Hendrix
I open the door to Governor Monroe’s office and there’s a flash of blond in front of me. “Let me speak to him, Dad, please. Just a few minutes.”
I slip my fingers around Elle’s wrist, keeping her from storming in and saying more. She halts in my grip, and her eyes widen. A caress of my thumb against her pressure point. “I was coming to find you.”
Her head whips toward her father who’s still sitting behind his desk, and he nods his approval. Elle goes off balance. Last time the three of us were in this room together, her father was going nuclear.
“When you’re done talking to him, Elle,” the governor says, “go back to your room. I’ll find you when I’m ready to talk.”
Elle mutters an agreement, then we leave the office, and Elle closes the door behind us. She stares at me and I stare at her. Her blond hair is brushed out and styled, the colored contacts are in her eyes that make them a brighter blue and makeup covers her freckles and scar. It’s Elle, but not Elle, and I wonder if she feels numb when she dresses up to be someone else.
Because that’s how I want to feel—numb. No, I take that back. I don’t want numb anymore. When I returned home from my year away, numb is what I thought I wanted, but then Elle entered my life, and she helped me feel. The one thing about highs is that there are lows, and this low...it’s painful.
“Do you want some lemonade?” she asks, and a ghost of a smile plays on her face.
Lemonade. Someplace inside, I chuckle, but it’s buried down so deep that it doesn’t reach the surface. “Yeah.”
Quiet and pensive, we head to the kitchen. When we reach it, she begins the task of finding glasses, going to the fridge and pouring the yellow liquid. As if it were May again, I stand on one side of the island, Elle on the other. Two glasses of lemonade, but this time, neither of us drink.
“We don’t need Dad,” Elle says. “I’ve been thinking about it. We can ask the district attorney to reexamine the video. Tell him to look for the tattoo. We can—”
I cut her off. “The program worked.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t. She can’t. She wasn’t the one who wandered around for years so angry at the world that hitting, hurting and making myself bleed was my only solution. She wasn’t the one who hurt everyone in her path like a renegade hurricane. She wasn’t me, and she doesn’t know what it was like to wake up on a cold morning sober and breathe in clean forest air, to feel the dew on my face and clothes, watch a sunrise and know that this day I was born. That this was the day I promised myself I wouldn’t be the asshole again.
“You don’t. Not really. You can take my word for it, but you can’t know it worked because you didn’t go through it.”
“I’m not arguing the program—” she starts, but I cut her off again.
“Marcus changed, too. He was doing drugs and committing crimes. He wasn’t deep in a gang yet, but he was close. Since the program, he’s been hanging with us and staying sober.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t affect you clearing your name.”
“I try to clear my name and I’m a bastard,” I challenge. “Because everything your dad said is right. I take a puppy out of a hotel, and I had to publicly apologize. Your dad had to pay for damages that weren’t there. I go forward with this, and the program’s future is in jeopardy. Your dad’s job is in jeopardy. I can’t do that. I can’t be the person responsible for taking away the program that saved me, saved Marcus and saved every person in the program. If I clear my name, I’m the bastard who stole hope from anyone else screwed up like me.”
Elle silently watches me. She’s the beauty with a short temper when the world sways the wrong way. She’s the girl on the edge of becoming a woman who believes she can change the world. I don’t doubt she can, but it won’t be with me. Too many things stacked up against me and sometimes failure is unavoidable.
She taps her finger against the counter. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There has to be another way.”
“Tell me what the other choice is, and I’m game.”
She blinks rapidly with tears, and anger reddens her cheeks. I understand the feeling because it’s the damn story of my life.
“Two bad choices,” I continue. “Choice One: I stay silent, and I’m a criminal for the rest of my life. Covering for a crime done by my sister’s asshole boyfriend. Choice Two: I speak up, and the program that saved my life dies, and your father’s career is crushed. Anyone like me who needs the help won’t receive it. They’ll be damned the moment they enter the system.”
She wipes at the corner of her eyes, and her pain is killing me. “That is a worst-case scenario. You don’t know if that’s what will happen. Besides, my mom and dad can take the heat. They’ll figure it out. They’ll make it work.”
I crack my neck to the side. “And what if they’re right? I can’t take that risk.”
“Why?” she shouts, and that sends anger shooting down my spine.
“Because I’m not a bastard anymore,” I snap. “Because there are hundreds, maybe thousands more people whose lives can be saved if I stay silent.”
Her head flinches back. “The greater good? Is that what you’re suggesting? That your life, your future, means less than anybody else’s?”
Because I lived so much of my life only for me... “Yes.”
“I don’t accept that.”
“It’s not yours to accept or not accept. This is my decision.”
“What about your sister? Are you going to let her continue to date Jeremy? If you do nothing, they’ll stay together. If you do nothing, he’ll be preying on other people like Holiday and Kellen. He’s sick, and he needs to be behind bars.”
The muscles in my face contort at the sound of his name. First thing I plan on doing is outing that bastard to my sister. “Hundreds of teens just like me can be saved, Elle. How do I walk away from that?”
She mashes her lips together as she tries to fight the tears, but each tremble of her mouth vibrates through me. My own sorrow, my own grief begins to weigh me down.
“What about us?” she asks. “What happens to us?”
My throat tightens, and I clear it. She dreamed of me by her side, and she painted such a beautiful picture that even the part of me that remains in stone softened to the idea. But I was stupid for dreaming. Stupid for even thinking I had a chance with her. “Your dad said after the election we can see each other again, in private. If we do what they say, then he’ll consider letting us be seen together in public.”
“Consider? What do you mean consider? Me and you being together is not his decision to make. That is between me and you, and me and you alone.”
She’s hurting, I’m hurting, and I close my fists, then force them open. “We’re trapped. I’ve told you from the get-go we’re trapped. We don’t get to make a single choice in our lives. We’re puppets who thought for a few seconds we didn’t have strings.”
“Because you’re letting them tell you what to do!”
“Two bad options, Elle! Which one is it? Whose life do I destroy? Yours? Mine? Because those are my choices. I claim my innocence, I lose you, too, because your father will never let me see you. I’m choosing. I’m choosing to save people like me, and I’m choosing to be with you.”
My own eyes burn, and I swear while turning away. I look out the window at the gazebo and her dreams. I lost mine, but this is my only shot at helping her reach her dreams, and maybe that will be enough to push me through life. Nailing in shingles, twelve-hour days, being weathered in the heat and cold. Maybe then I’ll get to be with Elle for a few more months. Maybe a thousand more lives like mine will be saved, and they’ll walk out of the program with a real blank slate and a real new future. Maybe Elle will have all she wants and more.
“If I stay quiet, your dad is going to let you apply for the internship and allow you to take the coding classes at school.” Because I learned fast once he started talking that I held his future in my hands. There’s not much that can be done for me, but I had no problem using that leverage to help someone we both love—his daughter.
“Why?” she whispers.
Because I love you.
“You’re important,” she says. “Your life, your future, is just as important as mine. Just as important as everyone else’s. This isn’t okay.”
It’s not, but two bad choices.
Silent tears stream down her face, and the sight makes my soul bleed. I want to hug her. I want to hold her. I want to tell her everything is going to be okay, but I don’t know if it is. “I promised your father I’d tell you, then I’d leave. Once the election is over, I can see you again.”
Elle covers her face with her hands, and I shut my eyes because I thought I was done hurting people. Her hands lower, she grabs hold of the glass of lemonade and throws it. The glass shatters, falls to the floor, and liquid drips down the wall.
“He’s wrong,” she says. “And so are you.”
I am, but either way I chose, I was wrong. At the garage, a car honks, and my time is up. That was the agreement. I had as long as it took for the driver they hired to take me back to my house on the other end of town. “If you’ll still have me, I’ll see you in November. If not, then know that no matter what—I loved you.”
And I leave, breaking both of our hearts.