37. June #2
I watch from my chair and a tired alarm bell goes off in my brain.
Cinna and Aeron have never been close. She’s always friendly with him the way you’re friendly with your best friend’s younger sibling, but this level of devastation is what Mom should feel.
What I feel. Cinna should be sad and shaken and worried, but this reaction belongs to someone who is at least friends with him.
Mom stands. She sways and catches herself on the bed rail. “I need to get something to drink before I pass out,” she says, her voice flat and far away.
“Dorien, go with her?” I ask. “Make sure she’s okay. Maybe get me something small, please? I’m sure I need a drink too.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to leave. His eyes move to Cinna, then back to me, and I’m sure he’s as alarmed by Cinna’s reaction as I am. But he stands and follows Mom out.
The door clicks shut. Just me, Cinna, and my brother’s machines.
She moves to where my mom was sitting and takes Aeron’s hand. She presses her forehead against it, shaking. I move to her side of the bed and pull her into a hug because I’m worried about her. She’s coming apart in a way that’s hard to witness, and concern overrides everything else for the moment.
“Cinna.” I rub her back. “Hey. Breathe.”
Her arms clamp around me. She’s gripping my sweater, pulling at the fabric, and the sobs get worse until she’s hyperventilating and choking on tears and air.
I grab a tissue from the table by the bed to start cleaning her face. “Hey. You’re gonna pass out. Just take some deep breaths.”
She finally manages to calm down. She grabs a fresh tissue and dabs at her face. Her eyes are so swollen from sobbing that they’re barely open.
“I… I didn’t…” She’s gasping between words.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. What have I done?”
I brush wet strands of hair from her face. “About what?”
“I didn’t mean…” Her voice crumbles.
“What are you talking about? Hey. Take some deeper breaths first.”
She breathes as deeply as she can, then she blows her nose and starts to compose herself a little more. She looks too fragile, so I pull her back into a hug.
“What happened?” I ask.
“June.” Her face is pressed against my collarbone and her voice is muffled and wrecked. “I… I did it. All of it.”
“Did what?”
The words come in a torrent. “It wasn’t Aubrey. It was me. I-I started all the exhibition rumors and I was the texter. And I sent those diary pictures to Aeron, but I didn’t think he’d do this. I didn’t know he was struggling this much—”
She keeps rambling, confessing in a rush, sobbing, frantic, her fingers digging into my arms, and I sit beside her with my hands still on her back. My brain goes blank.
I pull away and my arms fall to my sides. It’s like she just spoke a foreign language and I’m trying to piece together some meaning in the sounds.
“The… the phone.” My voice comes out flat and slow. “There was… a phone. Aubrey’s bag.”
Cinna covers her face with both hands. “I put it there.” Her voice pinches each word. “I got you into that room because I figured you’d find it. If you didn’t, I would’ve planted it some other way.”
“The diary.” I’m staring at a point just past her left ear. My brain is using every resource in my body to process Cinna’s words; I’m unable to move or even blink. “How did… you get that… in her bag? When…? When did you even…?”
“You carry that diary everywhere.” She’s hiccupping between sentences. “It was easy to take it from your bag when you weren’t looking. Aubrey and I have a class together. I slipped it into her bag when I knew you’d confront her, and…”
She rambles more, and I listen. Each detail paints a complete picture, all these loose threads I’ve been pulling for weeks weaving into a pattern.
She orchestrated everything. The doubt I felt toward Vienna.
The suspicion I aimed at Aubrey. The paranoia.
All of it was Cinna, standing right beside me the whole time, hugging me, asking me if I was okay, listening to me vent about the very destruction she was doing herself.
This is such a massive betrayal, one that shatters every part of me, that I should be screaming right now.
An explosive reaction would match the size of this.
But I’ve cried so much tonight and felt so many things about Aeron that my body is running on empty.
The fury is somewhere underneath, enormous enough to swallow me if I let it.
But I’m standing at the bottom of a drained well and the walls are too smooth to climb.
My voice drops to a whisper. “Why would you do this?”
Cinna lowers her hands. She holds them open in front of her, palms facing me, fingers spread.
“Because I hated seeing your perfect life and your perfect family.” Tears are still flowing down her puffy, red cheeks, but the words come out clear, like she’s been carrying them so long they’ve been living on her tongue, waiting to burst free.
“You get everything. You get an amazing mom who loves and supports you. You have a great family with your cousin and your brother, and Dorien is always giving you attention. I got sick of seeing you have everything when I have nothing. You don’t even stop to realize how amazing your life is.
You complain all the time and yet you have so much to be grateful for. ”
I stand and back away from her until there are several feet between us. “Get the fuck out,” I say.
Cinna moves toward the bed instead. She takes Aeron’s hand again and the sobbing worsens, rocking her whole body, shaking the IV line.
“I didn’t know he would get hurt. I didn’t know he would do this.
I only wanted to make you suffer a little in your perfect life, but it got out of hand.
I thought maybe then you’d be more grateful for what you have.
I didn’t want Aeron to… I wasn’t trying to truly hurt anybody. ”
I find just enough energy in this empty well that every nerve ending in me ignites.
It starts at the back of my skull and travels down my spine, through my arms, and into my fists.
I am shaking with a force I have never felt, a feeling that has no color because it is the absence of every color that exists.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” My voice tears through the room.
The heart monitor spikes, like Aeron’s body registered the violence. The door swings open and Dorien and Mom are standing there, frozen mid-step. Mom’s hand is gripping the doorframe. Dorien is half a step behind her. They stare at me, at Cinna, at the wreckage between us.
Cinna drops Aeron’s hand and gets to her feet. Then she turns and pushes past Dorien and Mom and runs.
Dorien crosses the room and reaches for me. He doesn’t even ask what happened because right now it doesn’t matter; he pulls me against him and I collapse.
The crying is demolition. Everything that held my life together, every person I trusted, every foundation I leaned against, is rubble. I don’t care what petty reason Cinna had for hurting me.
I care that she almost killed my brother.
Instead of remaining in Dorien’s arms, I move to the bed and take my brother’s hand. His fingers are so cold. They don’t respond to mine. The monitors beep in their steady, indifferent rhythm, and the fluorescent light bleaches his face so he’s translucent and barely there.
I press my forehead to his knuckles and cry and cry until every part of me is hollow and the place where hope used to live is only a dead space.
If I hadn’t gotten close to Dorien, this wouldn’t have happened.
The curse is real. It’s been real since we were children. Every time Dorien and I stop fighting and let ourselves become what we are, the world collects its price. Eli in the past. My brother now.
Cinna put the bullet in the chamber, but I pulled the trigger. By letting myself be happy, I did this.
I’m so sorry, Aeron.
Please wake up.