Cecelia Ahern - Flawed

She ignores me, continuing her attack on the piano, moving from the lower keys to the higher keys, making the most unusual, distorted sounds from something that she used to make sound so beautiful. I wonder if it sounds beautiful to her, now that her mind, too, has become so distorted. If she hears Mozart where I hear madness. She continues as if I’m not there, her elbow digging into me, almost pushing me off the bench. I stand up and move away from her, and I wonder if I should call for help, as she’s having some kind of an episode.

The door is flung open.

“What on earth?” Bob says, stepping inside.

She ignores us, continuing to be lost in her music with a smile on her face. But there is no happiness in it, just a demented picture of contentment.

Bob stands there in shock, watching her, not recognizing her.

“What’s she doing here?” Colleen asks suddenly, appearing at the door. “What’s going on?” She looks inside and sees her mother. Her mouth falls open. “What did you do to her?” she shouts over the noise.

“Me?” I ask, shocked. “Nothing. I didn’t do—”

“What did you do to my mom?” she yells, angrily, coming close to my face.

I back away. “Nothing. I didn’t do…” but she’s not listening.

“Get out of our house,” Colleen shouts.

I look to Bob for some kind of normality, to bring logic to the situation, but he is distracted. He makes his way over to his wife, holding his hands near her, hovering around her body as if he’s afraid to touch her.

Colleen puts her hands to her ears as though she just can’t take this anymore, not just the sound of her mother but whatever else she is hearing in her head. Her own voice, her own cries, her own anguish.

“Get out,” she says to me, disgust written all over her face.

I move closer to the door. I give one last look to Angelina, crazily banging down on the keys, an entirely different woman, maddened by the branding of her body and the treatment that comes with it. Suddenly she lifts one hand off the keys but continues banging with her right hand, and she reaches for the lid. I think she’s about to stop playing just as Bob is asking her to, and then I see what’s about to come.

“No, Angelina!” I shout, and they both look at me and miss her slamming the lid down on her right hand. The hand that is branded.

Once is not enough. She cries out in pain yet continues it over and over again.

“This is not my hand! These are not my fingers!”

It takes both Colleen and Bob to stop her, but by then I know the damage has already been done. She has broken her own fingers.

FORTY

STUNNED, I STUMBLE down the corridor to the front door. I open it and am faced with the media. They see the look on my face, which I have forgotten to adjust.

“What happened, Celestine?”

“Are you planning a coup?”

“Are you gathering a Flawed army?”

“Is Angelina Tinder part of your alliance?”

“Is it true you’re setting up a Flawed political party?”

I push through them and stagger forward to my house.

Mary May waits for me at the front door. The press aren’t allowed to photograph her, but I know they’re loving this. They can sense that I’ve done something wrong, that I’m in trouble again. Big news day. Already upset by what has just happened in the Tinders’ house, I don’t think I can take any more. Mary May steps aside so that I can enter.

Juniper and Mom are standing nervously in the kitchen. Ewan runs upstairs and away from me as he always does, afraid to be in the same room as me.

“What did you do?” Mom asks quietly.

“Nothing,” both Juniper and I reply at the same time, which makes us look at each other and smile for the first time in a long while.

Juniper throws me a worried look and whispers, “Did you do something yesterday?”

I swallow hard. I think of meeting Crevan and wonder if he discovered I was looking for the guards and Mr. Berry, and if so, what is my punishment. Mary May marches into the kitchen in her black-and-red coat and looks straight at me. I’m so afraid that it has something to do with my trip to Highland Castle and asking for the guards that when she produces a newspaper and slams it down on the kitchen counter, I’m relieved.

Now I know that I can’t trust Pia. It’s a ridiculous article about how I am getting preferential treatment at the school by missing classes and swimming, something I know was written purely to pressure the principal to make me leave the school. If he is seen as aiding a Flawed, or even making my life easier, then the parents will want his head on a plate. The picture that appears alongside it is a photo of me taken sneakily by someone at school. It’s supposed to be a photo of me with my braids down, covering my temple, which is against Flawed rules.

“That’s not me,” I say instantly.

We all huddle in closer.

“That’s me,” Juniper says.

“You understand the rules, young lady,” Mary May says to Juniper. “You cannot lie for your sister, or you will face punishment or incarceration or both.”

“I’m not lying,” Juniper says, and I can sense her getting a hot head. The old Juniper is back.

“The newspaper says it is Celestine,” Mary May says, a little put out, folding the paper again. “This photograph is a clear breach of the rules, Celestine. You will receive a punishment.”

“I’d like you to call the newspaper and get clarification,” Mom says quickly. “A mistake has clearly been made here. I know my daughters, and that is not Celestine in the photograph.”

Mary May is having none of it. “For a total of one week, starting Monday, you will be under house arrest. You cannot leave this house after school hours.” She signs a form, leaves it on top of the newspaper, and leaves.

“I hate her,” I say quietly, watching Mary May drive away.

Mom shushes me even though she’s too far away to hear.

“She’s just a stupid woman in a ridiculous costume,” Juniper snaps.

“No, no, no.” Mom grabs her by the shoulders and looks her straight in the eye. Juniper is startled by Mom’s aggressiveness. Mom realizes what she’s done, and she sighs. Then she leads us both to the kitchen table and we sit. “Girls, we have to be careful. You think she’s a woman with a grudge, but Mary May is one of the most senior Whistleblowers, and do you know why?”

“Why?” Juniper asks.

“She reported her sister to the Guild as soon as the Flawed rules were introduced. And then when her family turned its back on her, she reported all of them. Her father, her sisters, and her brother, something to do with their family business. Everyone was taken away, branded, punished.”

“What?” I gasp. “Her own family?”

“She might look like a woman in a stupid costume, but she’s dangerous. Let’s not find out how far she’ll go.”

I swallow and nod. I may have gotten away easily here. My weeklong detention isn’t the worst punishment in the world. It means that I can still go to Logan’s party tomorrow night, which I’ve been excited and anxious about, but it will pause my Carrick-finding mission, and I need to find him before Crevan manages to make any more people disappear.

FORTY-ONE

“SO DID YOU speak with the guards?” I ask Pia, biting into my apple.

An urgent request to meet with me has brought Pia to my house extremely early Friday morning. I can hear everybody getting ready for school and work, but I’m in no rush because the principal just called to say that due to the reaction to Pia Wang’s article, I can’t attend school until we figure out other arrangements. They have finally gotten their way, and they’re using the article to get at me, no doubt Crevan’s idea. I’m gone, now Art can attend. He just needs to be found first.