer, telling them to be thankful that I didn’t sleep with a sucker.

  “I’m so glad to be in the senior dorms.” She sighed, heaving her makeup onto the counter.

  “Yeah.”

  Being a senior came with a bonus perk at the academy. The senior dorms were the farthest from everything else on campus. A few blocks at best, but freedom no matter how you sliced it. It took a little longer to get to class, but we weren’t under the same scrutiny as the underclassmen. Compared to us, they lived in a fishbowl. When Dad had expressed his disapproval, I’d reminded him that I was leaving for college in a few months, and it wouldn’t be a tiny private prep school in the rural Midwest. I hoped to end up in New York or Los Angeles. I couldn’t handle much more small-town America.

  We stood together applying makeup, but the processes were drastically different. I had lip gloss and mascara in my makeup bag, plus concealer to cover war wounds. The rings beneath my eyes were straight out of a zombie movie. I’d left anything more complicated in a drawer somewhere back home. It’d probably rotted from disuse.

  Pixie whipped electric blue liquid eyeliner from an attaché resembling an artist’s palette. She prepared her face in layers. The result was breathtaking. Thirty minutes later, she looked like a life-size china doll in knee-high socks, a pleated skirt, and a cardigan. I looked like I had just woken up.

  According to school propaganda, uniforms “removed the distraction of fashion and reduced competition over material things.” The idea to make us look alike sounded logical on paper, but Pixie’s angled black hair with blue tips made it hard to see how the uniforms mattered in practice.

  Before long, my mind struggled to remember details from the dream I never talked about. I already didn’t fit in. If people knew about my multitude of issues—dead mother, distant father, recurring nightmare of impending death—I’d really be sorry. The new kid yet again, I needed to blend. Blending in was self-preservation. I imagined that going to school at an obscure midwestern academy would make it more imperative, not less.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Pixie pulled the sucker from her lips with a clear pop.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah.” Her smug tone implied a naughty reason for my reluctance to share.

  I turned to look at her, and she hopped
onto the counter, swinging her feet and leering back at me with a crazy, toothy smile.

  “What?” I sighed, relieved that she obviously didn’t know what I was thinking, and also glad for the distraction.

  “You’re thinking about that guy from the coffee shop in Elton.”

  “Ah.” I blushed. Though I hadn’t been thinking of him at the moment, I definitely had been thinking about him more than I should.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t miss a beat. “He was hot.” How many times a day did I lie to Pixie?

  “Well, duh. I still hate you for not going home with him. You don’t even know where he lives, his age, nothing. Ugh.” She growled at me and dismounted the counter with unusual grace.

  Honestly, I’d hoped she’d ask all the questions for me so I could sit innocently by and gather information. But she hadn’t.

  “His name was Brian.”

  “Hooray.” Sarcasm dripped from the word.

  On our way out, I locked the door and the deadbolt, too. Then I double-checked the knob. I’d grown up seeing Dad do the same routine. My effort was lost on my current community, which boasted a zero crime rate. Spending my early years in D.C. had made a lasting impression. Deadbolts earned their price there. Regardless of when the habit was transferred, Dad had passed the OCD on to me.

  My dad, Steven Smith, a consultant for a major insurance conglomerate, supported home-security practices of all kinds. He traveled for work, examining corporations for ways to tighten security and reduce their rates (i.e., lower his company’s risk in insuring them). He spent months at a time on one company, and it kept him on the road as much as home. I guess a job like his reminded him how often bad things happened.

  “Gross.” Pixie wrinkled her nose and kicked her toe into a pile of cigarette butts on the welcome mat outside our door. “Jeez, this is a smoke-free campus.” She emphasized the final three words, raising her voice as if the perpetrator might hear her and be warned. “Do you know how bad some girl’s breath smells right now?” She shook her head in distaste.

  Someone in our row of apartments hung around outside our door at night for her cigarette break, and a pile of yuck sat on our mat every morning to prove it. The pile grew by the day. Our door was in front of the stairs. Whoever she was, she could’ve been on her way home or using the locale as a decoy. Pixie left the butts for evidence as she searched for the culprit. We were up to seven pieces of evidence for the lollipop detective. She had reported the evidence to campus security twice. They’d promised to keep an eye out, but they either weren’t very good at their job or didn’t care about our dirty welcome mat despite a strict campus policy against smoking. Pixie pulled out another Blow Pop. She’d already asked everyone in the building, but no one had fessed up to the deed.

  I shivered and scanned the area for our audience. Tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. The sensation of being watched pulled my gaze through the spatter of shrubby trees and into nearby windows. I rubbed away the prickles on my neck, stifling an authentic set of goose bumps. Something about the sight of a smoker had always bugged me. The butts on my doorstep felt like a calling card.

  Chapter Two

  Pixie and I went straight to the local coffee shop, Buzz Cup. It wasn’t far from our building, still on campus but near Main Street with easy access to shops. Another perk of senior housing: we were closer to the coffee. A lot of the students went to Buzz Cup for breakfast. We had tickets for meals at the cafeteria, but one meal a day from school was enough. The cafeteria served home-cooked food, a selling point to the parents but atrocious to the female patrons. No one wanted to eat mashed potatoes and homemade breads five days a week. We’d outgrow our uniforms in a month. Pixie told me the boys felt differently and most clamored to get as much sausage, biscuits, and gravy as they could before first bell. I took a pass.

  Inside, we ordered coffees and a giant muffin to split. Pixie was right. There were a dozen girls to every boy in sight. The crowd parted for Pixie and then converged on us. Being the center of attention seemed to put her in her comfort zone.

  “So, how was the trip?” A redhead I recognized as Aubrie noshed on an apple and smiled between bites.

  “Yeah, Elle. How was the trip?” Pixie slid her eyes to me.

  I promptly blushed.

  “Oh?” Aubrie pulled us through the thick of the crowd to a table with her huge, green leather bag on top. “I sense a boy in this story.” She flopped into a chair and anchored her elbows to the tabletop, chin in hands. “Dish.”

  The trip had been Pixie’s idea. She’d said a road trip was the perfect summer’s-end celebration because it wasn’t every day that a girl became a senior. In our case, two girls. I was all moved in with nowhere to be, so she’d pressed me to get out of town with her for the day.

  “I took her to the flea market in Elton.” Pixie’s busted old car was another bonus of having her as my roommate. Cars weren’t a popular notion. Parents didn’t drop us off in the middle of nowhere and then leave getaway vehicles. Pixie drove a yellow Neon from the year I was born and called it Suzy Sunshine. Her addiction to old pewter trinkets led us to a flea market about an hour away. I couldn’t wait to scout out nearby towns. To my dismay, the towns were all remarkably similar, uninteresting and painfully quaint. “We were there all of five minutes before she went for coffee.” Pixie tossed a thumb in my direction.

  I got a few sympathetic nods.

  “Yeah. She went for coffee and came back towing Abercrombie.”

  A round of gasps and giggles ensued.

  Pixie had them eating from her palm. “He was freaking huge—black Ray-Bans, white tee, khaki cargos, flip-flops …” She ticked off her fingers as she went. “And he was at least nineteen or twenty. He was no high school boy.” She sipped her coffee, adding a dramatic pause for anyone in the shop who had stopped to listen. Even a girl seated at a small table, previously cooing at some guy, turned in our direction. “First he bought her coffee, and then he hung with her all day.”

  “Details.” Aubrie turned to me. “What’d he say to you? How’d you meet?”

  “How can we get him enrolled here?” A little freckled girl behind her joined in.

  My throat thickened, and I cleared it. “He asked if I found anything I liked.”

  Another round of giggles and some table slapping started.

  A flea market was the last place I had expected to meet a guy. Actually, I wouldn’t have expected to meet this guy anywhere. Most of the boys I attracted weren’t very nice or had a third eye or something. One look at him and even the blind could see how far out of my league he was. Pixie was right. He looked like a college guy, but there weren’t any colleges in the area. He was probably home for the summer.

  “So, he just asked if you found anything at the flea market, then bought you coffee?” Aubrie’s eyes grew wide and eager.

  “He bought us both coffee.”

  To Pixie, we had visited a flea market. To me, it had been a portal to someplace where a guy like him would talk to me.

  “He saw you in a crowd and came to find you. That’s so romantic.” A brunette I hadn’t noticed before leaned in over Aubrie’s shoulder.

  “Yeah. I thanked him for the coffees, but he wanted to walk me back.” All eyes on me, I started to fidget with the packets of sweetener on the table. Truthfully, his smile had hindered my concentration for the rest of our day together. Brilliant white teeth with red lips and a dimple. Swoon.

  Pixie looked at my busy fingers and winked, saving me from social self-destruction. “I took one look at him and said, ‘Well, all I wanted was a coffee, but I’ll go for this.’”

  I barked a laugh and jumped at the memory of how she’d looked at him like one of her Blow Pops. I’d laughed then, too, right before stumping my toe into the ground and splashing chai latte all over my hands. I smashed my eyes shut at the memory, hoping to keep out my immediate need to die.

  He and Pixie had made introductions, shifting coffees into their left hands a
nd shaking formally with their rights. The contrast between them had made me smile. He looked so … clean. She wore fishnet hose under scrubby cut-off jeans and a black, holey T-shirt for flea marketing.

  One handshake and they were friends for life, to hear Pixie tell it. The world was full of potential friends for her.

  Personally, I called them all the opposite until proven otherwise. I’d had my share of treacherous friendships. As a general rule, people weren’t as nice as they should be. My eyes flitted over the faces closing in on us. Many were familiar, though names escaped me. The itchy feeling of being watched crept into the crowded shop, and I took another look around. There were too many eyes on me, most of them unfamiliar. I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. I’d moved a hundred times. This move was no different, just one more step toward freedom.

  Something buried deep inside called me a liar.

  A blond squeezed in beside Aubrie, and I blinked. I turned in the direction of the table where she had been sitting a few moments prior. A new couple sat there. The guy she’d been sitting with a few minutes before came into view two blinks later. He lounged against the counter, paying his bill and looking into my face. His expression was less than friendly. Had the crowd we drew in ruined his breakfast date? Was it his stare that had made me want to slide under the table?

  “It was the strangest birthday I ever had.” I gasped, faking a smile and pulling my eyes from the blond’s boyfriend. “I spent an hour watching him and Pixie discuss blown glass and beer steins sold from the tailgate of a rusty pickup truck.” The scene had played out like a storybook. My closest friend, a handsome stranger, tiny rural town … In the distance behind them a panoramic view of grass, mingled with tree-lined hills and valleys brimming with wildflowers. For one day, I had seen a life full of sleep-filled nights, a mom at home wondering who this young man was, and a dad who’d be home in time for dinner. No wonder Brian had made such an impression on me. He’d unwittingly become part of my fantasy that day. Sad evidence that I needed to get a life this year. Make senior year memorable and all that.