Chapter One
It had been seven years and fifteen days since my father was reported a missing person. Legally, he was dead. Literally, we were burying an empty coffin.
There was a seventy percent chance it would have been raining. It was odd to see it wasn't. I was supposed to be at the funeral. Instead, I was sitting on the front steps of a stranger's mausoleum, sneaking a cigarette and retreating from a eulogy I'd no interest in listening to. I could still hear my oldest brother's voice muffled by the wind.
"When I was eleven, I failed football tryouts. While I was throwing a fit, my father told me this. When he was sixteen, he totaled my grandfather's car. For three years, he worked to pay them back as a cashier at a grocers'. It was a terrible job he hated every second of, but while he was covering a night shift, he met my mother. If he had never crashed that car, he may have never met her. Life's a chain of experiences. Even events which seem terrible will cause some good with time. The good of his passing is not here yet, but it will come," Sherrinford recited, pausing every two sentences to remember what to say. There may have been flash cards involved.
I took another drag from my crushed cigarette and leaned my head against a pillar of the mausoleum's archway. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed peaceful. Then, I heard footsteps. They were methodically paced, loud and nearly shook the ground beneath me. Mycroft must've stopped dieting, again.
"Mother's looking for you," my second older brother, Mycroft, asked from behind me.
"Not with particular success, it seems," I dismissed.
"She has other obligations."
I drew my cigarette away from my mouth and turned just enough to see Mycroft. My brother was a man of ample skill and idleness, so naturally he was a bureaucrat. Even at twenty-four, he held himself with the proper posture of an elderly politician. The bottom button of his blazer was undone; no doubt it wouldn't fit otherwise.
"To stand in place while they bury a vacant box. To maintain her image. Or to ignore what a disgrace I am. There's quite the list of options. Do you want to pick, or should I?" I answered through an outward calm.
I slipped my cigarette into my left hand, reached my right into my pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. I unfolded the page to show it to him. It was a boarding pass for two flights—one for New York and a transfer to Seattle. "Was it her idea to send me or yours?" I asked.
Mycroft paused for a moment, his gaze wandering while he debated how to respond. "You're accusing me and not Sherrinford?"
My eyes lowered with dulled disbelief. "When is it ever Sherrinford?"
Fully aware he wouldn't evade the question, Mycroft sighed internally. He relented to reply. "She thinks it'll do you good to get away from Sheffield, go somewhere where you and the police aren't on a first-name basis. One of father's old friends agreed to take you in. Some woman by the name Hudson. Before you ask, we're not paying. She said she owed father a favor."
"Seven years posthumously."
Mycroft's mouth curled with the suppressed urge to say something else. He paused before answering. "Mother's too tired to fight with you. Sherrinford already parents her. I just started my position at Thames House. It's the best option we have."
"Quite a subjective statement to make with a 'we'," I quipped. He didn't respond.
I turned my back to Mycroft and stared down at the boarding pass. The imprint of the letters reflected through the crumpled paper. Whatever pretense I'd been fed, the meaning of this page had been clear since I'd found the ticket purchase on mother's credit card statement. I was a mistake being covered up. I raised the page to my eye level, blocking my face from view.
"I could burn this ticket. Disappear. If I switched course in New York, you wouldn't know for at least six hours," I thought aloud.
"I'd find you in seven. Now put out the cigarette."
I raised the increasingly lopsided cigarette back to my mouth and inhaled deeply. "I thought you were relinquishing parental rights."
"Where did you find that? On the ground?" he asked with disdain.
"Aunt Rose's pocket. She was planning on quitting," I answered dismissively.
"Fine. Wallow in your self-imposed isolation. Clearly I can't stop you." Mycroft stepped down to ground level. There were no footsteps, so I presumed he was lingering, likely staring at my back in frustration. I leaned my head back against the pillar to ignore him.
"Before I go, can you do me a favor and promise me you won't get killed?" he asked.
I took another drag from my cigarette. "Well, not intentionally."
"Intentionally promise or intentionally die?"
"Either or both. If the plane crashes, it's past my control."
Mycroft walked away. I waited for ten more before I turned my head towards the grave site. Twenty or so strangers stood around an open pit, watching the casket descend. A few people were sobbing. Most weren't. My mother clung to the arm of her adulterous wealthy boyfriend, weeping for every hesitant pat he would give. Mycroft stood beside Sherrinford and hung his head in a representation of respect. The poses they were taking made it obvious to me; I may have been dressed as a mourner, but I wasn't one of them. Regardless of what the law claimed or how little I remembered of him, my father wasn't dead to me until I saw a body.
Three months had passed since the supposed funeral. I'd spent two and a half of them in Port Angeles trapped in perpetual boredom. That included today.
Black pavement and pastel houses passed the windshield in a continuous blur of pseudo-suburbia. Gray skies loomed overhead, threatening rain. The tires of an over-worked economy car rumbled against the pavement. I stared across the passenger-side window, observing my surroundings in general disinterest. My eyes stopped on a smudge in the upper left corner. A line, about the same width as two fingers, was streaked across the glass. There were only two typical passengers in this car, only one of which regularly opened this door. Given that this someone in question was me, it must have been someone who wasn't normal.
I raised my right hand to the window, cross-comparing my fingers to the mark. "Did Mrs. Turner borrow your car?" I asked towards the panel.
"No, dear, and you can't, either," Mrs. Hudson answered from the driver's seat. I caught a glimpse of her face in the overhead mirror. Her hair was a consistent blonde only dye could cause, her face wrinkled from time, particularly around her eyes and mouth, and her wedding ring, tarnished by at least five years of not caring, clung more snugly to her finger than it had likely been fitted to.
"You should park in the garage, upgrade external security. Someone's been looking inside."
"Are you sure you're not imagining trouble? We haven't had any robbers since there was that catnapping down on Evergreen," Mrs. Hudson questioned, presumably doubtful. The supposed cat-napping had been two months after I moved in. Her neighbor had left a back window open while there was a hole in her fence. The cat was found two days later in the next yard over, hungry, damp and still with his collar on.
"That wasn't deliberate," I answered.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head slightly. "Oh, Mrs. Brown was a wreck for weeks. That was commotion enough."
The car slowed as we rounded a corner. A pair of long, green signs in the shapes of a mountain range stood implanted in the ground. The words 'Port Angeles High School, Home of the Roughriders' extruded from them in bold white font at least thirty years out of date. I stared at the drivers' side of the car, still focused on the interior.
There was enough dust on the dashboard to indicate that if someone had entered the car, they hadn't made contact with anything Mrs. Hudson didn't ordinarily touch. The few mobile items that were present—snow brush, napkins, flashlight, maps—were common and benign, not things people tended to steal. That might explain why the observing party hadn't broken in. Then again, if the viewer had meant to find something valuable, why would they bother to check a cheap car that was chipping paint?
"If you did want to learn to drive, we could hire a teacher, or I could. I don't mind," Mrs. Hudson offered, misinterpreting me and shattering my concentration in the process.
"I know," I said flatly.
The car came to a complete stop. Mrs. Hudson turned her head away from the window and towards me. She held her position while she stared my way. I returned her gaze through the overhead mirror.
"Sherlock," she called to me, her voice marginally softer than before.
"Mm?"
"We're at school."
"I'm aware."
"Can you please get out of the car, then? I have my podiatrist at nine," she suggested. Oh, urgency. That explained her staring.
I grabbed my rucksack by the strap and pulled it over my shoulder as I climbed out of the car. I kicked the door with the back of my foot, planted my opposite foot on the curb and pivoted to face the parking lot. Mrs. Hudson and the car were stalling just as I was. "You are going to class today, right?" she asked.
I tugged the strap of my bag, shifting it across my back to mimic innocent ignorance. "You're my transport. Where else could I go?" Either the attempt had worked or she chose not to make it her problem, because Mrs. Hudson pulled a lever back into drive and began to pull away. She left the parking lot.
The better part of a hundred students were wandering the open campus. More would arrive soon. About three-quarters of them were carrying umbrellas. Nearly all of them had clustered into small groups, engrossed in pointless conversation either face-to-face or through their phones. Their overlapping chatter fused into an indistinct mass of sound. There was no way I was staying.
I closed my eyes, shifted the strap on my shoulder and entered the crowd. A few people glanced at me as I headed towards the door. I avoided eye contact. No one spoke to me. I returned the courtesy and continued on. Three doors down from my locker to the right side, a classmate was clacking furiously at her phone. Red lips, bloodshot eyes, nails bitten and on the verge of quivering. Most likely relationship drama was at fault.
I opened the door to my locker, blocking her from view. My intention had been to grab my roller-blades and leave. Before I could reach them, a white envelope slid out from the opening and onto the tile floor. I pressed down on the envelope with my foot, pinning it in place, and picked it up. Writing which appeared to say "sherbck hohnes' had been scrawled sloppily across the envelope. The lettering was unsteady, crooked and close-together, likely written with a non-dominant hand, and each 'h' was written as two separate strokes—one an n and the other an l. I'd seen a classmate write this way before. I tore open the envelope and unfolded the piece of stock printer paper inside. The letter consisted of my last yearbook photo with 'x's on my eyes and three words in 12-point comic sans; "KILL YOURSELF, ASSHOLE". Comic sans and caps lock. Even if not through words, he did know how to insult someone.
"Hey, Sherlock. How're you?" a female voice called from my left, disrupting my concentration.
"Bored."
My eyes trailed from the letter down to the half of her I could see from behind her locker. Her left stocking was damp and tinted brown at the knee, right intact, legs tense and close together, not accustomed to some form of strain. She was a good three inches higher than normal. Also, the gray cat hair that occasionally dotted her clothes was conspicuously absent from her shoes. They were new.
"Your trainers need better traction," I concluded.
"Uh?" Her feet shifted. Presumably, she had turned her head around her locker door to face me. I didn't check.
"Your shoes. The outsoles are flat and they have heels in them, No wonder you fell, running in those is a terrible idea."
She paused. "…Okay."
I reached to the top shelf and grabbed my roller blades. The door beside me clicked shut. My door rattled with the impact. The girl paused again, possibly swallowing.
"I was about to head to Physics. Would you…?"
I pulled away from my locker door and kicked it shut. The row of lockers rattled as I stepped back. The girl stood diagonally from me, her hands pulled in front of herself in a mousy slouch that matched her uneasy intonation. I forced the letter between her hands as I passed by.
"Tell Mr. Whitmore I have the flu. Give this back to Rob Talbot; gap tooth, grey hoodie, sits behind you second period. His mother's girlfriend moved in last week. He's been hostile ever since," I explained at roughly the same pace as I thought it.
She paused again, her expression stuck in a wide-eyed stare. I flung my skates over my shoulder as I headed for the exit. At least five seconds passed before she spoke.
"Are you sure you don't want to give this to a teacher?" she called at my back. I didn't answer.