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“It’s just an idea, of course,” she adds quickly. “But living with Anae and Jackie, I’ve had to come up with plentyof management techniques over the years. When the difficult person in your life isn’t going to change, and you can’t get away from them but you don’t want to be miserable, sometimes you have to direct things yourself. Dare isn’t the same as Anae, but they do have their similarities. Of course, he’s probably more focused on you,” she says pensively. “Anae is so self-involved, she can generally be redirected pretty easily. It doesn’t take much more than flattery a lot of the time. Dare might require more finesse. Or maybelessfinesse. Honestly, it might be okay if he knows what you’re doing. As long as he likes the result.”
“Just… refuse to engage.”
“Yeah. But don’t play dead. He probably won’t like that, and it won’t be sustainable for you even if he did. I don’t want you to do anything that will hurt you, but being happy doesn’t hurt. If he wants to fight about me, just grab him and kiss him. Smile at him. Play with his hair. Redirect him to somewhere you like and maybe he’ll be interested in following. You can literally just skip the fight.”
My eyebrows rise as I consider how tonight might have gone if I had tried Hannah’s techniques, but since there are things she doesn’t know about the way Dare plays, I’m not even sure she’s right.
Ihavetried to avoid the fighting, but I guess I haven’t tried her way. I picture Hannah effortlessly sidestepping the pit Dare has dug for her to fall into, dodging the swinging mace he had ready just in case she made it past. Then I imagine her arriving unharmed to offer him a smile and a plate of muffins before going on about her day.
Dare hates muffins.
It shouldn’t make me smile. None of this should. But I can’t help it.
“I wish I could do that, but I don’t think I have your skill.”
“Well, I wasn’t born with it,” she says lightly. “It’s a mechanism I honed by necessity when the evil stepfamily had all but zapped my will to live. I couldn’t carry on that way anymore, and I only saw two paths forward. One was too short, so… I took the other one.”
Reality seeps back in, and the idea of Hannah in the kind of pain she’s alluding to turns my stomach. Knowing that evil bitch Anae is partially responsible makes me hate her even more, but it’s knowing Hannah evenconsidereda “shorter path”, imagining if she had made a different choice…
The idea of a world without her in it brings a lump to my throat. “That’s terrible, Hannah. I’m really sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s fine, it’s in the past. I learned a lot about myself because of those experiences. They helped shape me into the woman I’m becoming, and I’m pretty fond of her.”
I admire the way she sweeps over her pain with a skillful brush and transforms something so dark and ugly into something hopeful and beautiful.
“So am I,” I say softly.
“I just know how defeating it can be before you develop those survival instincts, and… I hope you never get to that point.”
“Yeah, me too,” I murmur.
“We could make sure you don’t,” she suggests.
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs cheerfully. “I think we should kill him. I bet I’d be excellent at cleaning up a crime scene.”
I’m so shocked to hear sweet, gentle Hannah so casually suggest murder—even if I know she’s not serious—that I burst into laughter.
“What?” she says innocently. “It’s the only way he’ll ever let you get away from him, isn’t it? He’s really left us no choice. It’s practically self-defense.”
My laughter ebbs because that’s too close to the truth, and it’s not funny at all. “We can’t kill him,” I say with reluctant sobriety, my imagination unwilling to conjure such a thing even in jest.
I feel a bittersweet stab as she playfully sighs like I’ve ruined all her fun.
I regret forcing us both out of this imaginary fairy-tale land where Hannah can effortlessly sidestep Dare, and together, we can vanquish him.
But that’s further than my imagination can stretch.
Dare feels unconquerable to me.
“Why not?” Hannah teases, though I can tell by her tone she’s following me back to reality just as reluctantly.
I wouldn’t want to leave, either. In Hannah’s inner world, she’s magical. She holds all the power, even though she’s never not at some bad guy’s mercy.
Her life would kill anybody else’s spirit, but she has found a way to protect herself. To thrive even while she’s surviving so she doesn’t harden and sour like most people would.
And reality is a cold, dark cell with no light by comparison. Her world is vibrant and imaginative, and mine…
