The Bargaining Path Read online

  ***

  Dr. Miletus sent me home with various scrubs and ointments, all of which were meant to keep me from experiencing any pain. Though at first she had stated clearly that I would be staying overnight so she could watch for any deterioration in my condition, after I argued with her as mildly as I could for as long as I could, she relented, and seemed glad to be rid of both James and me.

  We walked with our arms around each other up the path, huddled together to protect from the biting cold. James's jacket was wrapped around me, and the smell of him to which I had become so accustomed filled my nose not only when I buried my face in his chest, but when I looked up at him, too. Every time I did the latter, he smiled that slight grin of his and kissed me.

  Upon entering our house, I knew that a secret was being kept by both him and Violet, who was awake and waiting for us. I knew by the cold way Violet was looking at him, in the very vague imploring behind his eyes when he looked back at her. Looking between the two of them, I decided that I would rather uncover the bombshell than let it lay hidden and waiting for the most inopportune time to explode.

  My heart began to ache; I knew what had happened, because I knew that only one thing could make Violet so angry. Only one betrayal on James’s part could make her look at him the way she was.

  Of course, I never could have imagined the many terrible layers of that particular secret.

  “I have not read any minds,” I said after a long moment of awkward silence, “So do not blame each other for my knowing. Your body language and my prior knowledge of both of you has led me to this conclusion. Violet, he did the worst, yes? Only that could make you so angry.”

  “Yeah, he did!” She exclaimed furiously, and as she continued, her voice rose, breaking slowly all the while, and tears began to pour from her eyes. It was evident to me that she had been holding in that outburst the entire time I had been so sick.

  “And also,” She continued, “When I went to get him so he could help you, he was so drunk he could barely stay awake, and then when one of his disgusting friends tried to rape me right in front of him, he just passed back out! And fucking Rene just sat there and let them do it! And he wasn’t even drunk…”

  “What?” James asked, walking forward. “Violet…”

  “Oh, like you care!” She screamed, as tears poured from her blazing red eyes, “You were so pissed at Brynna, you probably wanted your friends to do that to me, to get back at her!”

  “Violet!” He exclaimed, so shocked that she would say such a terrible thing that his eyes widened to their farthest reaches for a moment.

  “No! Don’t even try to tell me that it’s not true! Why else would your best friend, who we’ve seen every day for a year, just sit there and let that fat motherfucker do that to me?! James, I screamed and cried and begged you to help me, but you didn’t wake up, and you told me that you fucked someone else!”

  I crossed the room and wrapped her in my arms, easing her head onto my chest where her sobs grew to full-blown wails.

  “Violet, sweetheart…” James said somewhat desperately as he took a step towards her.

  “No, don’t you ‘Violet, sweetheart’ her!” I snapped at him fiercely. “Right in front of you, James?” I kissed Violet’s forehead, seeing in her mind the sensory images branded into her memory: The fat man’s greasy hair, the stench of liquor on his breath, his crooked smile, his weight crushing down on her, and his hands touching her all over. Sickened; I was sickened seeing it, knowing that she now felt as I did, as I had for so many years. In her remembrance, I saw James, passed out, and I heard my little sister’s deafening, terrified screams for him to wake up and help her, and to help me, as well.

  “You have had the nerve to look me in the eye for the past three days…” I whispered, my voice trembling dangerously. “You never mentioned it. You never said what almost happened to her!”

  “When was I supposed to say that, Brynna?” He asked, his voice calm, almost defeated.

  “Immediately! As soon as I awoke, you should have told me what had happened! Oh, but of course you did not tell me, because then I would have found out all about your indiscretion, wouldn’t I? I would have found out not only that you were with someone else, but that one of your friends almost… almost… Goddamn it, James!” I pulled away from Violet so I could look at her.

  “Did you go into town to get a charge for your music player today? Go in your room and listen to it. I will be in to talk to you in just a few minutes, okay?”

  “No, don’t send her away before we can settle this. Violet!” James called after her, but she had already scampered off into her room and closed the door. For a moment, I could see in my mind her crying into her pillow hysterically, covering her ears. In her mind, I saw her memories of my parents’ fights, and her acknowledgment of the fact that James and me fighting was so much worse.

  “Baby…” James started.

  I held my hand up to stop him abruptly.

  “Brynna…”

  “This…” I held my hand up again, “…is a universally acknowledged sign for ‘stop.’ In this case, it means ‘stop running your mouth.’ Shut it. Be quiet.”

  “I was drunk.” He continued calmly. “And if I’m being honest…”

  “You?!” I asked in fake awe. “Wait, have you ever been dishonest? Oh, James, please confess these instances of dishonesty to me now! For God’s sake! The day someone calls you honest will be the day someone calls me Ms. Congeniality, James Maxwell, so do not even go there!”

  “I walked right into that…” He murmured, “But Brynna, I am being honest now: I took the Peace Fruit.”

  “Of course you did!” I actually laughed uproariously in such a bitter, venomous rage. My entire body was shaking, and my eyes were red. “Why wouldn’t you?! We were broken up; you were a free man! Oh, but I had better watch myself, shouldn’t I? You are a danger to me if you took the Peace Fruit a few days ago. I am surprised you are not beating me senseless for raising my voice to you!”

  “That didn’t happen to me this time. I only took one, and that’s why I was nodding off. I didn’t hear her screaming for me.” He closed the space between us and tried to grab my hands, but quickly, I shook his off.

  “Brynna…” He said imploringly, desperately. “You know I would never let something like that happen to her! I love her so much. I could never let someone hurt her!”

  “Maybe you could. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you were so angry at me, and you were so drunk, that you wished for her to be harmed that way knowing how terribly that would hurt me, as well. Knowing that I would blame myself. The only way to truly hurt me is to hurt her or Penny!”

  “No, don’t you say that!” He snapped at me, and his eyes were not red, but they were certainly blazing. “Don’t even suggest that! You know that’s not true! I could never let something like that happen!”

  “I was sick, and you were drunk and high, and she almost...!” I lowered my voice, but the fury was no less overt or forceful, “She almost got raped. I think my reasons for not being there to stop it are valid, don’t you? But your reasons? Not so much. You were having a grand old time with your repulsively grotesque and abhorrently juvenile friends, drinking and partying like pathetic, over-aged frat boys, all because you were jealous that I had spoken to Adam. I had not had sex with him, or even kissed him; in fact, I barely touched him! But just speaking to him was enough for you to have a bitch fit to rival a teenage girl’s! And then, as I am writhing in a field, practically within an inch of my life, even then, crying for you, screaming for you, Violet is pleading with you to help me, and you tell her…” I stopped to run my shaking fingers through my hair.

  “Brynna…” He grasped my face, holding it firmly when I went to pull away, forcing me to look at him. “It meant nothing.”

  “You think…” I hissed at him, “You think… I give… a shit that you fucked someone else?!” I screamed the last part. “You think I care about that after what Violet just told m
e?!”

  “I’m not…”

  “Who was it?” I demanded.

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  “I am not asking you because it matters. I am asking you because I want to know who would have sex with you knowing that you and I were together! Who was it? Was it that stereotypically dimwitted bleached blonde girl, Kara? She has always had her eye on you. She is always following after you, laughing at everything you say. She and that woman, Michelle. They are a little older than me, so maybe people will not stare as much…”

  He mumbled a name, avoiding my eyes.

  “I am sorry, what?!” I demanded. “I suppose I have to beg your pardon, because I cannot hear you when you murmur in shame at the floor, James!”

  But just like that, the door burst open, and Adam, sans his cane, standing upright, completely healed, kicked in my front door. Janna was on his heels, saying nothing, looking proud of herself; I would remember that look of pride later.

  “I will not do this in front of you. I ask that you leave.” Adam growled at me, his eyes locked on James.

  “You told him?!” James exclaimed.

  “You told her?!” Janna exclaimed back, mocking him.

  “Janna?!” I screamed, and she looked at me. There was a heavy silence between us that lingered for an almost awkward amount of time.

  “What?” She asked impatiently after several seconds.

  “It was her?!” I exclaimed.

  “You do not know how to keep your hands to yourself, do you, Maxwell?” Adam asked, and I realized that I was standing in between them, my hands on Adam’s chest, pushing him backwards, away from James. James was trying to get around me, wanting to fight Adam as much as Adam wanted to fight him. I was sandwiched in between them, and the irony of it was not lost on me.

  “Brynna, get out of the way!” James ordered, but I was holding them both apart now by outstretching my arms to both sides as far as they could go. “If this son of a bitch wants to kick in my front door, then I will…”

  “Yes, yes, you’ll kick in his face, whatever!” I shouted. “Both of you stop!”

  I shouted so forcefully that a vase of flowers Penny had filled earlier shattered, sending water spreading across the countertop to fall over the edges and patter loudly on the floor. James and Adam both hurled backwards, held firmly to opposite walls by the force of my mind control.

  “I am shocked that you told her, Maxwell! Here I thought I would have to tell her! You would simply wait another year to confess your lies!”

  “You knew he was with me!” I screamed at Janna.

  “Yes, and Adam is with me!”

  “What?!” I exclaimed, and I rounded on Adam, “I must say, never once in any of our discussions did he mention having some romantic connection to the queen of where we were going.”

  “Oh, it is more than a romantic connection, dear. I am his wife! I am the mother of his children! And my, how that must pain you… How it must pain you to see the evidence of his lies standing right here before you.”

  “That does not hurt me, sweetheart; that should hurt you. I suppose you are so inconsequential that he found you unworthy of mentioning. And I don’t know why you are so up in arms about him and I, because I never had sex with him!”

  “Yes, but you tried, and don’t deny that you did! And my husband does not find me inconsequential! He just…”

  “‘Inconsequential’ is the tamest word I would use, actually…” Adam chimed in.

  “My God, you are the leader of an entire village, and yet you resort to petty high-school sabotage in order to get back at me for something that did not even occur! What did you tell her, Adam?!”

  “I told her nothing, Brynna.” He told me, his voice slightly more gentle now that he was addressing me. “She read it in my heart. She saw it.”

  It. What exactly was it?

  “You will not hurt him!” I snapped at Adam. “I might be furious, but I do not want any harm to come to him, do you understand? In return, I will not rip your wife’s heart from her chest right now!”

  “Please, try it! Try it, and you will not live to take one step!” Janna shouted at me, and I actually laughed.

  “Make no mistake, Janna, my injuries will not keep me from inflicting more than sufficient damage on you. In fact, it will be more than sufficient. There will be nothing left of you!”

  “That is what you think!” She laughed now. “Humans, you are all the same! So overly confident, so boisterous! But it is empty. It is folly.”

  “Is it empty folly?” I asked sarcastically, and her eyes turned even redder.

  “Do not mock me, human!”

  “Ladies!” Adam exclaimed, and my mental grip on him and James released. “That is enough! Maxwell, I want you gone. I will not kill you merely because she has asked me not to kill you. But you will not stay here!”

  “Can’t handle the competition. That’s cute.”

  “He is not leaving!” I snapped before Adam could return James’s taunt, “Well, he is leaving my house, certainly, but he is not going out into the forest! You know what is out there, Adam!”

  “Yes, and that is precisely why he will go! So he can last less than one day before he is ripped apart violently by any number of the violent creatures out there. I pray that it is a Shadow. You know they turn whomever they eat, or rather, whomever they eat, turns. You will tumble and fall through hell for all eternity, Maxwell, and I will think on that for a laugh when I need one!”

  “If you make him leave, I will leave, too!” I screamed, “I will go with him, even though looking at your face…” I turned my fiery gaze to James, “…is enough to make me want to strangle you! If you make him leave, Adam, I will go with him!”

  “You will do no such thing!” He barked at me. “I will not allow it!”

  “Oh!” James exclaimed with a triumphant laugh. “Bad move, but I think you already know that, don’t you?”

  “You won’t allow it?! You won’t allow it?!” I screamed at him somewhat insanely. “Get out! Both of you! We will be gone within the day! All of this is completely out of control, and I will not deal with it! I am so tired of all of this! Of you lying!” I screamed at James. “Of you manipulating, ordering people to do your bidding!” I screamed at Adam. “Of you…” I screamed at Janna, “I have only known you for a few short days, and already, I am tired of you! Things have been completely out of control! Things have been so hard for us.” I was speaking to James, “And now you tell me that you had sex with her, and she had sex with you because she wanted to get back at Adam, and now I suppose Adam and I should have sex to get back at you two!”

  “I am open to…” Adam began.

  “Shut up!” I screamed at him, “I would never do that! But allegedly, we’ve already done enough to warrant these acts of revenge on their parts!”

  Adam knew I was gearing up for a huge outburst, one that could possibly involve tears.

  “Janna, get out.” Adam ordered, and Janna left after scowling darkly at him.

  “Never mind that Rich Bachum whipped me with a vine; never mind that my father hit me and said that he wished I were dead; never mind that that man, Ray, tried to rape me, because none of that is an excuse for me growing closer to you, Adam! None of that is an excuse for me needing you and relying on you and loving you! Or feeling fondness for you! Feeling an attachment to you! Even though you were there that night, holding me and telling me everything was going to be okay, and if you hadn’t been there, I would be dead or worse! Why should I be allowed to talk to you when you are the only person who knows what happened, who can tell me that we are alright like you did that night?! And I can’t have sex now, apparently, because something has shut off. I can’t turn off my thoughts enough to do it. I’m pushing him away, so of course he found someone else. Why wouldn’t he? I’ve been completely… completely… cold, or whatever the word is! I’ve been distant! I’ve been picturing a rapist every time we tried to have sex!”

  I slammed
myself down onto the sofa, and I will admit, began to cry like a tiny child in my hands. Adam came up behind me to grasp my shoulders, and James kneeled in front of me immediately.

  “No. Brynna, that had nothing to do with this. Look at me. Part of the reason why I didn’t want to tell you is because I knew that you would blame yourself. I was angry, and she told me everything I wanted to hear, and then…” He stopped and looked up at Adam. His tone changed completely. “Do you mind? This is kind of personal.”

  “How my wife seduced you is certainly not ‘personal’ as you say. Rather, it most certainly does involve me. Now, when I say ‘seduced,’ I am not implying that you are a victim in any way. However, you are not the first. So please, continue.”

  James began to protest his presence, but I took my face out of my hands and protested his protest.

  “He has a right to know.”

  James looked unsure, possibly mutinous, but still, he continued for my sake, his tone not gentle or forceful, but rather, nonexistent; it was simply dead, objective, emotionless.

  “We had sex, but it was nothing, Brynna. I was so mad, thinking that you and him…” He stopped, rerouted. “While we were…” He rerouted again. “You and I were having… problems.” He said delicately.

  “Yes, that does happen to human men your age.” Adam said, “How very unfortunate. How very belittling. How very hilarious, too, for me.”

  “Adam, I swear to God, if you don’t…”

  “Alright.” I said quietly. “The testosterone-fueled hissy fits from both of you and the rap battle insults are beginning to irritate me, so Adam, James and I need some time alone.”

  “Of course.” Adam replied gently. “I am sorry that I have so rudely barged into your home.”

  “Okay.”

  He leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

  “Send for me if you need me. And you…” He pointed at James, “You just be thankful that she saved my life. Be thankful that her opinion and her happiness matter more to me than my own rage. Or you would be dead, Maxwell, and believe me, your death would not have been quick.”

  “Yeah, tell your wife I said thanks, and I’ll have two oranges to pay her with tomorrow.”

  “James!” I exclaimed, slamming my hand down on the sofa beside me in frustration.

  “You would insinuate that she is a common whore when she is the leader of her people?!” Adam asked, but there was significantly less fire in his tone and his words than I could have expected after James said something so terrible.

  “Would you prefer that she was an uncommon whore? Because I will tell you that the way she said I had her love afterwards was uncommon, but the sex was common. For me, at least. Your wife, on the other hand, she seems to enjoy the company of ‘human men,’ as you called me, very much.”

  “James, that is enough!” I shouted at him. “You will not needle him like that right in front of me! You doing that is rude, at best, and at worst, it is completely degrading to her! If you are going to equate however nonverbally your intercourse with Janna to winning a gold medal that brings untold chauvinistic glory to all males everywhere, then you can leave right now, and I will listen to nothing more from you.”

  “Alright, I’m done.” James said, and Adam left with only a dangerous chuckle. After he left, James grasped my hands. After a minute, he spoke.

  “It could have been anyone. She was just the first one to come along, asking me if I wanted to. And I was so pissed, I barely looked at who she was. And honestly, I didn’t recognize her. When she introduced herself to the group, I was so mad at you that I wasn’t paying attention. I promise you that, Brynn. I didn’t realize that she was Adam’s wife until it was over, and of course, I was entertained by the irony of it, because I believed that you were having something with him…”

  “Do you honestly think I would ever do something like that?” I demanded, tears held in my eyes but not falling, thankfully. “There were extenuating circumstances that led to us almost having sex. You and I were broken up. We were out there facing the odds together. We were almost shot, execution-style, James. Yes, while we were waiting for them to shoot us both in the back of the head, we kissed, and it did mean something, but we were about to die. I needed him.”

  “God, baby, I had no idea.” He said, and I could see how ashamed of himself he was. “About any of it. I knew it was something, but I never could have imagined that it was that bad…”

  “It is not that bad. It is certainly not what happened with Michael.”

  “It doesn’t matter! It was still terrible, and you have every right to feel like you do. None of what happened has anything to do with you.”

  “You couldn’t just go sleep with Kara, or Michelle, or someone normal? Someone who wasn’t the wife of the leader who can barely stand our presence on his planet as it is?” I asked him softly.

  “I could have, but I didn’t know it was her, and when I did know, I did think about how much it would hurt both of you if it was her. It was kind of like two birds, one stone: Cheating on you at all would hurt you, and it being Adam’s wife would get back at him for what I thought was him trying to steal you away from me.”

  “You were sober?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He answered, “And I’ll admit to you, I wasn’t sorry right after it happened. But I am sorry now. I was so angry, sweetheart; I was so jealous, and I wanted to make you mad…”

  “And, I mean, who could resist her, right? She’s so pretty, and sparkling, and those black pants? They really showcase her perfect, hourglassian figure. Of course you would want her.” I started to cry again, “And why would you turn down that chance, when I don’t look like I stepped out of a Dominatrixes-R-Us catalog all the time, and I wasn’t… I wasn’t keeping you… I wasn’t giving anything up. Why would you say no to her at that point? What difference did any of what happened to me make when you have your needs, right? But my stars, James… I really thought you understood. How easily you are able to fool me. I don’t understand how you do it. I really don’t.”

  He pulled me to him, and I cried with my face pressed into the side of his neck for a long time. I heard him sniffle once, and he reached up to wipe at his eyes.

  “You’re perfect, Brynna.” He said. “I love you more than anything, and I didn’t care that you and I were having those issues. I only cared that you got better. That’s all I wanted, sweetheart. How could I care about anything else?”

  We were quiet for a few more minutes, except for my hiccupping and gasping that often followed hysterical tears. He held me, and I held onto him, wondering if this really was it, if we really were over. I could not begin to fathom it; I knew that I could survive without him, but I did not want to live without him, though surely that does not make any sense. It is not that I wanted to die if I could not be with him, it is that it would make me very sad to make him leave, to see him with another woman, to see him at all, really… I could not begin to imagine Penny’s disappointment and her sadness; she would hate to see James go. Violet would, as well, I believed, after a while.

  “I need some time.” I told him softly.

  “I know.” He replied. “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t say that. You and I both know what that means.”

  “No.” I pulled away from him and shook my head. “It does not mean that, James. It does not mean that I want to end this permanently. I just need some time to get myself in order, to decide how I want to deal with this. If I am being honest now, I will say that there is a chance, and I do not know how large this chance is, that by the end of this time neither you nor I will want to continue this.”

  “I will. I am going to give you all the time you need, and I’ll be waiting for you at the end of it. No matter how long it is, I’ll wait.” His hands squeezed mine tightly, and when I looked up into his eyes, he spoke softly. “I have put you through hell this past year, Brynna. I left you at the campsite when I shouldn’t have. I ate the Peac
e Fruit and hurt you. I lied to you about knowing Adam. I kept secrets from you. Now, I did the worst. You gave me your trust, and I swore to you that I wouldn’t make you regret it, and I have. I’ve made you regret it over and over again. You’re sensible, almost to a fault, and because of that, you’ve put me out before. I’m saying that because I know that you making me leave is the right thing. I deserve it, after all of this. After all of the shit I’ve put you through. I’m so sorry for all of it. I need you to know that, and I need you to know that I will make it up to you. I promise I will. I am going to fix everything. I’ve asked you for so many chances. I just need one more, sweetheart. If I break your trust one more time, then I’ll tell you to go; I’ll want you to go. Just one more chance.”

  “I might give you one, and I might not. That is why I need time. I need time to decide if I want to give you that one chance to either fix things or break things all over again. I don’t know if I can stand for the latter to occur again. I love you so much…” I wiped at my still tearing eyes with shaking hands, “But I need you to pack your things and stay somewhere else for a while until I figure this out. I have given you so many chances, and you know that I am not a forgiving person. I can’t decide if my continued excusing of your missteps is the result of my love for you, or if I am very stupid, or both. But I think it is because I love you so much, and because we have built this life together, and you are stable and familiar and comforting because of that. But we have spent every day fighting on and off. I just need some time to align things. I need to sort it all out.”

  He kissed my shoulder, holding his lips there for a long time before kissing me again. The warmth that normally accompanied his kisses was absent, and the chill left in its place was jarring.

  I could not watch him pack his things. When he turned to me on the front porch so he could kiss my cheek, I moved my face away and avoided his eyes.

  “I love you.” He told me.

  “Yes. And despite all of this, I love you, too. Take care of yourself, James.”

  With that, I closed the door, slunk into Violet’s room to find that she had fallen asleep with her headphones blasting in her ears. I looked outside, at the position of the moon; the confrontation between James, Adam, Janna, and me had lasted for well over two hours. I thanked God that Penny was spending the night at her friend’s house. Otherwise, my explosion of rage at James never would have occurred, and even more certainly, Adam never would have broken down my front door.

  Wishing desperately that Violet was awake so I could at least comfort her even though I could not be comforted by anyone, I touched her arm, not intending to wake her. Instead, I merely wanted to peek into her mind to ensure that she was sleeping as peacefully as her slow, even breaths suggested she was. Her mind was blissfully blank, and I did not want to disturb it, so very carefully, like a doctor making a precise incision in the skull and rooting very cautiously inside the brain with a sterile tool, I picked through her memories until I found the one of that night. A torrent of sound exploded through my mind: Violet’s screams, the whoops and taunts and encouragements of the men watching, the disgusting man’s own words… Her eyes had been fixated on James, and she was screaming at him so desperately, choking on her sobs as they fell from her, begging him to help her, to help me… The boy who had helped carry me had killed the disgusting man on top of Violet, but the others had run away. I told my mind to slow down the replaying of the memory, and it obeyed; frozen in time, there within my head, were the terrified faces of the men who had watched but not intervened. I squeezed my closed eyes shut a little harder, as though snapping the lens of a camera down to take a picture, and sure enough, when I opened my eyes, their faces were cemented in my memory, as if I truly needed them to be; I recognized all of them by face, and the one I knew by name, the one who was James’s best friend, the one whom even Violet had known, was not that drunk and was not high at all like the rest of them. This man, who had always sat beside us at the dinner table in Don’s house, had visited us so often, who was one of James’s very best friends, had stood idly by and allowed my sister to be violated in the worst way.

  Rage burned through me, eating through the grief I inevitably felt at James’s departure. In fact, that rage ate through every last thought in my mind. For the first time since she had been a little girl, I leaned down and kissed Violet’s head. Her cheek rubbed against the pillow for a second, and I feared that I had awoken her, but her breathing remained slow and steady, and her eyes remained closed. Carefully, I stood up, and quietly, I exited the room and the house.

  That rage was quiet and left room in my mind to think about other troubling things. A part of me wanted to run after James, to ask him to come back. But a stronger part of me knew that we needed time apart. I worried that he would find someone else and that he would move on without me. He had said so many times how often he flitted in and out of relationships on Earth. Would I just be one of those sad women he left behind? Would he show me that everything we had had together was actually nothing?

  I did not know where I was going, so I followed the scent I remembered so well. When I climbed the steps to the house, I did so slowly, still lost in my thoughts about James. It was only once the hard wood of the door banged painlessly into my forcefully swinging fist that the quiet rage took the forefront of my mind’s perceptions, and I became once more focused on the task at hand.

  Rene was at the door. The smile on his lips when he saw me was perfunctory, meant to cover the anxiety that welled to life inside him when he saw me. His mind was constructing walls, and he did not even realize it. If I could just find a reason to touch his hand, there would be no stopping me. Sometimes, when a person’s mind was adamant about protecting a secret, direct physical contact was the only way to ensure an astute telepathic connection and the subsequent accurate reading.

  “Hello.” I said, with a slight smile, “Can I come in? I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Um… Yeah. Of course, Brynn.” He stepped aside and let me in.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, just to give him the chance to confess what he had done. Even if he did, I would not stop. “You seem tense, Rene.”

  “No. No, nothing’s wrong. How can anything be wrong when we’re here and we’re safe, right?”

  My mind was besieged by memories of us sitting around the dinner table at the house, talking, laughing, drinking wine until our minds were hazy and our cares were lost… He and James had had so many inside jokes that they would patiently explain to me. They would laugh hysterically when I would merely shake my head in response to those jokes and say in a tone of exaggerated boredom and slight exasperation at having to suffer through such childish stupidity, “Well, gentlemen, I suppose, as always, I just had to be there, as they say…” He had visited us in our rooms, and we had lounged on the couches and talked. He had played with Penny in the lake on our off-days. He had always joked with Violet; she always had said he was “like James but not quite as funny, but still funny.”

  Thinking about it, and perhaps I was merely seeing what I wanted to see because I had so resolutely made up my mind, I realized that he had always been strangely fixated on Violet. And it was after realizing it that my mind supported it with more evidence than I could possibly create on my own: I had overheard him many times inquiring about her relationship with Nick—how long they had been together, what they liked to do on dates, if he ever did anything that annoyed her—and she had answered his inquiries with ease, believing them just to be his way of making conversation. He had always, I realized, sat either directly beside her or across from her at dinner. Every so often, he would clap her on the shoulder or touch her back, only when the gesture never could be doubted; the situation absolutely had to support his physical contact with her.

  Now, all of that would have led me to believe that he had a crush on her, and I would have been right. Moreover, I would have been utterly disgusted that a forty-something year old man had developed a crush on a girl w
ho would be forever seventeen years old. Now, I was only five years older than Violet, physically, but as I have stated before, I was so much older mentally, and as my telling of this tale has revealed, I could more than handle my much older boyfriend in both good times and bad. Violet, on the other hand, was seventeen in body and in mind, and there was no way that Rene could not have noticed that.

  I would have been disgusted if it were only a crush, but it was not only a crush. It was a sick attachment, maybe even an obsession, that had led him to watch her nearly being assaulted. Her assault would have been her punishment for what he perceived to be her rebukes of his affections. That is why he was sneering ever so slightly as the disgusting fat man tried to pull her pants down. That is why, even though he was mostly sober, he did not intervene. Despite his “feelings” for her, he still wanted to see her hurt.

  The door closed, and I knew that I could let the animal out of its cage, but I did not. Instead, I sat down on his couch and watched as he walked across the room and sat down across from me.

  “Is everything alright?” He asked.

  “I don’t know how I did not see it, Rene. How could I have missed it?”

  “Missed what? Oh, Brynn…” He sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. His body relaxed, and the barriers his mind had been building were swept away effortlessly, but I did not need to see into his mind anymore. I had already deciphered him.

  “You gotta know that he didn’t mean it, sweetheart. It was just because he was drunk. It didn’t mean anything to him. He loves you so much. You’re his world, man. You’re everything.”

  “Yes, well, whether I am his ‘everything’ or his ‘world’ is irrelevant, and just for your information, though I suspect you already know, he was not drunk. That is not why I am here.”

  “Then what were you talking about earlier?” He asked, and the walls began to rebuild in his mind.

  “I am talking about Violet.”

  I left it at that. He knew to what I was referring. I could tell by the way his eyes widened and his shoulders tensed, by the way his hands began to press together and pull apart compulsively. As his eyes darted all over the room, mine stayed locked on him.

  “It’s nothing, man. It’s nothing at all.”

  “Is it not, man? Really? Rene…” I leaned forward, “I am here to give you my blessing.”

  He looked up at me, so much hope in his eyes that I almost felt sorry for him.

  “What?” He asked.

  “But first, Rene…” I said, “You have to tell me why you didn’t stop that man the other night when he was hurting her, and don’t lie to me.”

  Whatever man we had come to know while we were living in the house was gone. In his place was not a barbarous predator nor a mindless, lovesick, misguided sap; he was suddenly a child. The man with whom James had used to box, lift weights, shoot guns, smoke cigars, drink booze, and work for hours in the blazing sun, was suddenly gone, and there was this strange little creature there before me. I had known Rene for a year rather well, so the sudden change in him was unexpected, to say the least.

  “I just…” He stopped and squeezed the bridge of his nose, “Brynn, it’s so stupid, but I was just so pissed at her, okay? I can’t stand seeing her with that guy. I’m not obsessed with her. I sound obsessed with her, but I’m not. I don’t want you to think that, okay? I just really like her. She’s beautiful, and smart, and funny, and I’ve been fighting this for a really long time. I promise, I have been fighting it, with absolutely everything I have, cuz I know she’s not like you. She’s less mature; she’s still such a kid. But I can’t fight it. Every time I try to stop thinking about her, I can’t. Every time I’m with other women, I can’t stop picturing her…”

  My eyes closed for half a second when I heard that. Of everything he had said thus far, that turned my stomach worse than any of them.

  “I’m sorry,” He said, because he had seen my vast discomfort for that one millisecond. “I’m so sorry, Brynna.”

  And he did sound genuinely sorry.

  “I know it’s strange. I know it’s different than you and James, cuz you’re way more mature than Violet, but you have to know…” He leaned closer to me, “I can take care of her, okay? I can make her mature. I asked her once if she was still a virgin, and she isn’t, and that guy doesn’t deserve to be with her like that. He’s a little boy, and he’s making her worse. He’s making her act stupid.”

  “Are you from the Old Spirit camp?” I interrupted him, when I felt that rage go from a quiet whisper to a murmur.

  “No! What?! Brynna, you think I’m one of those people they put here?”

  “God, no!” I exclaimed, and I laughed in genuine amusement, “You reveal secrets far too easily and quite frankly, even before this conversation, I always found you a little dim. My boyfriend was an engineer, for the sake of all deities and Gods, and I could never understand what he found appealing in you intellectually. Personality-wise, I got it. Well, until now.”

  “Brynna, I’ve fought it, okay?! But she’s all I think about. At first, I was going to stop him…”

  The rage went from a murmur to a normal conversational volume.

  “…but I thought that maybe if it started to happen, and I stopped it, she’d… I don’t know, love me? No, not love me… That’s ridiculous. She’d be thankful, and she’d want to show me how thankful she was…”

  Normal conversational volume to a voice raised to speak over another.

  “I’ll be so good to her. I know you’re mad right now. I can see it. I can definitely feel it in your heart. You said you were here to give me your blessing, and I fell for it. I admit it. But I want you to know that it is going to happen either way.”

  “Once again, are you from the Old Spirit camp? Because, my stars, you sound like one of them.”

  “No!” He said, “Brynna, it’s going to happen either way. You keep talking about the Old Spirits, but I don’t need them to arrange the marriage for me like what Don says they do up there. She wants me, too. I’ve felt it. In her heart, I’ve felt it.”

  A raised voice to a shout.

  “All she needs is a little push, okay? All she needs is exactly what almost happened to her the other night. But she’s not going to be upset like that. He’s not me. She’ll be alright if it’s me. I’ll make her forget all about that German kid, okay? And she’ll grow up real quick…”

  And the shout went to a shriek. I was on him, one hand pushing his chest and the other shoving his head to one side. When my fangs ripped into his throbbing vein, he howled in agony, so I bit down harder. When my mouth was open to its farthest reaches, and as much of his neck as possible was clamped down between my fangs, I ripped backwards, sending a spray of blood outwards in every direction. I stood up and backed away, trying to avoid the stream of it. Of course, some did splatter onto me, but I walked sideways coolly to avoid becoming too saturated. His head was back, and I realized that I had broken his neck. Blood and white froth seeped from his mouth, and tears rushed from his eyes. His words, so sick, so utterly psychotic, such irrefutable proof of his dangerous delusions, echoed through my mind. I was going to kill him regardless of whether he truly was infatuated with her or not. But because he had spoken such disgusting words to me before I had severed his carotid artery and snapped his neck-bone, I reached out, grasped his chin, and broke his jaw for good measure.

  She’ll grow up real quick… She’ll grow up real quick… It does not take any practitioner of mental health hokum to decipher why such words would bore into me with such razor-sharp, red-hot force.

  Don was not sick. This man—this predator—was sick.

  “Brynna…”

  “Hmm?” I asked calmly, because I recognized the voice and knew what he had come there to do. When I turned around, I saw Nick was standing there, dressed in all black, hiding (quite unsuccessfully) a gleaming silver knife in his hand. I smiled with genuine warmth as I looked at him; the black clothes, the knife, the dodgy look in hi
s eyes, were all signs of inexperience, of very slight theatrics, even. I pictured him slinking into the house and waiting in the dark until Rene came home. Then, he would deliver a speech about how disgusting Rene was for witnessing what had happened to Violet, and how he deserved to die for it. If only he knew the extent of it…

  Nick’s eyes moved from me to Rene, who was still gasping and bleeding out, his jaw hanging half off, making his mouth eerily too large. He rushed forward, raising the knife, his hand trembling viciously, his large young eyes, normally so present and thoughtful, even when they were alight with mindless, youthful joy, blazing with wrath. Before he could plunge the knife into Rene’s chest, I grasped his wrist to stop him.

  “No, no…” I said, almost soothingly, as though I were speaking to a small child, “It is alright. You don’t have to.”

  “She told me that he wasn’t that drunk! He was letting it happen! He didn’t stop that man! I will kill all of them, Brynna! Starting with finishing him off!”

  “No.” I said gently, and I grasped his face and turned it to me, “You were so brave to come here, but I can cover this up. You cannot.”

  “I know.” He said, and his arm lowered. His voice took on a tone of the deepest consternation, and tears rushed into his eyes, but I didn’t look away. “Brynn, I can’t do it. I can’t do it like you can. I’m supposed to be able to. I have to be able to protect her!”

  “And you do.”

  “I didn’t that night.” He said, “Obviously. If I had, we wouldn’t even be here.”

  Tears began to leak from his eyes, and once the first fell, he let out a sob. Without hesitation, strangely enough, I enclosed him in my embrace and let him cry into my chest, even though he had to bend down very far to do so because he was so tall.

  “I’m so fucking pissed, and I can’t even kill this fucking guy!” He cried, “God, I’m so fucking pissed!”

  “I know. Shh… I know. You are young still. It is not time for you to be able to do this yet. For now, it is my responsibility, and James’s. Well, it was James’s, but…” I stopped, not wanting to tread down that path. “You were so brave to come here, Nick. I mean that when I say it. But you are too young to take a life in the way that I do. When you are out on security, you would be able to fight. But I do this quietly, decidedly, with much forethought. I hope that you never have to do that. Right now, as I am saying all this, I am wondering why I am able to kill so easily, but maybe…” I shrugged, “Maybe it’s just because of my very distinct definitions of right and wrong. My own warped sense of justice.”

  Rene had stopped gurgling several minutes earlier, and I knew that he was dead. We both looked at him, though my eyes stayed fixated on his repulsively disemboweled corpse, and Nick’s landed on it, and moved away, landed on it, and moved away.

  “He sat right beside us every night at the house. He has been James’s best friend since we arrived there so long ago. He has known her that entire time. He has…” I stopped, wanting to finish with “been preying on her for all of that time,” but I did not; the less Nick knew, the better.

  “What about the other guys? What are you going to do to them?” Nick asked.

  “Nothing.” I said, “Let them come here and find his mutilated body. They will either think I am responsible, and fear me, or they will think that karma has come knocking, and fear the universe.”

  “I’m way more afraid of you than the universe.” Nick said, and we both chuckled after a minute. When he looked up at me, though, he was suddenly serious, “One of these days, it won’t be you who has to do this, Brynn. I’ll take care of her. I’ll kill anyone who ever tries to hurt her like that again. One day, when I’m a little bit older, and a little bit braver. I’ve always been like this. Like a coward. Well, not even like a coward. I am a coward. Do you remember Jonathon? Tyre’s son?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was so angry that you all were turning him over to Adam. I knew, somehow, that Adam would kill him. Now, I see why it was necessary; look at all that Tyre has done. Obviously, I am glad that Rene is dead. I am glad that you killed him painfully for what he did to her. But I need to be able to do it, too.”

  I reached out and laid my hand on his cheek. For a long second, I just looked at him, and over that second, a smile spread across my lips.

  “He was right.” I said softly, “Adam. He said your heart is as pure as the first snow of winter, and he was right. Nick, I don’t ever want you to lose that. I don’t ever want you to be able to do what I have now done twice. In a fight, kill for her. But otherwise, don’t you dare kill for her. Do you understand?”

  “But, Brynn…”

  “No.” I said firmly, “You’re good. So good, I cannot begin to fathom it. You know how I hate emotionally revelatory moments, especially when they include recollections from my past, but I will tell you that I knew someone just like you once, and I…” I stopped, “After the death of my brother, this person was the first I loved. I never told her, but she was.”

  “Her?”

  “What? Do they not have couples comprised of two women in Germany?”

  His jaw had dropped, and I stifled a grin.

  “Yes, it is shocking, but I am not telling you this to shock you. I am telling you this so that you know the dangers of being so good: All she wanted in the entire world was to make a positive difference, and for her entire adult life, she had. More than anyone else. It was that goodness, that desire to help, that got her killed.”

  “But you just told me never to lose my goodness. Didn’t you?”

  “I did. Because even when she knew she was going to die, and she did know, she did not lose that light. I have met three people in my life who have light in them of such astounding brightness, and that is Rachel, my mother’s boyfriend, and you. Two of those three are dead, and I don’t know if there are others like the three of you out there. The universe will certainly not do you any favors; people like you have it worse than anyone, because the worst of the world will try to corrupt you, but you can’t let yourself be corrupted. They didn’t. I love that you couldn’t kill him, Nick. I know it does not mean much coming from me, because I am not that much older than you, and I am the antithesis of you, but I am proud of you; I love that you couldn’t do it.”

  “It does mean something to me.” He said softly, with tears in his eyes again, “Of course it does!”

  “Good.” I grasped his hand, and we left the house through the back door, slinking off into the darkness before we could be seen, though there was no one around to do the seeing. We walked at a brisk pace, beaming in the brisk night air, me with the adrenaline from a fresh kill pumping through me jubilantly, and him receiving a metaphorical contact-high from me. Before we parted ways, I grasped his hand one last time, feeling my grin widen even more.

  “You do realize I just gave you the ‘stay golden, Ponyboy,’ speech. I meant every word, but when I think of it in those terms, it amuses me to a point that all my ill feelings towards James, and Rene, and so many others disappears. It is so funny!”

  “Oh, God, I hate that book! Gross! The whole speech you just gave me is ruined now! We had to read that when we were learning English! And watch the movie! Ugh!”

  “Goodnight, Nicklaus.”

  “Goodnight, Brynna.” We parted ways, me still chuckling, and he called after me, “It’s not actually ruined, you know! I was just kidding! But I really do hate that book!”

  “You can’t hate anything! You have to stay golden, Ponyboy!”

  “UGH!”