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“Breathe, Zay, breathe.” It’s Jude. His hands wrap tightly around me, lifting me powerfully so that I can sit, and he kicks the phone away from my hands with his foot. The second the phone is out of my sight, I can take in some air. My tense body relaxes, turns to jelly.
Everything is going black, but Jude is gripping my waist so strongly, he’s bringing me back to reality. His voice penetrates the dark haze.
“I’ve got you, Isaiah. It’s ok, it’s ok.”
My stomach heaves, and I make it to the bathroom this time before I throw up again, violently, painfully, gasping for breath. I just wipe my mouth quickly, because I need to watch the rest of it. I crawl on my hands and feet to get my phone back.
“Don’t,” Jude reaches it before I do, and his fingers move to turn it off.
I make a grab for it, and I really must look like a wild animal, because Jude looks scared out of his mind right now. Even so, he holds it out of my reach.
“That’s enough for one day,” he says quietly.
He knew it was her.
All of them freaking knew.
They’d seen her photos plastered all over the news for years on end. Every single one of them. Jude, Skye, Spencer, Lou, Miki. All of them. All my assistants, every single person on the crew. Even Pooh knew about her probably. That’s why they were all so careful of her. So freaking good to her. Every single one of them is a good person—but the way they embraced her… It was special, I could see that. And it was because they knew their story.
They all became her personal bodyguards, without having to say a word. And Jude… He just adopted her from the first moment, didn’t he? He became her friend instantly. More than her friend, her brother. He kept anticipating her every need as if he had been freaking hired to do it.
And I was a complete and utter jerk to him.
He must have thought me a monster, all of them must have. How could they have imagined I didn’t know Eden was Edie? I just…
I don’t speak. I try to move my mouth, but nothing comes out. I open my hand, waiting for the phone.
“Isaiah, I can’t… I can’t let you watch this,” Jude says brokenly. “I need you to stop now.”
“Give me the phone, Jude.”
When he doesn’t, I somehow find the strength to lunge over and take it from him. I quickly connect it to the plasma screen in the room and press play–this time, there’s no stopping it.
…
Jude does something even worse than trying to take the phone away from me: he stays. He stays on the floor next to me and watches Eden’s story unfold on the huge screen with me.
The reporter keeps repeating the stuff about how Solomon dyed Eden’s hair black when she was four months old, as if he himself can’t believe it. Then he drones on about how this messed up her scalp and her skin. He explains that another weapon in the psychological warfare Solomon used on her was to make her eat out of a cat’s litter food container, and not allow her to eat any normal fun kid foods or watch TV, or even have gum.
Gum.
Gum.
If I thought I had been broken by what I’ve watched and heard this far, I hadn’t been. This. This is what breaks me.
Gum.
“Gum,” I murmur.
“Pardon?” Jude says in a small, careful voice. He’s afraid I’ll break, but there’s nothing to be afraid of: I’m already broken. Shattered. Destroyed.
I remember now, and it’s killing me when I’m already dead.
One day I had gum with me at school, and I offered her some. The stupidest, most mundane thing. I didn’t even remember that day until the reporter mentioned ‘gum’. But that day at school, when I offered it to her, she had just looked at it and said:
‘What’s that?’
I had laughed, thought she was being funny. She was—is—funny, and witty and so smart I always feel like an idiot next to her. Well, I am.
