“You just can’t stand that the world isn’t this orderly, perfect thing that you can mold if you just work hard enough. Everything you’ve ever touched turns to gold in your hands. If you can dream it up in your little diary, then it must come true. Princess wishes and all! Boo fucking hoo, Kennedy. The world fucking chews you up and spits you out, limbs broken and dreams stabbed through the fucking heart.”
“But you said, in your letter …”
“Forget the fucking letter, Kennedy. Jesus, you’re like a desperate child. Do you not understand that nothing is the way it was? I’m not fulfilling school kid promises, or chasing crushes like it’s some freshman year football game! Grow the fuck up, this is the real world. People lie, they disappointment you, and love is a fucking sham! You have no idea what I’m capable of. Or what evils the world holds.”
I’ve said too much, and I stalk away before I betray my secret even more. If I tell her, I’m not sure I could protect her. If anyone ever found out that I slipped up, that I revealed something to her …
Not only that, but the talk of our letters unnerves me. There is a letter in the bundle, one of mine that was never sent. It’s the one that contains too many of my feelings, that betrays too much of how deeply I care about her. In the light of day, I think I can handle this thing between Kennedy and me. That I can live a normal life, overcome my demons, love a person as they should be loved.
But it’s when the darkness sinks in that I know the truth. I’m not a normal person, I never will be again. What happened to me, what I’ve been put through, it chemically alters a part of your soul. I am the thing that goes bump in the night, and Kennedy Dover shouldn’t be shackled to my evil for the rest of her life.
“So tell me! Tell me, Everett! I’m not afraid of the big, bad wolf! Give me your worst!” She’s yelling, holding her arms out as if she wants me to try to attack her.
She wants the truth? She wants the Boogie Man? Fine. I’ll unleash it.
“When I was taken prisoner, I didn’t think there could be anything that would break me. How fucking naïve I was, and you are, too. There was this one guy, particularly specialized in acute, localized pain. Or at least that’s how I thought of him in my head, I never could understand any of those fuckers. That in itself messes with you, no one speaking your language for the better part of a year, it throws you out of your element. Anyways, he used to target one specific area, one you’d never think would hurt. Or, at least you never thought about being hurt in that place. Take the eardrums, for explain. There was this one week he’d pop one of my eardrums every day. Do you know how much that shit hurts? It also steals your balance, so I’d barely be able to stand, or prepare for when they came into my cell to beat me. He’d rip off fingernails, send electroshocks through my nose, one time he used a drill to—”
“Stop it. Stop it!” Kennedy’s voice is a broken thing as she places a hand on my arm.
I flinch. “I told you not to touch me.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just … I understand. I guess I don’t, because how could I? What you went through sounds like hell. But, you lived. You came out on the other side. You must have found something deep within you while they had you that helped you push through.”
It’s at this moment that I realize she still thinks there is a positive that came from my entrapment. That the ending is one of a hero, some brave blockbuster movie finish with redemption and rescue.
That’s why she, and everyone else, will never understand. I didn’t pull myself through with thoughts of home. I didn’t visualize her face, or strengthen my mind with fantasies of a normal life.
There is just a point, after you cross into a certain pain threshold, after every hope and flicker of positivity is stolen from you, that you just go numb. My body was on autopilot after a time, not allowing me to live but not allowing me to die either. I’m not back here because I want to be, because I saved my own life by perseverance.
If it was all the same to me, I’d rather they offed me in that goddamn filthy bunker. It would be better than living like this. There are just certain people, after they experience the level of trauma I have, who should be put out of their misery. Like a sick dog, someone should just put us down.
And then Kennedy says the last words I ever expect to hear.
“I know what it’s like to watch someone die.”
21
Kennedy
“I know what it’s like to watch someone die.” My tone is hushed, and Everett’s head snaps up.
His eyes are a hard, flinty clover, as if the green is seeping out of him the more furious he grows. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
When I got off of my night shift, I thought I’d be scurrying to my car in the cold. Not bumping into the next Michael Myers, who happens to be my next door neighbor, shredding his own hero banner.
Before I said anything, I watched Everett go to town on the plastic sign, knifing it with such anger that it stole my breath. His rage, it was palpable through the air, and even though I’m furious at him for what happened at the diner, I couldn’t let him self-destruct like that. Maybe I hadn’t realized, up until this point, just what he’d been through.
Hearing him describe his torture makes me physically ill, and I still feel like I could bend over and empty the contents of my stomach on my shoes.
But I need to tell him this, to tell him that I know a fraction of what he went through.
“Maybe I don’t. I can’t begin to understand what you went through, the horrible things you’ve seen. But I’ve seen horrible things too. I’ve held someone’s hand as they took their last breath. I’ve watched a man struggle through a heart attack, only to lose the battle. I’ve seen a family thrown from their vehicle, all four of them including their children—”
I break off, not able to complete my sentence because of the sob making its way out of my throat.
Everett assesses me, skeptical and guarded but with a shimmer of understanding passing over his face.
Swiping at the tears I can’t keep from falling down my cheeks, I speak directly to him. “The point is, I know what death looks like. I know firsthand how horrible it can be to deal with that. And if you want to talk about what you went through, I’m here. No matter what’s gone on between us, I’m here. But don’t think that just because you did some terrible things for the greater good of your country … don’t think it still doesn’t make you a hero. You dared to do things not a lot of people could stomach. That alone should mean something.”
His eyes change, and it’s the tiniest shift in the energy between us, but I feel it.
I know it’s going to happen before he makes a move. This moment, the one I’ve been imagining and wishing for since I first knew the word crush, it’s about to come true.
Everett steps into me, sweat trickling down his brow, and my heart vibrates so hard in my chest, I think it might just pop out. The kiss at the diner is all but forgotten. This is the moment we were meant to have, the slow, pulse-pounding first touch that the universe fated for us.
His hand comes up to my cheek, and my eyes flutter closed, then open slowly. I want to shut them, but I also want to see his face until the very last second. Those green eyes are full of lust, but also concern and restraint. Is he as afraid as I am?