“What did you do?” I whisper.
“I slowed things down.”
A sound I don’t even recognize comes out of my body. It’s small and ugly. Rage building inside of me.
“I had to. You were burning too bright. You didn’t know how people looked at you. You didn’t know what they wanted. They would have taken everything from you and called it opportunity.”
“You changed my oven temperature.”
Vanessa says nothing.
“You swapped my ingredients.”
“I corrected an imbalance.”
The words are so calm that for a moment, I do not understand them. Then I do.
Corrected an imbalance?
My hand flies to my mouth, but it cannot hold back the sound this time. It comes out broken and raw, ripped from somewhere younger than I am now.
Twenty-three-year-old me hears it. The younger me finally knows she was not crazy. And somehow, the truth hurts worse.
Vanessa is crying now. I can hear it in her breath. “I stayed. After all of it, I stayed. No one else did. I was the one who picked you up off the floor.”
“You put me there.”
“No. No, that’s not fair.”
“You put me there.”
“Kara, please.”
“You put me there, then held me while I cried.”
My voice does not sound like mine anymore. It sounds bold and somewhat frightening.
Cole is watching me like he would tear the world apart if I asked, but I do not ask. I need to stand through this. I need to hear it.
Vanessa’s crying turns sharper. “You don’t understand what it was like to stand next to you. You have never understood. Everything comes to you. Cameras love you. People love you. They taste one thing you make and act like you invented hunger.”
Her jealousy is naked now. It’s old and stinks … completely rotten. Somehow, Vanessa has convinced herself she can wrap it up with a bow and call it love. And I fell for it. Evidently, I needed a friend so badly that I bought the package set to detonate when I opened it.
“I loved you,” she says. “I love you so much it makes me sick sometimes.”
Sloane mouths, Location.
I nod once, though my body feels far away.
“Where are you?” I ask.
Vanessa laughs. “Now you ask.”
“Where are you?”
“Would you come if I told you?”
“No,” Cole says.
