Page 38 of V-Day
EllaJean was permitted to continue caring for her, only EllaJean was already old and even though her mind was still sharp, Chloe found it easy to fool her. By the time Chloe was thirteen, she was no longer a virgin. Bars were easy pickings, men made absolute fools of themselves over a sweet young thing, which made booze, and more, easy to come by.
She stole money for clothes and makeup, told everyone she was seventeen, which they believed without a quiver because her responses and behavior were all those of an almost-adult.
It was fun. It was distracting. She didn’t have to think about her mother even once in those handful of years.
Then she was caught shoplifting. She’d had to face her grandmother and look her in the eye as the welfare officer laid out the clothes, liquor and shoes upon the kitchen table which had been stuffed behind the false back of Chloe’s closet.
That was when she was sent to The Place.
Three years later, when Chloe found the group and Shadow, she had told them a great deal about the Place, except for the identifiable facts. Anonymity helped everyone feel secure revealing their true natures. She had been frank about how much of a shock the Place was for her. After a lifetime of coasting and expecting things to fall into her lap because of her smarts, she suddenly had to work to meet expectations.
She couldn’t tell them everything because it would let them figure out who she was and what the Place was.
Not until she reached the big house on the beach north of Acapulco and for the first time got to see Cristián on her screen, was she free to speak about the Place and actually name it.
That first time!
Daniel had deliveredHarry’s Cloakto Cristián’s house, which allowed them to use the full Internet resources available and speak to each other face to face. At eight o’clock that night, their standard check-in time, Chloe had tapped into Google Hangouts and connected with Cristián.
As she waited for him to answer the call, Chloe sat on the edge of her chair, vibrating.
She had never allowed herself to even search for a picture of Cristián before, just in case her searching alerted the Insurrectos. She had no idea what he looked like.
Would the same deep connection they felt still be there when they were looking each other in the eye?
The screen fizzed, then the video kicked in.
Cristián. Black hair, pale olive skin, wire-rimmed glasses, thin cheeks.
His eyes… Dark gray. Not black. They were beautiful.
For nearly ninety seconds they simply looked at each other.
“This is so…” Chloe whispered.
“All of it,” he breathed. He drew in a deep breath and let it out. “You’re…gorgeous.”
Delight filled her. “I’m a snotty X-Gen with privilege for blood.”
Cristián shook his head. “We both know differently.” He hesitated. “ThisCloakthing is really impenetrable?”
“It really is.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“All of it. Everything about you that you’ve never been able to say before.” Again, the hesitation. “That Place,” he said, and from his tone she could hear the capital letter. “What was it?”
Chloe shivered. “You didn’t guess? All this time?”
“I guessed,” he admitted. “I was probably wrong. In my mind it was Shawshank Prison.”
She smiled. “Almost. New York Military Academy.”
“Military. Oh, sweet lord….”
“EllaJean had old-fashioned ideas. She thought the discipline might work. The welfare officer wanted to send me to juvenile detention. EllaJean talked her around.”
