I wait for there to be questions, but there are none. Eventually the child services lady sits me down and tells me what happened: my parents, after they got home from the party, went into the lounge and sat around drinking vodka—they know this, because there were two glasses. They’d lit some candles and they must have left one of them burning, and for some reason they took the battery out of the smoke alarm.
That’s not what happened, I want to say, that’s not what happened at all. But she hugs me close as I start to cry and I can’t seem to find my voice.
I don’t see Craig for a week. We never speak again.
I’m introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, a nice foster couple. They’ve done this before, their previous foster child having just left for college, and their house seems nice. But it’s not my house, and they’re not my parents.
Is there anything you like to do? Mrs. Patterson asks me. She has a round face like a moon.
Dance, I tell her. I go to dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. And when they find out how much dance lessons cost, I can see there’s some hesitation, but they have muttered conversations they think I can’t hear, saying things like it’s the one thing she has left. And I dance like I’ve never danced before, because maybe, if I dance and I dance and I dance, if I dance until my legs ache and my feet bleed, maybe I can punish myself enough.
Chapter Thirty Six
Natasha
I stopped. There was more to tell: how I’d won a scholarship to Fenbrook, “She’s so committed! We’ve never seen a student with such focus!”; how I’d discovered cutting when I was nineteen, the dancing no longer seeming to work as well. But I seemed to run out of energy. After years of fearing I’d slip and slide down into those memories, I’d sunk down in them willingly, to save him, and now I was just...numb.
He was staring into my eyes, his face wracked with pain.
“Say something,” I said.
He shook his head.
“I understand!” I told him. “I know what it’s like to have it hanging over you, and it’s fucked me up too, just in a different way. Come with me, away from all this!”
He looked at me for a long time. And then he finally said, in a voice dragged from his very soul, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
And it was over.
We stared at each other for a moment, and then I turned around and walked to the elevator, knowing that I’d never see him again. Upstairs, I found the bag that I’d left out in the garden all night. My phone was soaked and ruined, but the cigarette case was just fine.
I found an old pair of his jeans and pulled them on, threw my wet clothes in my bag and called a cab. It was a beautiful, sun-drenched morning and all I wanted to do was curl up somewhere and die.
***
I had classes, but I didn’t go. I didn’t even call in sick. I had the cab stop at a drugstore and bought some fresh blades and dressings. I never normally bought the two things together, in case the salesperson got suspicious, but I was done hiding.
I wasn’t crying. Maybe I was all cried out, but it felt more like I’d slipped off the tightrope I’d been walking for six years, the one the cutting and the bike and the dancing had helped me balance on. I’d fallen down into the cold, thick ocean of guilt and I was slowly drowning in it.
In my bedroom, I sat with the shining blades arranged in a row down my leg.
My hands were shaking as I cut, and I waited for the burn of punishment to calm them, but it didn’t.
He hated me.
The second cut was no better, the line ragged and messy.
The best thing that had ever happened to me had been ripped away by the worst thing I’d ever done. In some tiny part of me, there was actually relief. I didn’t need to try to be normal anymore. I’d had it confirmed to me that I was broken beyond repair, that even someone who loved me as much as Darrell had would abandon me in disgust as soon as they knew the truth.
The third cut hurt more, but not in the right way. It didn’t lift me out of the swamp of memories, and I was sinking fast. Hot tears splashed salty pain into the wound—I hadn’t even realized I’d started crying. I slapped a dressing over my thigh and climbed onto the bike, not even bothering to get changed. I cranked it up to maximum resistance and started pedaling, feeling the sweat burn into the cuts and my muscles ache like fire, but the tears kept coming, heavy and fast.
Clarissa found me like that an hour later, my legs still pumping at the pedals, the flywheel making an unearthly howl as I pushed it and myself past endurance. She had to pull me off it, and I beat on her back with my fists as I sobbed.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Darrell
I was kneeling next to the missile, making the final adjustments. I’d turned the music up ear-splittingly loud, but it wasn’t working anymore to drown out my memories.
I understood it all, now. She was punishing herself every day because she looked in the mirror and saw a murderer. She’d been living with guilt for six years, when she should have been getting help. She’d never been able to grieve, because she didn’t think she deserved to.
And I couldn’t help her.
I knew she’d told me to make me understand, to let me know that she was going through something similar. We were both trapped by our memories. And that’s why, even though I longed to help her, I knew I couldn’t. I knew I could never let them go. I could never give up on their memory and move on—it would be like forgetting them. I couldn’t betray them like that. And if I couldn’t do it myself, how could I expect her to?
She was better off without me.
The doubts I’d had before had solidified into a cold understanding. I’d worried that what I was doing was wrong. Natasha had made me sure of it, hoping that once I realized that, I’d break away from it. She hadn’t realized just how strongly bound I was to my path—I knew now I was evil, but that didn’t mean I could stop doing it. It just meant I now hated myself as much as I hated the men who’d killed my parents. Well, fine. If that’s what it took to honor their memory, so be it.
The elevator chimed. I was didn’t have to turn to see who it was. There was only one other person with a key to the house.
“I brought you a care package,” Carol shouted over the music. Then, as she always did, she turned it off so that I’d have no choice but to speak to her. I sighed and turned around.
She was holding a crate of Dr. Pepper and two boxes of Krispy Kremes. I knew that one box would be all frosted, one all lemon meringue. Exactly what I liked.
“I wasn’t happy about the way we left things,” she told me sadly. “I wanted to check you were okay.”
“Me, or the missile?” I was surprised by how much bitterness came through in my voice.
She did a good job of sounding shocked. “Darrell! You know how much I care about you. I knew you were...conflicted.”
I shook my head and turned back to the missile. “I’m not anymore.”
She watched me for a second. “You broke up?” She was unable to stop just a hint of relief creeping into her voice.
I nodded.
She came closer, crouched down and put her arms around me. I knelt there rigidly, not relaxing into it but not pulling away, either. “Oh, darling. God, that’s awful. I know it’s tough. But I think in the long term, it’s for the best.”
I gave a kind of half nod. “I’d like to be alone, now,” I told her.
“Of course.” She started to retreat, her heels clicking on the concrete.
“One thing,” I said suddenly, without turning around.
“Anything, what?”
“Find me another project,” I told her. “And...find someone to dismantle the stage.”
“Consider it done.”
When she’d gone, I turned back to the missile. I’d done everything I could usefully do, now, and was just making busy work. I started cleaning the casing, getting rid of all the oily finger marks and buffing it until it shone. But in the reflections, I kept gli
mpsing Natasha, as if she was dancing on the stage behind me.
I’d thought I could fix her. I’d thought I was dealing with some trauma from the past, like mine, and maybe I could have helped her with that. But she was facing her trauma again every day, every time she looked in the mirror. She thought she’d killed her parents, and she’d thought that every single day since she was fifteen. No wonder she cut herself. She’d claimed she’d been coping—and maybe she had—but I’d come in and ripped away her only way of dealing with things, making her feel ashamed of it. I’d wanted to know her secrets, and I’d cruelly torn her open to get them. And then she’d spilled her last, dark secret to try to help me, only to discover I was too far gone to save.
And now what would happen to her? Would she meet someone else, someone normal, who’d be able to help her break free of her past? I tried to tell myself it was true, but I knew in my gut that it wasn’t. Ours had been a chance meeting, and she’d trusted me—probably against her instincts. Thanks to me, she wouldn’t trust again for a long time—maybe never. I loved her, and I’d managed to leave her far worse than I’d found her.
What do you do when you realize you’re the bad guy?
I pushed the thought out of my head. There was nothing I could do about it. She’d never accept me doing what I did, and there was no way I could quit. I was locked on this path.
I called a hire company and arranged for them to drop off a van in an hour. I’d drive the missile down to Virginia myself, delivering it to Carol’s company personally—a road trip was just what I needed. When I got back, the stage would be gone and I could get on with whatever project Carol found for me next. Life could get back to normal and, in time, I could forget all about her. It was time to accept what I was and get on with it. That’s what grown-ups did.
I called Neil and asked him if he’d skip classes at MIT for a couple of days to come with me. We could share the driving, put the bikes in the back of the van and ride back on them when we’d dropped off the missile. He could tell something was wrong, but he agreed to come, never able to pass up a long ride.
When he showed up, his first question was if Natasha was coming, too. He had a plan to pick up Clarissa and the girls could ride pillion on the way back, with us all camping in the forest. He even had a tent we could use.
I just looked at him, and he could see it in my eyes. His face fell, and he pulled me into one of his bone-crushing man hugs.
“What happened?” he asked, when he let me go.
I knew there was no way to explain. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He gave me a long look. “It was the work, wasn’t it? The goddamn work—”
“Just....” I shook my head. “No more distractions, from now on.”
“Distractions? That distraction was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“Enough!” I almost yelled it, and the sudden flare of anger and hurt I saw in Neil’s face made me cringe inside. What had I turned into?
It was late morning before we had Neil’s Harley and my Ducatti strapped down in the back of the hired van, and slid the missile in between them. I didn’t miss the disgusted looks Neil gave the thing. He’d tied his hair back in a bandana while we worked, and between that and his biker clothes he looked like someone the cops would pull over on the flimsiest excuse—indeed, that happened on a weekly basis and Neil took great pleasure in flashing his MIT ID card along with his license. He’d be a doctor of science pretty soon, and he chose to hang around with criminals and dress like an outlaw. He needed to grow up.
I started the engine, and then just sat there, my fingers tracing the steering wheel.
What if Neil wasn’t the one who needed to grow up?
I was doing what I was supposed to do. It was what being an adult was all about: making the difficult choice instead of the easy one. Sacrificing what you wanted and doing what you needed.
Except....
What if this was the easy choice? I’d thought I was being brave, continuing on this path. But the thing that really scared me was changing course. If I stopped making weapons, I had literally no idea what the hell to do tomorrow, let alone the rest of my life. Even worse, I’d be admitting to myself that the last four years had been a mistake—that I’d been on the wrong path all along. What if Natasha was right, and there were better ways of remembering my folks? What if the really brave thing was to have the guts to let go of my past and make a fresh start...with someone I wanted to be with?
What if being an adult really came down to making my own decisions, instead of letting someone make them for me?
It was like a dam bursting open inside me, a tiny hole ripped wider and wider by the pressure. As the wall fell, I finally felt the certainty I’d been missing, the knowledge that this was right. And with it came a flipside, a sickening realization that everything I’d been doing since my parent’s death had been wrong.
I had to fix everything. Fortunately, solving problems is what I do.
I turned to Neil. “Call Big Earl.”
“Big-Earl-who-you-don’t-approve-of, Big Earl?
“We need his help.”
Neil looked over his shoulder at the missile. “We aren’t going to Virginia?” he asked hopefully.
“We’re not going to Virginia.”
“Where are we going?”
“Fenbrook.”
Chapter Thirty Eight
Natasha
Clarissa somehow cajoled me into the shower and then into some fresh clothes. She hugged and empathized and occasionally wished horrible deaths on Darrell, as if this was just your typical break up, but we both knew it wasn’t. I could see the worry in her eyes, and she could see I wasn’t just upset. I was broken, maybe in a way that could never be fixed.
We’d already missed one class and were late for the second, drawing glares from Miss Kay as we crept in. I tried to fill my mind with dance, but it didn’t work. I felt raw and torn, the part of my heart that belonged to Darrell viciously ripped away. I kept missing steps. I couldn’t even balance, my muscles weak and my joints stiff. Miss Kay took about three seconds to notice.
“Man trouble?” she asked, in a voice low enough that only I could hear it.
“What?”
“Someone’s messing with your brain, honey, and you might want to tell them to quit. ‘Cause the way you’re moving, right now? I ain’t seen that since you were a first day freshman.”
I took a deep breath, thinking of the cigarette case. I hadn’t had time to duck into the restroom before the class started. I didn’t even know if cutting would still work for me—it hadn’t that morning. “I’m sorry. I’ll be better tomorrow. I just need a little time.”
“What you need is to get your shit together. You split with someone?” I looked up, aghast, but she could see the truth in my eyes. “Yeah, I figured.” Her expression softened minutely. “I’m sorry, Natasha.” She patted me just once on the shoulder, the closest thing to affection she’d ever shown me, and walked off to correct someone’s fouetté.
I was barely holding it together. When you meet someone—when you meet the someone—you see yourself in a whole new light. I’d liked myself, when I’d been with him. I’d felt normal. Now I was back to being me, and it’s difficult to describe just how awful the return was. Before, at least I hadn’t fully realized what I’d been missing. I wished I’d never met him.
....
No. That wasn’t true. Our relationship had broken me, but the happiness we’d had together, the way he’d made me feel...that had been worth it, a thousand times over. Maybe this was my punishment—one last glimpse of the life I could have had, if I’d done things differently six years ago, and then it was ripped away to ensure that I’d never again do anything as selfish as try to love someone.
I could barely concentrate as I moved to the center to try a combination Miss Kay was drilling us on. I went through the motions, but my body felt as if it was made of wax. I powered upward in a grand jeté, floated for a
second—
There was a crash as the doors opened and for a second, I thought I’d completely lost it and was reliving the audition. He was standing in the doorway, panting as if he’d just run up the stairs.
I landed, staggering a little, my mouth hanging open. Miss Kay was already turning to the door.
“You’d better not be a boyfriend,” she told Darrell as she stalked toward him. Then she glanced over her shoulder and saw my expression. “Oh, Lord.” She glared at Darrell. “Now you’re really in trouble.”
“I need to speak to her,” Darrell told her. He looked over at me, and his eyes weren’t clouded anymore. They were as bright and clear as I’d ever seen them.
He took a step towards me and suddenly Miss Kay’s right leg was straight out in front of her, the tip of her shoe prodding him in the waist. The room went utterly silent. Both her legs were like iron, with not a hint of a wobble. “Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah!” she told him. “You’re already in my bad books, but if you go disruptin’ my class, you and me are gonna have a conversation.”
I started forward, but Clarissa’s arm came up in front of me. She shot a questioning look at me and I hesitated. After the way he’d hurt me, did I really want to open myself up again?
I looked into those gorgeous blue eyes. Yes. Yes, I did, because what was the alternative? Close myself down for the rest of my life? I’d had my glimpse of a better life, a better me, and if there was even a slim possibility that could still be real, I had to be brave enough to reach for it.
I came up behind Miss Kay. Her foot was still prodding Darrell’s stomach, and she gave every sign of being able to keep it there for a week if need be. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was me. “Is this man the reason your pas de chat looks like a pas de herd-of-goddamn-buffalo?”
Dance for Me (Fenbrook Academy #1) - New Adult Romance Page 18
