“We’re all a bit mad, I suppose,” he quotes Lewis Carroll for what, I assume, is a lack of a better answer. My fingernails dig into my palm because I’m so frustrated.
“I love you, you know,” he offers, and his face is suddenly gentle. “God, I hate this, Calla.”
He walks away, like standing near me is painful.
I do the only thing I can do. I retreat to my room, where I’m alone and no one is watching. The room is lonely and quiet, and I can’t take the silence.
“Finn, you’d hate this place.”
Of course there’s no answer, but it makes me feel better to talk to him, to pretend my other half is still living, still making me whole.
I picture his face and he laughs.
“You’re such a goof, Cal,” he tells me, his pale blue eyes twinkling. “You were always the better half. You don’t need me.”
“That’s dumb,” I reply instantly. “I’ll always need you. I’m probably going to never stop talking to you, ok?”
He rolls his eyes and stands in the moonlight. “Fine. But there’s going to come a time when I stop answering. Because eventually, you have to let me go, Cal. For your own good.”
“Don’t tell me what my own good is,” I scowl, but he laughs, because that’s what Finn does. He laughs and he makes every situation better.
“Stay with me,” I urge him. “I feel so alone.”
He nods and he sits on the bed with me, and he watches me while I settle down to sleep. He hums, a song without words, a song that’s familiar, but I can’t place the name.
“Sleep,” he tells me. “I’m right here.”
So I do. I sleep while the memory of my dead brother watches over me, because that’s the only way I feel safe.
But even then, my dreams plague me.
“One for one for one.”
The whispers seem to come from the corners, from the shadows, from the halls. “One for one, Calla. One for me, one for me.”
It cackles and hisses and I run around the corners, into the dark.
As I escape, I realize something and skid to a halt.
I left Finn behind.
They have him now.
No.
No.
I have to go back. I turn, but I can’t move. My feet are enmeshed with the ground.
I hear him screaming and I force myself to move, but I’m suddenly stopped by Dare.
He grabs my arms and restrains me, his arms like steel bands, not letting me go.
“You can’t help him now,” he tells me somberly, his black eyes glistening. “I’m sorry.”
My screams wake me up and Finn is still sitting on the side of my bed.
“Are you ok?” My brother’s voice is anxious, and the moonlight shines onto his face. “You’re just having a dream. Wake up, it’s ok.”
I nod and grab his hand and he grins.
“Was it the bogeyman?”
I try to smile back, but the feeling of terror and loss is still too great.
I nod instead. “Yeah. The bogeyman.”
It’s a private joke, because Finn and I have always said that there’s no bogeyman in the entire world that we’re scared of since we sleep in a funeral home.
But my dream…. It preyed on the thing that does scare me, the thing that has always scared me the most.
Losing my brother.
But that already happened, and I survived, and I’m still here.
But the fear still owns me, because I can’t let him go.
“I’m fine,” I tell him confidently. Because it was just a dream.
Just a dream. The worst already happened.
He nods and starts to get up, but I tug at his hand. “Stay.”
Because maybe it was a dream, but it was so real.
There is understanding in my brother’s eyes and he curls up next to me without a word. There are no words needed, just his soothing presence. Real or not, he calms me and I’m not ready to give that up.
It’s not long before Finn’s breathing is soft and even and I know I’ve imagined him into sleep.
I watch him, the way his chest pulls deep breaths, the way his mouth is slack. The way he’s my other half and I have no idea what I’ll do without him, even though I know I have to try.