“I remember everything!” I’m sobbing and screaming at the same time now, snot and blood and spit running down my chin onto my chest. “I saw you kill her!”
“That’s not?—”
“Oh, no, no, no, no.” I retreat from the door, glaring at her eyes, knowing exactly what she’s trying to do. “Don’t you fucking dare. Your voodoo, goddamn motherfuckingmind games won’t work on me, Valeria. Not anymore. You murdered Mary,” I bite out, spit exploding from my mouth.
“You were so hurt when she confessed to knowing what you’ve been through.” Valeria's voice through the slot. Soft. Precise. A scalpel finding the exact place that's already open.
It’s like a knife jabbed into my chest, the memory flashing so bright it knocks me off my feet, my knees hitting the concrete.
Mary's voice. Mary's face. The way she looked at me like she'd been carrying it for so many years and couldn't carry it one more second.
"I was scared, Reth. And afraid, and I didn’t want to go back to that home. I didn’t want to go back to being an orphan.”
I can hear her. I can actually hear her, her voice in this room, in this cell, and I press my fists against my eyes like I can push the memory back out, and I can't. It's already everywhere.
“I was a little girl, and I didn't know what to do, and she promised me nothing bad will happen. She swore to me."
“You knew.” My voice breaks on sobs. “You knew what they did to me,” I cry. "All I wanted to do was protect you."
My fist hits the floor. The stone takes it without flinching.
"But you knew. You fucking?—"
Again.
"—you fucking knew."
The skin splits open further. I don't feel it.
“You have to forgive me. I just…we were alone, Reth. Had nothing, no one?—”
“I had no one!” I scream. “I had fucking no one!”
“I chose a life. A life for both of us.”
“Everything I did was for you, Mary.” I’m not crying, I’m dying, tears like knives cutting out of me, my ribs breaking over and over again, and it’s too much. It’s too heavy, too thick, too loud, too dense, and I fall forward, forehead meeting the floor with a sick, dull thunk that I barely notice.
“I loved you, little sister.” Spit dribbles from my mouth. “I protected you…and you…you fucking knew!” A scream tears from my lungs—this rotten, vicious thing that’s not human—my nails scratching the stone, desperate for purchase, breaking, bleeding. But nothing, no ache, to burn, no break comes close to the pain squeezing marrow from my bones.
I’m on my hands and knees on the floor of this room, and I’m me and my fourteen-year-old self simultaneously and there is no difference between those two people right now. They are the same person. They have always been the same person. The boy who waited for someone to come and the man who stopped waiting and learned to be the kind of thing that doesn't need anyone to come, because needing is weakness and weakness is?—
She's gone.
She confessed, and she's gone, and I didn't—I didn't get to?—
I didn't tell her I forgave her. I don't know if I forgave her. I don't know if I would have forgiven her if Valeria hadn't?—
“The guilt is eating you alive, isn’t it?”
My gaze whips to Valeria’s eyes, hatred melting my skin, my flesh, my soul.
“Poor boy. You always did love her too much.”
“Fuck you!” I’m on my feet and ram my shoulder intothe steel door before falling back to my knees and onto my side. My hands are destroyed—knuckles split to the bone, blood everywhere. The room tilts violently.
Mary. My little sister. The only pure thing I ever had in this fucking life. The girl I held in a hospital room when I was little and promised to protect forever. Dead because of me. Because I wasn’t strong enough. Because I kept crawling back to this hell for her sake. Because Valeria knew exactly which lever to pull.
“I wonder what your little therapist would say if she knew.”
