Chapter 22 #3
“Children internalize every word you give them along the way, while parents get used to taking the easier path of parenting instead of the more valuable one that requires more time and reflection.”
Now Zach turned to me.
“Parents have enough on their plate. Their children are already their priority, and they need to learn that their parents are only human, doing their best to provide for their family, even if a hand slips or harsh punishments are handed out.”
“They don’t!” I blurted out. “Not this way!”
The student assistant cleared his throat. “You both are straying from the topic.”
But Davian raised his hand, and I had too much to say to worry about the rules of any debate.
“Parents chose to have that child, not the child its parents. And every child deserves a family that can take the time to refrain from physical and emotional abuse. Yes. Every parent makes mistakes. And yet, every slipped hand, every poisonous word that makes the child feel unwanted is one slip too many that must not be normalized.”
Zach's jaw was working, because now I had cornered him with my emotionality. And I had only just begun.
I stepped toward him determinedly.
“Tell me, Zach. How often did your father accidentally hit you?”
“Miss Veritas...” I heard Davian clear his throat, but I noticed how I was getting through to Zach. “Mr. Faber, you don't have to answer.”
Zach's expression changed almost imperceptibly. “Often enough, and I don't care, because it made me the man I am today.”
Good.
A murmur broke out in the lecture hall.
I had Zach firmly in the palm of my hand, and he didn't see it coming.
“Now tell me, what weighs heavier?” The entire room fell silent instantly.
“All the slips of his hand? Or the burden he placed on your shoulders by pushing you from an early age to be the best in every area? To become the most outstanding student, the best skilled debater, the highest achieving scholar ever to graduate from Maplecrest.”
Silence. Everyone was now staring at Zach.
“Miss Veritas,” Davian said again.
I trailed off, aware that there were no legal penalties for such a thing, but I wanted to make it clear to Zach that the issue was more complex than he had presented it here.
Fearing that Davian would want to end the debate at this crucial point to avoid conflict, even though I had just made a tiny breakthrough, I continued.
“How often do you lie awake at night thinking about throwing it all away?
And what thoughts keep you from doing so?
It's the ones about your father, right? The thoughts that very person – who pushed and manipulated you into something without ever letting you make a decision – planted inside your head. He could hit you, lock you up somewhere...”
“Miss Veritas,” Davian stood up. “I ask you to...”
“You wouldn't care about any of that, because what's really tearing you apart inside is the pressure he puts on you! Words that whisper to you that you are not a good son if you disappoint him. Words that he planted inside you when you were a little boy who needed someone to tell him that he is loved, no matter how much he is able to achieve in this life!”
“Miss Veritas!”
“What?!” I snapped at Davian and turned to him.
Silence. Such silence that I wouldn't have been surprised if one could have heard the tear that escaped Zach's eye at that moment.
But I was no longer looking at Zach. Instead, I was facing the man who was now staring at me as if I had crossed a line. I was shocked by the intensity with which I glared at him, but Zach had enraged me, stirring up all the years of injustice and pent-up pain.
Davian turned to the lecture hall.
“I declare this seminar over for today!” Grinding his jaw, he turned to me. “And you... in my office!”
Secrets and Lies
Atli ?rvarsson
I paced back and forth, wondering how I could have upset Davian so much. What had made him stare at me in such shock.
He entered his office and hastily closed the door before turning to face me.
I opened my mouth, ready to throw all my questions at him, but he was quicker.
“What did you think you were doing?”
His jaw was working hard.
“Why does it make you angry that I defended my point of view when that was my only job?”
He stepped toward me, hesitated, took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up completely, until finally all the tension left his face and he lowered his voice.
“You got personal, and as much as I enjoyed hearing you speak, it's my duty to keep debaters from straying from the topic and cornering each other. I've watched Zach grow up, and never in his entire life has that boy cried.”
I highly doubt that.
With a snort, I turned away from him and tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't done anything wrong.
“Quill... Do you know who Zachary's father is?”
Not Joseph Richter. That was certain.
I spun around.
“Please do not try to protect me.” I pointed at the door. “Especially when I have nothing to lose here anyway.”
Probably no one would ever have told Zach the truth. And even if a lecture hall full of immature young men wasn't the best place, he had left me no choice but to prove my point by exposing his ignorance.
But it was too much to ask of Davian to play along. How could I have been so selfish? Of course it was his duty to reprimand me in front of the others. And only now did I realize how difficult that had been for him.
“They could find out, and then you'd have a lot to lose.”
I refrained from telling him that I didn't care.
“You have no right to worry about me.”
That was the only thing I could ask of him before I disappeared from here and would probably be ashamed of dragging him into this for the rest of eternity.
“I don't?”
He raised both eyebrows and stepped toward me.
“As a friend?”
I swallowed and his eyes drifted to my throat before he stared intently at me, took another step, and came to a stop an arm’s length away.
“What’s the point of having friends?”
It sounded challenging and suddenly he grabbed my wrist, lifted it up between us and pushed my sleeve down.
“When you decide to hide something like this from them.”
We both stared at my father's purple fingerprints.
“What the hell is this, Quill?”
I pulled my hand back.
Davian stared at me, his jaw tense, as if it were about to snap.
“Exactly what it looks like.” Frustrated, I pulled my sleeve back into place. “A slightly too firm grip from someone who wants to control me.”
“Your father is in town?”
He stepped toward me again, and when I tried to turn away from him, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward him.
“Where. Is. He.”
Never before had I seen so much anger flare up in Davian's eyes. Anger that frightened me. Not of Davian, but of the fact that I could never let him know who my father was. It would shatter his perfect little world of crystal glass. After all he had obviously already been through.
“Far away from me.”
His grip didn't relax, as if he needed to hold on to me.
“This...” I slowly raised my wrist and shook my head. “Isn't what scares me. Things like that heal.” I took a deep breath. “After this debate, at the latest, you should have internalized that there are other things that leave deeper scars.”
It was raging inside Davian. I could see it in his eyes. Nevertheless, he let go of me and gave me the opportunity to turn away from him, because it definitely didn't help when he stood too close to me in tense situations. It robbed me of all my concentration.
“All these years, Father has made it clear to me that I am a typo that you can’t even get rid of in the final draft.”
There was a white tulip on his desk.
I froze.
It had been freshly picked. Three petals lay on the tabletop.
“Every supposed typo that made it to this stage has proven that it belongs in this book,” Davian said tensely.
In a trance, I reached for the flower.
Davian remained silent behind me, not moving.
I walked around the desk, discovered the inkwell, reached for it, and unscrewed the lid.
“I might be able to disguise myself for a while.” I set down the open jar with the deep blue liquid and carefully slid the stem of the flower into it. “But if you look long enough, you'll see how I slowly but surely leave my mark.”
A glance at Davian told me that he was staring at the tulip, whose petals would start to turn blue in a few hours.
“Sooner or later, I'll be exposed. But until then, you can watch me color this place.”
With a sad smile, I shouldered my leather bag and was about to leave the room to sort out my thoughts.
“Feather.”
I paused, forcing myself to look back.
Feather. That nickname was poison to the last clear part of my mind.
Davian's gaze was still fixed on the tulip.
“This place needs color.”
She thought she would stain the pages of all
books with ink, but to him she was the
only written word that made sense.
– Leaking Batteries Diary