by Jodi Lamm
“So this is it,” I mutter. My fate is decided, but I keep talking because if I stop, I fear what I’ll have to do next. “It doesn’t matter how much I love you. It doesn’t matter how hard I try. Nothing… Nothing matters. God, if only I could make you see…”
She turns her face away from me.
“What is it you want, Esmeralda? A teenage romance? A pretty boy who fucks you and leaves you and turns you sour? Do you even know what you would have in me? I worship you. I will never love another human being more than I love you. You can’t take anything from me that I wouldn’t give you freely. Tell me to rip out my heart and hand it to you, and I’ll show you that I already have. I already have.” I choke and blink back tears because she still won’t look at me. No matter what I do.
“It hurts, Esmeralda. You have no idea. It’s killing me, how much I love you. And you hate me for it. You won’t ever forgive me, but it isn’t my fault. I can’t stop it. I’ve tried, for both our sakes. God help me, I’ve tried. But something… Something won’t let me… You won’t let me…” I rub the tears from my eyes with my sleeve. I feel so worthless, so pathetic right now. But this is the truth. This is who I am: worthless, pathetic. “No matter what I do, you’ll hate me. You won’t even look at me. You’re thinking of someone else while I pour my soul into your hands. You’re thinking of him, aren’t you? Please… Please, stop. He doesn’t love you. He barely even knows you exist. But I see you for who you are… You’re so… sweet and gentle with every other creature in the world. There isn’t a soul you hate… except me. Why, Esmeralda? Why me? From the beginning… it was always me!”
It hurts to breathe, I’m sobbing so violently. I’m wracked with grief and horror. This is going to end, and it’s going to end badly. I don’t want it to end. “I can’t… say anything… can’t do anything else. This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen.” I dry my eyes again and try to pull myself together. “It’s my fault, I know. I tried to be someone else for too long. Now I don’t even know how to be myself. It’s the easiest advice in the world, isn’t it? ‘Be yourself,’ they always say. But what if you don’t know who you are? What if the person you thought you were turns out to be a fraud.”
I’m not even looking at Esmeralda any more. I’m standing in front of the balcony door and talking to the sea. “Everything I thought was important I threw away for you. I’m failing my classes. I’ve risked my home, my job, my friends… all for you.”
And then I hear that song again—the song that played while Gene was dying—ringing and ringing and ringing like bells. “Do you want to know the worst thing?” I whisper. And my own voice—but it isn’t mine—answers, “Cain, what have you done?”
The ship spins around me. I’m overwhelmed by motion. That damned song won’t stop ringing in my ears. “Why?” I grip my hair and claw at my skull like I could somehow physically tear the music from my head. I’m sick and reeling. I’m drowning in pain. Guilt. “I killed him. It was me. My fault… Because of her…” The song fades a little, and I repeat the phrase that quieted it. “Because of her. Because of her.” Quieter and quieter. Wishing stars and lovers’ nights. “Because of her.” Near silence. “Because of her.”
I can’t tell where I am, who I am, or even when I am. I feel a slow rocking, and I taste salt on my tongue. I lick my lips and swallow my tears. And then I feel Esmeralda pull her foot out from under me. I must have fallen to the floor and wept. But how long have I been here? And how long have I been crying on Esmeralda’s little foot, while she stood over me and watched?
I glance up to see her looking down on me. Cold. Heartless. “Nothing touches you, does it?” I push myself to my knees. “Not so long as it comes from me. No tears, no desperate pleas, no amount of devotion will change your mind about me. I get it. I mean what else did I expect, right? After what I’ve done to you. After all the trouble I caused you. I think if I were to drown in this ocean, you would watch with a smile on your face.”
I wait, but she doesn’t protest the truth.
“It doesn’t matter, though. I love you, no matter how cruel you are. I don’t want to see you hurt any more, but you’re so damned determined to suffer. I can see that now.” I bow my head and stare at her bare feet. “All right… I’ll tell you, anyway. I’ve arranged a wedding on board this ship.”
Her horrified gasp buries me in shame.
“Don’t say anything, yet,” I beg her. “Just hear me out. I’ve arranged a wedding. When the ship docks tonight, you and I will stay in this room, which is where we’ll claim we’ve been all night. Tomorrow, we depart for a one week cruise. We’ll marry at sea. I already booked it. Peter packed your bags and brought them aboard. You don’t have to do anything. Just say yes and sign the papers. After that, you can apply for permanent residency. And then you can… wait the necessary years and divorce me.” I choke at the thought of this. “Unless you’ve found your heart changed. You’ll still be young. If Phoebus loves you, you could still pursue him. I won’t… I won’t get in your way. Just give me those first few years. Please. I want you to see that I can be so much more than this.”
Her stillness is almost more than I can bear.
“Please, just say you’ll think about it. That’s all I want to hear. You don’t even have to agree to it. I know I’ve done unforgivable things, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Esmeralda. Forgive me. Please, before the drug is gone and I turn cold again. Say one gentle word to me, so I know you understand. Give me one taste of the kindness you lavish on everyone else.”
Her eyes well with what I want to believe is sympathy. I’m prepared to receive it with an open heart. If this is all I can ever have from her, I will accept it gladly. As long as she doesn’t hate me. She opens her mouth to speak, and I hold my breath.
“You,” she says, looking down on me, “are a murderer.”
Her insult coats and colors me. In my mind’s eye, I’m still holding my dying brother in my arms. But what Esmeralda doesn’t know about me will be her undoing. I am saturated with shame and misery; I can’t possibly take in more. But rage? I have so much room for rage. I stand over her and advance into her as she backs away toward the sea, her eyes wide with the realization that she may have woken something dangerous.
“So I am,” I say. The calm in my voice surprises even me. Esmeralda is horrified, and I can feel myself smiling at her horror. “You’ll just have to resign yourself to marrying a murderer. Because I won’t be rejected again. Never…” She backs into the balcony railing and I lean over her. “Never again.”
I grit my teeth and press her back into the rail until she whimpers from the pain of it. Her black hair caught in the wind over the black ocean is a sight to behold. Now I know that love and hate can commingle in the most explosive way. I worship her. I despise her. I want her entirely.
Her skin burns my lips when I kiss her. I can taste the salt of her tears; mine have gone away forever. Her body writhes in my arms. She twists and struggles and scratches me with her nails. But I can’t feel it. I can’t feel any of it, and I don’t care whether I hurt her any more. She has changed me. Matter collides with antimatter. Our destined, mutual annihilation is minutes away. I can feel it creeping up on me as I sink my teeth into her skin.
She screams and beats me with her fists. “Stop! Stop it! I’ll tear your hair out!” She reaches up, but I grab her arms and force them to her sides. My eyes meet hers, and she shivers at the sight of me. “You’re disgusting.” She spits the insult at me. Her words are the only weapons she has left. “And ugly. You’re like an old man. Every time you kiss me, I feel like throwing up.”
I should be injured by this, but I’m not. Honestly, I’ve come to expect this kind of thing from people. This is par for the fucking course. I had only hoped she would be different. I release her arms, but I don’t let her leave her place against the rail. I like her there, framed by the chasm of her grave.
She takes some courage from my silence and opens her mouth again. “I love Phoeb
us. I will always love Phoebus because he’s strong and confident and gorgeous. I could never love someone like you, and I will never, ever be with you. I would rather die! Is that what you need to hear? Is that what it’s going to take for you to finally get it?”
But I’m not the one who doesn’t get it. I grit my teeth and take her by the shoulders. Then I turn her to face the sea. “You would rather die?” I say into her ear. I barely recognize my own voice. “Are you sure about that? Because that might just be your only other option.”
Then, to emphasize the point, I rip the wings from her back. She yelps from the shock. Her feathers are so soft against my skin I feel a rush just from touching them. My head spins, and I lean against her back, forcing her to bow low over the rail. “This is what it feels like to fall,” I say, and I toss her wings overboard.
We both watch those beautiful wings tumble down until they look so small anyone would swear they were just a dead bird, falling, spinning, and finally hitting the water below. They’re gone before I even release the breath I’ve been holding.
Esmeralda’s body shudders under mine. She’s sobbing, finally, and I savor the sound of it. As cruel as she’s been to me, I will show her I can be crueler. “You’re not an angel now,” I say. “You can admit you’re scared. Throw away the ill-founded loyalty and affection you give to people who wouldn’t pay ten dollars to save you.”
She shakes her head as I snake my arm around her waist and kiss the back of her neck where her hair has parted. I see the clasp of the chain she always wears—the little charm that was her mother’s—and I hate how she clings to that hope even now. She would hold on to it at the gates of hell if she could. It’s that hope that keeps her from giving in to me. That damned hope is going to kill us both.
“Fine.” I rip the chain from her neck. “I don’t want your love any more. I just want to see you crawl. Beg me to save you, the way I begged you, and I’ll show you that the devil is far more merciful than God.”
She sucks in the cool sea air and lets out one long, miserable cry, like it’s the last one she’ll ever allow herself. Then she tenses, grips the rail with both hands, and bows her head. “Fuck you,” she says. “Coward.”
I drop my forehead onto her back. This is it. The very end. I tried to stall it, but I knew this moment would come eventually. And now, I have to do what it is in my nature to do. I can’t resist who I am any longer. This tragedy must play out.
“I may be a coward,” I say, pocketing her pendant as I back slowly toward the balcony door. “But as you’ll see, a coward can be as vicious as any cornered beast, when you give him no other choice.”
I open the door and step backward into the room. And I feel a pang of sadness, like I’m saying goodbye to someone who once loved me—someone with whom I shared my life and thoughts, my joys and sorrows, my every breath and heartbeat. “You know,” I say, in a softened voice I once again recognize as my own, “I would give anything to hear you change your mind.”
But I already know what her response will be.
She’s still shaking her head as I close the balcony door and fasten the safety lock. When she realizes what I’ve done, she runs up to the glass and presses her palms to it. I can see her lips form the word why, but I don’t try to answer her. She knows the inevitability of this as well as I do, though we both tried to fight it. She knows.
I touch my fingertips to the place where her palms meet the glass and look into her eyes for the last time. She’s crying and trembling. She’s more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. I can’t bear to look at her, but I can’t look away either. Everything ends tonight.
“I love you, Esmeralda,” I say, though I know she can’t hear me. “I love you so much.” But what good is love? What good has it ever done any of us? It’s a disease. And we are all dying of it.
Mechanically, I turn from Esmeralda and set off to find her executioners.
II
On a ship this size, I expect to have difficulty finding anyone, but fate leads me right to Clever Jack, as Sydney liked to call him. Jack, of all people. Jack, the cruelest of the bunch. I haven’t been given a moment to come down, to consider the consequences of what I’m doing or whether this is what I really want. The ease of finding Jack, to me, only proves that no matter what path I decide to take, the destination will be the same.
Jack marches along the upper decks, his eyes darting around. He’s looking for Esmeralda. The team is taking advantage of my chaos. They mean to find her and end the threat she poses to them. Maybe it seems unreasonable to you, but this is how they operate. This is how they’ve always operated. No one and nothing gets in their way. Their reputations, their positions in the upper-class world are a matter of life and death to them. They will do whatever it takes to stay in the good graces of their blessed parents and team captain.
I don’t even bother to hide my face this time. My life, if it can even be called a life at this point, will never go back to what it was. Whatever avalanche is rumbling toward me, I welcome it. Bury me, please.
“Jack,” I call out to him.
He stops and tries to look casual. “It’s crazy in there,” he says, as though I’ll actually believe he’s left the ballroom in order to escape the chaos.
“Here.” I hold out my keycard, and he takes it.
“What’s this for?” He turns it over in his hands, examining the room number on the back.
“She’s on the balcony,” I say. “She’s acting drunk and reckless. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she fell overboard and drowned.”
And that’s all it takes. Jack’s sadistic smile tells me he’s gotten my message loud and clear. “René!” He jogs away from me, pocketing his treasure. “Tristan! We’ve got her!”
It’s done. Jack is gone, and the fire recedes. I’m left in the silent wake of the entire ordeal.
I turn my face to the sky and breathe in deeply. Somehow, I’m happier. No one can hurt me more than I’ve already hurt myself. I win. My tears don’t even bother me as they roll down my neck into the collar of my costume. It’s as though the weight I’ve born my entire life, the duty I thought I owed the world, has rolled off my shoulders and into the sea. It’s an almost lonely feeling, losing that side of my persona, but a persona is all it ever was. And deep down, I think I’m glad to see it go.
So this is what it feels like to become your own shadow.
I walk to the side of the ship, where I know Esmeralda is right below me, waiting to die. The sea is dark and beautiful—the sky, equally so. How have I missed it all this time? I lean over the rail to watch the finale I orchestrated. Even if I wanted to stop this ride, I doubt my screams of protest would have any effect. It’s like I’m sitting in the future, watching the past. What is happening now has already happened.
Esmeralda looks like a bird when I first see her—a little white bird flying alongside the ship in the night. I stare down at her as she crawls over the side of the balcony, slips, catches herself, and hugs the railing. She climbs down until her hands are on the last rung and stays there. She’s trying to hide. I feel an awkward twinge of hope that she might actually outsmart them, that she might survive. But then I remember I was the author of her situation. I have no right to hope.
The wind whips Esmeralda’s tunic around her. I hear voices coming from her balcony. “Where is she?” they say. And to my simultaneous horror and relief, I hear Tristan shout, “There!” He laughs. “Hanging off the railing.”
You might think it’s my baser nature that wants Esmeralda to die, and my civilized self that hopes she doesn’t. It’s just the opposite. Something in me, some deep-down, instinctive part of me wants to see her survive, to protect her and hold her no matter how hard she hits. I want to fight for her, but my rational mind has convinced me that this is the only path, the only way we will see an end to this, Esmeralda and me.
“She’s making it so easy,” René’s voice says. “Maybe she wants to die. It would be a crime not to give it to her.”
Esmeralda tries desperately to outmaneuver her tormentors when they reach for her, but it’s impossible, in the end. There’s only one of her and three of them. I watch them climb over the side of the balcony to get to her. They’re stupid, but they’ll take her easily. I know they will. I lean over the railing to see more.
Jack has climbed over the balcony and positioned himself above Esmeralda. I think he’s standing on her shoulders, adding his weight to hers. He’s so sadistic, so unbelievably cruel. Her hand slips. They laugh. And I have to remind myself that this was her decision. This was what she chose over me.
I lean so far over the rail that my feet lift off the deck. I want to see the moment she lets go. Don’t misunderstand. I take no pleasure in this. I’m dying inside. I’m torn and bleeding and screaming for it all to stop. But I know I owe it to Esmeralda to keep my eyes on her, no matter how much it hurts. If I turn my face from her now, if I’m not strong enough to watch her die, how can I claim to have ever loved her?
Esmeralda doesn’t make a sound. I hear the jeers of her executioners, but nothing from the angel herself. Even now, she overwhelms me with her otherworldly beauty and strength—the little bird that refuses to let go or cry out. But then Jack pulls himself up and drops heavily onto her shoulders.
He is too much. And she falls.
I can barely see the splash her body makes when it hits the water. She’s just a napkin, someone’s fluttering refuse tossed into the waves. In a matter of seconds, she’s gone. I had expected to see her struggle a little longer, but the ship moved past her so quickly, it’s like she was never there. Like she never existed at all. Except…
After Esmeralda’s killers have cleared the balcony, I pull from my pocket the proof of her existence: those little golden shoes that came from her mother, the charm that reminded her to hope. I hold it over the railing and watch it dangle. It catches the light like a tiny flame on the end of a string. This little flame is all that’s left of her.