Chương 21: True Lies

The eyes of the bureaucratic automaton stared into my soul for a long moment before she turned back to the detective.

"I believe I can take care of things here Carl, how about you give us the room." Danger, Will Robinson, danger! My mind went into overdrive. Stay in character. Play dumb. I never talked to her at the school. She probably didn't even know I went there. Detective Homer Simpson shook her hand as he slipped out the door with a look of profound relief on his face. Then she turned her eyes on me.

"Hi Cassandra, you remember me, right?" She grasped the top of the chair in her hand and dragged it back, making a long scraping sound, then sat down.

"From the assembly? Ms. Briggs." Crap, she did know I went to the school she was investigating. It wasn't a total loss. Just play the ditz and lie.

"Yeah! You're that government lady looking for a loser who is hiding his powers, right?" Her smile widened to stretch across her face and the whiteness of her teeth was just frankly impressive. Bet she didn't eat real food to ensure there was no potential staining.

"That's right Cassandra, I am looking for a pretty big loser." She unclasped her pink purse and pulled out a small metal disk about the size of a hockey puck and put it on the table. There was a button that she pressed and a green light on top lit up.

"Now I have some questions for you, but remember, no matter what you say, you're not in trouble." The green light on the top flashed red.

"Do you understand?" I hoped the smile on my face didn't look as fake as hers.

"Yeah, I definitely got it." My shoulders were rigid and tense, the pump of my heart sounded like a drum in my chest. I concentrated on the rhythm of my breath, keeping it slow and steady, measured. I'd gotten through one interrogation, I could get through another. I pointed to the small black disk.

"Is this like a Christmas thing? What's with the green and red lights?" She shook her head, lips stretching.

"Don't worry about that, it's just a recording device. It goes from red to green to show changes in pitch and tone, that's all. Pretty boring, right?" It changed to red twice while she spoke. I nodded, but kept my eyes on it.

"Super."

"So tell me about what happened today?" She said, sitting back easily, as if we were best friends having lunch together. Remember, Kassandrai, you got this. I flipped my hair back with one hand.

"So, I just really needed a day out, you know? School has been just so crazy busy and I haven't been to Millenium Park in so long. So I said to myself 'Kassandrai-'" The light on the device changed to red, and Ms. Brigg's eyes glanced down to note it.

"-you idiot, you need to go again. So I went." She pressed her lips together while looking at me, thinking.

"Is Kassandrai your real name?" The hockey puck's light had changed only when I had said my fake name, the only lie I had told. It had also flashed red when she'd talked, particularly about how I wouldn't get in trouble no matter what… So, it wasn't just a voice recorder, then. I had to keep up this fake persona, answering questions with only completely truthful answers, while at the same time, on the whole, lying out of my butt to conceal what was really going on. It would be easier to solve world hunger.

But then… there were many ways to tell the truth and that included slicing and dicing it. Chopping it up so that you only showed some parts while hiding others and still being able to say, truthfully, 'Yeah, that's exactly what happened.' Politicians had taught us that long ago. I'm looking at you, Richard Nixon. You were a crook. I tested out my theory.

"But Kassandrai is my name!" I said it indignantly. The device flared red. Bingo. Ms. Briggs looked at me with her lips turned up and an eyebrow raised. I slumped my shoulders and rolled my eyes.

"Fine. It's Cass, with a 'C'. My grandma won't let me change it." That was definitely true. The black box stayed green. Still, this was very dangerous ground. I could easily make a mistake and if I did, I would need to use my powers to correct it, even if it left me a paraplegic afterwards.

"You live with your grandmother?" This one would be easy.

"Yes. She burns everything she cooks. It's how I stay so thin." Umbrage pressed her fingertips together lightly.

"So you went to the park and what happened then?" I took a deep breath and took my time letting it out.

"I people-watched. I know, I know, that sounds boring and like a total waste of time, but it makes me feel better about myself." It did because I ended up doing good deeds from watching the crowd.

"Oh? How so, Cass?" I sighed.

"Other people are just so sad! They wear such bad clothes and they listen to such dumb music. There were these hippies there that played Taylor Swift songs on a wooden flute and bongo drums. It was a tonal abomination!"

"Yes, I read the report and it said the music group and another girl were engaged in some kind of crime, and that you got involved somehow. Can you tell me about that?" My throat was dry, so I sipped the soda-tinged water my drink had melted into. Then I raised my hands in explanation.

"So I totally didn't plan on any of this happening, but it did, so we're all lucky that I was watching. I started noticing this girl go up to the hippie group and she'd hug the singer, and it just felt off, you know, like there was something weird about it. So I started following her and I saw how she was taking all of these people's wallets and I could not believe it. It was so wrong! So I decided I should tell somebody about it, like maybe-" Green lights turned to red. Ms.

Briggs was giving me that hard stare again. Shoot. I'd gone a little too far from the truth. Now I'd have to cover up for it. But that wasn't too hard when you were playing a vapid airhead.

"Okay, okay. I don't like to admit this, but… I didn't want to tell anybody. But she got to that one guy and I just kind of lost it at that point. I was tired and I had the biggest headache in the world- you don't even know- but I wanted to do something, so when she walked by the police officer, I pushed her into him. Then I fell on the ground and fainted- ugh, I mean, talk about taking an L." Briggs' eyes darted from me to the light on the box, which had remained a steady grass green.

She began tapping a pen against her lips with a look on her face as if she were deeply considering things. Then she leaned forward.

"So you didn't use your powers to stop the crime?" My eyes flashed to the little truth box on the table. When you couldn't deny, it was always best to deflect. Questions were my best defense with an accusation, because it was impossible to tell a lie by asking a question. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. I pointed to myself.

"If I had powers, would I use them to stop petty crimes in a public park? Only a zero would do that." The light stayed green. Thank you, low self-esteem, for making that pass the truth test. She glanced at the green light and her eyes hardened.

"I'm afraid I will need a yes or no answer. Did you use your powers in the park?" All of my triumph at my brilliant redirection fell out of the bottom of my stomach. I was Cass's raging ulcer. My face froze for a second. I locked eyes with the vile toad of a woman in front of me, then I began, "No–" The light flickered to red. I honed in on Brigg's face, her overpuffed lips, caked-on make up, and, more than anything, that expression of politeness mixed with cold calculation in her eyes.

There wasn't a big indicator that time had stopped, other than that the whirring sound of the air conditioner had silenced and that a sun had exploded into existence behind my eyes, blinding me. My fingers reached out until they collided with the device and I ground out, "I did use my powers to stop the crime." I released the black box and snapped my hand back to its previous position on the table top just in time for the AC to groan into life and Briggs to blink. Green lights shined from the device now.

She stared at it, red lips turning down on one side. Her matching manicured hands picked it up, turning it over.

"It flickered, I saw it. It turned red at first." I kept my expression still while my skull pounded beneath my skin and everything around me had a haze surrounding it. My back stiffened straight as I tried to ride out the churning of my stomach. A green screen filled my vision before I dismissed it with a thought. Warning: Skill Exhaustion in effect. Brigg's blurred face was looking straight at me.

"You don't look so good, you know." Her voice sounded like I was under water.

"Bad corndog," I answered and then threw up all over the desk. She shrieked for someone to come clean up my mess while I held my head in my hands. A janitor arrived with a ring of paper towels and a spray bottle. We waited until the pinkish beige mound had been cleared, but there was a strong smell of barf-tinged bleach perfuming the air, so Umbrage moved us to another room. One of the police officers brought me a water bottle and I sipped it carefully as Briggs set up the device again.

Everyone tried to avoid throwing up, but the unfortunate truth was, you always felt better afterwards. My brain no longer felt like roadkill and my vision was sharp. Her eyebrow raised.

"Feeling better now?" I nodded. Briggs had stared at me the whole time with this indulgent look on her face as if I was a silly toddler who drew with crayons on the wall and was now trying to lie about it while holding the evidence in my fingers. She tucked a hand under her chin.

"You know, I've dealt with a lot of people that don't have powers and those who try to hide theirs. I'm very used to the stories they tell. And there's something that's not adding up with your story, Cass with a 'C'. You're already kind of famous, aren't you? A car crash with an eighteen wheeler when you were only five? Your parents didn't make it, but you miraculously survived. That's quite unusual, isn't it?" I looked down, staring at my hands folded on the table.

My brain tried to come up with some valleygirl explanations, but none would really work. So instead, I dropped the Cher Horowitz accent and looked her directly in the eye.

"The truth is, ever since that day, I've always thought of myself as a nothing. Because I didn't start using powers as a six year old, and as a seven year old I knew that I didn't have any. I got the message from an early age that I wasn't going to be special and I couldn't even hope for it to happen someday like everyone else. So I tried to make myself different in other ways and that's been my whole life since then.

Everyone has always seen me as a zero and deep down I still feel that they're right, and I think I always will." The light stayed green the whole time. She squinted at me, tapping her fingers against the desk. It was time to turn the tables on her.

"But, are you saying that you think I do have powers?" She smiled slowly, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

"No." The light turned red. The door opened again and another woman walked in. She didn't have the smooth, polished look of Briggs at all. Her hair had flyaways escaping a low ponytail of dark blonde hair, her moss green dress clashed with her orange knit sweater, and she huffed her breath in and out as if she had run all the way here.

"Patricia," she gasped.

"You know very well that you're not supposed to start any interrogations without me present." Patty didn't look surprised and kept her eyes on me.

"Oh, but this isn't an interrogation, Susan. We're just having a friendly chat." Susan hastily placed a laptop on the table and opened it up.

"Now, I've already read the case file with the interviews of witnesses, accusations, and police analysis. I think this has gotten way out of hand. We've got the testimony of a five year old and a perpetrator making the accusation post-crime? This just seems like the most-""Susan," Umbrage tutted.

"You're ranting about broken protocols when you haven't even introduced yourself." Susan's hands raised unconsciously to her face, looking embarrassed. You got the feeling that she did this kind of thing a lot.

"Oh- yes- well, I'm Susan Hargrove from the Academy. I'm from the Potential Super Inquiries sector where we, well, investigate potential supers. I would have been here sooner, but for some reason, I didn't get the message from Ms. Briggs here until just ten minutes ago." She sent an accusatory glare in her direction. Dome-hair shrugged.

"Ah well, must have slipped my mind. I'm sure you've experienced that before, haven't you, Susan?" Susan looked down, adjusting her sweater which looked to be inside out.

"Yes, well, in any case, I've read up on everything and I really don't see any substantial evidence. But if you have something new to reveal, Patricia, I'm all ears." Pat turned her eyes on me.

"Cass here told me quite the interesting tale. At first, she was using a different voice to speak in and using a very particular persona which she dropped at the end. That's clearly a wig on her head, and, most importantly, although she passed the interview with mostly truthful answers, when asked if she had powers, there was a moment where I swear it turned red when she answered no." She looked up at Susan with a manic gleam in her eye that was similar to a predator grasping her prey.

"Does that sound like substantial evidence to you?" My heart sank like a rock all the way down to my toes. Here I thought I'd done pretty well covering things up in the interview. Should've known that Ms. Bureaucracy here would pick up on things without mentioning them just to fling them in my face after. Goodbye, freedom. Goodbye, agency. Goodbye, Gran. Susan looked at me like she was taking in my reactions, trying to read them.

"I've read up on Cass' life and it doesn't surprise me that she's acting erratically. A traumatic experience from the age of five, no psychiatric care after, living with her grandmother in poverty since."

"Hey, Gran and I are not that poor." Their heads turned to look at me and I tapped my fingers on the table as I frowned.

"We're poverty-adjacent." With a slightly raised eyebrow, Susan turned back to her opponent.

"I'll remind you, Patricia, that my background is in social work and Cass stands out to me as someone who is more likely hiding psychological trauma than superpowers. If she'd had them from the age of five, don't you think her teachers would have noticed long ago? What kindergartner is able to conceal something like that?"

"There are always outliers," Briggs said dryly.

"Especially in our business." Susan looked down at the black box, still shining green.

"You said the device only turned red for a moment? Let's test it. My hair is on fire." The light turned red for a solid second before returning to green.

"It seems to be working fine."

"What about the voice and the wig?"

"I work at the Academy. Do you have any idea how many teenage girls dye their hair, wear wigs, and try out a new personality every week? It has nothing to do with powers. It's just confused kids trying to figure out who they are." Briggs looked at her with a flat expression.

"Ten years experience has taught me to trust my gut, Susan."

"Not when it has you breaking protocol, Patricia!" Patsy put the device away into her purse, rolling her eyes.

"Please, spare me the dramatics. There's no need to shout. I'm simply talking to the girl and you're being highly unprofessional bringing all of this up in front of her."

"Unprofessional? She needed to have a parent or guardian here, by law! Therefore any questions you may have asked are inadmissible. You are the one who works for the government; I just work for the Academy. So why am I the one that has to remind you of this?" Patty got up out of her seat "Parents and guardians need to be informed for interrogations. This is just a friendly chat. Right, Cassandra?" I stayed in my normal voice, leaving behind forever the Southern California pep.

"I mean, you locked me in this room and won't let me leave, so that feels interrogation-y to me." Susan looked over at me with wet eyes. It was unclear if they were teary from stress or pity, but at this point, I didn't care.

"Cassandra dear, you are free to go." Briggs whipped around to glare at Susan.

"You can't just let her go!"

"I absolutely can, and I'll be having a word with your supervisor, Marcus. He will not be pleased with your methods." Patty's face turned white. Apparently, Umbridge feared her boss more than she hated me.

"Susan, that won't be necessary. This was an informal chat, nothing more." I pushed back my chair and stood up.

"Great. Then I guess I'm free to go." A smile shoved itself onto Patricia's face, as wide as it was fake. Her red lipstick was just slightly smudged at the corners now.

"It was very nice to see you again, Cass. I'll keep in touch, okay? I'd love to get to know you better. Maybe we could have lunch sometime." No food would ever be worth eating with that she-devil. Her domed hair finally slipped out the door. Susan turned to me, scratching absently at her head which only made the flyaways more fuzzy around her face.

"I'm sorry about that. She has her own way of doing things and it's for that exact reason that we are supposed to have two people in any kind of investigation." I shrugged, looking down. The important thing here was to maintain innocence.

"I'm sure she's just trying to do her job. And this is certainly an appropriate place to play good cop/bad cop." She shook her head as she gathered up her things.

"I'll be telling her department just how she wasn't doing her job. That's the only thing that will be written up about this. Here I can walk you out."

"No," I said quickly, then smiled to soften it.

"I remember the way. I'm the kind of person that just needs a lot of alone time to process things, and well, this has been a lot." Utilizing psycho babble would be my ticket out of here.

"You know, Cass, working at the Academy, I have a lot of experience with kids who have been through trauma. If you ever need to talk, here's my card. It's not good to process things alone." I took the card and slipped it into my pocket. Hopefully, I would never have to use it.