30. Rafe
Chapter Thirty
Rafe
M om smells like lemons and sugar, and I would bet anything that she was in the kitchen making lemon bars again. She does that when she’s feeling anxious about me, and she’s made lemon bars every other day this week. She’ll probably be making more too.
I pull back and look down at her. I think it is the first time I’ve really looked at her since I was thirteen.
Her eyes search mine, trying to read my expression, trying to understand my motive for pulling her into a hug.
Surely, I’ve hugged her over the years. I had to have.
She’s my mom. I must have, but by the way her lip trembles with emotion, it must not have been often, or at all.
I look at my dad over her head, seeing the surprise in his gaze when I meet his eyes.
They are so like my own, but mine carry a darkness that his never will.
I know it has been years since I have been able to hold his gaze.
It was just easier to avoid looking into those all-seeing, all-knowing eyes.
They saw my every flaw and shortcoming, somehow magnifying them without words.
“I love you, Mom, Dad,” I whisper. The words are clunky and foreign on my tongue, and I fumble them from lack of use.
My mom’s dark eyes widen and fill with tears. “We love you too, Rafey.”
My dad nods, putting an arm around her reassuringly, ready to catch her if she faints from the surprise. “We love you very much,” he affirms, and even his eyes are slightly glossed with emotion.
I give them a small smile and glance at the twins and Luke sitting in the living room.
All three of them are carefully pretending to be engrossed in the television and not in the conversation between my parents and me.
They are awful at it. Zane clearly panicked and is miming braiding his leg hairs, no doubt the first thing he could think of. Idiot.
For a moment I just stand, breathing in the scene and remembering the person who should be here, acknowledging the specter of grief that lies over this house, this realm. I don’t look at my parents again as I walk away, heading back to my room.
Inside my room, I sit on the bed, my back to the closed door. I stare out the window at the view of the silver city, knowing I will never see it again. It is probably better that I don’t. The bed dips slightly next to me, and I don’t have to look to know who it is.
“Is she with him now?” I ask, not looking at her, staring out at the marvelous levels of clouds and silver in front of me.
“She is,” my grandmother answers. “They have their chance, as you asked.”
“A chance to say goodbye,” I say and stand up, moving toward the window without looking away from the view. “She needs it.”
“And you?” she implores. Her voice is soft and smooth, but it still vibrates with power, despite her attempts to mask it. “What do you need, Rafe?”
What do I need? Hasn’t that always been the question I’ve never known the answer to? I need to not be here. I need to not watch my family struggle to find common ground with me, to tiptoe around me, worried that I’ll react badly. I need to not be different from them, the broken one, the angry one.
“It doesn’t matter,” I answer, finally turning to look at her. My grandmother’s dark brown skin glows faintly in the dim light. “Will it hurt?”
“Yes,” the Almighty answers.
“Good.”
The Fall is what I expected. I anticipated the soul-searing agony as my very being is torn apart.
Falling from Eden isn’t like flying. Those hated wings, the mark of my species, no longer protect me.
Now I am Falling, and my very being is ripped and torn like paper.
My wings burn from my back until nothing remains but ash.
The golden halo that binds my wrist withers and turns black.
I expected it all. I looked forward to it .
Pain is the only time I feel alive. The sharp burn across my nerves reminds me that I live, that I breathe, that I am.
I no longer feel that aching disconnect from everything and everyone around me.
For those moments that I hurt, I am not the angry brother, the problem, the different one.
Pain is my great equalizer. Pain is fair , but it is temporary, and when it ends, shame always floods the vacant void it leaves behind.
Shame that I loved the feeling of pain, the feeling of anger, the feeling of hatred even.
At least, when it is self-directed. I am ashamed that I need pain to live, whether causing it or receiving it.
I am ashamed that I am so fucking broken that I can’t be like everyone else.
My body forces a loud booming crack from the sky as I pass through the cloud portal, leaving Eden.
My eardrums burn and then shatter from the sound, and I doubt there’s anything left of them now.
I can no longer hear anything other than the frantic pounding of the blood in my veins.
The Silver City glows as I leave it behind.
Spinning wildly through the air, I catch glimpses of the Silver City through the portal, and a fresh wave of pain washes over me, knowing it will be for the last time.
I won’t see my family again. I won’t see Luke smile shyly at us while trying to figure out something.
I won’t see Zach and Zane stumble over each other trying to come up with a reason for the rug in the living room being on fire.
I won’t smell my mom’s baking, or feel her worried gaze, her encompassing softness and gentleness. I will never know my father’s pride.
As I accelerate toward Avalon, I finally feel clean.
Every layer of skin being ripped from my bones takes with it a scar, a memory that sank deep, beneath muscle and bone to mark my soul.
Traumatized kids become angry adults, poisoned by the children we never got to be.
Enraged that the world kept moving on, that it kept going while we were slowly drowning.
Now, that anger, that injustice, is burning away, and for the first time in too long, I feel new .
My tears of relief burn away before they can fall from my face. Maybe I’ll die. No one would mourn me. They’d be free of my presence. I’d be free of my presence. I’d finally be free from the past that haunts my every breath, of a trauma?.?.?. Of a trauma?—
My body slams into the ground, and I know no more.