by Tahereh Mafi
“Ow—” I jerk back, scowling. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You’ve been hit extra hard with the stupid stick today.”
“What? I thought you said I was doing okay—”
“You are. But you’re distracted. You keep staring at the elevator like it’s about to grant you three wishes.”
“Oh,” I say. I look away. “Well. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he sighs. Frowns a little. “What the hell is going on between you guys, anyway? Do I even want to know?”
I sigh. Flop onto the mats. “I have no idea, Kenji. He’s hot and cold.” I shrug. “I guess it’s fine. I just need a little space for now.”
“But you like him?” Kenji raises an eyebrow.
I say nothing. Feel my face warm.
Kenji rolls his eyes. “You know, I really never would’ve thought Warner could make you happy.”
“Do I look happy?” I counter.
“Good point.” He sighs. “I just mean that you always seemed so happy with Kent. This is a little hard for me to process.” He hesitates. Rubs his forehead. “Well. Actually, you were a hell of a lot weirder when you were with Kent. Super whiny. And so dramatic. And you cried. All. The. Damn. Time.” He screws up his face. “Jesus. I can’t decide which one of them is worse.”
“You think I’m dramatic?” I ask him, eyes wide. “Do you even know yourself at all?”
“I am not dramatic, okay? My presence just commands a certain kind of attention—”
I snort.
“Hey,” he says, pointing at my face. “I am just saying that I don’t know what to believe anymore. I’ve already been on this merry-go-round. First Adam. Now Warner. Next week you’re going to try and hook up with me.”
“You really wish that were true, don’t you?”
“Whatever,” he says, looking away. “I don’t even like you.”
“You think I’m pretty.”
“I think you’re delusional.”
“I don’t even know what this is, Kenji.” I meet his eyes. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how to explain it, and I’m not sure I understand the depth of it yet. All I know is that whatever this is, I never felt it with Adam.”
Kenji’s eyes pull together, surprised and scared. He says nothing for a second. Blows out a breath. “Seriously?”
I nod.
“Seriously, seriously?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I feel so . . . light. Like I could just . . . I don’t know . . .” I trail off. “It’s like I feel like, for the first time in my life, I’m going to be okay. Like I’m going to be strong.”
“But that sounds like it’s just you,” he says. “That has nothing to do with Warner.”
“That’s true,” I tell him. “But sometimes people can weigh us down, too. And I know Adam didn’t mean to, but he was weighing me down. We were two sad people stuck together.”
“Huh.” Kenji leans back on his hands.
“Being with Adam was always overshadowed by some kind of pain or difficulty,” I explain, “and Adam was always so serious. He was intense in a way that exhausted me sometimes. We were always hiding, or sneaking around, or on the run, and we never found enough uninterrupted moments to be together. It was almost like the universe was trying to tell me I was trying too hard to make things work with him.”
“Kent wasn’t that bad, J.” Kenji frowns. “You’re not giving him enough credit. He’s been acting kind of dickish lately, but he’s a good guy. You know he is. Shit is just really rough for him right now.”
“I know,” I sigh, feeling sad, somehow. “But this world is still falling apart. Even if we win this war, everything is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.” I pause. Stare into my hands. “And I think people become who they really are when things get rough. I’ve seen it firsthand. With myself, my parents, with society, even. And yeah, Adam is a good guy. He really is. But just because he’s a good guy doesn’t make him the right guy for me.”
I look up.
“I’m so different now. I’m not right for him anymore, and he’s not right for me.”
“But he still loves you.”
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t.”
“That’s a pretty heavy accusation.”
“It’s not an accusation,” I say. “One day Adam will realize that what he felt for me was just a crazy kind of desperation. We were two people who really needed someone to hold on to, and we had this past that made us seem so compatible. But it wasn’t enough. Because if it were, I wouldn’t have been able to walk away so easily.” I drop my eyes, my voice. “Warner didn’t seduce me, Kenji. He didn’t steal me away. I just . . . I reached a point where everything changed for me.
“Everything I thought I knew about Warner was wrong. Everything I thought I believed about myself was wrong. And I knew I was changing,” I say to him. “I wanted to move forward. I wanted to be angry and I wanted to scream for the first time in my life and I couldn’t. I didn’t want people to be afraid of me, so I tried to shut up and disappear, hoping it would make them more comfortable. But I hate that I let myself be so passive my whole life, and I see now how differently things could’ve been if I’d had faith in myself when it mattered. I don’t want to go back to that,” I tell him. “I won’t. Not ever.”
“You don’t have to,” Kenji points out. “Why would you? I don’t think Kent wanted you to be passive.”
I shrug. “I still wonder if he wants me to be the girl he first fell for. The person I was when we met.”
“And that’s bad?”
“That’s not who I am anymore, Kenji. Do I still seem like that girl to you?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“You don’t know,” I say, exasperated. “That’s why you don’t understand. You don’t know what I used to be like. You don’t know what it was like in my head. I lived in a really dark place,” I say to him. “I wasn’t safe in my own mind. I woke up every morning hoping to die and then spent the rest of the day wondering if maybe I was already dead because I couldn’t even tell the difference,” I say, more harshly than I mean to. “I had a small thread of hope and I clung to it, but the majority of my life was spent waiting around to see if someone would take pity on me.”
Kenji is just staring at me, his eyes tight.
“Don’t you think I’ve realized,” I say to him, angrier now, “that if I’d allowed myself to get mad a long time ago, I would’ve discovered I had the strength to break through that asylum with my own two hands?”
Kenji flinches.
“Don’t you think that I think about that, all the time?” I ask him, my voice shaking. “Don’t you think it kills me to know that it was my own unwillingness to recognize myself as a human being that kept me trapped for so long? For two hundred and sixty-four days, Kenji,” I say, swallowing hard. “Two hundred and sixty-four days I was in there and the whole time, I had the power to break myself out and I didn’t, because I had no idea I could. Because I never even tried. Because I let the world teach me to hate myself. I was a coward,” I say, “who needed someone else to tell me I was worth something before I took any steps to save myself.
“This isn’t about Adam or Warner,” I tell him. “This is about me and what I want. This is about me finally understanding where I want to be in ten years. Because I’m going to be alive, Kenji. I will be alive in ten years, and I’m going to be happy. I’m going to be strong. And I don’t need anyone to tell me that anymore. I am enough, and I always will be.”
I’m breathing hard now, trying to calm my heart.
Kenji is staring at me, mildly terrified.
“I want Adam to be happy, Kenji, I really do. But he and I would end up like water going nowhere.”
“What do you mean . . . ?”
“Water that never moves,” I say to him. “It’s fine for a little while. You can drink from it and it’ll sustain you. But if it sits too long it goes bad. It grows stale. It becomes toxic.” I shake my h
ead. “I need waves. I need waterfalls. I want rushing currents.”
“Damn,” Kenji says. He laughs nervously, scratches the back of his head. “I think you should write that speech down, princess. Because you’re going to have to tell him all of that yourself.”
“What?” My body goes rigid.
“Yeah.” Kenji coughs. “Adam and James are coming here tomorrow.”
“What?” I gasp.
“Yeah. Awkward, right?” He tries to laugh. “Sooo awkward.”
“Why? Why would he come here? How do you even know?”
“I’ve, um, kind of been going back?” He clears his throat. “To, you know, check up on them. Mostly James. But you know.” He looks away. Looks around.
“To check up on them?”
“Yeah. Just to make sure they’re doing okay.” He nods at nothing. “Like, I told him that we had a really awesome plan in place,” Kenji says, pointing at me. “Thanks to you, of course. Really awesome plan. So. And I told him the food was good,” Kenji adds. “And the showers are hot. So, like, he knows Warner didn’t cheap out on us or anything. And yeah, you know, some other stuff.”
“What other stuff?” I ask, suspicious now. “What did you say to him?”
“Hmm?” Kenji is studying the hem of his shirt, pulling at it.
“Kenji.”
“Okay, listen,” Kenji says, holding up both hands. “Just—don’t get mad, okay?”
“I’m already getting mad—”
“They were going to die out there. I couldn’t just let them stay in that crappy little space all by themselves—especially not James—and especially not now that we’ve got a solid plan in place—”
“What did you tell him, Kenji?” My patience is wearing thin.
“Maybe,” he says, backing away now, “maybe I told him how you were a calm, rational, very nice person who does not like to hurt people, especially not her very good-looking friend Kenji—”
“Dammit, Kenji, tell me what you did—”
“I need five feet,” he says.
“What?”
“Five feet. Of space,” he says. “Between us.”
“I will give you five inches.”
Kenji swallows, hard. “Okay, well, maybe,” he says, “maybe I told him . . . that . . . um, you missed him. A lot.”
I nearly rock backward, reeling from the impact of his words.
“You did what?” My voice drops to a whisper.
“It was the only way I could get him here, okay? He thought you were in love with Warner, and his pride is such a freaking issue with him—”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout. “They’re going to kill each other!”
“This could be their chance to make up,” Kenji says. “And then we can all be friends, just like you wanted—”
“Oh my God,” I say, running a hand over my eyes. “Are you insane? Why would you do that? I’ll have to break his heart all over again!”
“Yeah, you know, I was thinking maybe you could pretend to be, like, not interested in Warner? Just until after this war is over? Because that would make things a little less stressful. And then we’d all get along, and Adam and James wouldn’t die out there all alone. You know? Happy ending.”
I’m so mad right now I’m shaking.
“You told him something else, didn’t you?” I ask, my eyes narrowing. “You said something else to him. About me. Didn’t you?”
“What?” Kenji is moving backward now. “I don’t—”
“Is that all you told him?” I demand. “That I missed him? Or did you tell him something else, too?”
“Oh. Well, now that you mention it, yeah, um, I might’ve told him, um, that you were still in love with him?”
My brain is screaming.
“And . . . that maybe you talk about him all the time? And maybe I told him that you cry a lot about how much you miss him. Maybe. I don’t know, we talked about a lot of things, so—”
“I am going to MURDER YOU—”
“No,” he says, pointing at me as he shifts backward again. “Bad Juliette. You don’t like to kill people, remember? You’re against that, remember? You like to talk about feelings and rainbows—”
“Why, Kenji?” I drop my head into my hands. “Why? Why would you lie to him?”
“Because,” he snaps, frustrated. “This is bullshit. Everyone is already dying in this world. Everyone has lost their homes, their families—everything they’ve ever loved. And you and Kent should be able to work out your stupid high school drama like two adults. We shouldn’t have to lose each other like this. We’ve already lost everyone else,” he says, angry now.
“They’re alive, J. They’re still alive.” He looks at me, eyes bright with barely restrained emotion. “That’s reason enough for me to try and keep them in my life.” He looks away. Lowers his voice. “Please,” he says. “This is such crap. This whole thing. I feel like I’m the kid caught in the middle of a divorce. And I didn’t want to lie to him, okay? I didn’t. But at least I convinced him to come back. And maybe once he gets here, he’ll want to stay.”
I glare at him. “When are they going to be here?”
Kenji takes a beat to breathe. “I’m getting them in the morning.”
“You know I’m going to tell Warner, right? You know you can’t just keep them here and make them invisible.”
“I know,” he says.
“Fine.” I’m so furious I don’t even know what to say anymore. I can’t even look at him right now.
“So . . . ,” Kenji says. “Good talk?”
I spin around. My voice is deathly soft, my face only inches from his. “If they kill each other,” I say to him, “I will break your neck.”
“Damn, princess. When did you get so violent?”
“I’m not kidding, Kenji. They’ve tried to kill each other before, and they almost succeeded. I hope you didn’t forget that detail when you were making your happy rainbow plans.” I stare him down. “This isn’t just the story of two guys who don’t like each other. They want each other dead.”
Kenji sighs. Looks toward the wall. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”
“No,” I say to him. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Can’t you try to see where I’m coming from?” he asks. “Can’t you see how much better it would be for us to all be together? There’s no one left, J. It’s just us. We shouldn’t all have to suffer just because you and Kent aren’t making out anymore. We shouldn’t be living like this.”
I close my eyes. Sigh deeply and try to calm down.
“I do,” I say quietly. “I do see where you’re coming from. I really, really do. And I love you for wanting everyone to be okay, and I love you for looking out for me, and for wanting me and Adam to be together again. I know how much you’re going through right now. And I’m so sorry, Kenji. I really am. I know this isn’t easy for you. But that’s also exactly why I don’t understand why you’d force the two of them together. You want to stick them in the same room. In a confined space. I thought you didn’t want them to die.”
“I think you’re being a little pessimistic about this.”
“Dammit, Kenji!” I throw my arm out, exasperated, and don’t even realize what I’ve done until I hear a crash. I look toward the sound. I’ve managed to knock down an entire rack of free weights. From across the room.
I am a walking catastrophe.
“I need to cool off,” I tell him, trying to moderate my voice. “I’ll be back to shave your head while you’re sleeping.”
Kenji looks genuinely terrified for the first time. “You wouldn’t.”
I head toward the opposite wall. Hit the button for the elevator. “You’re a heavy sleeper, right?”
“That’s not funny, J—that’s not even a little bit funny—”
The elevator pings open. I step inside. “Good night, Kenji.”
I can still hear him shouting at me as the doors close.
FOR
TY
Warner is in the shower when I get back up to the room.
I glance at the clock. This would be about the time he’d start heading down to the training rooms; I usually meet him there for our nightly recap.
Instead I fall face-first onto the bed.
I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Adam is going to show up here tomorrow thinking I still want to be with him. I don’t want to have to walk away again, to see the hurt in his eyes. I don’t want to hurt him. I really don’t. I never have.
I’m going to kill Kenji.
I shove my head under the pillows, stacking them on my head and squishing them down around my ears until I’ve managed to shut out the world. I don’t want to think about this right now. Now, of all the times to be thinking about this. Why do things always have to be so complicated? Why?
I feel a hand on my back.
I jerk up, pillows flying everywhere, and I’m so stupidly startled I actually fall off the bed. A pillow topples over and hits me in the face.
I groan, clutching the pillow to my chest. I press my forehead to the soft cushion of it, squeezing my eyes shut. I’ve never had such a terrible headache.
“Juliette?” A tentative voice. “Are you okay?”
I lower the pillow. Blink up.
Warner is wearing a towel.
A towel.
I want to roll under the bed.
“Adam and James are coming here tomorrow,” I say to him, all at once. I just say it, just like that.
Warner raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize they’d received an invitation.”
“Kenji is bringing them here. He’s been sneaking out to go check on them, and now he’s bringing them here. Tomorrow morning.”
Warner’s face is carefully neutral, his voice unaffected. He might be talking about the color of the walls. “I thought he wasn’t interested in joining your resistance anymore.”
For a moment I can’t believe I’m still lying on the ground, clutching a pillow to my chest, staring at Warner who’s wearing a towel and nothing else. I can’t even take myself seriously.
“Kenji told Adam I’m still in love with him.”