CHAPTER 53
Nastya
I think a lot about all the little things that happened the day I was attacked and how any one of them might have changed everything. I wonder how many thousands of variables played a part in him finding me that day and if there are as many at work in my finding him.
***
Clay picks me up at eight in the morning, wearing a long-sleeved button down shirt and dress pants, and not even remotely resembling the artfully unkempt mess I’m used to seeing. I doubt I look much like what he’s used to seeing either. I look more like Emilia today than I have in months. I don’t know if it feels right, but it doesn’t feel as wrong as it used to.
I look Clay up and down and cock my head to the side in appreciation.
“You too,” he says, opening the car door for me. I’m not even sure why he’s bringing me. He said he wanted me to see what I sat on my ass so long for; but I’ve seen it all already. I doubt it will look much different hanging on a wall.
The gallery opening is at nine and all of the finalists have to be registered and checked in for interviews by ten. The drive is just over an hour, so we’re good. Clay’s interview is at eleven, which gives me time to wander through the exhibits and check out his competition, though I can’t even imagine how Clay Whitaker could ever have any.
“Here.” Clay hooks an mp3 player up to the car stereo and hands it to me. “I figured we’d need music since we’ve exhausted all the good conversation topics.
You can DJ.”
I don’t really want to DJ. I just want to lean my head against the window and close my eyes and pretend I’m on my way to an Italian restaurant in Brighton. I turn it on and flip to the first playlist and click on it. As long as it’s not classical music or depressing love songs, we should be good.
I didn’t go back to Josh’s again after Wednesday night. When I let go of his hand and left his truck, I promised myself that the next time I stepped foot in his garage I would answer any question he wanted to ask, and I want to keep that promise.
I spend most of the drive trying to line the right words up in my head, rearranging them a hundred times, then finding new ones and starting all over again. When we pull into the gallery an hour later, my cheeks are wet and I don’t even remember when I started crying.
We get Clay checked in and then find the room where they’re showing his work.
It’s one of the bigger rooms and there are three artists sharing it. Clay’s pictures are hung on the largest wall. I recognize most of them. Some are from his college portfolio. Some are the ones he’s done of me. But it’s hard to concentrate on any of them, because on the center of the wall I’m staring at, is something else entirely.
And it’s overwhelming.
The centerpiece of the display is a sixteen picture mosaic. On each separate drawing is a part of my face and he’s pieced them together like a puzzle. It’s obvious that this is the reason I’m here. He hadn’t shown it to me. I didn’t even know he’d done it. It makes me want to run from the room.
A couple of people come in and comment on the drawings and ask questions to Clay and the two girls, named Sophie and Miranda, whose work is also on display here. I mostly try to face the wall and pretend I’m studying one of Sophie’s paintings until Clay gets called for his interview.
Once he’s gone, I venture out into the rest of the displays. I figure I can start at the rear of the gallery because most people haven’t made their way there yet and it’s quieter. I wander toward the back corner of the building into one of the smaller rooms.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. And for the third time in my life the world shifts under my feet and I just try to stay standing.
Because he’s here.
It’s his face. And it’s not a nightmare.
It’s not a memory. He’s here and real and looking at me. And I’m looking back. I’m standing in the middle of a moment that I’ve dreaded and hoped for since the day I remembered what he did to me.
The name on the wall next to the paintings is Aidan Richter, the school is the one in the next town over from Brighton and the face in front of me belongs to the boy who killed me.
Everything in me turns on and shuts down at the same time. I am weak and strong. I am terrified and brave. I am lost and found. I am here and gone.
I’m afraid I’m going to stop breathing again.
He’s older, like I am, but there is no mistaking it. I know his face like I know every one of the scars he gave me.
I want to run. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to faint. I want to hurt him, break him, kill him. I want to ask him why as if there could ever possibly be a reason.
“Why?” It’s a whisper and a scream.
I ask it, and not just in my head.
That’s the word I choose out of all of the thousands I could say to him. I ask the unanswerable question. Except that maybe it’s not unanswerable. Maybe he’s the only person in the world who can tell me.
I don’t even know which why I’m asking. Why did you do it? Why was it me?
Why are you here? Why am I here? Why?
He’s looking at me like he’s scared and it’s the only thing that could possibly make me happy at this moment. Good. Lots of people are scared of me. Girls at school. My parents. Even, sometimes, Josh Bennett. But this boy is the only one whose fear I want.
“You
weren’t
supposed
to
remember.” There isn’t one thing about his voice that is the same. It’s him, but not him.
There isn’t any rage or darkness gripping him. It’s the same boy but not the same voice, not the same eyes, not the same madness.
“You weren’t supposed to kill me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t mean to?” My brain is wringing out the words, trying to find the meaning of them. But there isn’t any. “How do you not mean to do what you did? You hit me in the face over and over again. You dragged me around by my hair and ripped it out of my head. You kicked me so hard and so many times that there wasn’t a way to fix everything you broke. You murdered my hand. The bones were sticking out. All over the place. Do you remember it?” The last question is nothing more than a pathetic, strangled whisper.
“No.” The word is almost an apology.
“No?” I don’t remember what my hand looked like, either. I’ve only seen the pictures nobody wanted to show me. But he’s the one who did it. He should have to remember.
“Not all of it. Pieces.”
“Pieces? You did this to me and you don’t
even
have
the
decency
to
remember?” I don’t know where the word even comes from. I can’t believe I’m talking to the boy who beat me to death about decency. I can’t believe I’m talking to him at all. I’m supposed to be killing him.
“My brother killed himself.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m sorry? I said I’m sorry to this boy. I’m walking to school and smiling and saying hi all over again.
No. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I forgive myself because it was automatic. I didn’t mean it. I gave him the words but I won’t give him sympathy. He’s looking at me like he can’t believe I said it either. I think I’m insane. I don’t know if this twisted conversation is real, but it must be because I don’t think I could imagine this.
“I got home that day and I found him.
Found his body.” He’s talking like he’s rehearsed these words a thousand times in his head and he’s just been waiting for the moment to say them.
And so he does.
He gives me the mythical why. He tells me the story. At least what he remembers of it and I think how ironic it is that I’m not supposed to remember, but I do, and the boy who is supposed to have all the answers has a mind full of blanks.
But he spills everything in a mad rush like he’s been holding onto it for years and he wants to get it out before I stop him.
He tells me about his brother. About the girl his brother was in love with who went to the same school as me. The girl who broke up with his brother and who Aidan blamed for the suicide, even though he knows, now, that she wasn’t the reason.
The Russian girl. The Russian whore. The girl he went looking for that day. The girl he saw when he saw me. Just because I was there.
And then he says the words. And it isn’t possible for me to hate this boy more, but I do.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
My head wants to explode. This is not the way this is supposed to happen. He’s not supposed to be apologizing. He’s supposed to be evil and I’m supposed to hurt him.
My hands are fists without a purpose.
I don’t know where my breath comes from, just that it still comes. I can’t hear any more of this. Because he’s stealing my rage and it’s the only thing I have. He can’t take that, too. He can’t make me not hate him.
I’ll have nothing left.
He starts talking about his parents putting him in therapy after the suicide and about the guilt he lives under because he never told anybody about what he did to me. How he kept waiting to get caught and waiting to get caught but no one ever came for him. And he thought that he was being given a second chance; that I didn’t die and he thought I was okay and it was some sort of new beginning. It was. Just to a shittier story.
Words. So many words. I don’t need to know why he turned evil, just that he was. There is absolutely no part of me that wants to listen to him talk about his guilt and his therapy and his art and his healing.
He doesn’t get to feel better. He doesn’t get to forgive himself. I won’t give him permission.
And yet I don’t think he does forgive himself. There is so much remorse and pain and self-loathing in his expression that I ache for him because I know what it feels like; and I hate myself for the aching.
He stops talking. I listened to every word he said and it’s my turn now. My turn to tell him everything I’ve needed to tell him since the day I remembered what he did to me. My turn to make him listen. But I don’t get the chance. Clay walks in before I can figure out which of the thousand words in my head I’m going to say first.
“There you are,” Clay looks at me.
“Did you make it all the way through already?”
He turns to Aidan Richter who looks haunted and stares at me like I’m a specter.
Some spirit from the past, come to claim what’s owed.
“Hi,” Clay says, and walks over to offer his hand. I want to grab it away and scream not to touch him. I know what those hands have done and I don’t want them anywhere near Clay’s. “Clay Whitaker.
You’re work?”
Clay glances around at the walls which I’ve only now started to notice. This boy’s art is so different from Clay’s.
There’s nothing remotely similar at all. But it’s amazing and I want to slap myself for thinking so. I despise him for the ability to create it.
And then I see it. And there are no words that exist to describe the hatred I feel for him. The painting. On the far side of one wall, all the way to the end, like a period or an afterthought. But it’s not a painting. It’s a memory that didn’t happen.
I don’t know anything about art so I can’t tell you that it’s watercolor or acrylic or that it’s on canvas or anything art related at all. I can tell you that it’s a painting of a hand, my hand, turned up and opened to the world and that it reaches into my body and rips out everything that’s left.
Because in the palm, right in the center, is the pearl button I never reached.
***
Aidan Richter is gone and I’m still waiting.
I need to find him. He got to say everything and I said nothing. I won’t let him absolve his guilt at my expense. He doesn’t get to use me for that, too. He doesn’t get to make me question everything I’ve believed for nearly three years and then walk away without listening to me.
I want my turn to scream at him. To ask him if he knows that he’s a murderer. If he knows that, even though I lived, it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill me. Just because they brought me back, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t dead. Just because they restarted it, it doesn’t mean my heart didn’t stop. It doesn’t change anything he did. He killed the Brighton Piano Girl even if he didn’t kill Emilia Ward. And I want to tell him. I want him to know what I know. I want him to hurt. I’m frantic with unsaid words.
Maybe no one found him before, but I know who he is now. I know his name. I can find him like he found me.
And when I do, it won’t be random.