Echoes by Marissa Lete (best books for students to read txt) 📕

own, honestly. But the people here, this is their job. They get paid to cook, and clean, and take care of the yard. I don’t want to take that from them.”

I ponder it. “I guess that is weird.”

He nods, sliding the full basket of fries into the deep fryer. He turns to face me, leaning back and resting his elbows on the counter. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve all of this,” he waves his hand in the air, gesturing at the room vaguely.

I glance at all of the stainless steel around me, the spotless tile floors. I shrug. “You just got really lucky, I guess.”

A half-smile crosses his face, but it looks more sad than happy. “It doesn’t feel like that.”

I try to imagine Maverick’s life. Struggling with his ability. Fighting with his family about it. It all seems too similar to my own experience with the echoes, except Maverick’s ability actually caused irreversible damage to his family. And now both of his parents are gone. I can’t even imagine having to deal with so much.

The deep fryer beeps, and Maverick turns away, lifting the basket of fries out of the oil. He pulls a plate out of a cabinet, shakes the pile of French fries onto it, then slides it over to me. “All yours.”

Chapter 29

Two hours later, we wait in a parking lot in Maverick’s Corolla, watching the doorway of the building. I shiver from the cold. We didn’t leave the car on, since we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, and twenty minutes later the bitter cold from outside has already made its way into the car. It’s freezing, but the gun burns hot against my hip. Maverick had assured me that I most likely won’t need it tonight, but he wanted me to have it just in case.

Twelve minutes after seven, Alice comes walking out of the building. I shiver at the sight of her, dressed in a pantsuit and carrying a briefcase. So normal in appearance. She hops into a shiny white Porsche and peels out of the parking lot. I start to move after it’s gone, but Maverick holds his hand up.

“Let’s wait a few minutes, just to make sure,” he says.

I nod, my breath coming out in clouds of mist. We wait in silence as a few other people dressed in business clothes leave the building. Ten minutes later, Maverick pushes the door open.

We walk inside into a small waiting room where a receptionist is sitting behind a glass window, typing into her computer. When we get closer to her, she opens the window, looking at us expectantly. “Can I help you?”

Maverick ignores her. He steps past the window, opening a door just to the left of it, and I follow closely behind him. “Excuse me? You need to check in before you can go back there. Your doctor will come and get you when they are ready,” the receptionist is saying as we pass through the door. On the other side, a hallway is in front of us and the backside of the receptionist’s desk is to our right.

“Hold on, please go back around the other way,” she says, standing up from her chair. She steps forward as if to guide us back through the door, but Maverick reaches out and grabs her wrist. I watch as her eyes widen for a half-second, then glaze over. Maverick grabs her other arm, guiding her back into her seat. She sits down, then he turns her forward to face the front door again. When he lets go of her, he goes to the wall behind her, searching for something. He snatches a key chain off a hook, then looks at me.

“Let’s go,” he says, avoiding my gaze. “She won’t remember seeing us.” Then he starts down the hallway.

I pause for a long moment, realizing that I’ve just witnessed Maverick use his ability. The same ability he used on me. I shiver at the thought; it had been so easy. It only took a second. Pushing my fears to the side, I follow him down the hall, taking long strides to keep up with his pace.

Finally, we come to an office, and Maverick uses a key from the keychain he took to unlock the door. It slides open, revealing a homey-looking office with a red sofa across from a desk. It’s quiet, probably because it’s so late in the evening and even last year no one was here at the time.

My eyes immediately go to the filing cabinet in the corner.

Maverick closes the door and locks it.

“We’ll be quick. You start with the filing cabinets,” he says as I make my way toward them. “I’ll see if I can get into her computer.”

I open the first drawer, sifting through folders. I find copies of different types of paperwork: questionnaires, medical history forms, insurance forms. All of them blank. I close the drawer, moving to the second one. This one has more forms, but these ones are filled out. They’re in alphabetical order, and I scan a few of them, but there isn’t anything that stands out as odd or incriminating.

I’m putting a folder back into the cabinet when I notice a paper laying face down at the bottom of the drawer. I reach in, flipping it over in my hand. It’s a photograph.

“This is Dave, that guy that was working for Alice,” I say. Next to him in the photo is a woman holding a young child. It’s a studio-quality photo, all three of them smiling at the camera and standing in front of a backdrop of a field of flowers.

I hold the photo out to Maverick, still sitting in front of the computer. “I know them,” he says, looking at it.

“You do?”

“That’s his wife, Amy, and his son,