My Monster

by Einat Segal

  “I didn’t use you, Sophie,” he argues, his cool composure melting quite fast.

  “You didn’t use me as bait, then? You want me to believe that you’re innocent here and had no idea this was happening?”

  “Sophie, they would have found a way to take you two anyway. Except what would have happened was that one day, Shawn would’ve disappeared, and you would never know what happened to him, and then you’d wake up one morning to find that you’re immortal—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me anything? You had every opportunity.” I don’t raise my voice, but there’s something sharp about it.

  Oh God, I sound like Esmeralda.

  “You don’t have protections over your thoughts. I couldn’t risk the chance that they’d read your mind and find out.”

  I shake my head. “And the SET? How the fuck do you expect me to trust you after you hid something like that from me? I’m one of those “pockets of magic” you kept going on about. You told me about it but didn’t even tell me it was me. Because all along, you thought you’d get me in love with you enough to want to give up everything for you.”

  “Sophie, it’s not like that, I swear. It was never like that.”

  “Landon, you know what happens when people lie too much and too big?”

  He lowers his gaze to the ground.

  “Their promises become less than air and all the words they speak are meaningless,” I say.

  “Sophie . . .”

  I shake my head. “I would’ve forgiven you for lying to me, Landon. I would’ve given you the benefit of the doubt. I really would have, but what you did to Shawn . . . is unforgivable.”

  He closes his eyes. “I messed up, I know,” he says weakly. “I didn’t know him, and he was just conveniently next to you, and in fact, he’s . . . not a normal person.”

  “What do you mean?” My heart starts racing. I don’t want Shawn to be a monster. I want Shawn to be just Shawn.

  “He’s got a connection with all things magical. He can . . . contain it. Influence it, even. Sometimes, often, better than even immortals can. I built wards around him that were supposed to be unbreakable, but Dianne . . .”

  “Guessed your plan?”

  He nods. “She was sneaky. She recommended him to me as a suitable hiding place in an offhand remark. She secretly prepared him using magic of her own that I couldn’t detect.”

  “And is he all right now?” Shawn’s eyes were different when he opened them right after Landon healed him.

  He nods his head. “He’s back to normal.”

  I wonder if that’s another lie. I’ve become so good at detecting Landon’s lies, but this one has me stumped.

  Landon takes in a deep breath. “Sophie, is your decision final?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to be with me to be immortal, Sophie.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you people?” I cry, exasperated. “Why would anyone want to be immortal? All you guys do is fight and scheme and enslave each other. If you’ve got endless lives to live, it all becomes worthless. I’m just glad that at the end, I’ll die forever and won’t remember how much it hurts to lose my dad and everyone I love. What you have, Landon, it’s a curse. Is that how you love me? You want to take me into your hell?”

  He looks at me. His eyes are wet, and I know that there’s a part of me that’s attached and hurting. “No,” he says softly. “I almost hoped you’d say no. At the end, this existence does something to us, and it would’ve changed you too. It scared me how much like . . . like . . .” He swallows, his eyes widening with despair. “It scared me that your personality is so much like Revenna's.”

  The last word hangs in the air. I understand. She isn’t gone. Her name’s still around, which means she’ll be born again.

  His eyes dart toward the forest behind me, and his brow creases thoughtfully.

  “There’s that, too,” I say.

  “Still,” he continues, snapping out of his thoughts and looking down at me. “I wanted to give you more time. The SET can be activated until you turn twenty-three—”

  “Twenty-three?”

  “Well, it’s not an exact science. In some cases, the deadline is before. In others, it’s after. But there’s a window. It can’t be activated before you’re eighteen, and it will vanish eventually. But it doesn’t matter now,” he says with unmistakable wrath, his fists clenching and his shoulders shaking.

  And the ground beneath our feet vibrates, as if responding to his anger.

  I take a step back. “Whoa, calm your tits, okay?”

  “I’m not angry at you,” he hisses. “I’m angry at everything else.” He lowers his voice. “By making your SET anything but an absolute secret, he wanted to ensure that even if I give you a choice, someone else will make sure it’ll be activated. Shaldron’s out there, and he knows about you. They all know about you. Anyone, even someone who can’t see it, can activate it with enough force.”

  I feel cold all over. Dread spreads from my heart to my throat. “What?” My voice comes out as a quivering whisper.

  “I can place a ward on you, Sophie. I can make it impossible for them to find you,” he adds quickly. “But for it to work, it . . . demands a price.”

  I keep looking at him, trying to force myself to be calm. “What’s the price?”

  “I’ll have to take away or alter every memory you have of immortals. You have to never know you’ve got a SET or that we even exist or that you’re warded.”

  Bile rises in my throat. “Will I forget you?”

  “You’ll remember me as just a normal bloke you dated. I can’t cut an entire year. That’d just mess up your brain. It will all be altered. You’ll remember a different narrative, one without monsters. Only tonight will be completely gone.”

  I blink. Hold on. Hold right there. “I won’t remember what happened with Shawn?” Inside, I cling to the newfound emotion. I begin shaking. “There has to be another way . . .”

  “Sophie, there’s nothing else.”

  “But wait—”

  “You’ll figure it out again.”

  I shake my head, taking several steps back. “Landon, I’m bad at falling in love. I’m so bad that I had to watch him being ripped open by a classmate-turned-monster to find out how I feel.”

  “You’re not that bad,” he says calmly. “Even I knew you loved him all along.” Always the optimist—to the point of blindness.

  “This is bullshit.” I throw down my hands. “Will Shawn remember?”

  Landon slowly shakes his head from side to side. With his mouth set in a grim line, he lifts his hand, maybe to perform the spell. “It’ll protect you, Sophie,” he says, “and you won’t feel a thing.”

  “No,” I say. I turn around and begin running into the woods, back toward where I left Shawn. It’s completely dark now, and the full moon is up, making everything eerily grey. I find the shrub where Shawn threw up not a long way away. I turn a full circle around myself.

  There’s no one here.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie,” Landon says softly, materializing before me. He reaches toward me.

  I back away. “No, don't you dare—”

  * * *

  “Oh my God. I’m so hung over. I’m never drinking grappa again.”

  “We need to talk, Sophie.”

  “Okay? Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “So, yesterday got me thinking . . .”

  “Oh, good. Let’s talk about yesterday. Why’d you leave prom all of a sudden, Landon?”

  “I . . . I felt . . . How should I put this . . .?”

  “What’s the struggle?”

  “I think we should see other people.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s break up.”

  “Oh boy. Are you fucking serious?”

  Pause.

  “Sophie . . .”

  “What happened to all that ‘you love me’ crap?”

  Pause.

  “I’m not feel
ing it anymore.”

  Long pause.

  “Asshole. You fucking asshole.”

  “I deserve that.”

  “Dipshit. Dick. Cunt. Bitch.”

  “You forgot douchebag.”

  “No. Fucking. Way. That one belongs to Shawn.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you’re selling the house,” Esmeralda says for the millionth time as she helps stack books into the cardboard box.

  I pause with the tape gun in hand and give Esmeralda an incredulous look before I resume sealing boxes, the tape screeching as I stretch it over the cardboard. Mom and I decided that we’re going to sell the house. The memories are too painful, and there’s no reason to continue living here when we both need to be at Columbia every day. It will be easier on both of us and will be the start of a new life.

  Strangely enough, after everything that happened, I feel like I’ve been born again. It was like I was spiraling out of control, falling from one thing to the other until I splattered on the concrete bottom with a broken heart. Esmeralda was there for me. We were both heartbroken. She and Ophelia broke up in the car on the way to prom.

  We were great company for each other. In a good and bad way.

  But I was crushed somehow. Graduation meant nothing to me. And then the summer started, and me and Mom made some plans.

  “Did you find a place yet?” Esmeralda asks.

  “Yup,” I say, my jaw clenching with irritation.

  “Oh no.” Esmeralda stops to sneeze five times from dust coming from the books. “What’s the problem?”

  My grip tightens on the tape gun. “Mom wants us to live with Aunt Jenny.”

  “But Aunt Jenny hates you.”

  “I know. But Mom won’t believe me. You know how she gets with her sister.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I guess I’m going to be living with Aunt Jenny, because renting a whole place in the city on my own is too expensive,” I say in a haughty voice. I shrug. “Whatever. I’ll either learn to live with it or I’ll go to jail for murder and my mom will hate me for killing her sister.”

  Esmeralda looks at me for a long moment. “Try to go with the first option. Sounds slightly better.”

  The doorbell rings. I throw the tape gun on the sofa and go get the door.

  “Fee, why don’t you ever pick up your phone?” Shawn asks, letting himself in. I don’t even know why he bothered ringing the door because he sometimes just walks into the house as if he lives here.

  I look over the mess of cardboard and general chaos that’s our house. “I have no idea where it is.”

  I lost my phone after becoming too drunk during prom, so my mom got me a smartphone. I usually reply to texts by calling her, I systematically forget to charge it, and even though it’s ginormous, I never know where it is.

  Shawn exhales through his nose and leans toward me, sliding his arm around my waist and pulling my phone out of my back pocket. He does give a slight squeeze of my butt while he’s at it. It’s a mutual thing we have. We tease each other but haven’t actually slept together since we were sorta dating after the first time I broke up with Landon.

  I look at the screen. “You called me three times.”

  “Yes, because you told me to warn you before coming here in case you have a guy over.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “You were?” He doesn’t give to too much thought. “Okay. Anyway, I have a solution for your Aunt Jenny problem.”

  “Hi, Shawn,” Esmeralda says, glaring at him. “Hi, Esmeralda. Oh, you’re in the room too.”

  “Sorry, sorry, this is important,” he says, gesticulating with his hands like an excited kid.

  “Okay.” I cross my arms. “What’s the best way to get rid of a body? Acid?”

  “Look at the photos I sent you.”

  I twiddle with my phone. I use it pretty much at the same speed that my eighty-five-year-old grandmother does.

  “I found a great place in Washington Heights. Three bedrooms, good facilities, and price is under the market and includes utilities. We have to decide fast and find a third roommate.”

  The best thing about going to Columbia? Shawn’ll be there too.

  Did I say best? I meant worst.

  I flick through the pictures on my screen. “This is actually pretty good,” I say.

  “Yeah, look at your room. Nice curtains, right?” Shawn points at the screen and then swipes to the next photo. “And that one’s mine. We’ll leave the small bedroom to the third roommate.”

  “Wait, Shawn, hold up,” I say. “You seriously want us to live in the same apartment together?”

  “I know it’s a terrible idea,” Shawn says, “but living with roommates is always terrible, and you’re clean and organized, you know how to cook, you’re not loud, and you smell nice.”

  “I am loud,” I say.

  “Only when you’re angry,” Esmeralda and Shawn say together.

  “Which is most of the time.”

  “Pre-med students are practically ghosts anyway, Fee. I think it’ll be a perfect arrangement.”

  “And how long before we start fucking our brains out, break up, and make everything awkward until one of us has to move out?” I ask.

  “I give it two months,” Esmeralda says.

  “Two months?” Shawn says. “You’re generous. Let’s just not sleep with each other if we can help it.”

  Easier said than done. I exchange a glance with Esmeralda. I sort of wanted to sleep with Shawn a couple times. Okay, more than a couple times. We made out more times than I can count.

  But there’s something strange about Shawn, something I can’t name. Sometimes I catch him just sitting and thinking—which is something I never knew he knew how to do. But, it’s like the darkness around him is darker. There’s sadness in his voice and pain in his eyes. There’s some strange shit going through his head. I can’t understand it, and I find myself wanting to.

  I find myself wanting him a lot, wanting him very strongly.

  When the hell did he become so attractive?

  Esmeralda looks at Shawn thoughtfully. She already told me that eventually I’ll end up sleeping with him for the right reasons, but until that happens, I should try growing up and building better sex habits. I don’t understand what she means exactly, except maybe sex for me is almost like drugs.

  “But I say go for it,” she says, drawing some conclusion of her own. “Doesn’t work out—do the Aunt Jenny thing.”

  “Exactly. We’ll have a blast, Fee.”

  “No, Shawn. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s a terrible idea.”

  “But look at the pretty pictures!”

  “It’s nice, but we’ll drive each other insane. And you’ll get jealous whenever I have a guy over.”

  “But you won’t have to deal with your aunt.” He totally didn’t deny the jealous thing.

  “Shawn, this is ridiculous. You need to stop.”

  “I promise to brush your hair whenever you ask me to,” he says. “I’ll be your hair-bitch.”

  I blink. “You just called yourself a hair-bitch.”

  Esmeralda starts cracking up and has to brace herself against the empty bookcase.

  Shawn holds my gaze, unwavering. “I can use a hairbrush or . . . my fingers.”

  I shrug one shoulder, tilting my head, pretending to consider, and keeping myself as nonchalant as I can. “Okay,” I say slowly. God help me, I’m an idiot. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “And she folds like an umbrella,” Esmeralda says, high-fiving Shawn.

  “Whatever,” I say.

  Share Your Thoughts About My Monster

  Sophie inspired me to dare, and that, along with the love of thousands of Wattpad readers, is what brought this book into your hands.

  I hope you laughed at least once while reading My Monster, and yes, I hope your heart broke a little too. If this book made you feel or think anything, please consider taking a short
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  About the Author

  Einat Segal is an Israeli fantasy author.

  Due to congenital visual impairment, she did not learn to read before the age of 12. Until then, the many stories that were read to her nourished a rich inner world. She has a degree in East Asia Studies with a focus on Japanese language, culture and history.

  Einat currently lives in Pavia, Italy along with her husband, daughter and two dogs.

  Please visit her website einaty.com and sign up for the mailing list to be kept up to date on future publications.