by Tahereh Mafi
Page 32
And I’ve said a word of this to exactly no one.
I really thought that perhaps I’d imagined it, just until Warner kissed me and told me he loved me and then, that’s when I knew I could no longer pretend this wasn’t happening. But it’s only been about 4 weeks since that day, and I didn’t know how to bring it up. I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to bring it up. I really, quite desperately didn’t want to bring it up.
And now, the thought of telling anyone, of making it known to Adam, of all people, that the one person he hates most in this world—second only to his own father—is the one other person who can touch me? That Warner has already touched me, that his hands have known the shape of my body and his lips have known the taste of my mouth—never mind that it wasn’t something I actually wanted—I just can’t do it.
Not now. Not after everything.
So this situation is entirely my own fault. And I have to deal with it.
I steel myself and step forward.
There are 2 men I’ve never met before standing guard outside Warner’s door. This doesn’t mean much, but it gives me a modicum of calm. I nod hello in the guards’ direction and they greet me with such enthusiasm I actually wonder whether they’ve confused me with someone else.
“Thanks so much for coming,” one of them says to me, his long, shaggy blond hair slipping into his eyes. “He’s been completely insane since he woke up—throwing things around and trying to destroy the walls—he’s been threatening to kill all of us. He says you’re the only one he wants to talk to, and he’s only just calmed down because we told him you were on your way. ”
“We had to take out all the furniture,” the other guard adds, his brown eyes wide, incredulous. “He was breaking everything. He wouldn’t even eat the food we gave him. ”
The antonym of excellent.
The antonym of excellent.
The antonym of excellent.
I manage a feeble smile and tell them I’ll see what I can do to sedate him. They nod, eager to believe I’m capable of something I know I’m not and they unlock the door. “Just knock to let us know when you’re ready to leave,” they tell me. “Call for us and we’ll open the door. ”
I’m nodding yes and sure and of course and trying to ignore the fact that I’m more nervous right now than I was meeting his father. To be alone in a room with Warner—to be alone with him and to not know what he might do or what he’s capable of and I’m so confused, because I don’t even know who he is anymore.
He’s 100 different people.
He’s the person who forced me to torture a toddler against my will. He’s the child so terrorized, so psychologically tormented that he’d try to kill his own father in his sleep. He’s the boy who shot a defecting soldier in the forehead; the boy who was trained to be a cold, heartless murderer by a man he thought he could trust. I see Warner as a child desperately seeking his dad’s approval. I see him as the leader of an entire sector, eager to conquer me, to use me. I see him feeding a stray dog. I see him torturing Adam almost to death. And then I hear him telling me he loves me, feel him kissing me with such unexpected passion and desperation that I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know what I’m walking into.
I don’t know who he’ll be this time. Which side of himself he’ll show me today.
But then I think this must be different. Because he’s in my territory now, and I can always call for help if something goes wrong.
He’s not going to hurt me.
I hope.
FORTY-FIVE
I step inside.
The door slams shut behind me but the Warner I find inside this room is not one I recognize at all. He’s sitting on the floor, back against the wall, legs outstretched in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. He’s wearing nothing but socks, a simple white T-shirt, and a pair of black slacks. His coat, his shoes, and his fancy shirt are all discarded on the ground. His body is toned and muscular and hardly contained by his undershirt; his hair is a blond mess, disheveled for what’s probably the first time in his life.
But he’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even look up as I take a step closer. He doesn’t flinch.
I’ve forgotten how to breathe again.
Then
“Do you have any idea,” he says, so quietly, “how many times I’ve read this?” He lifts his hand but not his head and holds up a small, faded rectangle between 2 fingers.
And I’m wondering how it’s possible to be punched in the gut by so many fists at the same time.
My notebook.
He’s holding my notebook.
Of course he is.
I can’t believe I’d forgotten. He was the last person to touch my notebook; the last person to see it. He took it from me when he found that I’d hidden it in the pocket of my dress back on base. This was just before I escaped, just before Adam and I jumped out the window and ran away. Just before Warner realized he could touch me.
And now, to know that he’s read my most painful thoughts, my most anguished confessions—the things I wrote while in complete and utter isolation, certain that I would die in that very cell, so certain no one would ever read the things I wrote down—to know that he’s read these desperate whispers of my private mind.
I feel absolutely, unbearably naked.
Petrified.
So vulnerable.
He flips the notebook open at random. Scans the page until he stops. He finally looks up, his eyes sharper, brighter, a more beautiful shade of green than they’ve ever been and my heart is beating so fast I can’t even feel it anymore.
And he begins to read.
“No—,” I gasp, but it’s too late.
“I sit here every day,” he says. “175 days I’ve sat here so far. Some days I stand up and stretch and feel these stiff bones, these creaky joints, this trampled spirit cramped inside my being. I roll my shoulders, I blink my eyes, I count the seconds creeping up the walls, the minutes shivering under my skin, the breaths I have to remember to take. Sometimes I allow my mouth to drop open, just a little bit; I touch my tongue to the backs of my teeth and the seam of my lips and I walk around this small space, I trail my fingers along the cracks in the concrete and wonder, I wonder what it would be like to speak out loud and be heard. I hold my breath, listen closely for anything, any sound of life and wonder at the beauty, the impossibility of possibly hearing another person breathing beside me. ”
He presses the back of his fist to his mouth for just a moment before continuing.
“I stop. I stand still. I close my eyes and try to remember a world beyond these walls. I wonder what it would be like to know that I’m not dreaming, that this isolated existence is not caged within my own mind.
“And I do,” he says, reciting the words from memory now, his head resting back against the wall, eyes pressed shut as he whispers, “I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not I’m actually alive. So I sit here. I sit here every single day. ”
I’m rooted to the ground, frozen in my own skin, unable to move forward or backward for fear of waking up and realizing that this is actually happening. I feel like I might die of embarrassment, of this invasion of privacy, and I want to run and run and run and run and run
“Run, I said to myself. ” Warner has picked up my notebook again.
“Please. ” I’m begging him. “Please s-stop—”
He looks up, looks at me like he can really see me, see into me, like he wants me to see into him and then he drops his eyes, he clears his throat, he starts over, he reads from my journal.
“Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you’re a blur that blends into the background.
“Run, Juliette, run faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your mu
scles atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it beat too fast for too long and run.
“Run run run until you can’t hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.
“Run until you drop dead.
“Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.
“Run, I said. ”
I have to clench my fists until I feel pain, anything to push these memories away. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to think about these things anymore. I don’t want to think about what else I wrote on those pages, what else Warner knows about me now, what he must think of me. I can only imagine how pathetic and lonely and desperate I must appear to him. I don’t know why I care.
“Do you know,” he says, closing the cover of the journal only to lay his hand on top of it. Protecting it. Staring at it. “I couldn’t sleep for days after I read that entry. I kept wanting to know which people were chasing you down the street, who it was you were running from. I wanted to find them,” he says, so softly, “and I wanted to rip their limbs off, one by one. I wanted to murder them in ways that would horrify you to hear. ”
I’m shaking now, whispering, “Please, please give that back to me. ”
He touches the tips of his fingers to his lips. Tilts his head back, just a little. Smiles a strange, unhappy smile. Says, “You must know how sorry I am. That I”—he swallows—“that I kissed you like that. I confess I had no idea you would shoot me for it. ”
And I realize something. “Your arm,” I breathe, astonished. He wears no sling. He moves with no difficulty. There’s no bruising or swelling or scars I can see.
His smile is brittle. “Yes,” he says. “It was healed when I woke up to find myself in this room. ”
Sonya and Sara. They helped him. I wonder why anyone here would do him such a kindness. I force myself to take a step back. “Please,” I tell him. “My notebook, I—”
“I promise you,” he says, “I never would’ve kissed you if I didn’t think you wanted me to. ”
And I’m so shocked that for a moment I forget all about my notebook. I meet his heavy gaze. Manage to steady my voice. “I told you I hated you. ”
“Yes,” he says. He nods. “Well. You’d be surprised how many people say that to me. ”
“I don’t think I would. ”
His lips twitch. “You tried to kill me. ”
“That amuses you. ”
“Oh yes,” he says, his grin growing. “I find it fascinating. ” A pause. “Would you like to know why?”
I stare at him.
“Because all you ever said to me,” he explains, “was that you didn’t want to hurt anyone. You didn’t want to murder people. ”
“I don’t. ”
“Except for me?”
I’m all out of letters. Fresh out of words. Someone has robbed me of my entire vocabulary.