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MISHA
The back deck looks incredibly clean now, which is annoying. I wish there was something else I could clean or anything else I could do with my hands. I’m worried, and right now, I would really like to keep my hands busy.
The girls all have to go after lunch. They’ve told me what they’re doing, but honestly, I’m not paying attention. I’m waiting for Trine to come back with Luke and Malon. I would do anything to make sure she’s changed her mind and standing around here, waiting, it’s driving me insane.
I don’t want to go inside and talk to any of them, so I roll my pants up, sit on the edge and dip my feet into the pool. I don’t look up when I hear footsteps approaching me.
Rei sits next to me. “Hey,” he says. “Do you know how it’s going?”
I shake my head. “No. Don’t know anything yet.”
“How long have they been gone?”
“Long enough to worry.”
He nods. He takes off his glasses and sighs. “This is brutal,” he says. “It’s like…every choice sucks, and I don’t know what to do. Waiting is the worst.”
I turn my head to look at him. He really looks terrible, deep dark shadows under his eyes, his cheekbone swollen, his skin covered in bruises. I probably don’t look much better myself. I have scratches all over my arms, my shoulders. My fists are bruised and still bloody. “If we hadn’t come back, do you think any of this would’ve happened to her?” I ask. “Maybe our presence here is just a bad idea altogether. If we weren’t here, maybe she would be okay.”
He furrows his brow. “I’ve thought that too,” he says. “But you’re wrong.”
I stare at him.
“I think if we weren’t here, Trine would be dead,” he says. “How many times have people–demons or whatever–come after her? How many times have we helped her?”
I guess he’s right. It doesn’t make me feel any better. “Right,” I say. “But it hasn’t been easy for her.”
“It hasn’t been easy for us, either,” he says. “Like, even professionally, our success rate is usually higher than this.”
I shake my head. “Are you giving me shit for this?” I say.
He smiles. “No,” he says. “Just being realistic. Things went off the rails really fucking quickly with her. I wouldn’t change it, to be honest.”
“Not even now?”
His shoulders slump. We both look at the ripples in the water, brown leaves falling on it. “I know this might sound crazy to you, but I think this is probably the best outcome.”
“Even now?”
His expression hardens. “No,” he says. “Now I’m worried. Now I wish there was something I could do, anything I could do, to make this better. I just…I feel powerless here and that makes me really fucking angry.”
I know Rei is kind of a control freak, but it still takes me aback to hear him say this. “For what it’s worth, I hate waiting too.”
“I know,” he says. “You’re really bad at it.”
I shake my head. I’m trying to figure out a witty retort when we hear footsteps approaching us. Rei’s posture straightens as he looks back. “They’re here,” he says.
“Do you think they convinced her?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But they don’t look upset.”
I get to my feet immediately. I don’t realize that I’m running until I’m right in front of Trine, searching her face for answers. “So what did you decide to do?” I ask.
“You can try,” she says. She tries for a smile, but her eyes fill with tears. I pull her in for a hug, squeezing her so tightly I think I might be hurting her. She speaks quietly into my chest to tell me that she can’t breathe.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she replies. “I’ll try, but Misha, it might not work. You know that, right?”
