“Then the weirdest thing happened. A car drove past on the road that ran outside my dorm room. The windows were open and the radio blaring. It was a song from the eighties, ‘Shout’ by Tears for Fears. And all of a sudden I was a kid again, walking through the hallways of my high school, the speckled linoleum floors and olive green lockers, the fluorescent lights, the smell from the chemistry lab, and that song playing on a tiny pink Sanyo boom box.”
For a second, she seemed like the Lily Lydia remembered, animated, excited. Some of the color came back to her cheeks and she started to use her hands to express herself.
“And just like that, my life started to leak back, my job, my parents, my apartment. I realized that I was about twelve hours away from losing myself completely, becoming one of the zombies I’d seen hanging out in the common room.”
“So you ran,” said Lydia.
“Yes, I ran. I ran for my life. But they caught me.”
She slumped in her chair.
“They shot me… not with bullets but with those hard rubber pellets riot police use to subdue crowds. It felt like bullets. I thought they’d killed me; I tasted my own blood. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, they had strapped me down, they forced a feeding tube down my throat, played these audio visual messages about shedding the old self, my new day dawning, shifting off the negative messages of a sick society and smothering family. But I don’t remember much of it.” She stopped and smiled here.
“I just kept hearing that song in my head. ‘Shout, shout, let it all out.’ You know it?”
Lydia nodded.
“I don’t know why, but that song saved me. When I heard it in my head I just remembered who I was and where my life was. And I knew that no one could take my power; only I could give it away.”
The tears fell again. She took a tissue from the box and wiped them dry, blew her nose.
“I’m not sure how much time passed but as soon as they removed the tube, I started acting like my New Day had dawned. I just did whatever they wanted, looked vacant and euphoric. But I started pouring out the tea they gave me; I realized whatever is in that just makes you really mellow and susceptible. And all this time I’ve been listening, observing, taking notes.
“I figured Grimm would come for me at some point but then after a couple of weeks I started to get worried. Maybe he couldn’t come in after me; I knew he wasn’t supposed to be dealing with me at all. I started figuring out how I could get away.
“Then there was some emergency in Riverdale. I thought, finally, it was the FBI coming but they moved us down here… just a few of us. They left some people behind; the ones that didn’t have any more money I think, those whose families had cut them off, who couldn’t be extorted.”
“So that’s the agenda?” said Jeffrey. “To draw people with problems into The New Day, take all their money, then extort more funds from the families?”
She nodded. “I mean, you tell Rhames everything. Between the way he is, his personal power and the drugs, he becomes like your confessor, your lover, the only true friend you ever had. You bare your soul and all your pain to him. And he heals you. Or anyway that’s the way it feels in that controlled environment with the drugs and the audio visual messages they play.”
There was something pleading to her tone. She wanted them to understand, and Lydia did.
“But you have to be in pain first, right? In order to be healed by him?”
Lily looked at her with wide, sad eyes. She nodded.
“And that’s what you didn’t count on. That your grief over the loss of your brother fractured you, that you were in terrible pain and seeking revenge. It made you vulnerable.”
“That’s right. And I think I had a sense of it before I went in that night. I’d read Mickey’s journals and contacted the FBI. But I felt so overwhelmed, suddenly, unsure if I was doing the right thing. That’s why I called you.”
“I’m sorry, Lily,” said Lydia, moving to sit beside her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
She held Lily for a minute and then released her.
“No,” Lily said, shaking her head. “You couldn’t have known. Besides, if I hadn’t made that call, I might still be in there. Did it lead the police to you?”
Lydia nodded. “And then we came looking for you.”
Lily smiled a real smile for the first time. “Thank you.”
After a moment, the smile faded and worry clouded her features.
“I need to get in touch with my parents. They need to know I’m okay. And they need to be warned. They’ll come after me. And they’ll do that by trying to get to my parents.”
Lydia looked down and took Lily’s hands. “Your mom is staying at your apartment in New York. We can send someone to look out for her.”
Lily nodded. “They’re having problems again,” she said, as if she suspected it was inevitable. “Where’s my stepdad? At the house?”
“I’m so sorry, Lily,” Lydia said. She hadn’t wanted to tell Lily about Tim Samuels, but she didn’t want to lie either. Lily deserved better than that.
“What?” said Lily, her eyes widening.
“He’s dead,” she said simply. There was no better choice of words.
Lily jerked as if Lydia had slapped her. And Lydia instantly regretted her decision to tell the truth. Lily wasn’t strong enough to handle the news. Lydia reached for the younger woman.
“What?” she breathed into Lydia’s ear. “How?”
Lydia shook her head, searching for what to say. Lily drew away from Lydia and looked her in the face. There was something hard and angry in her expression, a look Lydia had never seen on her. It turned her prettiness to granite. The girl was gone. In her place was a woman made hard by bitter experiences and crippling grief.
“It was suicide.”
“Suicide?” she said, incredulous.
Lydia nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Lily. Yes.”
All the air seemed to suck out of the room as they waited for her to crumble beneath the weight of this new grief they’d delivered. But she didn’t crumble. Her face went blank and her lids lowered in rage.
“That bastard,” she hissed. “That coward.”
She stood suddenly, then lost her legs and fell into a pile of skin and bones on the filthy carpet. Lydia knelt beside her. Lily put her head in her hands and started to sob, terrible wracking sobs that connected painfully to the grief in Lydia’s own heart. Lydia pushed back tears, rested a hand on Lily’s shoulder. She hadn’t expected anger like that from Lily; it surprised her.
“He did this to us, to all of us,” she managed, between sobs. “And then he just bails? How could he?”
She leaned into Lydia and started to wail. Lydia looked up at Jeffrey who was leaning into them, his hand on Lydia’s shoulder. Agent Hunt stood back from the scene, looking uncomfortable and useless. On Jeffrey’s face she saw concern but she saw something else, too. Suspicion.
The high beams of the van were blinding her in the rearview mirror and the roar of its engine told her that it was souped up. Her Explorer was all bark and no bite, its engine no match for whatever was humming beneath the hood of the white van. The van rammed her hard from behind and she jerked hard from the impact. She’d managed to get her seat belt on before she started driving and she was glad for it when it locked and held her tightly in place, though she felt the sting of the friction burn on the side of her neck. She pressed her foot to the gas and the Explorer and the headlights dropped behind her but kept following fast.