“We’re told that your son is in stable condition. We did wait for this news before talking to you. We’d like you to accompany us to the station.”
Crevan appears torn at the prospect of having to leave Art. I think of being dragged off the bus away from Juniper and Art, the whistles ringing in my ears. Paraded through the courtyard to a hissing crowd, the branding chamber, the pain of six sears on my body, in bed for a week, tied up and locked away by supposed friends, the supermarket riot, buried alive, paraded half-naked through the streets. The worst thing of all, having to run from my family. This was all at his hands.
I watch Crevan being taken away. Our eyes meet, and in that look I see everything I have felt over the past five weeks. And I know he is feeling it, too.
The question is, does it make me feel better?
EIGHTY-ONE
NO.
For someone to win, somebody else must lose. For that person to have won they must have lost something in the first place.
The irony of justice is that the feelings that precede it and those which fruit from it are never fair and balanced.
Not even justice itself is perfect.
EIGHTY-TWO
I WATCH ART for some time after his dad leaves. He looks like an angel, his face completely unharmed, his baby skin, the light shadow of facial hair emerging. I run my fingers over his hands; his skin is smooth, his fingers are long. I see them playing the guitar and singing about the giraffe that couldn’t find a turtleneck to fit, the monkey that had vertigo, the lion that couldn’t use a smart pad, the zebra that had polka dots. We all used to sit around crying with laughter as he entertained us, but I guess we never put it all together. He always sang about something that didn’t fit in, someone who was left out, someone who was losing or missing something.
Art has been living with his own demons since his mother died, no wonder he joined the Whistleblowers. I can actually begin to understand him now, imagine I can even forgive him, such is the depth of my understanding. Compassion and logic are all that’s ever needed. Can I forgive him? Yes, I can even do that.
I pull the curtain around his bed, for privacy, so I can change into my jeans and T-shirt. They’re the clothes I was wearing with Carrick when he helped me escape from Crevan’s secret hospital, when he helped me break into Mary May’s home for the snow globe, when I was taken from Sanchez’s apartment to the docklands, when I was stripped and dressed in the red slip for the parade through the town. I imagine they smell of Carrick. Do I ever want to wear these clothes again? Will it feel like I’m going backward?
I dig deeper in the bag for something else to wear and my hands brush against Carrick’s notebooks. I recall the last time I saw him before seeing him again in the castle. I had said good-bye to Mom; he was going in the car with her to rescue Juniper from the dreaded skin graft operation. Carrick was going to guide her there. I was to wait at the lake for Raphael Angelo, who was going to drive me to see Sanchez to make our deal.
I remember as the car drove away wanting to shout after them that he’d forgotten his books, which he’d trusted me to carry, but I stopped myself. I selfishly wanted to keep them. Not because I wanted to read them—well, of course I wanted that—but I wouldn’t betray his confidence; it was because if I had something of his, it meant that I would absolutely have to see him again. It would mean he would be safe. A deluded thought process, but that’s where I was at the time. He’d have to come for me to get his books back, or I would have to find him to give them to him.
Now, for the first time since the whole episode occurred, I start to wonder why on earth Carrick was in the cells at all. How did he get there? If he and Mom had gone to get Juniper from the hospital, and Juniper and Mom were safe and well, and the others—Mona, Lennox, Fergus, and Lorcan—all said that he’d gotten away safe and sound, then how did he end up in Highland Castle?
I do a quick search on my phone and among the hundreds of changing news stories documenting what’s happening in our country I see it in black-and-white. Carrick Vane, accused of being on the run with Celestine North and evading Whistleblowers and breaking Guild rules, handed himself in.
That’s how he ended up back in the cell beside me. He wanted to be there.
And I left him.
I’ve been sitting here, trapped in time, in a kind of shock until now. My eyes fill with tears.
I take out his notebooks, feeling guilty but determined to know what’s inside, and I let out a whimper when I see the first page.
I find young, childish writing, and I realize they’re his institution diaries, the ones he admitted to writing for all those years and then hiding from his teachers.
Today we did a smell and taste test. They wanted to know what the smells reminded us of. Paul Cott started crying when he smelled lemon. He had to tell them why and when he did the teachers told him that that is a memory he needs to forget, that his parents were bad people.
Baby powder reminded me of baths. I think I had baths with Mommy. I must have because there’s only showers here. I remember the bubbles that I could hide under. I remember that they tickled my skin. I remember putting them on my chin and pretending to have a beard like Granddad. Then I remembered Granddad and Grandma and I remembered so many other things. I remember Mommy laughing. I remember her wrapping me in a huge towel like a baby and carrying me to her bed. I remember kicking and shouting and pretending I didn’t like it, but really I did. I remember a glass of chocolate milk while she dried my hair.
It must have been when I was five. Three years ago. But I remember.
She’s not a good mom, they say. Unfit. Dad, too. They tell me I’m here for my own good, that Mommy and Daddy want me here, but I don’t think that part is right. I remember them crying when the men took me. Screaming and crying. If she is so bad then why do I smile when I smell her perfume on Ms. Harris, who I will never tell wears the same as Mommy, and why does my tummy feel sick when I think of them?
The teachers are right. One smell leads to another. It helps to remember things and now I can’t stop thinking and remembering. They are the ones who made me start remembering, it’s not my fault. I’m not going to be like the others and tell them what I remember. Not the real things. Because I don’t want them to take them away from me.
As tears fall from my eyes I skip toward the end of the last notebook. I don’t have time to read it all; I need to find him and give them back to him.