Chapter 2 Things I Thought But Never Said #2
Another painful breath. I place my hands just above Azaire’s ribs.
Close my eyes. Do not make contact at any cost. Sometimes that helps me escape the world.
I ask the wound to heal. And ask again. And beg.
Will it to heal. Force the life within me to mend the life within him.
My energy dwindles, escaping faster than when I mend someone’s emotions.
This, in the grand scheme of things, is far more dire.
I repeat Azaire’s words. I believe in you. I believe in you. I believe in you.
“I believe in you, too,” the boy says, voice gentle.
I squeeze my eyes shut, tighter.
“Wendy?”
I don’t open my eyes. “Yes?”
“You can open your eyes.”
At his request, I do. Azaire’s complexion has returned to his usual olive. He looks better. Still bruised, but better.
The moment I feel the smallest iota of success, the rest of the room fills me. Stab wounds, bruises, Eunoia who fear they won’t heal their “volunteer.”
I have to leave this room that’s full of pain, of people who feel violated by my very nature.
I have to leave this room full of Nepenthes who have been deliberately hurt.
I have to leave this room.
I leave the room. The emotions are still heavy in the hall, but at least I’m away from the heart of it. I go to the garden, to the woods, to the nature. I feel Azaire follow shortly behind. I sit on the grass, and he sits next to me.
The sun shines through the tree canopy above us, casting dappled golden light across Azaire’s face. The bruises are gone, leaving his skin flawless—a combination of his deep olive complexion, and the sun’s warm glow. Like veined marble.
He sits inches from me. Too close, but not close enough.
No one can ever get close enough.
“Are you all right?” Azaire asks softly.
I glance at him incredulously, trying to laugh. It becomes a scoff. “You’re asking me? You were beaten half to death.”
“Yeah. I’m asking you.”
I shake my head, muttering, “Can’t Lucian do something? Why didn’t he do something?”
Lucian is the prince. He must be able to stop these volunteer groups.
My comment only makes Azaire sad, and I feel guilty, all over again.
“He can’t.” His defeat is hopeless—like a stone in water that doesn’t want to sink. It has no choice but to sink. “It’s just life. I’m okay with it.”
“You can’t be.”
“Yes, I can, if I want peace.” There’s no animosity in his tone, nor any bone of his body.
“There’s nothing I can do to change it, so I accept it, until maybe one day I can change it.
Like when Luc is king.” He smiles at the thought.
It isn’t a happy thought to him, though.
Not completely. He is just as worried as he is relieved by the future.
Kind of like Calista.
“I don’t think that’s how life works,” I argue.
I can’t just sit around hoping that maybe life will get better, someday. I can’t just take the pain everyday.
Except… that’s all that I do. The only difference is that I don’t have hope. I’m resigned to the fact that my life will always be this way. Always on the outside, never in.
Always alone, longing for closeness, but fearing for those who try.
“It’s how mine does.” Azaire shrugs. “Has to.” He looks around the woods, the bright sky and trees. The willow leaves dangling over us. He’s still in awe of it, despite seeing it everyday.
He looks back at me.
“Here.” Azaire holds out his hands. “You can feel me, can’t you?” he asks, but he already knows. Most of my classmates know my disposition. “I’ll show you peace.”
I look at his hands.
I don’t pick them up.
He thinks I’m a normal Eunoia. The kind that needs skin-to-skin contact to truly feel another being.
To control their emotions.
If I were just any other Eunioa, he’d be offering up his will. I could do whatever I wished with it.
It scares me that he trusts me.
It scares me that he doesn’t know what my touch means.
All I could do with my hands is kill him.
“Think of it as me repaying you.”
“I-I can’t touch you,” I stutter through my words, scratching my forearms. “Besides, you’re not indebted to me.”
“You can’t… touch me?” Azaire asks slowly, focusing on the wrong thing. I want to reiterate—you are not indebted to me. I did what anyone should. But it’s not what he cares about.
“I can’t touch anyone, no.” I pull at the tips of my gloves.
“Why can’t you?”
I look at him, and he looks at my gloves. No one else wears them. Hopefully they never have to.
My condition isn’t something I would wish upon anyone.
“Too powerful,” I say. It’s not the whole truth, but I suppose it’s a piece of it.
The last time I touched someone, they died.
The next person will, too.
“But then, you could feel if I just…” Azaire closes his eyes.
He tries hard to not try at all. Yet, slowly, it works. Suddenly, there’s silence. A small gap in the noise around us. I close my eyes with him.
The world falls apart.
At first, there’s nothing—the kind of nothing that’s sweet. The kind of nothing I’ve always longed for. No emotion bombarding me, not even my own.
It’s stillness.
Then I see it for what it is: peace.
I breathe it in like fresh mountain air. Soak it up like the sun. But with every breath, the silence around me grows, pounding in my ears. Past memories come up, begging to be relived and rehashed. Wanting me to feel the guilt, the pain, all over again.
My mom appears, dead in the ground. Her legs are swallowed by the soil, as if the ground claimed her before the burial.
I realize, startlingly, that peace is far too quiet.
The nothingness hardens into a room—four walls I built myself, with a door I locked and forgot how to open.
I walk to a wall, and I pound on the carcass. The noise echoes through the empty room. I try to scream, but the only sound I make is my flesh and bone beating against the wall.
My eyes fly open.
“Azaire!” I gasp, clutching his hand. I need him to stop, before I fall back in.
He opens his eyes wide, gasping along with me. He’s in shock. First I see it. Then I feel it, too.
I’ve scared him.
“My apologies.” I rush to get the words out. I glance around my surroundings. The sun glowing on the grass, the trees rustling above me. The real world that I am still a part of. I take another deep breath. “I suppose I’m not well equipped for the quiet.”
Azaire’s eyes hover, searching me with nothing but compassion. My gloved hand still holds his, dangerously tight.
“You can tell me about it.” Azaire adds, “If you want.”
I let go of his hand and pick at the leather wrapped around my fingertips, as if I could rip right through and reach skin.
It would look ridiculous if I didn’t tell him why I’m like this.
I fear I would like to tell him why.
“I can’t turn it off like the others,” I say. “The empathy. Being in that room, with all the pain, it was…” I trail off, sucking my bottom lip between my teeth.
“Painful?” Azaire shrugs.
Despite the morbidity, I smile. “Yes.”
“And you took even more of it for me?”
I look around, listening to the subtle music of the birds and the wind. Searching for my own version of peace. A louder one. “Good observation,” I murmur.
“I do try.” Azaire squeezes his eyes shut as he emphasizes each word. “Very, very hard.”
I chuckle as he blinks, looking right at me. Smiling a little more, I spot a journal behind him. It’s the same as the one from the party. He must’ve dropped it.
I reach around him, picking it up.
His anxiety spikes the moment he sees me holding it.
I quickly hand the journal to him.
“Um…” I stammer as I stand, awkwardly shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I jab a finger in the direction of the academy, avoiding eye contact. “I, uh… I’m gonna head back.”
Azaire jumps to his feet. “Would you like to—” He stops mid-sentence.
I freeze, caught off guard, even though I know the direction he wants to take this. He’s the only boy in this academy who has ever given me a second thought.
I would like to give him one, too.
“Like to…?” I prompt softly.
“Hang out.” The words drag awkwardly. “Sometime. Maybe?”
Azaire shrugs, and I smile. He’s nervous, and it’s kind of endearing. For a moment, I imagine his heart is beating fast. Then I realize that mine is.
But that is exactly the problem.
“Be careful,” the boy warns me, his voice echoing through my mind—and I hate that he’s right.
It’s better for both Azaire and me if I keep my distance. It always has been. That’s why my life is the way it is.
That’s why I’m alone.
That’s why the boy—a figment of my own imagination—is telling me to tread carefully.
I look at the little journal in his hands and say, “It won’t take away from your writing?”
Azaire tugs at his beanie, shrugging one shoulder. His eyes meet mine with hope. Longing.
“I can write anytime.” He smiles.
I’ve never felt someone care for me this much without a reason.
It reminds me of Ma.
“Why now?”
“What do you mean?” Azaire asks.
“We’ve known each other for nine years. Why are you only asking me now?”
“Oh, uh…” He tugs at the back of his beanie. “Would you have liked me to find you sooner?”
My heart aches with his anxiety, and I feel frozen in my bones by my own contradictions.
No, now is the perfect time.
Yes, I’ve been alone so long.
No, you should’ve never found me.
“I’ll let you know,” I say. “As soon as I decide.”
“That’s a good sign, right? That you want to decide?”
“It’s a to-be-determined.” I shuffle back and forth, not daring to walk away. Not when I’m so close, even though I should be so far.
“I’ll tell you what,” I add. “We can watch the stars again.”
I think I mean it.
I’m scared to mean it. I shuoldn’t mean it.
People are safer at a distance. I’m safer at a distance.
I contemplate on how to leave this open ended. The best way to buy more time. “When I find you,” I add.”
“Okay.” Azaire smiles, and I walk away with the feeling of his excitement.
Then, I feel my own. Though it’s hard to notice over the pounding voice in my head telling me this is a bad, bad idea.
?