38. Ugly Truth
Ugly Truth
Desdemona
The winter has long ended, but my hands are cold.
It’s the morning before my first exam—I’ve not slept a full night through for days now, and I threw up my entire breakfast hours earlier.
Now, I sit in a corner of the library, my sleeves pulled down over my hands, which are still cold.
At the same time, the inside of my stomach feels hot and hollow, a dug-out pit lined with searing acid.
Each time I blink, my eyelids feel as if they’re scraping over my arid eyes.
“Dess?”
A whisper startles me out of my thoughts and I look sluggishly up. I frown when the voice repeats my name—I recognised it instantly but wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.
It’s Ophelia.
I cringe back into my seat, lowering my laptop screen to hide its light, praying desperately that she won’t see me.
After spending half a year doing everything and anything to get her to talk to me, I find myself dreading the idea more than anything else.
Not now, I think, deep in the empty pit of my heart. I don’t have the strength.
I don’t want to see you.
“Dess!”
Please. Not now.
But I feel her before I see her: she brings the outside frost with her, and her perfume, which is rich and sweet and reminds me of Mum, and that aura of hers, like a whirlpool, drawing attention irresistibly towards her.
I swallow, and hope and pray that no matter what I do or say, I don’t cry in front of her.
Because I would rather die than do that.
“Dess, Dess, have you heard? I—” She rushes over to me, her eyes bloodshot like she’s also not been sleeping, wide with panic. “I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry, I’ve messed up—”
I push all of my own despair and sadness and grief back, shove it into a grave deep in the black dirt of my mind, a grave that’s already full of Elias and his name and his voice and his skin and his eyes.
“What is it?” I pull Ophelia down by her hand to sit next to me, smooth the dark hair back from her face, which is flushed and moist with sweat. “Are you alright? You don’t look well. I think you might be running a fever.”
“No, I’m not, I’m fine—well maybe I am, but it doesn’t matter, Dess!” She looks up at me, straining, desperate. “The police are here!”
My heart tightens. So the Inquisitor was right.
They’ve finally come to make an arrest. But if Elias got rid of the phone, then there’s no evidence to lead back to him, and whatever they’ve confiscated, it shouldn’t lead them to him.
The only other piece of evidence apart from the phone was the ring—and I have the ring.
“It’s alright,” I tell Ophelia, even though my own body is awash with terror. “You’re going to be okay, you—”
“I’m not worried about me!” Ophelia hisses. She looks away from me, then guiltily back. “It’s Elias I’m worried about.”
The last person I want to hear uttering his name right now is her, and my stomach churns with sudden nausea. I’m slammed through with a wave of emotion so powerful I snatch my hands from her like she’s burnt me.
For a moment, I feel nothing except absolute anger.
Anger that she’s kept her distance for so long. That she never told me about Birnam, that all of this could’ve been avoided if only she’d let me. That she’s everyone’s favourite in the family, that she’s this precious jewel we all cherish and yet keeps acting like she’s an unwanted burden.
Anger that she went to Elias for help, and not me. Anger because I wanted her to trust me, and, pettily, humiliatingly, anger that she went to Elias when he’s mine. And that he chose her over me, after everything.
Anger because I can’t help but feel as if it’s partly Ophelia’s fault that we broke up.
Anger at myself, most of all, for feeling this way, despite knowing that Ophelia didn’t mean any of it, that she’s just young and vulnerable and scared, and that I should be better than this.
“Elias is going to be fine,” I say finally, and I’m shocked by how cold my own voice sounds. “He’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
Except for me asking him to take the fall for it. Except for the phone, which he claims he no longer has.
Unless he’s lying.
“Look, there’s no need to worry, alright?” I say, turning away. “You should be in class right now, and—”
“No, you don’t understand!” Ophelia wrenches at the sleeves of her jumper so hard a thick black woollen thread tears free.
Looking down at it, I notice how deep she’s bitten her fingernails, blood at the corners.
How pale she looks, like her heart isn’t pumping enough blood through her body.
How red and swollen her eyes are. “They’re going to arrest him, Dess, and it’s all my fault. ”
I stare at her in shocked silence, and she finally looks back up at me. Shame and guilt squirm in her dark eyes like worms writhing in pits.
“Dess, I did something stupid, something I regret. I can’t—I wanted so badly to solve this problem on my own, so you wouldn’t, so we’d—” She interrupts herself, glances away like she can’t quite withstand my gaze.
“I asked him for help with something, with—” Her lower lip trembles. She stops to bite it hard.
“Ophelia,” I say finally, with a calm I don’t feel. “What happened?”
“You’re going to hate me,” she whispers, hanging her head.
I tilt her face up back to me. Tears fall from her eyelashes, tracing twin paths down her cheeks.
“I could never hate you,” I tell her. The truth makes my voice ring clear. “Not in a thousand years. Not if you stabbed me in the chest or stole the thing I love the most from me. Even then I wouldn’t hate you. I could be angry at you, I could be afraid of you, but I could never, ever hate you.”
I catch my breath, my lungs feeling suddenly drained and tight, like they’re filled with emotions instead of air and I might suffocate.
“Don’t you get it, Fee?” I say, looking into her eyes.
“I don’t hate you—I love you. I love you so much it hurts.
I love you with all my heart and soul. You’re the most precious thing in my life, in William’s and Austen’s lives, in Mum’s and Dad’s.
We’d do anything for you, anything at all, if it meant keeping you safe and happy.
It wouldn’t matter if you messed up. I don’t even think it would matter if you did something wrong.
I’d do anything for you, I’d give up anything for you.
So whatever you’ve done, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is you.”
Ophelia’s eyes are wide and tears are now pouring freely down her cheeks.
“What about Elias?” she whispers. “I know you love him too.”
I flinch, almost pulling away once more, but this time it’s Ophelia who pulls me back to her.
“I… I did something unbelievably selfish, Dess. I’ve been so ashamed to tell you.
” She shakes her head, tears flying from her cheeks and splashing my hands.
“He’s going to be arrested, and it’s all my fault.
I know I shouldn’t have, but I asked him to do something for me, something to do with Birnam.
I begged him not to tell you. And now he’s going to be arrested, and go to jail, and it’s all my fault. ”
My heart is beating so fast it almost hurts my ribs. I swallow hard, feeling shaken with panic and dread and shock. I breathe in deep, composing myself.
“Ophelia. What did you ask him to do?”
She looks at me, and then away with a sigh, chin wobbling. “Birnam… Birnam filmed me,” she says, low and hoarse.
And I can tell from her body language, from her voice and how she speaks, that she doesn’t want to tell me this. That she’d rather be dead than tell me this. But her guilt for involving Elias must be greater than I could possibly imagine, because here she is, telling me.
At last.
I listen to her and don’t say a word until she’s done.
“He… he told me he’d never show it to anyone, and by the time I realised it was too late, I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t know who to tell, and he promised me, after, that it was our secret and just harmless fun.
And I know I shouldn’t have listened, I know I shouldn’t have trusted him, I don’t know why I did.
I was just so happy that he liked me, that he wanted to spend time with me, that he wanted me.
And I know it’s stupid and pathetic, and I wish more than anything that I could go back to that moment, slap my stupid self and grab the phone from his hands and smash it to pieces.
But I didn’t do that and I know it was dumb.
Mum and Dad would be so ashamed of me, and I knew you’d be too.
And I was scared William and Austen would go crazy, maybe even kill him.
So I kept it a secret like he said and I hoped he’d do the same, but then I found out he’d started showing the video to some of his friends, that he was telling people about it, and then—”
Her voice by now is a low, pained squeak. She sounds like a little girl, like a little wounded girl, and my entire body feels like it’s been hit with incomprehensible pain, like whatever wounded her then reached right through her and hit me just as hard.
“Then he got beaten up, and I was hoping, secretly, that maybe he’d never wake up.
But then he did, and I got scared, so scared, that he’d think it had something to do with me, that he’d show everyone my video.
He’d joked a few times about sending it to the Inquisitor for a laugh, and I thought he was joking, but I knew he could do it.
And I… and I was so scared, but then you brought Elias home for Christmas, and I could see how he looked at you, how much he got on with Dad and the twins and everyone, and I remembered the rumours about him doing favours for people and… ”
She stops once more, shaking her head as if appalled at her own self, as if this is somehow the worst part out of all these awful, heartbreaking things she’s pouring out at my feet.
“Dess, I asked him to help me because I knew, deep down, he’d never say no to me because of how much he loves you.
I knew that, and I asked him to get rid of the video for good, and I even made him swear not to tell you, even though he wanted to.
He wanted me to tell you. But he still did it, and I know he would never have done it if I wasn’t your sister, because Elias never does anything for free, but he did.
He did it all. He even got his hands on Birnam’s phone and destroyed it.
He showed it to me. And now people think he’s the one who beat Birnam up, and people know he’s been breaking into phones and deleting stuff, and I know the police are going to find the phone in his room, and it’s all my fault. ”
By the time she stops, my heart is so utterly shattered it barely feels like an organ in my chest. Instead, all I feel is a bleeding mess, a gaping injury right somewhere beneath my ribs. My eyes are burning with tears.
“Why would you ask him for help and not me?” I say finally.
And this time, it’s me who sounds like a little girl.
“Because, Dess, I—you don’t understand what it’s like.” Ophelia swallows so hard I hear the wet gulp. Her knuckles are white from how tightly her fingers are clenched. “Being your sister, it’s… it’s so fucking hard.”
My chin wobbles and I feel the tears drop from my cheeks.
This is the last thing I expected her to say. The worst.
I can’t do anything but weep.
“Dess,” Ophelia says, pleadingly. “I love you, I don’t mean it like that.
You’re so…” She catches her breath in a sharp hiss.
“You’re so perfect. You never get bad grades, you never lose a match.
You never mess up or say the wrong thing.
You’re never late, you’re never messy. And I can’t—I just can’t compete. I don’t even want to compete!”
Ophelia presses her cheeks between her hands, sounding shocked at her own words.
“God, I love you, I admire you, but I think if I was you, I would fucking crumble under the pressure. Being Mum’s favourite, and having to work so hard to get into law school just like her, and being Dad’s favourite and spending all your summers playing tennis and getting trophies, and being William’s and Austen’s favourite, so always having to deal with them and their problems. I would hate it!
But…” She sighs, a low, self-deprecating rasp.
“I… I feel so stupid and small and insignificant when I’m around you.
The way you always help me, look after me, solve my problems. It doesn’t make me feel safe; it makes me feel useless.
The truth is that when I’m around you, I don’t feel like you love me, or even like me.
I just feel like I’m just another one of your responsibilities.
Get good grades, get into law school, win tournaments—keep Ophelia out of trouble. It makes me feel so pathetic.”
She’s stopped crying now, and as much as I can tell it’s hurt her to say all this, I can almost feel a strange relief emanating from her.
“I begged Elias not to tell you because I didn’t want you to fix yet another one of my problems. And…” She hesitates. “I didn’t want you to look at me for the rest of my life and think about Birnam.”
She shrugs and smiles through the tears still staining her cheeks.
“I fucking love you, Dess. I love you to death. I only wanted you to love me back, that’s all.
And now, I’ve fucked everything up. You know the truth, and you know how stupid and weak and pathetic and immature I’ve been, and Elias is going to get arrested, and because of me, you’re going to lose the only boy you’ve ever actually liked. And it’s all my fault.”
She hangs her head.
“And I still end up having to ask you for help.”
Silence finally falls between us. The walls of the library, its bronze lights and towering bookshelves and buzzing radiators, walls of heat and paper and plant leaves, seem to close in around us, blocking us off from the rest of the world.
Nothing exists except me, and my little sister, who’s been carrying so much fear and self-hate and doubt—and the whole, ugly truth.
So I swallow hard and open my mouth.
And I, too, tell her the whole, ugly truth.