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“God, do you hear yourself?” She sits back, her face set in a sneer. “You’re so arrogant, you don’t even realise how you come across right now.”
“How do I come across right now?”
“Like you’re better than everybody else in the world.”
“I’m not better than everybody else in the world—youare. That’s why it always has to be you, Theodora.”
She lets out a laugh that’s the coldest sound I’ve ever heard, so cold it almost burns.
“Whatever image you’ve created of me in your mind, Zachary, one day you’ll wake up and realise it was just a dream. I’m not an angel or a goddess. I’m just a human being, and I’m certainly not better than everybody else. If I seem like it, it’s only because I’m good at pretending. I’m not better than everybody else. I’m barely as good as everybody else. Just because we’ve tied grades over the years doesn’t mean you and I are trapped in this great cosmic battle of higher wills. This is just a story you’ve told yourself—a story as fanciful as any children’s book you might look down on.”
Her words wash over me, and I let them do so, taking my time to reply. Theodora’s talk of making up stories resonates with me—but not because I’m the one making them up.
“And what fanciful story have you made up to justify not following the programme when you know it’s perfect for you, when you know there’s a hunger deep inside you for knowledge and ideas and debate, when you know how much you want it? What image is it you’ve created to justify your actions, and how will you feel when you wake up?”
I don’t want to be cruel to Theodora, and I don’t want to fight with her. But this is like a debate. Not two sides debating one motion, but two sides debating two motions.
My house believes that Theodora should be a Spearcrest Apostle because there is no other way, because she wants to be there as much as I want her to be there, because neither of us can or should be doing this without the other.
Her house believes something else, something small and dark and ugly I can’t quite get her to spit out. Something which makes her believe that she’s not an angel and a goddess, that she’s barely as good as everybody else around us.
A blatant lie—but the kind of insidious lie that grows deep underneath someone’s skin, sprouts seedlings and grows into something uncontrollable and barbed.
“The truth isn’t whatever you choose to believe, Zach,” she tells me in the severe, almost patronising tone of a schoolteacher. “You don’t get to state your opinion and will it into truth through sheer power of confidence.”
“Fine, Theodora. Since you know the truth and I don’t, why don’t you tell me?”
She stiffens in her seat. At this angle, the glow of a light somewhere behind her catches the pale sheen of her hair and makes it gleam like a golden halo.
How ironic.
“Tell you what?” she asks, her tone as rigid as her posture.
“Why did you turn down Mr Ambrose’s invitation?”
“Why is it so important for me to accept?”
I answer immediately. “Because I know you want to.”
“If you don’t bother telling me the truth, why should I?”
“What truth?” I draw closer, resisting the urge to pull her to her feet, to draw her into the circle of my arms, to force her to speak to me while we’re heart to heart so that I can feel her emotions in the rise and fall of her chest.
“The truth, Zachary. Do you want me in the programme because you think I want to, because of the enrichment of my soul, or because of Andrew Marvell’s perfect parallels?”
I didn’t expect her to go there.
It’s my turn to stiffen—not defensively, but proudly.
“Are you asking me if I want you there because I love you?”
Colour rises to her cheeks. Perhaps she expected me to tiptoe with my words just like she did, to speak in veiled allusions and poetic analogies. But not in this case, not about this.
“You don’t love me,” she hastens to say as if hoping to do some damage control—as if the idea of me loving her is damage that needs to be controlled.
“No,” I answer without shame. The balance of calm and emotion has tipped now. I’m as calm as a sea after a storm; her eyes are wide with panic. “I absolutely, undeniably, inexorably love you.”
Chapter 23
