“I have something for you,” he says. I look up. He reaches into his not-a-backpack and hands it to me carefully, ceremonially even, without taking his eyes off mine. And I receive it. But when I tear my eyes from his to look, it’s just a college catalog, one of those glossy brochures that fill the mailbox as soon as you sign up for the SATs. I don’t know what I was expecting. Or would have wished for. Something sentimental maybe, anything really, but this is nothing.
“For your escape,” he says, “and all your future endeavors.”
My stomach clenches like I’ve eaten something off, rotten, like I’ve stuffed his stupid catalog into my mouth page by page and swallowed it.
“This is where my father went to school,” he offers.
I know this from when we called the library in search of his dissertation research, but I can’t tell River that.
“And where his father went to school. So it’s where I might go too. Maybe we could go together. Take a look.”
When I still don’t say anything, he pulls his wand out of his back pocket. Waves it around half-heartedly. Offers it to me. “Want to say the magic words?”
I cannot even shake my head no. I cannot say a word. Magic or otherwise, there are none left to say. So I do the only thing left to do: Turn away. Turn away and back to my worn front door and my worn life. My body is Mirabel’s. It can listen, but it can’t not listen, and it can’t reply. It is sapped of strength, control, and agency. I have my one hand. I can turn the doorknob and let myself inside and close the door behind me. That is all.
* * *
In bed, I can hear Mirabel typing, but her Voice is silent. I can hear her and Monday listening to me cry, waiting for me to be done. Mirabel must know I know what she did now. What we both did. Monday can’t have any idea why I’m so upset, but in some ways it doesn’t matter to her. She’s upset I’m upset. And that’s enough.
Still, I can feel her itching to ask—she doesn’t like to not understand—and itching to comfort me too. They both have so much they want to say. But instead of tears it feels like words are leaking out of my eyes, and soon I won’t be able to tell them anything at all. And I have a question I need answered before I surrender forever the power of speech with no magic Voice to replace it. I wipe my face off and roll over.
“You told him,” I say into the darkness. A question. An accusation. But more than anything, a plea. Please let there be some kind of explanation to make me stop feeling like this.
“Who told who what?” Monday sounds relieved to hear my voice, any voice.
“Yes,” says Mirabel’s.
“Why?” I beg because if she has an answer it will halve the number of people who’ve betrayed me.
She types. “You said,” she says.
“And you said he was too young. You said he wasn’t trustworthy. You said we had to keep the secret from everyone, even him. You said especially him.”
She types. “You convinced me.”
“But,” I say, and then I don’t say anything else. I turn on the light. We squint at each other as our eyes adjust. I look at my sister, and she looks at me. What I want to say is: If someone was going to tell him, it was my place not yours. What I want to say is: Did I convince you it was okay to tell, or did you convince me it wasn’t so you could? What I want to say is: At least I can speak. Or I could before this. What I want to say is: Why and how could you?
But I know how she could: Slowly. Deliberately. And—dawning, incredulous—I also know why. The fact that I haven’t known before, that it hasn’t even crossed my mind until now, is maybe the biggest betrayal of all.
Monday is just getting her head around what happened. She stands up on her bed. “Three! You told?”
“So did I.” I am so angry at Mirabel and so hurt by Mirabel I don’t know which of those I am more. But that instinct to protect her—and share her burden whenever possible—runs deeper still.
Monday’s head whips to me. “I am not stupid. I figured that out. But I do not understand why.”
“We don’t know,” I answer for both of us. And then, “I can’t believe you would do that to me.” I sound pathetic, but they’ve both heard me sound worse.
“You mean you cannot believe River would do that to you,” says Monday. “Betray you. Tell his father.”
“I don’t mean River,” I say. “I mean Mirabel. Why?” I want to hear her say it.
“I do not know why,” says Monday.
But there’s only one reason, isn’t there? Mirabel must have told for the same reason I did.
“You love him?” I ask.
“I love who?” Monday says.
“Yes,” says Mirabel’s Voice.
“But that’s”—my brain rolodexes through every vocabulary word it’s memorized in the past five years and lands on—“impossible.”
“No,” says Mirabel’s Voice. There’s more there, sentences and paragraphs and tomes waiting to spill, but we don’t have time right now for her to tell them.
“How can that be?” This is crudely—cruelly—put because of course it’s not impossible. It’s exactly as possible for Mirabel to fall in love as for me or River or anyone. Mirabel-champion is my most important job, not just telling her she can do it, whatever it is, not just helping her do it, but believing she can. She’s brilliant and funny and strong and, yes, lovable, and I’d fight anyone who said otherwise, but there are some things she just can’t do. So why does she have to do them with River, who, in addition to being the scion of her enemy, is mine? I feel terrible for asking these questions, even in my head, but mostly I just feel terrible.
“I don’t know,” her Voice answers.
“For how long?”
She types. “All along.”
“I do not know what that means,” Monday says.
Me neither.
“That’s no excuse,” I say.
“No,” she agrees.
“Just because I told too—” I stop. “I was wrong but only once and understandably. You were wrong twice—”
“Because you told when you said not to tell and because you betrayed your very own sister!” Monday cannot help but put in. Enthusiastically.
“And not understandably,” I finish.
“Yes,” Mirabel’s Voice insists. I hope she means yes, she was wrong, twice. But she could as well mean, yes, it was understandable. And the fact that I don’t know might be the greatest loss of all. I wait, but she doesn’t clarify.
Finally I admit, “He gave me this,” because I have to sometime, and it might as well be now. It’s mortifying really, but they are my sisters, so I hand over the brochure.
“He wants to help you go to college.” Monday is puzzled but trying. “That is nice.”
“It’s condescending,” I spit. “It’s pity. It’s tossing me his scraps. It’s rubbing in my face that he’s leaving and I never will. And even if it weren’t all that, it’s just mean because he knows damn well I can’t afford it.”
No one says anything for a moment.