by Joanna Wiebe
A dead branch snaps under my foot. Ben turns at the sound. I try to flatten against the back side of the tree, but I’m not fast enough.
“Hello?” he calls.
Did he see me?
“You. Behind the tree. Hiding.”
I know I’ll look like a total spaz if I keep hiding. So, holding my breath, I step out.
three
THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB
“HI, BEN,” I SAY WITH THE LAMEST WAVE IN THE HISTORY of waves.
Ben drops the box he’s holding. He mouths my name, but I just keep standing like a moron. I feel naked. I have to glance down to be sure I’m still wearing this idiotic school uniform because I’ve never felt so exposed in my life.
“Are you a ghost?” he asks in a breath, like he’s not sure if I’ll float away at the sound. I can’t speak, not with the memory of Garnet kissing his cheek and, earlier, stroking his arm. “Anne?”
Oh, God. My name said by his voice. This is why people have names. This is why people have voices.
He glances over his shoulder, checking the open doorway, and looks back at me like he’s worried I’ll be gone. But instead of appearing relieved to see me, his face falls.
“Tell me you’re not here,” he says. He must see my chest moving, my breath struggling to flow. “God, you’re really here. You’re back.”
I nod once, almost imperceptibly. But he’s watching me closely enough that he sees it. He closes his eyes. It’s my chance to get a little closer to him, but I do so only tentatively, on tiptoes, like he might bite if I cross an unseen line. Wormwood Island and its uncrossable lines.
His head is down. He looks the same, but different. I knew him only briefly and left him only hours ago—but he doesn’t seem to be the unaging sixteen-year-old I left behind.
“Did you die?” he asks without looking up again.
“Teddy was waiting for me in California,” I tell him and struggle to keep my voice even, certain it will betray my feelings.
I’ve always known I’d be a fool to believe Ben Zin could ever want to be with me; I should have expected him to reunite with Garnet and forget me as the fleeting memory the universe might have planned for me to be. I should have known better, been smarter. But when’s the last time a person reasoned with a heart?
“That skinny beanpole Teddy?” he asks.
“He’s got some sort of crooked nurse giving me just enough meds to stay in a coma. There’s no escape. Mephisto wants me here, so…”
“He was in California when you woke up?”
“He got there fast. The perks of being a demon, right? Transcending physicality and all that.” I awkwardly search for words to fill the dead air. Ben keeps his head down.
“Of course, he had to fly back here like a normal person. Because he had to carry my vials. Can’t just vaporize into spirit form when you’ve got three real, physical tubes of blood to tote along, I guess. Though how he got them through security is beyond me.” I laugh a little.
He groans. He’s not taking this as lightly as I’m trying to.
I glance at the doorway just as he lifts his head and looks there, too. The doorway’s still empty.
“Garnet’s inside?” I ask.
“She’ll be back any second.”
“So. You and Garnet.”
He doesn’t say anything. He looks down again.
Silence is worse than admitting it. It feels like I could freak out— just totally blow up—at Ben, but in truth only a part of me is angry. The other part, the bigger part, the part that tries to protect my aching heart, is whispering madly for me to avoid saying or doing anything that might prompt him to tell me what I don’t want to hear: that he and Garnet are, in fact, together again—a fact that would make everything that happened last night, including my first real kiss, anything but real.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he says.
“Neither can I.”
“Anne, listen, I’ve gotta get my head together. I mean, what was it all for? This is…horrifying.”
Bad, yes, but horrifying?
“Please, get out of here before she comes back down.”
“So you’re,” I hesitate over the words, “back with Garnet?”
“No! No. Of course not.”
Thank God. I want to pause time, to stop him from saying anything that might dull my relief. Why does it always seem like the good things will vanish long before I can appreciate them?
“She’s nothing, Anne. A means to an end. Or that’s what she was gonna be.” He finally looks at me fully. The tears blurring his pupils make his eyes seem to be made of pure color. “I thought you were free. I thought I’d actually done something good.”
“You did. It’s just that evil trumps good here.”
“Look,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “Meet me at Gigi’s. Give me ten minutes, okay?”
Without a second look and without even waiting for me to agree, Ben disappears into the dorm. I hear him storm up the stairs and stop midway. He says something, and Garnet says something. And she laughs.
Is she laughing at me?
Are they both? Are they laughing together? As a couple?
The slap in the face that was Pilot’s betrayal still stings; it reminds me that being two-faced is a survival strategy, a universal PT. Just because I want Ben to want me doesn’t mean he does. Just because he kissed me doesn’t mean it meant something to him. And what does that mean, Garnet is a “means to an end”?
I turn to go. But not south, where Gigi’s house is. I go north instead, to the cliff.
I don’t feel the grass under my boots. I don’t hear the whispering of frustrated kids taking pleasure in the humiliation of the Coma Girl they’ve loathed since the day I arrived here, but especially since I killed one of their own—and Gigi, too, as the rumors go. I don’t notice the clouds drift over the sun as I cross the empty parking lot and start up the hill. I don’t wrap my arms around myself as the wind picks up and thick, slushy raindrops start to fall, then cease. I don’t even notice, when I make it to the top of the hill turned pink by the setting sun’s light cast over slick gray rocks, that Dia Voletto is here already. It’s not until he speaks that I realize I’ve got company.
“Anne Merchant.”
“I didn’t see you here, Headmaster.” I move to leave. There’s not enough room up here for his malevolence and my frustration.
“You don’t want to know how I know your name?”
“It’s a Cania pre-req, knowing my name. Everyone knows everything about me. More than I know about myself.”
“That may be true.”
I glance at his feet, expecting to see Villicus’s old jeweled bag, the one he used to transport vials in only to throw them off the cliff. Has Dia got someone to expel? There’s no bag at his feet. It’s just him. He’s traded his ringleader attire for normal human clothes: he’s wearing Doc Martens, fitted jeans, and a big woolly cardigan; his hands are stuffed in the pockets. The cold evening air has colored his cheeks and made his dark eyes glossy. Looking as he does, he could be on a photo shoot for J.Crew.
“Come,” he says. “Stand by me. Take a look at this spectacular seascape.”
The last thing I want is to make nice with the newest devil to curse my life with his presence. When he notices my hesitation, he chuckles.
“Are you cold? Take my sweater.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s no problem. I’ve got fire and brimstone built into my bones. Keeps me toasty warm.” He waves to get my attention when I don’t react. “Hello? That was a joke.”
“Right.” I wonder if Ben’s on his way to Gigi’s already. Is he planning to break the bad news to me that he and Garnet have finally declared their love for one another? “I should get back to campus.”
“What did you come up here for? Planning your next escape?”
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“To celebrate your victory over Mephistopheles.”
“I beg to differ.” He holds his hand out for me. “Come.”
I don’t take it, but I reluctantly shuffle to stand at his side. Thick rain has started to fall again. We stare through it and over the pinkish-gray ocean. Droplets make disappearing divots in the low waves across the water. The setting sun will soon take its warm glow to the mainland. I should leave, but I don’t know where I’d go.
“Imagine all of this as your kingdom,” he says. “Only a fool would risk losing something so beautiful.”
“Some people don’t feel worthy of beauty.”
“Those people are the world’s biggest fools. Beauty is a human birthright. Your souls are by far the loveliest entities I’ve ever beheld, but this landscape—this world—is a close second. Fools turn from it.”
“Physical beauty is impermanent,” I counter absently. “Some would say fools fixate on it.”
I see his mouth drooping in disappointment for perhaps the first time since he glimpsed his reflection in the water. I don’t want to risk the ire of this devil leader; as nice as he may be acting, I know it’s all just an act. So I backtrack. If he wants to be dazzled by beauty, who am I to stop him? Ben dazzled me, and I would have rather never been woken from that trance.
“That’s what artists are for,” I offer. “We preserve beauty as we see it, Headmaster.”
“Call me D.”
That’s not gonna happen.
“So,” I say, wishing he would leave and wondering if I should, “when did you find out you were being sent here?”
“Sent here?” He tsks. “I came. Intentionally.”
“To build the college?”
“If you think any devil gives a damn about educating the masses.”
“So why, then? Why are you here—aside from replacing our shamed ex-headmaster?”
“Why are you here?”
I scoff. “A devil wants my dad’s network, and he got a demon to bring me here.”
“Is that really the reason?”
He stares ahead. I glance at him, wondering what he means, and in that second, I can’t help but deconstruct his profile as any artist would do. Each of his features is flawed, yet in combination they’re striking. Little wonder he was as taken by his reflection in the water as Narcissus.
“You’re an artist, Anne?”
“In some sense of the word.” I wipe raindrops from my face. “It’s hard to be an artist when your every move is graded. Not much room for creative license.” I catch him looking at me in the strangest way, as if he’s deconstructing me like I did him. There’s something about him. A familiarity. “Have I seen you before? Did you visit Cania last week or something?”
He shakes his head no. He looks like he’s about to add something, but his glistening stare drifts to the entry point of the cliff-top. I follow his gaze to find Ben, out of breath and looking bewildered, standing in the shadows at the top of the slick hill. He is watching us just as I watched him and Garnet. How did he know I was up here? Or did he?
“Am I interrupting?” Ben asks us.
“Mr. Zin,” Dia says. “This must be a popular spot.”
Dia moves to help Ben up the last step of the steep hill. The three of us stand awkwardly—at least, it feels awkward to me—until Dia realizes Ben and I are not leaving. He wraps himself tighter in his cardigan, nods our way, and retreats easily down the slippery path to campus, vanishing in the brush.
That leaves me alone with Ben.
“Did you already go to Gigi’s?” I ask him.
He’s still trying to catch his breath. “There and back. Mr. Watso was there, and so was Gigi—vivified Gigi. They were dragging her remains into the water.”
“You saw them?”
“They told me you hadn’t come by. I had a hunch you’d be here.”
Silence settles over us like the cold rain on our hair. Ben and I are separated by a mere three feet. That’s not a lot of room to cross, but right now it feels like the English Channel. Whatever miracle brought down the walls around him and around me last night is unlikely to make a reappearance. Too much has happened.
It’s not just Garnet.
It’s that the thing we created together—my escape—failed spectacularly. How can we move past that?
“You’re shivering,” Ben says at last.
I hadn’t noticed. I feel like we’ve been standing in the cold for a lifetime—a proper one, not a Cania one—when Ben takes off his school blazer and wraps it around my shoulders.
I thank him.
He says it’s no problem.
Our voices are quieter than they should be. They are, like the inches of physical space between us, bricks rebuilding the walls. If I were Garnet, I could get close to him, I could kiss him like she easily did and laugh with him like she easily did. Instead, I rock on my heels and try not to shiver too noticeably. He’s going to think we ought to go in to escape the rain, and then what? And then it’s all over, like it never happened? We can’t leave. I need to say something. Do something.
“I’m sorry about the way I was on campus just now,” he says at last. “Please don’t be angry.”
“I’m…confused, Ben.”
“What you saw with Garnet, it wasn’t real. She doesn’t know that yet, but trust me.”
I slip his jacket off and hold it out to him. “You can understand how that might be a little tough for me.”
“I really can’t.”
“Well, then there’s even less hope for us than I’d thought.”
We both eye his coat, this symbol of something much bigger than polyester lining, itchy wool, and the Cania crest. He surprises me by taking my bare, freezing arm and sliding it, clumsily, into the sleeve. He shuffles behind me to drape the coat, and he bends and shifts my other arm into the other sleeve, trying to be delicate, until I think my shoulder might pop out of its socket.
“Could you make this any harder?” he says under his breath. “This is why I work with clay.”
Trying not to smile, I shift my shoulder and shape my hand so he can pull his coat up and over me. He adjusts it a little. Rolls a cuff. Unrolls it. And stands back to admire his handiwork. Girl in a school blazer. Major success.
He tugs the collar up. And, in doing so, pulls me onto my tippytoes. Close to his face, close to his lips. Not close enough to be close, but close enough to make me believe that we could close the gap in little time.
Am I wrong to think his jaw is more defined than it was just yesterday? Or that small lines now run in thin rivers at the corners of his brilliant but sad eyes? Or that his shoulders are broader and he’s at least an inch taller? Ben looks the part of the twenty-one-year-old guy he is, the guy who was trapped in a teenager’s body and doomed to live forever as an unaging, beautiful sixteen-year-old boy, the eternally youthful boy Teddy scorned.
“You think there’s no hope for us?” he asks me, still holding me by the collar. “Is this part of your dark, brooding mortician’sdaughter façade?”
“Is stringing along multiple girls part of your hot-guy-in-school façade?”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“That you’re a philanderer?”
“That I’m a hot guy?”
I smirk. Was there ever any doubt? I’ve been a gelatinous mess since he first uttered my name.
My gaze moves back and forth between his eyes and mouth. I see myself reflected in his darkening irises, his dilated pupils. I look away. Because I don’t want to lose myself in him—God knows that would be easy.
“I’d say there’s hope for us, Miss Merchant.”
“Hope is the worst of all evils,” I whisper. “It prolongs our torments.”
“You’re quoting Nietzsche?”
“Loosely.”
“Here, all we have is hope,” he says.
“Well, isn’t that ironic?”
“The irony of hope in Hell on Earth?”
I s
hrug. “‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’—isn’t that written on the gates of Hell?”
“In the Inferno.” He smiles, and his bright eyes meet mine. “Do you have any idea how much it turns me on when you quote Dante and Nietzsche within seconds of each other?”
I’m about to laugh when he, at last, presses his lips to mine. I’m on my tiptoes, so I stumble a little until he wraps his arms around me, steadying me. How this happened, how we’ve crossed the chasm that seemed greater than the distance between Hell and Heaven, is a testament to either our humanity or our divinity here. We’re either completely weak and foolish or part of something bigger. This kiss is part of something bigger.
“My Anne,” he whispers into my hair, near my ear, as he pulls gently away, leaving me in shivers. “We tried to outsmart the devil, and we screwed it up royally, didn’t we?”
“Like Charles and Camilla,” I say. He laughs a little. “Royally. Get it?”
He leans back. “That’s pretty bad.”
“You could’ve done better?”
“Working with ‘screwed it up royally’?” He thinks about it. His hands are on my lower back. I pray we’ll never, ever move. Let the rain freeze us in place. “Maybe something like, ‘Like a lightbulb in Buckingham Palace.’”
I wrinkle my whole face.
“Not good?” he asks.
“Worse than mine.”
His grin grows. But as our shallow breaths come and go, as rain collects on us, and as his eyes darken, it fades. At least his arms stay around me. And mine around him.
“I heard your dad’s working with my dad now,” he says. “So we were right about what Mephisto wanted with you.”
“I’ve never wanted to be wrong so much.”
“Always the A student,” he says. “I assume your dad’s new job was your punishment?”
“That plus two cherries on top.”
“Two? Lucky you.”
“Harper is my roommate.”
“Ouch.”
“And Pilot is my new Guardian.”
“Double ouch! Damn, I thought I had it rough.”