Perfect

by Cecelia Ahern

  I think of catching Mary May reading my diary in my bedroom, of her wanting to be in my head.

  “And everything changed for me after this test. I knew that everything they were telling me about my parents was a lie.”

  I want to reach out to him, hug him, tell him I’m sorry he was taken away from his parents at such a young age, but there’s something about Carrick that stops me each time. He’s so contained. It’s like he has a force field around him, like the glass that was between us in the castle cells is still between us now. He’s there, but I can’t reach him.

  He clears his throat. “You have nerve endings on the surface of your eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. They detect the coolness of mint, the burning of chili peppers. Use them. You’re not alone in this, you know.”

  “Your mom had the same thing after her branding?” I guess. What was her lie? I want to ask.

  “It’s not just Flawed people who experience this. Not being able to taste is called ageusia.”

  “So it’s a thing?” I ask, surprised.

  “It’s an actual thing.”

  I feel happy about that.

  “So here is a taste bag.” He places a bag down. “And here is a smell bag.”

  I laugh.

  “Let’s use”—he scans the shelves in the large refrigerator—“Bahee’s jelly beans.”

  “Jelly beans?” I laugh. “In the fridge?”

  “He’s an odd man. Consumes more sugar in one day than Evelyn does in a week, and he never shares, which is what makes this all the sweeter.” He takes the bag of jelly beans out, tells me to look away.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Crushing the jelly beans, so the odor is released in the smell bag. Now.” He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a bandanna. “Close your eyes.”

  He moves behind me and gently ties the bandanna around my eyes, his fingers brushing against my skin at one point, and I feel my skin tingle and the hairs stand up on my arms. The last time I was blindfolded, it was by some kids from school, playing a cruel joke on me. They stripped me and examined my scars with ghoulish curiosity like I was in some freak show at a circus. I felt terrified then, broken, had lost all faith in people and my new life. But now, I’m completely relaxed, excited even. Despite the terrifying feeling I had when we approached the gates of the CCU plant, I realize I completely and utterly trust Carrick. He feels like my partner in all this. If my sixth brand is as powerful as Carrick says it is, he could have used his knowledge of it for his own purposes. He could have threatened Crevan himself, but he didn’t; in fact, he didn’t tell anybody. He wants to help me reverse my own branding.

  “Okay.” He’s back in front of me. “Taste this.”

  “You better not slip a chili pepper in.” I laugh.

  I open my mouth and feel him place a jelly bean on my tongue. I close my lips and self-consciously chew. I don’t taste anything, unsurprisingly. I feel the texture, though I don’t think I would have known it was a jelly bean had he not told me.

  “Take a sip of water.”

  I suck through a straw.

  “Now smell.” He holds the bag up to my nose and I breathe in the crushed jelly bean.

  “Strawberry,” I say easily. Nothing wrong with my sense of smell at least.

  “Now taste.” He places the jelly bean on my tongue.

  I expect it to be strawberry again but I frown. “That’s not strawberry,” I say confused. “I know it’s not strawberry but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Aha,” he says happily. “Progress.”

  “Yay,” I cheer myself.

  “Smell.”

  I sniff. “Orange.”

  “Now taste.”

  I feel his fingers brush my lips as I open my mouth. I’m so distracted by everything around the jelly bean, everything that’s happening, I can barely concentrate on what I’m doing. All of my other senses are on fire. I try to focus. I smell as I chew, waiting for my nerve endings to recognize whether it’s bitter, salty, sweet, or sour flavor. I recognize the taste as being the same as the previous taste. Bitter. “Orange.”

  “Yes,” he says happily. “Now let’s go again.”

  Carrick is nothing if not efficient, and persistent. Over and over again, we try the test until I think I get the hang of using my gift of smell. He’s practically emptied out the fridge of flavors. I have correctly identified most without needing to smell the bag first.

  “Right, last one.” He places it on my lips and I concentrate, I concentrate so hard. He said there are taste buds in my throat—I never knew that. I can also smell as I chew. I feel like an animal, zoned in on my food, sniffing as I chew in the dark, hoping for scents and clues.

  “Mint?” I ask hopefully.

  “Perfect,” he replies.

  I smile. It’s been a while since I’ve heard that word, or felt anything close to it.

  TWENTY

  ART AND I never had sex. We had been dating for six months and we were close to it happening but we never got there before the branding, before both our lives changed. In the few days before I left, he told me that he’d been in love with me. Not that he was in love with me now, but that he had been in love with me. It took me only a few seconds of silent celebration before I distinguished the difference, and then the party inside me died.

  When Art and I were alone, we explored each other’s bodies, but shyly, clumsily. I don’t feel that way with Carrick. He shattered that transparent glass between us as soon as we began the taste test. I feel so connected to him, feel that our bodies went through so much together already that it links us tighter. We have a physical bond. And that was never Crevan’s plan. Instead, it was to mutilate us, make us appear ugly, dangerous, different, not to be touched. He said it himself, at the ruling. A tongue brand so that everyone who talks to me or kisses me knows that I’m a liar. I remember how repelled Art was by it, whether he noticed it himself or not. How I feel when I’m with Carrick is not what Crevan intended, for the people who are punished to find harmony and safety together.

  I don’t know where Art is now. I don’t know if he’s gone back to his dad or if he has run away. I asked Granddad about him once and he quickly shot me down, but not cruelly; I suppose he was just being realistic.

  “Why do you want to know about that boy?” he asked.

  “Just because…” I’d mumbled something incoherently, embarrassed to be talking about feelings with my granddad, particularly when I knew he was never a fan of the Crevans anyway.

  He stopped what he was doing and fixed me with a hard look. “He cut you loose, girl, I suggest you do the same.”

  So I never asked again.

  I take off the blindfold and Carrick is looking at me intensely, his eyes on mine. The light from the fridge dances from his dark pupils, like cat eyes.

  To his surprise, I reach out and open the top buttons of his denim shirt. Three buttons it takes me to see the contrast between the color of his neck and the skin hidden below his collar. I see his F brand, only a month old, still new and fresh like mine, healing over, trying to settle, to find its place on his body.

  His breathing is heavy; his chest rises up and down; he looks almost nervously from my face to my fingers as they hover above his scar. I press them to his skin and with my forefinger I trace the sign of the F and the curve of the surrounding circle. I feel his heart beating beneath my fingers. It was supposed to be a branding to symbolize his disloyalty to society, to the Guild, for seeking out his parents after thirteen years in an institution that tried to teach the Flaws out of him. He turned his back on the Guild. But his dishonor to them only proves his loyalty to what’s good and right, and proper and honest.

  I move my body closer and press my lips to his scar, and I hear him breathe out. I look up to see if I’ve hurt him, but his eyes are closed, and his hand moves to my hair, to my right temple. His thumb rubs my temple. My brand.

  For your bad judgment, your right temple. I hear Crevan’s co
urtroom voice boom as though he’s in the kitchen with us right now.

  Carrick lifts my right hand, and I feel his thumb circle my palm.

  For stealing from society, you will you branded on your right hand. Whenever you go to shake the hands of any decent people in society, they will know of your theft.

  He kisses the palm of my hand, gently.

  Then he reaches out, pushes the refrigerator door closed, and we’re plunged into darkness.

  “Carrick?” I whisper.

  “I didn’t want it to defrost.”

  I smirk, then start laughing.

  “Let’s go to my cabin,” he whispers.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “WHERE IS LENNOX?” I ask as we enter the cabin, and I pick up on a distinctively male smell to the room.

  Carrick kicks a pile of dirty clothes under the bed and I pretend not to notice.

  “Not here.”

  I laugh.

  His cabin is exactly the same as mine and Mona’s, but messier. He sits down on the double bed. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Should I have played more hard to get?” I tease.

  “I mean I can’t believe I found you. I told you at the castle that I’d find you, but it was harder than I thought. You were well guarded. I wanted to meet my parents, of course I did, but now … but now that we have you, we’re moving out of here. It’s finally time to move,” he says, pumped.

  “Who’s the ‘we’ you keep referring to?”

  “Fergus, Lorcan, Lennox, you, and me. Maybe Mona. I haven’t discussed it with my parents. Bahee has a fit if people can’t agree on what to watch on TV, never mind the Flawed movement.”

  “So you, me, Fergus, Lorcan, and Lennox are going to change the world, are we?”

  “Not the world. Just the country. And to change the country you only have to change a few minds.”

  I stare at him in surprise.

  “Celestine.” He takes my hands and pulls me to sit beside him on the bed. “To most people, Crevan seems all powerful. He has control over the Guild, and the Guild has somehow found a way to manipulate the government—probably because they’ve branded most of them and those people now live in fear of the monster they created. Much of the public supports Crevan, but not everyone. You got people listening who never listened before. I always knew you were special. And now, I realize that you have something even more powerful against him.”

  The sixth brand. And the footage of it occurring. My chest tightens that I haven’t told him I don’t have it.

  “The video will expose Crevan. He’ll lose credibility, he’ll lose his power. You’ll be able to force him to undo the charges against you. You know you can. If he has made a mistake with one Flawed, then perhaps he’s made a mistake with more. It will call the entire thing into question. Then we can all be free. But it’s you who has the key to unlock it.”

  “That’s all?” I ask him, terrified by the prospect. “I just make Crevan change his mind?”

  “You can do it, Celestine,” he says softly.

  “But I’m exhausted, Carrick.” I finally break down. I sit on the bed beside him. “I can’t do it anymore.” And that’s all I can say, because the tears take my words away and the exhaustion sweeps in and takes over.

  Carrick removes my hands from where they’re hiding my face and pulls me to him. I rest my head on his chest; his shirt is still open and my tears fall on his scar. He lets me cry for a moment, holding me perfectly still.

  “Whenever I think I can’t do something, do you know what I think of?” he asks.

  “Raindrops and roses?” I say weepily.

  He doesn’t laugh. He’s not really the laughing type. “You.”

  I pull away from him, confused.

  “What you did on the bus, in the courtroom, and in the chamber,” he says quietly, as we both remember, “was the strongest, bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. You are my inspiration, Celestine. Every time I think I can’t get through this, that there’s no way out, I think of you. There’s no one like you. Courageous, so damn stubborn, and you have all the power now. You’re like Superman to Crevan’s Lex Luthor.”

  Despite my fear and sadness I laugh. “That’s a terrible comparison.”

  Embarrassed, he says, “I was trying to be serious.”

  “Oh.”

  “When I was watching you in the chamber I saw awesome power. When I was in there myself, I was terrified. I just thought of you the entire time. I wanted to be brave like you were. I didn’t make a sound, just like you. I’ve told Lorcan, Fergus, and Lennox about you, that you have … something, that they just have to wait and see. Because even though you don’t know it, Celestine, it comes out of you, when you’re least expecting it, when the timing’s right.”

  “They’ll be terribly disappointed if you’ve built me up to be Superman.”

  “They already believe me. They saw you in action at the supermarket, standing up to that policeman. But they don’t know about the—”

  “Shh…” I hold my finger to his lips.

  I see a shadow beneath the door.

  TWENTY-TWO

  CARRICK FOLLOWS MY GAZE. As if sensing our attention on it, the shadow quickly moves. Carrick jumps up and pulls the door open. He charges down the balcony, his boots clattering on the metal.

  I lie back on his bed.

  He returns, out of breath. “Couldn’t see anyone.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t say it out loud,” I say blankly, staring at the ceiling, feeling everything positive I felt about this place this morning further draining away. Of course Carrick is right: I can’t stay here forever. I miss my parents, Juniper, and Ewan. I miss life. But it’s not just that: This place has layers I didn’t see on arrival last night, and today. Now it doesn’t feel safe.

  Carrick finishes checking the corridor and closes the door. “Are you okay?”

  “My new happy, peaceful world has been officially deflated. So, no.”

  He comes toward me, lies on the bed, above me, on his elbows to take his weight off. He gives me a long kiss. Long, slow, beautiful. Soft despite his strength. Then he pulls away and asks me again. “Now are you okay?”

  “Almost,” I whisper.

  He smiles. “So where was I?” He lifts up the palm of my hand and kisses it. “One.” He kisses my right temple. “Two.” Then next is my mouth. He kisses my tongue. “Three.” He reaches for the hem of my T-shirt and lifts it over my head, revealing my chest scar, between my bra cups. He does what I did, makes the shape of it with his finger before kissing it gently. “Four.” Then he moves down slowly, kissing my belly button, which isn’t branded, but I’m not complaining, and he removes my shoes and socks. The sole of my right foot for your collusion with the Flawed, for walking alongside them, and for stepping away from society. He kisses my foot, I feel him whisper, “Five,” with his lips on my skin, and I hear the voices, the shouts, the fury, the pounding of the hammer of the courtroom all in my head. I’m almost dizzy from reliving it.

  He kneels and looks at me.

  I’m nervous. My heart is pounding. I vowed to never let anyone see this.

  “Turn over,” he says.

  I shake my head, swallow hard.

  His enormous hands take my hips and turn me. I move with him so that I’m lying on my side. He lies down beside me, behind me, hand on my waist. If he’s disgusted by what he sees he doesn’t show it. The sixth brand wasn’t planned, it was carried out without anesthetic by a furious and out-of-control Crevan. I jerked when it happened, as I felt it burn through my skin. The F is gaudy and unclear, it’s as brutal-looking as it felt.

  He starts at the nape of my neck with his tongue and he traces my spine all the way down to my lower back. There, he kisses my most painful brand—yet the one he believes to be my most powerful of all.

  I hear Crevan amid all the branding chamber panic. Brand her spine! We have never seen anyone so Flawed to their very backbone.… Until his voice dies out and I
can’t hear him anymore. He’s gone from my head. Cleansed.

  “Six,” Carrick and I whisper in unison.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT’S CLOSE IN THE CABIN, the small window doesn’t allow any air in on the still, hot night. We’re tangled in the covers, my leg draped over Carrick’s, my head against his chest. My left hand is resting on his chest, guarding his brand, and his left hand is holding mine, his finger circling my palm. I don’t know if he notices that this is the natural position we’ve both adopted.

  “So I guess two Flawed make a perfect,” Carrick says, and I giggle. “I don’t do jokes well,” he says with a small smile.

  “You don’t need to. You just be serious and mean and sexy.” I kiss his jaw.

  Art was funny, it was what I adored most about him. He always made me laugh; he lightened every tense atmosphere with his well-timed observations. He also managed to be appropriately inappropriate, which is a feat. Guilt envelops my mind, and I stiffen.

  “Okay?” Carrick asks.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  But it’s as if he can read my mind. “I was thinking, we do have a way to get to Crevan. You have more power over him than you know. Apparently he’s close to his son, particularly now. Crevan would do anything for him.”

  I freeze. Use Art?

  I’m so disgusted by the suggestion, by the tactless timing and the way it was raised, that I clamber off Carrick, clumsily, trying to untie my body from his, but he’s so strong and it’s tricky. I eventually get away from him and off the bed, but only because he gives up the fight, and I hurriedly start putting my clothes back on.

  “Come on, Celestine.” He sits up, bedsheets low on his hips, revealing the tattoo of a weather vane on his hip, the one he says he got when he was sixteen on a school trip away and won’t tell me why.

  “Is that why you slept with me?” I snap. “To make me fall for your plan? So you could use me to get to Art, to get to Crevan?”