It makes me want to look in the mirror.
“You and I are not as different as you might hope.” His grin is so cocky I want to twist it with my fist.
“You and I are not as similar as you might hope.”
He smiles so wide I’m not sure how to react. “I’m nineteen, by the way.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m nineteen years old,” he clarifies. “I’m a fairly impressive specimen for my age, I know.”
I pick up my spoon and poke at the edible matter on my plate. I don’t know what food really is anymore. “I have no respect for you.”
“You will change your mind,” he says easily. “Now hurry up and eat. We have a lot of work to do.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Killing time isn’t as difficult as it sounds.
I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I’ve been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.
It’s been one week since I’ve spoken a word to Adam.
I turned to him once. Opened my mouth just once but never had a chance to say anything before Warner intercepted me. “You are not allowed to speak to the soldiers,” he said. “If you have questions, you can find me. I am the only person you need to concern yourself with while you’re here.”
Possessive is not a strong enough word for Warner.
He escorts me everywhere. Talks to me too much. My schedule consists of meetings with Warner and eating with Warner and listening to Warner. If he is busy, I am sent to my room. If he is free, he finds me. He tells me about the books they’ve destroyed. The artifacts they’re preparing to burn. The ideas he has for a new world and how I’ll be a great help to him just as soon as I’m ready. Just as soon as I realize how much I want this, how much I want him, how much I want this new, glorious, powerful life. He is waiting for me to harness my potential. He tells me how grateful I should be for his patience. His kindness. His willingness to understand that this transition must be difficult.
I cannot look at Adam. I cannot speak to him. He sleeps in my room but I never see him. He breathes so close to my body but does not part his lips in my direction. He does not follow me into the bathroom. He does not leave secret messages in my notebook.
I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined everything he said to me.
I need to know if something has changed. I need to know if I’m crazy for holding on to this hope blossoming in my heart and I need to know what Adam’s message meant but every day that he treats me like a stranger is another day I begin to doubt myself.
I need to talk to him but I can’t.
Because now Warner is watching me.
The cameras are watching everything.
“I want you to take the cameras out of my room.”
Warner stops chewing the food/garbage/breakfast/nonsense in his mouth. He swallows carefully before leaning back and looking me in the eye. “Absolutely not.”
“If you treat me like a prisoner,” I tell him, “I’m going to act like one. I don’t like to be watched.”
“You can’t be trusted on your own.” He picks up his spoon again.
“Every breath I take is monitored. There are guards stationed in five-foot intervals in all the hallways. I don’t even have access to my own room,” I protest. “Cameras aren’t going to make a difference.”
A strange kind of amusement dances on his lips. “You’re not exactly stable, you know. You’re liable to kill someone.”
“No.” I grip my fingers. “No—I wouldn’t—I didn’t kill Jenkins—”
“I’m not talking about Jenkins.” His smile is a vat of acid seeping into my skin.
He won’t stop looking at me. Smiling at me. Torturing me with his eyes.
This is me, screaming silently into my fist.
“That was an accident.” The words tumble out of my mouth so quietly, so quickly I don’t even know if I’ve actually spoken or if I’m actually still sitting here or if I’m actually 14 years old all over again all over again all over again and I’m screaming and dying and diving into a pool of memories I never ever ever ever ever
I can’t seem to forget.
I saw her at the grocery store. Her legs were standing crossed at the ankles, her child was on a leash she thought he thought was a backpack. She thought he was too dumb/too young/too immature to understand that the rope tying him to her wrist was a device designed to trap him in her uninterested circle of self-sympathy. She’s too young to have a kid, to have these responsibilities, to be buried by a child who has needs that don’t accommodate her own. Her life is so incredibly unbearable so immensely multifaceted too glamorous for the leashed legacy of her loins to understand.
Children are not stupid, was what I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to tell her that his seventh scream didn’t mean he was trying to be obnoxious, that her fourteenth admonishment in the form of brat/you’re such a brat/you’re embarrassing me you little brat/don’t make me tell Daddy you were being a brat was uncalled for. I didn’t mean to watch but I couldn’t help myself. His 3-year-old face puckered in pain, his little hands tried to undo the chains she’d strapped across his chest and she tugged so hard he fell down and cried and she told him he deserved it.
I wanted to ask her why she would do that.
I wanted to ask her so many questions but I didn’t because we don’t talk to people anymore because saying something would be stranger than saying nothing to a stranger. He fell to the floor and writhed around until I’d dropped everything in my hands and every feature on my face.
I’m so sorry, is what I never said to her son.
I thought my hands were helping
I thought my heart was helping
I thought so many things