40. Heavy Enough
Heavy Enough
Desdemona
The night of Elias’s arrest, Ophelia shows up at my bedroom a little before midnight. She’s wearing one of Mum’s big black jumpers over her pyjamas, and her long dark hair is all loose around her shoulders. She looks somehow even younger than her fifteen years. It makes my heart ache.
Without a word, I shift to the side of my bed, and she climbs in, lying on her side facing me, her hands tucked under her cheek, her eyes huge. The air is warm; it smells like radiator heat and my soap and her sweet perfume.
“Are you alright?” she whispers.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “It’s all going to be fine. I promise.”
We gaze at one another for a long moment in the dim lamplight. Outside, it’s been raining for hours, raining ever since Elias was driven away. I don’t think it’s going to stop raining until he’s free.
“How can you not hate me?” Ophelia whispers finally. “It’s all my fault.”
“None of it is your fault, Fee.” I speak quietly and assuredly.
I’m done lying to her, and she knows it.
I look her deep in the eyes. “It wasn’t your fault that Birnam took advantage of you and it wasn’t your fault he filmed you and it wasn’t your fault he lied to you.
He chose to do all those things. And there’s nothing you could have done that would make you deserve this. Nothing at all.”
Ophelia’s eyes are wet, and when she blinks, tears streak sideways down her face, falling over the bridge of her nose, her cheek, soaking silently into the pillow we’re sharing.
“Birnam knew exactly what he was doing—you don’t deserve to carry the guilt for his actions.”
“I know, but…”
“There’s no buts. Ophelia—” I smile at her sadly. “Trust me, you’re going to make lots of mistakes in life. It’s heavy enough carrying the weight of your own actions without having to carry other people’s. Birnam hurt you and used you and betrayed you—that’s his shame to carry, not yours.”
“But Elias—”
“I made the deal with Elias—that’s my guilt and shame to carry.
Not yours. It doesn’t matter what you asked him to do.
I’m the one who went to him, who asked him to take the fall for something he didn’t do.
I gave him the phone. So you don’t need to feel guilty about that.
I’m the one who has to make up for it, not you. ”
Ophelia nods. She swallows thickly, like there’s a huge lump in her throat. Finally, she speaks, her voice faint and scared, trembling like it used to when I read her ghost stories as a little girl.
“What are you going to do?”
I smile. “Something I shouldn’t.”
The day after Elias’s arrest, I walk out of an exam to find the full force of the Blood Brotherhood waiting for me.
Blaise and Benjamin both look like they’ve also come out of exams, their uniforms impeccable as usual; Mikhail Rurik, the quietest one in the group, has a grim look in his ice-chip eyes; Dimitri’s got a cigarette tucked between his teeth.
Jamie Vale is carrying an armful of books—the first time I’ve ever seen him holding anything other than a rugby ball, a girl or a bottle of beer.
Yuna is standing next to him with her arms crossed, so that might explain why.
Even the twins are here, lurking behind Dimitri’s broad shoulders like they hope it will form enough of a shield between them and my wrath. They all look so serious I’m stopped in my tracks.
Dimitri is the first one to speak.
“Right, what’s the plan then?”
“What plan?” I frown. “Why do you guys look so sinister?”
Benjamin rolls his eyes. “Getting Lennox back, obviously.”
My heart stutters in my chest. I don’t know what to say, overwhelmed by such a colossal wave of emotion, I feel almost dwarfed by it, crushed and buoyed at the same time.
“Since when do you all care?” I ask finally.
“Since an abominable abortion of justice was committed right in front of all our very eyes?” Benjamin says, shuddering with outrage.
He yanks a book out of his pocket and brandishes it in my face.
“‘There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice’.”
Blaise sighs and says to me by way of explanation: “He was in the exam Elias got dragged out of. He’s been quoting Montesquieu and John Locke ever since.”
The thought of Elias being pulled out of his physics exam is like reopening an already sore wound; I almost flinch from it. Swallowing hard, I straighten myself.
“Right, well, I appreciate your principles, but—”
“Lennox is one of us,” Dimitri interrupts me bluntly. “A blood brother.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Oh, is that why you threw him into a lake, then?”
Dimitri shrugs. “He passed the test.”
“I’d say,” Blaise adds warmly. “That cut in your hand’s still not fully healed yet.”
Dimitri smirks, waving a bandaged hand in the air.
“Elias cut you?” I ask, eyes wide.
“It was kind of brilliant,” Blaise says enthusiastically.
Benjamin nods appreciatively. “I knew I liked him for a reason.”
Elias told me they threw him in the lake, but he never told me he cut Dimitri.
To him, it probably wasn’t even worth mentioning.
Elias’s life taking its course: another day, another fight for survival.
But a hot rush of something like admiration blazes in my chest—no, not admiration.
Pride. It’s followed immediately by such a profound ache of longing I have to catch my breath.
“That kid’s a feral fucking dog,” Dimitri says, and, raising an eyebrow at me, says, “Good on you, Dess. You were always too good for those pathetic weakling poodles.”
“So how are we going to get him out?” Blaise says, looking back to me. He gestures towards the twins. “Those two came to see us last night and told us everything.”
My heart stops. I spin to look at the twins, who shrink back behind the fortress of Dimitri. “You did what?”
Blaise lets out a long-suffering sigh. “The idiots have even been talking about giving themselves up to the police.”
“Do not give yourselves up to the police,” I snap, so sharply the twins both start back.
“We know!” William says, glaring at Blaise, who clearly wasn’t supposed to share so much information with me.
“Dimitri told us he’ll rip our ballsacks out if we even think of talking to the police,” Austen adds with a shudder, glancing up at Dimitri to throw him a disgusted look.
“Might do it anyway,” Dimitri grunts. “Just in case.”
The twins shrink back.
“You two only have one job: stay out of trouble, alright?” I shake my head. “I’ll handle everything else.”
“Not on your own, you won’t,” Yuna pipes up, and I meet her eyes. “We’re here, Dess. You know that, right?”
Why didn’t you come to us sooner? The question hangs, unspoken, in her eyes.
I don’t know what to say; my throat’s tight. With her silver pins and the white streak in her hair and her outrageous make-up, Yuna is like a mix between her mum and Aunt Willow, who’s the scariest person I’ve ever met. Yuna reminds me of them both. She reminds me of home.
“I vote we break him out,” Dimitri declares before I can say anything else. “I’ve already spoken to Uncle Luca. He says he knows people.”
“Uncle Luca is people,” Yuna says.
“So Lennox goes from being wrongfully accused of a crime to being a full-blown fugitive?” Blaise says, rubbing his forehead. “Better leave the strategising to those of us who actually have a brain for it, cuz.” He looks at me and tilts his head. “I think we need to talk to your mother, Dess.”
My mind flashes to Ophelia—the video that started it all.
Ophelia, whose shame was so profound she couldn’t even bring herself to tell me about it.
“Mum can never find out what happened,” I tell Blaise, low and steely. “We can’t tell her.”
Blaise stares at me, clever enough to read all the unspoken things behind my answer.
He nods.
“Fine, then let me talk to my father, at least. He—”
“No.” I hold up a hand. They all look at me. “I’m going to fix this. Trust me.”
I meet Dimitri’s dark eyes, Blaise’s clever gaze, Benjamin’s narrowed grey eyes.
Yuna’s and Jamie’s searching frowns, the twins’ worried stares.
Inside my chest, my heart feels full for the first time this year—maybe even for the first time since I started at Spearcrest. It’s the exact same sensation that I feel every time I spend Christmas at Blackwood Manor.
Like I’m completely, totally safe. Like everything’s going to be okay.
Even though I know exactly what I’m about to do.