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The star-covered sky loomed above us as we lay in the darkness, our clothes scattered around us, both of us still trying to catch our breath after the third round of mind-blowing sex. My heart was branded with his name, my skin with his scent, and while he held my hand in his, his thumb slowly creating circles on the top of my hand, something I had never felt before settled deep inside my bones.
Peace.
I finally felt at peace.
“You know…” I broke the comfortable silence first. “When I was a child, I would lie on the grass behind my house, looking at the sky and imagining what it would feel like to be free. Completely and utterly free.” I lifted myself up on one elbow and looked down at him, at the mark I left on his chest. “And every time a teacher would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up, I said that I wanted to be a bird.”
“A bird?” He chuckled. “Because you felt caged.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, and it amazed me how well he understood what I was trying to say.
“I had no idea I was caged until last year. Until you opened my eyes.”
“I had a very small part in that, baby. You were already well on your way on your own. I just sped up the process.”
“I know.” I nodded. “But still. My mother lied to me. My father… Hell, I don’t even know where he is anymore, but he left me—with her. She could never understand me and everything I was capable of.”
He simply listened as I spoke, telling him about my childhood, the screaming, the tears, the days and nights when I wanted to simply disappear because I couldn’t fit in with anyone after that accident, and I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.
It wasn’t as if I could go to high school somewhere else, in some other town. My mother refused to move even after I begged her, telling her about the kids making fun of me in school and mocking my memory loss.
The ones that knew me before the accident steered clear of me, remembering the Danika I used to be.
Everyone would always tell you that they were a good child, a calm child, well-mannered and well behaved, but I wasn’t. I didn’t care about them as individuals—I cared about their insides. I wondered what their blood looked like. I wanted to know if it was bright red like they showed in the movies, or dark like this very night. I wondered what their hearts looked like when they slowed down, and if they would continue beating in the same way when they gasped for breath.
I knew that society regarded me as a monster, and maybe I was one. But I was simply a curious child that couldn’t find support in anyone. My parents feared me. My teachers feared me. My peers stayed away from me after I asked Marissa Delaney if her blood tasted sweet or bitter after she cut herself on the swing, right on top of her forefinger.
They ran from me, screaming and crying for the teacher, when I asked her a very simple question. It wasn’t as if I was the one who cut her.
But that day was the first time I saw fear in my mother’s eyes. That day was the trigger for countless visits to psychiatrists and weird communes that dealt with people like me. As if they needed to deal with people like me.
They just had to let us go.
“I found your old folder in my father’s study,” Lazarus said, turning toward me.
“And?” I smiled, tracing my finger over the stubble on his cheek. “Was I a monster there too?”
“Perhaps you were for him. He thought I was a monster too, and that’s why he had to go. That’s why he needed to disappear. I knew that night that he would lock me up just like he locked my mother up.”
There was no remorse in his words, no regrets over what he did, which only filled me with elation. “I know. My mother didn’t lock me up, at least not in a real-life cage. But she locked my mind up, stopping me from remembering, making the last couple of years of my life unbearable. I always felt that those pills she kept sending me were making me less alive, less… me, I guess? But I kept taking them because she was my mother, right?” I laughed sadly. “She was my guardian, the one person who should’ve wanted what was best for me.”
Lazarus pulled me closer to him, our chests pressed against each other. “I don’t think that they ever wanted what was best for us. I think they just wanted us to disappear because it would’ve been easier dealing with us like that, than actually trying to help us navigate this world.”
He was right. It made me angry, what she did to me, but I knew he was right. They wanted to have picture-perfect children, and I was never going to be one of those.
“Do you ever regret it?” I asked, needing to know that I wasn’t alone in all this. I read about regret and what it was supposed to feel like, but it simply never came to me. This past year I tried to rediscover who I truly was, and if the screams I dreamed about would do anything to fill the gaping hole in my chest.
They did.
Oh, they really, really did, but I had no regrets. No sadness over the life that disappeared right in front of my eyes.
“No.” He shook his head. “Not even a little bit. What I do regret, however, is the fact that we need to get back to the party.”
My mood soured because I knew he had to go and deal with Judah and whatever it was that he needed from him.
“You mean, we need to go and check in on Judah?”
“Yes, unfortunately, we do.”
I hated it. I hated the fact that the slimy prick interrupted our precious time, staying in the back of our minds all this time.
