She feels guilty and left out. I feel angry and bitter, and I must admit I have found an odd sort of joy at taking my pain out on her. With too much time on my hands to think, analyze, and dissect, my mind always drifts back to the moment on the bus. I try to live it out differently in my head, as if doing so would change the outcome. But every time I relive the moment on the bus, I can’t help but relive Juniper’s silence. Juniper, who could never usually keep her trap shut, couldn’t find one single word to leap to my side on the bus or to defend me in court, but most of all, watching her live her life as I want to live mine is hurting me the most.
I can tell she is maddened by my silence with her. I can sense her shouting at me that this wasn’t her fault. She’s telling me that she feels guilty enough without my having to make her feel any worse. And I respond to all that with silence. I was the one who would have done exactly what I was told, not her. For her to suddenly become me and for me to become her is the most bizarre twist of all. I am wearing her clothes, I am feeling her insecurities, and she is suddenly silent, biting her tongue that she could never silence before, sneaking out at night to meet who knows at a time I am no longer permitted to step foot outside my house. It is my fault that we are behaving like this with each other, but I can’t stop feeling as I do.
Most of all, I miss Art. My heart is broken and I need him. I can’t understand why he hasn’t written to me, why he hasn’t called me, why he hasn’t reached out to me. If it’s true that he has run away from home, then not being under the thumb of his dad gives him even more freedom to contact me. This is beginning to feel more like Art’s decision to stay away from me and less his dad’s. That hurts more than any branding.
After what happened with Colleen, I give up on the school cafeteria. Instead, I read books in the library, huddling on a beanbag in a corner and getting lost in somebody else’s victories and troubles. I never had much time for fiction before. I preferred real life. Mathematics. Solutions. Things that actually have a bearing on my life. But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else’s life. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they’re not alone, that I’m not alone, that it’s okay to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings, the book closes, and I’m plunged back into reality.
Today I’m too tired to read. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve been forcing myself to stay awake because my dreams keep turning into nightmares of the Branding Chamber. Lately they’ve focused on Carrick, and instead of it being me in the Branding Chamber, it’s him and I’m watching him being seared. Where is he? He told me he’d find me. When? Has he decided not to, or does he need my help? I have thought of him often, so often that he has started to appear in my nightmares. Internet searches of Carrick Flawed do nothing to help me learn anything about him. I don’t know his surname. I don’t know anything about him. Where he’s from, what he even did. I don’t know if he was found to be Flawed, but a wild guess tells me that he was. I wonder about his punishment for being there for me in the Branding Chamber, and I hope someone was there for him, that someone offered him peace as he did for me. I have written his name on my notepad, gone back over the letters in red ink over and over. It starts to break through the page. It helps me think.
Suddenly I hear a noise in the library, and I jump as Logan appears.
“Hey,” he calls cheerfully. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Me?” I say in surprise.
He jogs forward and hands me an envelope. He’s always so confident, but right now, he seems shy. “Invitation to my eighteenth. This Friday.”
“Thank you.” I smile, my heart surging.
“The directions are inside. You’ll come?” He holds my eye.
I hold the invitation in my hands, feeling stunned and unsure. “Um, why?”
He laughs. “Why what?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“The whole class is invited. Couldn’t leave you out.”
“I don’t think they’d want me there, Logan.”
“Well, I do,” he says firmly. “Are you coming or not?”
“Okay. I mean, yes. Thanks.” I feel my grin take over my whole face, and I just can’t stop. As soon as he leaves, I squeal and stamp my feet excitedly. Maybe things won’t be so bad after all. Maybe things can change.
I hear another sound in the library, and I call out. “Logan? Is that you?”
I walk to the end of the row of books and look left. I’m grabbed from the right and pulled around the corner to the next aisle. I’m about to shout when I’m faced with Art.
“Shhh,” he says, holding his finger up to my lips, and leads me down to the far corner of the library, behind the shelves, in the darkest corner.
THIRTY-FIVE