In the end, my parents decided to keep the portrait up. Of course, this meant my mom had to sacrifice her weekly coffee dates. No one wants to come to your house and drink coffee while the handsome face of a murdering psychopath watches. I doubt the decision was too difficult for my mom, though, seeing how there isn’t much left to brag about where her children are concerned.
My schoolwork took an unprecedented dive in the wake of Asher’s arrest. Emily eventually forgave me; however, like my mom’s friends, she stays far away from my house. She doesn’t need a reminder of how her daydreams within the walls of my house became the stuff of nightmares. But she stood by me even after my family and I became social pariahs. She knows better than anyone how hard it is to be the sister of a killer in Maribel. I’ve had to get used to a new level of seething glares. I deserve them. I soak them up in silence. My penance for all of the destruction I’ve caused.
One painful reminder of my destructive nature comes in the form of an attractive blond who can’t make eye contact with me anymore. Peter hasn’t forgiven me for believing he was a murderer. He doesn’t look at me with seething glares; he just doesn’t look at me. Period. I don’t deserve his forgiveness.
I don’t deserve Gideon’s forgiveness either. I’m part of a family that cracked his soul and his body, to the point where no one was certain he’d recover.
When I visited Gideon in the hospital, I was prepared for him to scowl at me the way he had the past few months. I feared that even though he’d survived the attack, I’d lost him forever. He’d managed to keep me at a distance for so long, maybe he finally realized he was better off without me.
Because he was.
The truth is, I do share something with Asher besides our crystal eyes. There is something broken in me, just like there’s something broken in Asher, that lets people get hurt while I walk away unscathed.
I know now that much of my identity stems from a lie. I’m not a killer; I didn’t even accidentally kill Sara Leeds. But I let myself believe the lie—the story Asher told me about myself—and it shaped every decision I made. I let those little creeping things embed themselves inside my brain, inside my very core, until they ate away at who I was. They created the hollow person who refused to help Melody. The girl who allowed Gideon’s conscience to rot away so I could stay safe. The girl who let the murderer escape so no one would think I’d killed again. The girl who made Seth into Maribel High’s new target and later put him in jail.
And the thing is, Seth let the lies invade him too. He let the rumors I started push him into the shadows. He became the skulking loner the way I became Fire Girl.
But Gideon never saw Fire Girl. He believed in me and defended me starting in Mrs. Kent’s second-grade class. So his reaction at the hospital should’ve come as no surprise. I hovered cautiously over his battered body, afraid he might open the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut and scream for me to leave the room. Instead, when he saw me, he forced the corner of his cracked and bleeding mouth to lift.
Maybe it was blindness or maybe it was forgiveness. Maybe it was that perfect blend of goodness and audacity I’ve always loved about him. Or maybe I just managed to make my way onto Gideon’s list of people who needed fixing.
Gracie came to see Gideon at the hospital, and she burst into tears when she saw how his handsome face had been dismantled. While she cried, I thought horrible things about her. How she had no reason to cry over Gideon. How she’d only known a fraction of him. How she probably even believed she loved him while she let her tears drip onto his hands—hands I should’ve been holding.
I’m not sure if Gracie felt my thoughts pierce through the back of her skull like lasers or if she caught Gideon’s eyes periodically drift from her tear-streaked face to where I sat on a chair in the corner of the room. But she kissed his hand in that angelic way she does everything, and then she left. And I had the feeling she wouldn’t be back.
Good or bad, she doesn’t share what Gideon and I share.
After Gideon’s release from the hospital, we didn’t speak about the hobbit house. Our secret hideout occupied a dark place in my mind, along with Asher and the other horrors I felt responsible for. It made me want to stay far away from the woods, and Gideon seemed to feel the same way. It was like we’d never be able to get past what happened out there, unless we buried it once and for all.
So one day, I woke up and the sun’s rays landed on my pillow, glittering the way they always did in the spring when the weather was warm enough to spend childhood days outside.
That morning I decided to return to the hobbit house. And I took Gideon with me.
By the time we crawled through the evergreen trees on hands and knees, the sun had vanished behind the clouds and a light snow began to fall over us. The hideout, which had seen even more ruin thanks to Asher’s brief stay, was no longer the hobbit house of our childhood. Brown blood still smeared the ground and the torn, mangled cover. The termites I’d dreamed about had actually materialized. We could see the ugly, translucent creatures slithering over the blue cover down in the bottom. Tiny flecks of snow sprinkled the ground. Our once-serene world was now a dilapidated wonderland.
I continued to peer down into the hole, waiting for a joyful memory to emerge from the pit. Instead, I observed the devastation I’d caused.
Gideon proceeded to kick some dirt into it, watching the little bugs scamper away as the brown clods fell on them, dispersing granules of dust into the air. I kicked some more.
Then we abandoned that hole in the ground to the beastly critters.
We trudged back through the trees in silence. Gideon walked a few paces ahead of me. I noticed he wasn’t leading me toward my backyard, but in the direction of the road. Shivering, I wiped off some of the crystals of snow that had swirled beneath my jacket hood and onto my face. I wondered where he was headed, but didn’t want to interrupt his somber, reflective mood. I followed until we passed through the final line of fir trees, entering the narrow space beside the road.
There, as cars passed by, swerving to avoid us, we teetered on the edge of the road until Gideon took my hand and pulled me close. He lowered his head and peered into my eyes through snowflake-sprinkled lashes. I recognized his expression, and a familiar wish stirred in me along with a warmth even the chill in the air couldn’t touch. I was home.
He closed his eyes, causing the small flecks of snow to tumble onto my cheeks. And that’s when our lips met, melding together the way our souls had years ago.
A driver honked while we kissed, and I held on to Gideon tighter. As I relaxed in his arms, allowing his embrace to heal so much of what was broken inside me, a chorus of catcalls sounded from a car’s open window. Probably some kids from school.
But I didn’t care. People could say what they wanted. Rumors and expectations were left back in the termite-laden hole in the woods.