That maybe I’d never won at all, no matter what I’d done out in the “real” world.
At my scheduled time, I opened the door and stepped inside. The lock clicked over by some force of its own. As always, a plain chair stood in the middle of the small, white-walled room, but I never bothered to sit. It was easier to brace myself standing up.
Who would it be today? My sister? My grandmother? One of the many classmates and “friends” the school could twist to its use?
The rose scent flooded the room even stronger than if I’d been standing right in front of the blooms. The walls shimmered, and images appeared on them as if projected by an invisible device.
Trix’s pale green eyes gazed at me from every direction. My body recoiled instinctively, but I had enough self-control not to try the door. I knew from plenty of experience that it never opened until the appointment was over.
The images of her were smiling at me, some close up on her face, some farther away so I could see her whole appealing figure. Somehow that smile was worse than the way she’d snapped at me less than an hour ago.
“Why the hell do you let them beat you down?” one of her asked with a dismissive shake of her head. “They don’t get to call the shots.”
But they do, I answered silently. In every goddamn way.
“Were you ever even a kid?” another image teased. She loped toward the woods, waving for me to join her. “Come on. You’ve got a lot of making up for lost time to do. Let me guess—you’ve never even climbed a tree.”
Too many other more necessary things to do. That’s what my grandfather would have said. And God help me if I gave any indication I didn’t appreciate all he was doing for us.
“Oh, fuck him,” a third version of Trix said, as if she’d read my thoughts. Probably the powers that fueled this room could—probably that was why it’d presented me with her after the actual confrontation outside. “Just because someone helps you out doesn’t mean they can’t be an asshole. And that dude? From what you’ve told me, asshole through and through.”
You’d say the same thing about me if you’d been around me back then.
More Trixes flitted past my view: Trix clambering out onto the school roof with the wind whipping her hair into a blaze of orange flame; Trix banging on a door with her teeth gritted tight. “Can’t you talk to them or something? For fuck’s sake, Elias.” Trix tucked under a blanket that had fallen back with the rise and fall of her breath to show her bare shoulder, begging to be kissed. Trix staring up at me, her hair plastered to her head and her cheeks mud-flecked, her eyes watery with more than just the rain.
“What if it’s not enough? We can’t let them win. But I feel like I’m doing everything I can, and it’s just out of reach. What am I missing? Please.”
I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. They’re going to win, no matter what we do. They always win.
A laugh spilled out of her as she whirled past me through a streak of moonlight, a moment of unfettered joy I knew was rare. A fantasy, all of it—none of these moments, good or bad, would ever really be mine. The invisible counselor was simply hammering that fact home, over and over, as if my heart hadn’t already cracked apart in my chest.
Maybe, just this once, the forces around me had misjudged, though. I found myself sinking into the chair, surrounded by all these realities that weren’t, thinking back to the reality that was—the accusation in her eyes and the demand in her voice on the lawn outside, the flicking of her hair in the wind. The potential balled in that lithely strong body.
I was never going to win. That hadn’t changed. But there was a quieter message within the current that ran through the words that pelted me. It filled my heart with a sharper ache, but this once I let it in rather than pushing it away.
Trix didn’t expect me to have all the answers. She didn’t expect me to fix the world for her. She wasn’t even sure she could do it herself, for all her bravado. All she’d asked of me, really, was that I try. Making the effort would matter to her so much more than the end result.
I was the one who cared about winning. Roseborne College hadn’t beaten the urge out of me yet. I’d almost let my old ways shackle me all over again.
She deserved better than that, even if the impending failure wrenched at me, even if I wanted to run away from it just like she’d accused me of. But I could do right by her, no matter how many people I’d let down before. I could be better than that.
I would be.
Chapter Twelve
Trix
Fourteen-year-old Cade’s voice rolled over me from where he’d hunkered down on the bottom bunk next to me. He traced a finger along the inside of my arm. “We’d do anything for each other, wouldn’t we, Baby Bea? Whatever you need, I’ll be there for you. That goes both ways, right?”
There was something in his tone I’d never heard before, low and cajoling, but it sent a shiver through me like the glances I’d caught him giving me here and there over the last few months, as if he were measuring something in me with his eyes. The shiver tasted of both anticipation and uneasiness. Something was coming—something I might love or hate or maybe both at once.
“Of course,” I said, because there was no other possible answer when it came to this boy. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m hoping nothing is.” His breath grazed my ear. “I want you to prove it, so I know for sure.”
The dream shifted; I turned over and found myself standing in the dark in a rain-slick alley, the Cade of five years later looming over a form that had fallen to the warped pavement. “You fucker!” he shouted as he kicked the guy in the gut, over and over. “You piece of fucking shit.” When his legs started to wobble from the effort, he bent down and brought his fists into the pummeling.
I stood still and rigid, not wanting to watch, feeling I had to—It’s my fault; it was all my fault—but the dream tipped me over and threw me out into the cramped space behind the garden shed that always smelled like turpentine. Cade’s arms wrapped around my trembling shoulders as our foster father stomped around in the mudroom so loud his footsteps and furious voice carried right across the backyard.
Cade hugged me tighter. “Don’t you worry, Trix. If he tries to touch you, he’ll have to get through me first.” With the unwavering confidence that somehow his eight-year-old self could take on a raging full-grown man.
“I don’t want him to hurt you either,” I choked out around a sob, clutching his arm, and he leaned his head close to mine, and we lurched forward into another memory, two years later, speeding down a steep, icy hill on a snow racer. The frigid wind wiped my hair from under my hat and bit into my cheeks. One of Cade’s arms was still around me, his other extended to grip the handle.
We shot past a few trees and into view of a kids’ plywood fort right in front of us. A shriek tore from my throat. Cade jerked on the handle, but it was too late. We slammed right into the boards, splinters flying as they snapped apart, and tumbled onto the snowy ground. Cade pulled me to him with a laugh bursting from his lungs, and as the panic washed away, I started laughing too—