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“Why are you a prisoner?” I ask after a few minutes, broaching a forbidden topic, hesitant and afraid that he’ll snap at me. But he doesn’t.
His shoulders slump and he closes his eyes and he lifts his face to the moon.
“It’s not anything you should worry about,” he says with tired words. “They don’t want you to know.”
“But why?”
“Because.”
“Because isn’t an answer.”
“It is right now,” Dare tells me. “Someday, you’ll probably know. But for now? All that matters is this. We’re breathing, and there are stars, and we had chocolate cake for dinner.”
He’s right. It was a good dinner.
And it’s a good night.
I’m alone with Dare in the garden.
We’re breaking rules,
And that feels good.
* * *
Water creeps up around me, over me, drowning me. I twist and turn, fighting to break the liquid bonds encircling my hands and feet. I can’t move, I can’t breathe, and there are black eyes staring at me from the surface.
I see them, peer into them, fear them, as they blur then disappear.
Down,
Down,
Down I go.
Away from him.
My savior.
My anti-Christ.
“It’s your fault,” I whisper, and the words are swallowed by the water, stuck in my throat. Am I talking to him or to me? It doesn’t matter. My lungs fill and fill and fill, and there isn’t any air. There is only a void where my heart should be.
“This isn’t real, Calla.” I hear Finn’s voice, but I know he’s not here. No one is, I’m submerged and the water is murky and dark. My fingers clutch at something, at nothing, at everything.
Focus.
I narrow my eyes and I breathe, a deep breath like they taught me. I fill my body with air like I’m filling a chalice, starting at my belly, then my diaphragm, then my throat, then my mouth. I exhale slowly, like I’m blowing through a straw, I push it at out, expelling it until there’s nothing left, just me and my withered empty lungs.
I do it again.
And again.
And when I’m done, I can see again. I’m in the hospital, and I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m Calla Price, and Finn is gone, Dare is gone and I’m alone.
I close my eyes because this is not a reality I want.
The darkness behind my eyelids flickers and wavers and moves, and I know that I’m not in a hospital at all. I’m in a box, a casket. I’m alone and there is a satin sheet pulled up to my waist and there are calla lilies in my hands. White ones. They smell like they’re wilted because they are. Dying flowers smell the sweetest.
