Chapter 14 #2
I did have to finish it, though, and I was having trouble concentrating.
Oppressive guilt does not help one to be particularly productive.
Although I was supposed to be writing about the history of psychic abilities—or, at least, claims of having them—I kept coming back to the fact that I owed Rajesh Parikh an apology, and I had no idea how to go about doing it.
First of all, if he wasn’t going to come to Beyond the Veil—which he didn’t seem to be doing, although I didn’t blame him for that—I had no idea how to find him without asking Hart.
And I didn’t want to ask Hart because then I would have to explain to him what I’d done.
And if he didn’t already know, that meant that Raj didn’t want him to know, and if I told him, then Raj would be even more angry with me.
Second, I had no idea how to apologize for what I’d done. Even I knew that simply saying I’m sorry was woefully inadequate when what I’d done was invade his subconscious, dreaming mind.
That wasn’t something you did to people unless you had a very, very good reason. And me wanting to see him, to get to know him better, wasn’t even a slightly good reason. Not without permission, which I definitely hadn’t had.
You can’t consent to something you don’t even know exists.
I sighed.
I needed to finish this stupid paper.
My email chimed softly, a small window popping up in the bottom corner of the screen. The sender’s name was listed as Violette Femme.
Even I could figure that one out.
I clicked on the email.
hi! its your sister but you probably knew that right?
anyway
we should hang
lunch next week?
let me know yeah?
v
Lunch. With my sister.
With everything else, I’d almost forgotten I’d met my sister two weeks ago.
And now I felt worse, because not only had I betrayed Raj’s trust, I’d also essentially been behaving as though my sister didn’t exist.
Not that I really knew her, but that was sort of the point, wasn’t it? That she wanted to get to know me. And I should want to get to know her, too.
A normal person would have wanted that right away.
A normal person wouldn’t have invaded someone else’s dreams, either.
I’d promised to have lunch with Violette on Monday. She’d replied to say that she’d bring me lunch, and that it would be, and I quote, ‘amazeballs.’
I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I assumed that she wasn’t going to poison me or bring me something that would make me sick, and I’m otherwise not terribly picky about food.
At least Violette wasn’t angry that I hadn’t emailed her first. And she seemed genuinely excited to have lunch with me—at least over email. It was nice that someone, at least, would be happy to see me.
I needed to find something else to do to stop wallowing in guilt and self-pity, since that would only lead to yet another sleepless night, and I was already running on too many of those.
I couldn’t bring myself to even pick up Red Mars, although just looking at it was an unwelcome and unpleasant reminder that I would have to figure out how to give it back to Raj.
I could probably ask Hart to do it, but then I’d have to explain that we’d been talking about books, and that would probably lead to me having to explain why I wasn’t going to be able to just give it back myself.
I also didn’t want to not finish it—I hate not finishing books, even when I don’t like them.
Once I start one, I have to get all the way through it.
Worse, I have to get through a series if I start one, and the Mars Trilogy was, well, a trilogy, which meant that not only did I feel compelled to finish Red Mars, but also the other two books after that.
And I knew that reading them would make me think about Raj.
And thinking about Raj would make me think about the fact that I was a horrible person who invaded other people’s thoughts.
So reading wasn’t an option.
I thought about playing something, even going so far as to start up my laptop, but then all I could do was stare at the screen, unable to decide on a particular game, so I gave up on that, too, after about twenty minutes of indecision.
Neither audiobooks nor something streaming were nearly engaging enough for me to attempt listening or watching, because I’d still need something to do with my hands.
And all that left me with the one thing that was still guaranteed to completely monopolize my attention, even when I didn’t want it to.
I knew it was probably a bad idea.
I did it anyway.
Lying on my bathroom floor, legs propped up on the side of the tub because there wasn’t enough space on the floor for me to actually lie down, I felt like I now probably owed Cass an apology, too.
I doubted very much that she’d thought I’d be able to get as much out of the worry stone as I had—I certainly hadn’t thought so.
But I now knew the names of about ten different girls in middle and high school that she’d wanted to kiss, but had never tried to. Four girlfriends she had kissed. Three co-workers she knew she very much should not kiss, and the one she kissed anyway.
I knew every math test she thought she was going to fail, every French test she’d been desperate to get an A on because she thought Mademoiselle was hot, every dance, date, and awkward flirtation from the age of thirteen to thirty-six.
I knew every fight she’d gotten into with a girlfriend, a parent, a coworker, a friend. One particularly abrasive homophobe who had seen her and a girlfriend holding hands in a park.
I knew that she’d liked Hart instantly, had been afraid of Raj, had hated John Kurtzweil—although she got over that pretty quickly—and felt protective towards Drew Shao.
That in the flash of a few seconds from the moment she’d taken the stone from her pocket and handed it to me, that she’d pitied me, but also hoped I’d be able to get control of my abilities because she liked me and thought I had a lot of courage.
She was wrong, of course, but I was at least glad that she liked me.
I wondered what she would think of me if she found out just how much I knew.
If she found out what I’d done to Raj.
Emotion made my stomach churn again, but I’d already thrown up everything in it, so I didn’t bother trying to sit up.
I really should have gone to bed, but it was four in the morning and I hadn’t even tried yet. Just dove into the worry stone again and again and again until I made myself physically ill. And then kept going until I lacked the strength to get off the bathroom floor.
The stone was in the sink, where I’d dropped it before collapsing in front of the toilet. I hadn’t managed to get back up to get it.
I probably shouldn’t.
I was supposed to get up for work in about two hours, and even if I didn’t sleep, I knew that if I tried to go into the stone again—or anything else—I’d be so completely drained that going to work would be out of the question.
I didn’t want to call in sick.
For one thing, I’d feel bad about leaving Ward and Mason without someone at the front desk. For another, it would leave me alone with my thoughts for the whole day, and that was out of the question.
So I stayed on the floor, my eyes staring at the faint pattern of mildew on the textured ceiling that someone hadn’t bothered to paint with high-gloss, the stippling hidden in the shadows cast by the strip lights above the mirror.
I felt trapped by my own weak-willed stupidity. If only I’d been able to keep myself from following Raj into his dreams.
Self-control seemed to be my worst fault, since my failure to control my abilities, whether because of a lack of skill or a lack of will-power was what had gotten me into all of my current problems.
I let out a heavy sigh.
And then spent the next two hours right where I was until the sound of my alarm from the other room forced me to drag myself back up.