Page 27 of The Puppetmaster

Sexual misconduct in the workplace? My little sister?

Somehow, I can’t bring these two sentences together in my own head. What on earth did she do for that to happen? Is it related to her leaving her boyfriend Chris, who she has been with for the past two years? Did she cheat on him? Did they do something at her office and get caught? Is that why she left him?

And do I really want to know?

I’m curious, as anyone would be—but I don’t dare ask because I’m too afraid of the answer.

“W-W-What will you do now?” I ask instead, trying not to sound too affected by her words. “Will you be okay?”

I can hear her laughing at the other end of the line. “You don’t want to know what happened?”

“I...I’m just—”

“I know, I know,” she interrupts my stumbling reply. “I’m sorry to steamroll you like this. I wasn’t planning on telling you like this, but since you called...”

I nod as she speaks, suddenly charged with a very different concern. Could I really disappear from the face of the earth when Riley needs me?

“Actually, since we’re already talking...” she continues, her words weighing heavy with hesitation. “I was going to ask you for something.”

I prick up my ears. “Yes? Anything!”

“Could I stay with you for a while?” she wants to know. “I need to get out of here. I’ve had enough of this place. I need a fresh start.”

She pauses, clearing her throat and seemingly feeling just as uncomfortable as I was when I started this phone call.

“I promise it won’t be for long!” she adds. “Just until I find a place of my own. I already have job interviews lined up and—”

“You have?” I cut her off. “That quickly? Riley, how did you—”

“Well, fine, I wasn’t super honest about the timing of my dismissal,” Riley admits, adding an awkward chuckle. “It’s been... a while.”

“Riley! How could you not tell me?” I scold her, pulled back into my big sister role all too suddenly.

“It’s fine!” she insists. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Like I said, I already have some job interviews lined up in Boston. I just need to get my ass over there ASAP.”

I’m shaking my head. This is so unlike my little sister. She has always been the reliable one, the reasonable, smart, and collected one between the two of us.

She’d never do something like I did. Never.

“So, can I stay with you?” she asks again, sounding hopeful.

And this time I’m the one who responds with an amused snort instead of actual words.

“You know what?” I tell her. “You can actually have the place to yourself, because I won’t be there for a while.”

And just like that, I tell her. I tell her as honestly as I can. I have never mentioned the Puppetmaster in front of her, so I have to start at the very beginning, the first time I saw him, the first time I tried to be with him. I don’t leave out the part where I trip a girl on purpose to gain his attention because I feel she needs to hear this particular detail.

The thing is, Riley has always looked up to me, and for me, that was part of the problem. I hate it because I was such a bad role model for her and she admired a side of me that I was never proud of.

That’s exactly why I told him. That’s why I shared this tainted truth about myself with the Puppetmaster, fully aware that I am risking everything. I was brutally honest in the note I wrote to him, telling him things that no one outside my Brooklyn community knows about me.

It wasn’t pretty. It’s nothing to take pride in. On the contrary, it’s a heavy cloak of guilt that’s been weighing me down for years.

It was ugly. I was an ugly person back then.

And it’s irreversible.

It’s an invisible mark on everything I am, body and soul, and I wish for nothing more than to forget about it. But I know I can’t.

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