I pick up that he doesn’t want to relive all the sad details of his past. I can relate. I’ve always hated being looked at with pity.
"Where did you grow up on j'Tilak?" It's a safe question—his home planet is paradise, and his face always softens when he talks about it.
“I grew up on a few space stations. The first time I saw my home planet was when I enlisted.”
Way to go, Bri.
Stations are no place for a kid. Even I know that. The fueling station we stopped at on our way to j’Tilak was an absolute nightmare. I imagine a younger Tai growing up there. The thought makes me sad.
I audibly clear my throat to try and force down the uncomfortable feelings rising up. This small insight is a reminder that I know so little about him. I always associated him with Aro, so I assumed they had a similar background. An ideal life on a perfect planet.
We ride for a while. Even though we have been joking around, I still need to talk about why he wasn’t honest with me. The silence hanging over us feels heavy and uncomfortable. My mind keeps circling back to why he lied to me about being here before. Initially, Iwas hurt and mad. Hurt because he should have trusted me enough to tell me, and mad because he is such a stubborn ass sometimes. Maybe once I know why, then I can stop obsessing about it.
“So…” I start slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been here before?” I hold my breath, waiting. I need an answer from him. For some reason, it feels important.
“I didn’t tell you, because I was an idiot.”
“Was?” I interrupt, half joking.
“Well, even more back then. I got mixed up with the wrong crowd and ended up here, hiding out. I got caught and you pretty much know the rest.” He looks out toward the horizon, avoiding me.
“Tai, you could have told me. I would have understood. Do you think I’m so awful that I would judge you for something that happened years ago?” I hope he says no. He’s got to know me better than that. The weight on my shoulders could be lifted if I knew it wasn’t me. I’m self-aware enough to know Tai thinks I’m a hard-ass, but I’d never want him to think I was unforgiving.
“It’s not you. It's me. I thought I dealt with it over the years, but it turns out I buried it instead. Being back here brought it all back up.” He finally looks over at me with sad eyes.
“I get that. But no more secrets. We’re in this together now.” I don’t like being lied to, and I especially hate being kept in the dark. Tai doesn’t owe me his entire life story, but this was information that could have been helpful.
Learning it from Boss made it so much worse. Being here brought up some painful memories for Tai, but his deception brought up some painful memories for me as well.
I’ll never forget the day my dad left. There was no explanation. He was just gone. Mom fell apart and cried for days. She hardly got out of bed. My brothers filled in the gap, making sure I was fed and got to school. It took years for her to recover, or maybe she never did. From the day he left, I promised myself I would never hurt someone the way he hurt us.
This situation with Tai brings up a familiar feeling, a tightness inmy throat. The ache of holding back tears. These are two very different situations, but the similarity of a truth unsaid ties them together in my mind. You think you know somebody, and then one day they show you who they really are. Sure, Tai isn’t my dad, and part of me understands why he did it. The scariest part is how much it hurt that he kept the truth from me. It’s a warning I have let him get too close. Hopefully he’ll go back to the “one-word answer Tai.” I don’t feel as exposed with that guy.
THIRTY-THREE
Tai
Over the last six years, I have never told anyone about my upbringing. As far as Aro and my unit are concerned, I came into existence the day we enlisted. I showed up with my bionic arm, ready for a new start. That Tai, the one who survived on scraps and stealing from travelers, was gone.
My eyes stay fixed on the horizon. A narrow strip appears, separating the hot air from the burning sand. Slowly, bit by bit, a mountain range appears. There is one lingering thing I need to tell Bri, and it’s going to bother me until she knows the full truth. Maybe if she knows the context of what led me to Sabaak, then she’ll understand.
“Spending my life jumping from station to station was not a good life for a kid,” I tell her.
She doesn’t say anything, and with half her face covered by her hood, it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking.
“Six years ago, I was on the run. I finally got off the station, which is a whole other story. I ended up here in some village. When I was hungry and thirsty, they brought me in and saved my life. I was thereonly a few days when the Authority found me. I set up an explosive on the outskirts of the village to cause a distraction, so I could get away. I didn’t know what I was doing, and the explosion was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was chaos. Sabaaki and the Authority were all running around trying to put out the fire. I got hit with some of the explosion. It’s how I lost my arm.”
I pause and take a deep breath. My heart is racing out of my chest while I tell Bri the whole story.
“A good person, a good Tilak, would have helped the Sabaaki. Would have made sure everyone was okay. I didn’t. I ran like a selfish coward. I tried to save myself instead of helping others. In the end it didn’t matter because I got caught, and I’ll never forgive myself for what I did here.”
The heavy quiet between us stretches on. Her expression is unreadable, but it’s not the anger I was prepared for. The neutrality on her face is just as terrifying. I wait and wonder if I made a mistake. I thought telling her was the right thing to do. The thought that scares me the most is that I doubt she will ever look at me again like she did yesterday.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says, flooring me with one sentence. “I know it’s not who you are anymore. People make mistakes when they are desperate. It was a shitty thing to do, but I know you’d never do that again.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” I say, doubtfully.
“I do. I know you were looking for people on the station when we were evacuated. You didn’t even have to tell me. I just knew it. You put yourself in danger for strangers. That’s who you are now.”
