34

BETRAYAL

JONAH CAME by that morning, as soon as Esther called him. They ate breakfast together in the sad hospital cafeteria and waited for Eugene to return to the waking world he so desperately wished to leave.

“Do you think they purposefully make hospitals hideous?” Esther asked. The cafeteria had lemon walls and orange floors and all the furniture looked like it was from an old office building. A young girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, with a cast on her arm, gave Esther a strange look as she and Jonah lined up to buy their food.

“Man, I hope they don’t serve this to Eugene or he’s gonna wanna kill himself all over again,” said Jonah as they sat down with their trays of bland eggs and “toast.”

Esther took a mouthful of food, but a strange sensation made it hard for her to chew and swallow. She looked up. The girl with the cast was still staring at her. Esther looked down at her Matilda Wormwood costume; nowhere near the weirdest thing she owned.

“That girl keeps looking at me,” Esther said. “It’s making me uncomfortable.”

“She’s clearly looking at me,” Jonah said. “You know what, this food isn’t bad. Come on, eat some more.”

“Okay, she just looked at me again.”

“Stop looking over there and she’ll stop looking over here.”

“Jonah, I’m not kidding. She’s staring at me.”

“It’s probably because you wear costumes everywhere. You’re being paranoid.”

“I am not being paranoid.”

“Eat your eggs, woman.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“How come?”

Something in Esther cracked. Her eyes welled and her throat swelled and suddenly she was crying. “Because my family is disintegrating around me and . . . and . . . and it’s all my fault. I should’ve . . . fought harder to get my dad out of the basement. I should’ve tried harder to break the curse before it tried to kill Eugene.”

“Hey, hey, hey, there’s no way any of this is your—” Jonah began, but the girl who’d been watching them was now standing behind him.

“Esther Solar?” she said. Esther wiped her eyes and frowned. “No way! It is you! I’m such a huge fan! Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt but . . . can I get a photo with you?”

“What?” Esther said.

“Can I get a selfie with you?”

“Why?”

“I watch your YouTube channel.”

“My . . . YouTube? I don’t understand.”

“A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares,” the girl explained, looking between Jonah and her, like maybe they were not the people she thought they were. “The one where you guys go out every week and face a new fear. The geese were my favorite. One bit me when I was a kid and I’ve never—”

Esther looked at Jonah.

“Esther,” said Jonah, softly, pleadingly, but she’d already lurched up from the table and sent her bright orange tray of hospital food flying in the process. Jonah caught her at the cafeteria entrance.

“They’re online,” she said between gasps. She wasn’t sure if her breathing was wild from panic or from running or from pure rage or from all three. “You put the videos online.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise for 50/50.”

“You made me look like an idiot!”

“An idiot? You haven’t even seen them. You haven’t even seen how much people love you.”

“Don’t touch me!” she spat when he tried to put his hand on her arm. “You lied to me! You promised me that no one would ever see. You promised me. You promised.”

Jonah took a step back. “Yeah, okay, I lied. You wanna know why? Because what were we gonna do when we got to the number one slot? You aren’t scared of lobsters or snakes or blood or heights. That’s bullshit. I’ve known what you’re afraid of since the day I met you. I’ve known what you’re too chickenshit to write down.”

“Oh yeah, and what’s that, Dr. Phil? Please psychoanalyze me with all your many years of experience!”

“Are you kidding me? You actually don’t know? You have to know.”

“Screw you. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I see you, Esther. I meant it when I said that. You think your fear makes you so interesting and so special, but it doesn’t. You think you’re so unique or some shit because you carry around a list of everything you can’t do, but you’re not. Everyone is scared of exactly the same stuff. Everyone fights the same battles every day.”

“You don’t know what it’s like living with a cursed family.”

“Jesus. Your family isn’t cursed. Eugene’s been trying to tell you for months and months that he’s sick, but you don’t want to see it. You don’t pay attention. You want a simple solution to a complex problem. Well, there is none. People get depression and develop gambling addictions and have strokes and die in car crashes and get hit by the people who should love them, and it’s not because they were cursed by Death. That’s just how it is.”

“This isn’t about you and your fucked-up life.”

“Goddamn it, Esther,” he said, and then he kicked a trash can.

So Esther said the thing she knew would cut the deepest. “Already starting to take after your dad, I see.”

Jonah took a deep breath in and steadied himself. When he spoke again, his voice was low and measured. “You think so little of your family because they don’t love you like you wanna be loved, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love you with everything they’ve got. Just because they aren’t perfect people doesn’t mean they aren’t enough.”

“You promised me you’d prove me wrong.”

“You think this means I don’t love you?”

“No. I know you love me. This just proves to me that love was exactly what I thought it was all along. The power to cause pain.”

“I see you, Esther,” he pleaded. “I see you.”

All the times her mother should’ve left her father but didn’t, wasn’t strong enough, was too afraid of the unknown. But Esther had had practice. Months and months of practice being brave. So she was brave again then. There were no tears. She simply shook her head and walked away.