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Not one person listened to me. The one person I thought would listen to me, my dad, strode up the stairs with the cop, Mr. Knight.
“Hey, you okay?”
Sky shakes me. I wonder where she came from. I realize I’m still sitting on the floor, right under my barred window, still thinking about last night, reliving the horror over and over. From the numbness and stiffness of my body, I spent hours down here.
“Wh-what?”
“God, you’re shaking.” Sky rubs my back and moves the tangled hair off my face.
I blink at her; my vision is a little foggy. “What’re you doing here?”
She lifts me up and walks me to my bed. “I wanted to check on you, and good thing I came, huh? You look like a disaster.” Grimacing, she sits beside me. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean, you do look like one and I hate that. Anyway, look, we don’t have much time, okay? Your mom’s not home. Thank God. And your dad let me come up but only for a few minutes.”
She’s talking too fast for me. I can’t understand her. I’m still stuck in the moment where my dad went back to Abel’s apartment with a cop.
“They took Abel, didn’t they? They took him.” Tears stream down my cheeks, my body frail and useless. I try to get up from the bed but my legs are trembling so badly. “I need to… I need to go tell them to let him go. Nothing happened between us. He didn’t do anything. He loves the camera, you know, and I told him to take my photos. It was me. I wanted it. I —”
Sky squeezes my shoulder. “I know. That’s why you have to listen to me. They released him, okay? He spent the night in prison but they released him.”
“They did?”
“Yeah. They let him go on one condition. They want him to leave town. Tonight.”
“What? He-he can’t…”
Sky looks over my shoulder. “That’s why I’m here. I talked to him, okay? He’s the one who sent me here. He didn’t think it was safe to call you with everything.” She stares me in the eyes. “He’s leaving, Evie. They’re forcing him to go and he wanted you to know that he’s okay and that he loves you and…” She sighs. “He told me to tell you that he won’t make you choose. Between him and your parents. He won’t put you in that position. He…”
I can’t hear anything. Her words are gibberish to me right now.
He won’t make me choose? What’s that supposed to mean? Is that a joke?
There is no choice. No choice at all. It’s him. It’ll always be him.
“I choose him. I’ll always choose him.” I repeat the thoughts in my head.
“What?”
“Yeah. He’s an idiot. There’s no choice. No contest.”
“Okay. And that means what?”
“It means...” I take a deep breath. “I’ll go with him.”
I can’t believe I’m thinking about this, thinking about running away. Like David and Delilah. But I am.
Because he’s my Abel. I love him more than anything else in the world. Just the thought of being with him fills me with electric energy. For the first time after last night, I can feel my heartbeats. I can feel my limbs. The numbness is vanishing.
“Oh my God, really?” Sky’s eyes are wide and excited.
That alone should tell me that it’s a crazy idea but fuck it. Fuck everything. I go where he goes. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay where no one will listen to me. I can feel their judgmental eyes jabbing into my flesh. I can hear their whispers, calling me names. My mom saying I’m a slut when nothing even happened between us, when I’m still a virgin. My dad breaking Abel’s camera when it was something we did out of love. He cheapened it, made it look like a crime.
“Yeah.” I swallow, saliva scraping my throat. “I-I can’t live without him.”
Maybe this is what happened with Delilah, too. Maybe she faced the same challenge, the same dilemma. She chose love and I’m going to choose love, too.
“It’s crazy,” I whisper. “But I need to do it.”
Goosebumps erupt over my skin. The fine hair on my body stands taut, defying gravity. Defying the laws, the rules. Every atom in my body buzzes, rippling with energy. I feel warm in my bones.
“What’s love without a little bit of crazy?”
Sky smiles, which quickly morphs into a big, giant grin, and even though I’m weak and terrified and so fucking angry, I can’t help but grin back. I probably giggle too. So inappropriate at a time like this. But it’s exactly right.
For once in my goddamn life, I’m going to be brave. I’m going to be reckless. I’m fucking going to be in love.
Soon our few minutes are up and I walk her to the front door, under my dad’s scrutinizing eyes and hug her, tightly.
