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“You what now?”
“I hate them. They’re all about her, you know. They’re all about Eden.”
He whistles. “All of them?”
“Yep.”
“All of them,” he confirms again. Ari is trying not to laugh. God, I am pathetic.
“Yes!” I nearly scream.
“Dude.”
“I know, I know. I’m the king of being pathetic, right? Except they… They reek of bitterness. And I hadn’t realized it, but now I see it. And I can’t unsee it. I don’t want to sing them anymore. I don’t want to be that person.”
He’s nodding.
Thinking. I wait to see what pearl of wisdom will fall from his lips.
“Saint Hopetoo?” he says at last and I close my eyes.
Nope, it was not a pearl of wisdom. He’s still in shock about what I just revealed.
“That’s the first one. I actually… I wrote that one first, and then all the rest came pouring out. All of them are for her, except for Teddy’s song. AndBeethoven.”
“Now I get it,” Ari says. “The fans. Finding out she is the heartbreaker in your song is what made them mad, right? That’s what happened, isn’t it?” I nod. “Those songs… They are too powerful, Isaiah. They would make anyone crazy and murderous on your behalf.”
I wince. “Don’t you think I know that? I know it’s my fault, what happened.”
“No no no,” Ari says quickly, looking horrified. “I didn’t say that. There is absolutely no way it’s your—”
“It’s ok,” I tell her quickly, seeing her freak out. “I know that’s not what you were saying. I’m just an ass. It’s just that I’ve only recently began to discover howmuchof an ass I am.”
She’s fighting laughter again. I like this girl. Wes is still studying me as if I’m an artifact unearthed from the Parthenon’s surrounding rocks.
Finally, he speaks:
“What she do to you?”
Ah, isn’t that the question. I shrug. “She loved me,” I say.
Wes waits for me to go on, and when I don’t, he raises that annoying eyebrow again. “What, that’s it?”
“Loved,” I repeat. “Past tense.”
“Ah, I see.”
He doesn’t. No one does.
Eden’s phone
Dad,
I need to stop writing to you. It’s time. The therapist told me to never try to contact you, but even she knew that I needed time. Well, I’ve taken some time, or maybe too much of it, and now I’m ready.
But before I stop, I need to tell you something: You locked me in that mansion in Amherst when I was a few months old. But when I was fourteen, I climbed down a window, scraped my knee badly, landed on the thick, orange leaves two floors below, and limped over to the woods. I don’t know what I was planning to do there.
I know that I craved freedom even though I’d never experienced it. But the truth is that I did not know what my own situation was. I thought that every little girl had grown up with just one dad and no contact with another human being. Of course, I don’t think I had ever seen another little girl in my life. But I had books.
