Chapter 9
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I fear I am my own undoing.
Morana
Kyran is going to be the end of me. He’s determined to kill me very, very slowly.
And, to makeeverythingworse? He now knows I want a life-size plushie of his stupid beautiful face!
Face down in my bed, I scream into the pillows until I am all out of air and my head is light, then I refill and go at it again.
I love you.
No, you don’t. Youdon’t. You can’t. I’m just…funny. I’m just an amusement right now. Someone who play fights with you. If I let all mylikeout? If I stop providing this dopamine rush that comes in our back-and-forths? If I start treating you right, like a boyfriend, that’s it.
I’ll become so dull you won’t want anything to do with me.
Everything I can offer will dry up.
Memories of Talira slip between the cracks of my mind’s fortress, and I find myself fighting down tears. I helped her, constantly. However I could. With whatever I could. Her chores at home. Her schoolwork. Everything. I gave, and gave, andgave, not once realizing until it was too late that the only thing she offered in return wasbeing there. Notfor me, even. Just. Plain.Existing.
When she found her fulfillment in that boyfriend of hers, I became so suddenly irrelevant. Her grades sank, but he didn’t like her talking to me so much, and shereallyneeded to learn to do things on her own, didn’t she?
Ultimately, we were too close for his liking; she told me so during one of her rants to me concerning her discontent in the relationship. After they finally broke up and she came crawling back, it wasmyfault. Why couldn’t Iseehow toxic he was? Why didn’t I understand thatshewas the victim?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because Itold her repeatedlythat he was a red flag? Every single time she cropped up with a horror she just “needed a friend to help her process,” I said,Yikes. Please break up with him.
But she didn’t listen.
Not once.
Not until—apparently—it was all my fault I didn’t drag her away against her will before she became avictim.
People see what they can get out of you. That’s just life. The only place where thathasn’tbeen the standard is with my mom, my dad, and my sister.
Just onceI wish I could find myself on Talira’s end of a relationship, with someone like me who looked at her and gave without question or thought and didn’t even realize she was completely useless…because just talking to her was enough to balance the unseen scale.
While I’m sniffling myself toward an early rest, my doorbell rings.
Immediate, uncontrollabledreadhits a wall of thundering swears.
Pushing myself upright, I peer out my bedroom door.
The bell rings again.
I look down, at my pajamas, which are black, tight, and skimpy.
The bell rings. Again. And again. Andif it doesn’t stop ringing I will actually kill someone.
In a burst of insanity, I launch off my bed, wrench open my dresser, grab the first baggy t-shirt I get my hands to, throw it on, and stomp to the door. “What?” I shriek.
Kyran stands there, his finger on the bell. His mouth opens with a practiced shape to it that suggests he is once again intending to bestow a list of unwanted Kyran facts upon me, but something holds his tongue.
His eyes stick on my chest.
I become very aware of the fact I’m not wearing a bra.
