“What is it about Wren that has you continuously going to visit him? And don’t say to give him gifts because from what you told me, you haven’t given him a gift since the painting you made for him. So why, Sage? Why keep going back?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know."
I huffed and flopped to my side, my head angled funny while it rested on the armrest and I glared at her. “Why do you have to ruin things by making me think?”
She chuckled. “Sage, this is my job. And I’m not trying to diminish the importance of what Wren has become for you, I just think it’s important you consider why you keep going back.”
“I keep going back because I like to be around him. He’s my friend.”
“Yes, but why? Is it simply because Wren is part of an organization that saved you? Is it really Wren you like being around? Or is it the idea of him?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Do you actually enjoy being around Wren? Or is it Specter you enjoy being around? Do you like the qualities Wren has? Or are you obsessed with the hero that Specter is? Because here’s a tough one to hear, Wren is a criminal. Whether he rescued you or not, he did it in an illegal manner. If Wren were to ever be caught, he’s facing decades in prison. He could possibly go to the same prison Kade is being held in. Both criminals. I’m asking you, what makes Wren different?”
Anger surged into my body so fast, I sat up and hurled her pillow across the room. The distinct feeling of whiplash rattled my body as I glared at her, pointing a finger in her direction. “Do not ever compare Wren to Kade again. They are not even on the same wavelength!”
“What makes them different, Sage? You think Wren is the hero and Kade is the villain?”
“And what? I’m the damsel in distress? This isn’t a fairytale, Julie! Wren isn’t a knight in shining armor and Kade isn’t an evil witch with an apple. This is real life and they are real people. They have qualities and personality traits. Kade woke up every morning and did coke for breakfast before rolling over and smacking me awake. He took whatever he wanted and used people as targets at a gun range. He sold humans on the internet, and you think he belongs in the same category as a man who wears Fred Flintstone pajamas and goes to Sunday brunch with his parents? Kade was a sociopath, and Wren stops people like him. Wren and his team risk themselves to expose monsters. They are not the same. I feel warm when I’m around Wren. I don’t have to censor everything I say. My heart doesn't drop into the pits of my stomach when he walks into a room. I don’t break out into a cold sweat and throw my hands over my head when he steps towards me. He doesn’t pull my hair or force shit up my nose. I’m not afraid to walk by a staircase when he’s around. He doesn’t have a gun or bruises on his fists. And when he needs something from his friends, it’s a recommendation for a new video game. It is not a hit on someone who supposedly screwed him over or ten tons of vodka. And if you ever even think about comparing my best friend to the monster that killed Trish and destroyed my life again, I will walk right out of here and never come back.”
I gasped, heaving air into my lungs. I wiped at my face, confused by the moisture on my cheeks and yanked a Kleenex from the box on the table in front of me. I can’t believe, after everything I’ve told her, she’d still have the audacity to put Wren on a list of criminals. Sure, what he did wasn’t legal but a lot of good people stood on the border of right and wrong for the sake of the greater good. Wren walked a tightrope every night, falling far into the depths of what society considered wrong all because he wanted to eliminate evil. He had courage and heart and a big pair of balls to be able to put himself on the line, knowing he could get locked away and never come back. What Kade had was a lump of ice where his heart should be, and though my mind often malfunctioned, and there were moments I questioned my sanity, I knew Wren would never turn into the man Kade is.
“And there it is.”
I looked up to find Julie’s small smile. Her hands were resting in her lap. She regarded me with something in her face I thought was pride. But that couldn’t be right. “I’m sorry?”
“Sage, I would never, under any circumstances, consider Wren and Kade to be the same. I know why they aren’t the same. I wanted to know if you did.”
“You bitch!” My eyes flew from my head the moment the term flew from my mouth. I contemplated shoving a ton of Kleenex in my mouth to censor whatever else might come out. “I mean... that was super uncool of you. Saying that to produce a reaction.”
Julie chuckled at my outburst. “It was uncool of me, but it was necessary. Because it just gave away so much.”
“Uhm, it did?”
“Sage, you called Wren your best friend.”
“He is, I guess.”
“And what is a best friend? If you looked up the term in a dictionary, what do you think you’d find?”
Julie’s exercises got more bizarre every time I came to visit her. Each time I left, my mind was reeling more than the time before. Still, I couldn’t deny their results. “Uhm, I guess it’s a person you’re closest to. Someone who knows all your favorite things. Someone who knows when to push you and when you’ve had enough. Someone who makes you smile when you thought you never would again. Someone who keeps your secrets and covers for you when you mess up. And maybe…” I paused and cleared my throat, stalling for time while I thought up the right words that described what hanging out with Wren was to me. “Maybe a best friend is someone who likes the pieces of yourself that you find to be broken.”
“You think you’re broken?”
Why she said it as if it were a question was beyond me. She knew that’s what I thought of myself. It wasn’t a new revelation. “Wren doesn’t make me feel like a freak for refusing to eat anything that doesn’t come from my mother. He goes out of his way to make sure our bodies don’t brush because he just somehow figured out that I can’t stand when people touch me. That isn’t normal. That indicates something is wrong with me and Wren doesn’t care.”
“Your parents don’t care.” She pointed out, forcing my eyes to roll. “So why slowly open up to Wren and not them?”
“Because Wren doesn’t make sad eyes at me when I dodge a hug or refuse to go to a restaurant. He didn’t know the old Sage. He isn’t comparing what I used to be to who I am now. I’m not constantly trying to mend the two together to spare his feelings. I can just… exist. In whatever way I please without the fear of something going bad or somebody breaking down into tears. There is no pressure when I’m around Wren.”
“Exist?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were free to exist. Why use that word and not live?”
“Because who only lives on Monday and Wednesday evenings for a few hours?”
“You’re saying you feel like you’re living your life when Wren is around?”
“I’m saying it’s easier to feel comfortable. To relax. And not just because he’s Specter. That is what brought us together, but that’s not why I stayed. I stayed because Wren gives me hope that I’m capable of being a fully functioning person who has fun and doesn’t think about what happened to me. It may only be a few hours-"
“A few hours is a huge success, Sage. Do not undermine how far you’ve come with the rest of that sentence. You went from never leaving your room to being able to leave your home alone and spend time with a person you haven’t known your whole life. Be proud.”
“But, I-"
“Stop.” She held up a hand and silenced me with a pointed gaze. “No talking for sixty seconds. Close your eyes and be proud. Right now.”
I rolled my eyes before I closed them and attempted to remember what pride felt like. I guess if I was gonna be proud of myself, now was as good a time as any. I was able to knock on Wren’s door without shaking now. And Ace’s loud voice had stopped making me flinch. I didn’t panic when Lilah tried to shake my hand the first time I met her. I simply stepped back and smiled politely. I wasn’t gonna fool myself into thinking that W
ren was some magic potion that would make the nightmares go away. I still had them, frequently, and I wanted to run away screaming at the thought of somebody touching me. I was still an absolute mess who had no idea what her future held and couldn’t handle the thoughts of what her weakness had done to her family, but for two nights a week, there was a chance to forget. And somehow, I trained my brain to forget when Wren was around. Because somewhere along the line, it trusted Wren to watch over me.
I peeled open one of my eyes, finding her writing fiercely on her notepad. “I think that was sixty seconds.”
“It was.” She set down her pen. “One more question about Wren.”
“You are relentless, Julie. Honestly. You should write a book filled with hard questions people don’t want to answer. I feel like I’m on the world’s shittiest first date. And my first ever date I was kidnapped, so that’s saying something.”
She chose to say nothing about the joke I’d made and simply closed her eyes. I pictured her counting to ten in her head and trying to figure out if I’d been a cynic forever or if that was a product of spending sixteen months sleeping next to a monster.
“How come you only see Wren two nights a week?”
Oh. We’re back to asking questions now. “What?”
“You told me earlier that Wren has invited you to see where he works. He’s invited you to come watch movies on a Sunday evening. You’ve declined those invites. You won’t even accept his phone number. Why? If Wren makes you feel like you’re living, if he’s your best friend, why keep him contained to four hours a week?”
The crack in my heart that was there just for Trish had begun to ache immensely. The pieces that were dedicated to her were barely holding on as I lifted my head and pointed my watery gaze at Julie. “Because the last best friend I had was killed.”
There was a place in this cemetery. It was an empty place between Trish and a man named Winston who was ninety-four when he passed away. I googled his name during one of the long afternoons I’d spent here and found out he was a war veteran who only had one leg when he died. He lost it after an infection had spread. According to his obituary, he wore a cowboy hat everywhere and spent decades after the war dressing up as a clown and making balloon animals at children’s birthday parties. He had thirty-seven grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a wife named Erma. Those were all the facts I knew about Winston, but there was something about that five-hundred-word obituary that made me believe Winston was the same type of badass Trish was. It was a force that only came out when necessary. A force that was hidden beneath loads and loads of kindness.
I couldn’t think of a better person for Trish to spend an eternity next to than a person who embodied everything she was. Except, she wasn’t right next to him. There was a plot right between them. It was empty. There were no flowers, no gifts, no photos, or letters of goodbye. There was a long, rectangular spot in the grass that was lighter than the rest. It told me there was a tombstone there that had since been drug away.
It took one trip here and the look on Brett’s face for me to realize that spot had been for me, and the tombstone that was drug away had my name engraved on it. I don’t know where it is now. I don’t know if an empty coffin is still lying beneath me or if they dug it up months ago. Those were questions I did not want to know the answer to. What I did want to know is why my parents chose to bury me between Trish and old man Winston. Don’t get me wrong, I liked that my place was between two beautiful souls who had the strength of a warrior, but I often wondered why I wasn’t somewhere they could all be buried with me. It was a morbid thought, really. Wondering why I would be in the dirt on the top of the hill while they would be in the dirt at the bottom. Maybe it’s because where our bodies lay wasn’t what mattered. It’s where they went afterward.
I laid down on top of the place that was mine and peered over at Trish. “What’s it like up there?” She didn’t answer me, but I was so easily able to envision the smile that crept up her cheeks. “Did you meet Winston? He’s a badass, isn’t he? I should bring him a crayon.”
I pictured her laughing, her eyes sparkling the way they did every time she laughed so hard she snorted. Trish always laughed at the things I’d said when I’d intended for them to be serious. After a while, I started to believe Trish had a hard time being serious. She was full of fun. No reservations. No hesitations. If she wanted something, then she would go and get it. I’d always loved that about her personality.
Until one day, I’d come to resent it.
“I was mad at you once.” I told her, wiping the tears before they fell down my cheeks. “I spent so long being mad at you for you just being you. And then I started to get mad at myself for having the audacity to be mad at you. I was just this ball of anger. I was mad at you, me, Kade, the men who hurt you and took me. I was mad at the police for never finding me. I was mad at whoever the hell created drugs and weapons. I was such a terror, Trish. I was pissed twenty-four seven. And let me tell you, pissed off and broken is a toxic combination.”
She regarded me with sympathy and reached out to stroke my cheek, wiping away the drops of moisture.
“I kept thinking that if you weren’t in such a hurry to get a damn tattoo, we would have never gone inside that bank. We would have told our parents where we were going. They would have tried to stop us. But, no. You wanted it to be spontaneous. Keep it a secret from your parents and make sure you withdrew cash instead of using your card so they couldn’t track down the transaction from your statement. You were smart, Trish. That’s what I thought. I thought you were being smart, but then I had to watch you die and I just wanted to scream at you for being so damn stupid.”
She opened her mouth to say something. I shook my head, cutting her off with a sniffle before she started to apologize. It wasn’t fair of me to call her spontaneity stupid. Teenagers get random tattoos all the time. They sneak out. They lie to their parents. They go overboard trying to be secretive. They spent their time so it was worth their life, and that’s all Trish wanted to do. It wasn’t stupidity that got her killed. It was cruelty.
My mind went back and forth, reminding myself of the difference between the two when Kade had tried so hard to convince me it was the former.
“Kade was a mind bender, Trish. He twisted my thoughts, confused me, manipulated me, used me. It’s taken months and months with Julie to undo some of what he has done. And I thought I’d gotten over it, ya know? I was able to believe it wasn’t me that got you killed. And then today, I blew it. I made one comment and it opened such a mass of floodgates, I took off running out of her office.” I rolled to my back and gazed at the sun that warmed everybody except me. “I know you’ve been watching me. So I don’t have to tell you about Wren. But what I should tell you is to brace yourself for how disappointed you’ll be in me when you hear about the way I insinuated I’d get Wren killed if I continued to be his friend.”
I didn’t realize the underlying message beneath my words until it was already out in the open. The look on Julie’s face was one of heartbreak and I took off running, crying fierce tears of frustration and overpowering sadness. I knew it wasn’t true. My mind worked itself to the point of smoke flowing out of my ears before I believed I was not the reason her blood filled that hallway. For the first little while I was with Kade, I reminded him every chance I got that he was a monster. I spat nasty words at him. Hurled venomous looks and did what I could to get him to kill me.
He must’ve known living would be worse. That’s the only logical reason I can come up with as to why he kept me alive after I repeatedly reminded him how much I’d wished for him to be torn apart. He listened to me with a smirk on his face, even going as far as to say he was sorry for her death and starting an event that changed the person I was forever.
The more time I spent with him, the more he began to convince me it was my actions and my lack of responsibility that had gotten her killed. I knew it wasn’t true on some level, but if you put something on repeat in someon
e’s brain, it’ll start to reprogram. Between Kade and all of Julie’s help, my brain had been picked apart and put back together time and time again.
I knew it wouldn’t ever function normally again.
“There were so many what ifs, Trish. What if I did this, what if I did that, what if we stayed in the bathroom, what if I got killed and not you. My mind was swimming in them, and I thought I’d moved past that giant bump until that sentence came out of my mouth.”
I may not have liked pretending, but I didn’t enjoy overanalyzing either. I didn’t second guess my reluctance to spent additional time with my new friend. I went with it and thought nothing of it until I vomited the painful truth all over myself.
I didn’t get close to my parents because I didn’t want to hurt them.
I kept my distance from Wren because I didn’t want to kill him.
I was a walking bomb. Due to explode at any time and anyone in my path would be part of the wreckage. Danger followed me everywhere and there was a gnawing feeling in my bones that told me I’d led it directly to Wren the same as I did to Trish.
“I’m sorry, Trish.” I whispered. “It should’ve been me. My spot should not be empty.” I rolled over to find her angry face. Her red lips were pursed and there was a wrinkle hidden behind her bangs. I knew she was pissed at me, trying to tell me it was not my fault and I had to make peace with it. I couldn’t start the process of convincing myself otherwise all over again only to have a setback for the second time.
Julie called it Survivor's Guilt. I called it overwhelming.
I studied Trish's face, noting the way tears were streaming down her cheeks. Tears that were for me. In the time it took me to blink, she held out a cyan crayon and tried to get me to take it. I shook my head, refusing to accept that I was deserving. I had badass moments, sure. But I did not lead a badass life.
She surged forward, attempting to force the crayon into my hand before giving up and thrusting it at my chest. I watched as her hand went through me and she dropped the crayon into my chest, over my heart where the crack that lay for her was.
Specter: Circuit Series Book One Page 14