Chapter 26 #2
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. Everything is so— Nothing is right. It’s a disaster. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I remember Adam all at once smiling toward me on the bench, when we met, when he asked me what I was reading that could possibly be more interesting than a Simon you know it’s not right.” I can already feel what his response will be; it’s written in the lines of his body.
“I didn’t say that,” he snaps without turning back to me.
“It is right. I feel conflicted because I’m human.
You wouldn’t understand.” He walks up the steps and I hurry after him, the strength seeping out of my muscles.
“Do you think it’s always the truth?” he says without looking at me.
“What people say when you’re doing that thing to them.
Maybe it’s just whatever you want them to say. ”
This was true of Dick Face. I remember that suddenly. The people in the bar didn’t really want to be vegetarian, they just wanted to please him.
But what I wanted from Joel was the truth. Or at least, I think I wanted that.
What is happening? My heart feels skittish, likely to panic and bolt without warning.
“You liked me,” I hear myself say, and there’s desperation in it. “You said you really liked me—before. I’m the same person now.”
He pauses with his hand on the door. “No,” he says. “You were never that person. It was all a lie.”
“It wasn’t! It was the truth. Just not—all the truth.
” I’m on the stoop with him now, reaching out, as though I can pull him back through time.
Words rush out of me: “I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone.
Adam was the first man I had touched in more than a decade, and it was only because he seemed different, because I thought the curse was over.
When it seemed like I’d killed him, the—first time—I wanted to die, too. ”
He seems unable to move for a moment, his face blank, and I keep going: “And then I was okay, finally. Not that I can ever fully be okay. I don’t deserve it.
But then I saw you.” I feel sicker all at once, my strength bleeding out of me as though through a terrible gaping wound. I stagger, reach for him. “Joel— ”
He’s moving, pushing the door open. Always this door, it’s always the boundary, the border.
“Don’t follow me.” I saw the conflict in his face, though, I saw him hesitate.
I catch his wrist. He pivots, seizes my shoulders, and holds me too hard, like he’ll throw me next, like he’ll cast me into the night. His voice drops, freezes over. “I said don’t follow me.”
“What’s happening?” I ask, this time out loud, and I hear the bewilderment in my voice. I need to focus. I need to act.
“Go away, Tempest.” He steps into the house, tugs his hand from my grasp like I am a paper chain, and my grip tears just as easily.
“I can’t let you hurt them,” I whisper. “I can’t let you.”
“Then tell me where your father is. You said yourself that he’s evil. Let him go.”
“I don’t even know him,” I hear myself say.
He’s going to shut the door now.
I know what I have to do.
It’s the same as in the beginning, in the exam room. For some reason, we have returned to that point, when I felt his magic in me, felt my body shutting down. But I am more afraid now.
Or maybe I just can’t remember.
I was angrier then. The anger helped. The anger was better.
I’m disoriented.
The door is closing; it is a knife that cuts us in two—the house and him, the night and me.
I gather myself, I launch myself, hit with my shoulder. I tumble inside, bones dry and fragile, fall against him. He is much, much too strong, but he isn’t fast enough. I kiss him. He lurches back from me, I surge forward and kiss him again. He makes a frustrated sound, half fury, half lust.
And here we are again.
But it’s different this time. This time, it’s the wrongest yet.