Chapter 15 Clarke
Clarke
“Are you sure this is where you wanted to go?” Leith asked as I opened the passenger door to his truck.
Now that we were here, the buzzing was gone.
But the aftershocks still moved like a pendulum from one side of my skull to the other.
This part was always the hardest—the part after the fever pitch and after the panic, where the pain started to feel like this tangible thing I needed to rip out of my head.
“Yeah.” I stumbled my way to the bench right inside the entrance of the Sweetwater Peak cemetery. I collapsed as soon as I got to it and put my head between my knees.
The cemetery sat atop a small hill, with a wrought iron gate that was warped and curled after years of steady decay and the earth moving beneath it.
Dense vines and plants grew up and around it, and a thick forest enclosed the cemetery’s perimeter.
The roots of the trees were visible in some places—tangling together to create a fortress for the people who rested inside.
The elevation meant that fog often found a place to repose.
Breath in, breathe out. I focused on the sound of Leith’s boots on the gravel walking toward me. There was a part of me that didn’t want him to see me like this, but that part was smothered by the fact that my head fucking hurt.
I felt him sit down next to me—close. Then I felt his hand on my back, rubbing up and down. I focused on that now. He didn’t say anything, just sat next to me as the sun was setting in the sky.
If I couldn’t talk to ghosts, I would probably think that cemeteries were full of them, but in my experience, that had never been the case.
They seemed to avoid being near them at all costs.
Maybe it was too real of a reminder that they were dead, or maybe there was some sort of supernatural barrier that kept them out of here.
Whatever it was, I was grateful for it. Because here, it was quiet.
No buzz, no dull hum, no white noise—just blissful silence for me and my head to recover.
When I was thirteen, one of the teachers at Sweetwater Peak Junior High passed away in the middle of the year.
My parents brought Collins and me to this cemetery a few weeks later to put some flowers on her headstone.
That was the first time I noticed the silence.
I’d felt something like it before—at Boone’s farm—but even there, there was still the buzz of animals around me. Here, there was nothing.
Beautiful, eerie silence.
I lifted my head slowly, but kept my eyes closed as I straightened my spine. The weight of Leith’s hand stayed between my shoulder blades.
“How’s it feel up there?” Leith asked quietly.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Sorry.”
Leith’s hand moved to the back of my neck, massaging. “You scared me for a minute there,” he said quietly. “You went pale. Your eyes…the light went out.”
“Migraine,” I said again as an explanation.
“Are you sure?” Leith asked. I noticed he was still talking quietly. “Like, have you been to the doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me what I already know.”
“I don’t think…I—I’ve never seen anything like that before.” He sounded kind of…scared. “And migraines don’t just, like…go away like that.”
For the first time in my life, I wanted to tell someone about my abilities.
No, I wanted to tell him about my abilities.
I wanted to ease his fear—make him feel better.
Maybe if Leith knew what just happened to me was outside the scope of his reality, it would take the pressure off.
Maybe he wouldn’t feel like he had to take care of me.
But I couldn’t do that.
“Everyone’s different,” I said as an explanation. “Sorry you had to see it.”
“Clarke,” Leith said. His voice was still quiet, but firmer than it had been a second ago. I opened my eyes. It was dark outside now. The sun had set all the way while I gathered myself. Leith was lit only by the moonlight. It suited him. He’d be great in a werewolf movie.
“I’m relieved I was there,” he said. The hand that had been on my neck moved to push a rogue hair from my bun behind my ear. “Really fucking relieved.”
“I would’ve been fine,” I said. I didn’t like this—the vulnerability he was showing.
It made me want to be vulnerable, too, to have the chance to show all my broken pieces to someone in hopes that they might find something beautiful among the cracks and shattered glass.
But that was a slippery slope—especially considering the situation that Leith and I were in together.
Leith studied me for a few moments. “You do everything yourself, don’t you?” he asked.
“I-I don’t know what you mean by that.” But I did. I just didn’t like the mirror he was apparently hell-bent on making me look into right now.
“It just seems like you’re used to being, and doing everything, on your own,” he said. “If I wasn’t there today when whatever happened with your head”—it frustrated me that he wasn’t calling it a migraine—“what were you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling defensive. “Wait for it to pass.”
“Clarke, you could barely stand,” Leith said. “And you didn’t seem to get even a little better until we got here.”
“Who did you want me to call, Leith?” I snapped. I didn’t mean to. “I have a few people in my life, and at least half of them are thousands of miles away right now. I don’t have anyone to call. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Clarke…” Leith said softly.
There were tears tucked behind my eyes. I tried not to blink so they couldn’t get out.
“Everyone adores you, Clarke. They would come if you called,” Leith said. “I would come if you called.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged—ignoring the way his words wrapped around me and warmed me up.
“But…I think sometimes people like me because they don’t have to worry about me.
” I was dependable and kind and involved in my community.
I wasn’t a wild card like Collins. I was…
easy, or at least I tried to be. I didn’t want to know what would happen if that went away—if they would feel the same about me if I needed something from them.
I felt like I’d spent my entire life tricking people into liking me to make up for the fact that they didn’t really like Collins. It was part of my identity and I didn’t know what I would do without it.
Leith’s facial expression made me want to curl into a ball against his chest. I straightened my spine instead. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” I said. “Can we move on, please?”
Leith sighed. “Okay…Why here?”
“Fresh air,” I said. “And quiet. I survived just fine before you and I started doing this, you know.”
“I do know,” Leith said. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“It’s hard for me to imagine you going through that alone.”
“It’s a headache, Leith,” I said, trying to downplay the fact that it felt like he just punched me in the stomach. “I’m fine. It was great that you were there, and that you could bring me here. But if you weren’t, I would’ve been fine.” I have always been fine. I will always be fine.
“Okay,” Leith said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…push a button.”
“You didn’t.”
“Whatever you say, Clarke,” he said. Then I let silence fall.
Leith had been properly vexing me since I’d known him, and I think I was starting to understand why.
I think, maybe, he saw me clearly—not the outline I drew for others or the parts that I wanted people to see.
He saw me as a whole person—flaws included.
Probably because I’d spent a lot of time being kind of mean to him.
I didn’t even want to know what he’d be able to see if he got the soft parts, too—the full picture.
Dammit. I should be nicer to him.
“Thank you,” I said. “For organizing everything for the roof.”
I thought about how stressed I’d been trying to find someone, getting quotes and realizing that all of them were out of my budget, the anxiety I felt every day when I walked through the door—worried that I’d waited too long and that the tarps wouldn’t hold and that I’d come into a destroyed Toades.
“It means a lot to me. Thank you.”
“It means a lot to me, too—that you’re helping me and letting me help you.”
“It’s nice,” I agreed. “When this is all over, when we execute our whole plan, I think…I think I’d be really happy if we were still friends. If maybe…if maybe I could call you.”
“I’d like that a lot, Clarke.”