“We’ll take care of it. It’s done,” he said somberly.
Just like that, my fate had finally been determined. Carly and Spider walked back into the
house, Cameron was left to ponder over his decision alone, and I sunk to the floor. I knew it
had been coming, I knew I should be making a plan fast, but all I could think about was that I
didn’t want to leave Cameron. Where would I go? There was nothing for me in Callister or
anywhere else. My life was with Cameron and Rocco and Carly. Spider could stay too—if he had
to.
I loved Cameron; that hadn’t changed. When Cameron had looked at me and told me he loved me, I
believed him without a doubt; the fact that he had also said to me and then to Manny that he
didn’t love me, I had decided was made up, like he told me it was. But he had also promised
that I would live, that he would send me home with an armed guard. Even if I didn’t want this
to happen—the thought of being separated from him made me feel nauseated—and I had planned to
convince him otherwise, this had proven to be a lie.
I was so mixed up.
There was a chapter in one of my criminology class books that was dedicated to the story of this
rich girl from California who had been kidnapped by a left-wing group. Two months later, she
walked into a bank with a gun and helped her kidnappers rob it. When she was arrested, she said
that she had been brainwashed by them, she said that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a
condition where hostages start having feelings, like loyalty and love, for their captors. The
girl was convicted but was pardoned a few years later. Apparently, there was such a thing as
Stockholm syndrome.
Everything was different between Cameron and me. What I felt wasn’t just mind games or some
fabricated syndrome. What I felt for him, I had seen him, felt him feel for me too. I was sure
of this … but then there was all the other evidence that I couldn’t refute either: he was a
killer, a drug dealer, a crime boss, an expert pretender. He was very smart and too beautiful to
fall for someone like me. Frances, Griff, and even Roach had warned me about him. Though I
couldn’t deny the existence of any of these things, none of them changed my mind. There were
two sides to Cameron—the real side was the one who took my hand and answered my incessant
questions about his secret life while I tried to avoid watching the movie he had picked up just
for me. The real Cameron was the one who kissed me in the darkness, the one who sat on my bed
and admitted that he loved me … and had loved me for a very long time.
The final blow—Cameron’s decision to end my life—I tried to attribute to Spider and Carly’s
cunning abilities to sway Cameron. I loved him, and he loved me … but I still needed proof that
I hadn’t just imagined it all, that I wasn’t going crazy.
When I got downstairs and didn’t see Cameron right away, I got sidetracked in the kitchen. My
belly was grumbling loudly, and after days of liquid meals, I was ready for some real
sustenance. I started pulling miscellaneous food out of the cupboards and managed a vague
cheerfulness as Carly and Spider walked by.
“Mornin’,” I said.
Spider glanced at his watch and graciously pointed out, “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
Carly appeared behind him and looked almost genuinely concerned. “Feeling better?”
I nodded my head, stuffed a handful of animal crackers in my mouth and walked to the table, my
arms full with cereal, milk, bowl, spoon, cookies, crackers. I noticed that Carly and Spider
both seemed to be in a better mood; they were either happy to see me finally go, or the thought
of killing someone just brought the best out of them.
“You know you made half of my guards sick with the flu,” Spider charged.
I hadn’t realized that, along with everything else, I was also to be held responsible for
getting sick first. “Sorry,” I mumbled through my Oreos.
When Cameron walked through the patio doors, I kept still on my chair. His dark eyes
automatically came to find mine, and he slowed his walking pace. Catching himself, he quickly
looked away, picked up his pace again, and kept going out through the front entrance. Carly and
Spider followed him out, and I heard the front door shut behind them. In that brief moment, I
knew what I had to do and immediately started planning over my bowl of cereal.
Rocco hobbled over from the couch and grabbed himself a bowl to help me with my meal. He poured
and analyzed.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked me with an accusatory tone.
I wasn’t sure what he was referring to. When I’d looked in the mirror this morning, I thought
I looked better—at least I didn’t look like walking death anymore. “Nothing. Why?”
“You’re staring at the wall. Smiling by yourself for no reason.”
I shrugged, removed the smile, and shoveled Captain Crunch into my mouth. I wasn’t going crazy
—not anymore.