“What? No!” I reply.
“Some people think you were trying to be a hero,” she says. “That you still see yourself as a hero, that you’re perhaps above everybody else. That your apparent selfless act does not make you Flawed, or at least that it puts you on a different level from the other Flawed. I think you wanted to be different, stand out, were tired of being in the middle of the road, normal girl, boring girl, abider of rules.”
I bite my lip to stop myself from snapping at her, which is what she wants.
“Do you think you’re a hero, Celestine?”
I sigh. “If I was such a hero, that old man would be alive now. Nobody seems to be considering the fact that a man is dead. A man died because an entire bus full of people failed to help him. Do I think I’m a hero? No. I failed.”
She frowns, slightly confused. “But you succeeded in raising your issue to a higher platform. Everybody is now talking about the ‘aiding a Flawed’ rule. An overwhelming number of people want it stricken from the rules.”
I’m surprised to hear this. If it’s gotten rid of, will that mean I’m not Flawed anymore? How can they undo my scars? They can’t. Never.
She looks at her watch, then at me eagerly. “When can we meet again?”
I shrug. “I’m here every day after school. Don’t plan on going anywhere.”
“A popular girl like you? I’m sure you have plenty of offers. I heard you were offered a perfume deal.”
I snort. “What, Eau de Flawed? Who would be bothered to buy that, and why on earth would I want that? You really don’t know anything about me at all, do you?”
“I just wanted to introduce myself today. Let’s meet again tomorrow,” she says eagerly, picking up her briefcase. “If you’re not the boring teenager who was fed up with her life and did something as a cry for attention, then I suggest you talk to me or that will be my story.” She holds out her left hand this time. I reluctantly reach out and shake it with my unbranded hand.
I stay in my seat, fuming, thinking back over our conversation. “By the way, I don’t have five brands.”
She freezes at the door, pivots ever so delicately on her peach pumps.
“Pardon?”
“You said I am the most Flawed person in history, with five brands. Crevan gave me six.”
THIRTY-THREE
PIA IS STILL staring at me. She hasn’t blinked once. I know the press hasn’t reported my sixth brand for some reason, which surprises me. I assumed Crevan would want the whole world to know. If she doesn’t know, she can’t print it. And while Pia’s not knowing gives me comfort, I also want her to know that she doesn’t know everything, that even her basic knowledge of me is wrong. She tried to put me out when I walked in. I’ll put her out when she leaves. If Crevan has lied to her, her little, solid world will be rocked, and I want to see the look on her face for my own gratification. Saying it is worth it for the reaction.
“He what?” she says, shocked, her cool demeanor completely gone. “In court, he distinctly said five.”
I make a decision whether to continue. It will probably come out sometime anyway, better that it’s from me. And even if she prints it, it’s true. Crevan can’t blame me for that. My heart pounds as I say it aloud. “He came to me in the Branding Chamber. He asked me to repent. I wouldn’t. So he ordered a sixth on my spine. Without anesthetic. Said I was Flawed to the very backbone.” I decide not to mention that it was him who branded me. Best to save my revelations.
“He … what?” She can barely speak. “But that’s not allow—I mean, it’s never been…”
She knows she can’t say much more about it. Question and doubt Judge Crevan? In the company of a Flawed? She’s not that foolish.
“Talk to your buddy Crevan about it.” I leave her standing in the doorway in shock.
It’s the first time I smile in almost a week. When the lows are so immense, the victories are small. But they are there despite it. You just have to know them when you see them, little pockets of light and hope hidden away in the darkness.
When I return to my bedroom, I find Mary May has been rummaging through my table beside my bed. I look around my bedroom in surprise. My wardrobes are open, clothes have been pulled off the hangers and left on the floor, and my shelves have been rooted through and left untidy. She’s sitting on my bed reading my journal, which is sitting on her lap, my private diary. I want to cry right there. I haven’t written in it since before the trial, I haven’t had the energy. It feels like a different life, but they are my private thoughts, silly things, embarrassing things, but things that were important to me at the time of writing them. My secret thoughts, and she’s sitting right there stealing them.
I open my mouth to protest, but as if sensing it, she holds up her gloved hand to silence me. She turns the page. Finally, she snaps the journal shut and looks at me up and down as if seeing right through to my soul.
“Rules state you are to expect random searches of your private possessions. If you’re going to continue writing this journal, for example, further thoughts on whether your thighs are fat and if you’ll be any good at sex”—she sneers, and I feel my whole face heat up with embarrassment—“I expect you to hand it over to me every Friday so that I can read it for myself. Is that clear?”
I swallow. And nod.
“What did I say about verbal communication?”
“Yes,” I say, and it comes out as a whisper. I clear my throat and repeat it, but she’s pleased by the effect she’s had on me.
She picks up the Highland Castle snow globe that she’s found in my bedside table and gives it a shake.
“Always good to have a reminder, isn’t it?” she says, dropping it into my hands as she passes, the red sparkling glitter falling down and coating the bottom like drops of blood. It feels like a warning.
I rush to the bed and throw the snow globe back into the drawer. I never want to see it again. I pick up the journal and start to rip the pages out, first one by one, then frantically as I start to sob. When I’ve torn all the pages out, they lie scattered on the floor.
Mom comes to the door and watches me, concerned.
“She was reading my journal,” I splutter.
Mom joins me on the floor and looks around at the pages. Then she picks them up and starts to rip them into little pieces, her face not as cool as usual, her eyes filling up. This gesture means more to me than anything she could have said. I join her, and we rip the pages of my handwriting, excited exclamation marks, stars and hearts around Art’s name, doodles and words that came from my heart, concerns I ached over, stories I giggled over, private thoughts that were once only mine. I watch the hearts be ripped to pieces.
Angelina Tinder was right. They want to be in our heads. I will never let them in my head again.
THIRTY-FOUR
JUNIPER AND I barely speak.
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 kno
ws 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
MY HEART IS pounding. I can’t believe it. I can’t wipe the grin off my face.
We’re so close I’m pressed up against the bookshelf. I feel a few books slide behind me as I push against them. Art looks tired, his hair not as bright, a bit grubby, his curls looking more like knots. There are dark circles around his eyes, like he hasn’t slept for weeks, and the mischievous glint is gone from his eyes; they’re flat. While I take him in, he does the same with me. He studies my temple, the one with the brand, and winces as if feeling my pain. His fingers come close to touching it, but they don’t make contact, just hover above my skin. His finger runs down my cheek to my lip, and he looks at my mouth with intensity. I know he’s thinking about my tongue brand.
“It’s still me,” I whisper.
“I know, I just…”
“It’s okay.”
There’s a silence, and I suddenly don’t know what to say. I’ve wanted to kiss him for so long, but now it doesn’t feel right, it feels different, he seems different, and I have so many questions, like where on earth has he been?
“Who’s Logan?” he asks before I get a chance to speak. “You called out his name.”
“Oh, that’s just nobody. It doesn’t matter. Art, where have you been?”
“What’s that?” He looks down at the invitation in my hands, reads it.
“Logan Trilby?” His face looks hard, angry.
“He was just being kind, Art,” I say quietly. “How did you get in here?”
He lightens up a little, but he seems flat. “The number of times I had to sit in here for study, I eventually found a way out.”
“I’ve been so worried about you. I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know what is going on. Where have you been all this time? It’s been a week and a half.”
“I can’t tell you where I’ve been.”
“Why not?”
He looks around, paranoid. “Because they’ll ask you where I am, and I don’t want you to have to lie, to get into trouble again.”
“I couldn’t possibly be in any more trouble.”
Neither of us laughs.
“Please tell me.”
“I can’t. They’ll follow you to me. They’re watching you all the time.”
He leans in, and I think he’s going to kiss me. I watch his lips and wait for them to kiss my lips, but he moves away again.
“I’ve needed you,” he says.
“Me too.” I feel tears prick, feeling sorry for myself. “I feel like you just left me alone.…”
“I’m sorry. I just had to get away from him,” he says, stepping away, agitated. “I’ve been so confused, trying to figure it all out. I was so angry with you, Celestine.” He shakes his head. “Everything was perfect.”
I’m in so much shock I can’t speak. After what his dad did to me, he’s angry with me?
“And I can’t even look at him knowing what he did to you. Five brands? Five?! That wasn’t just to hurt you, it was to hurt me, too.”
He doesn’t know about the sixth. I can’t tell him, his rage is so intense. I want to reach out to touch him, but for some reason I can’t.
“And I can’t live with you, either, knowing that my dad did this to you,” he says, taking a step back. “I’m in the middle of the both of you, and whatever I do, it will be wrong.”
“Art, listen to me,” I say, feeling the panic rising. I can’t lose him. If I lose him, then I’ll have nothing.
“No, you listen to me. What you did on the bus was right, but it was wrong for us. If you were selfish like me, you wouldn’t have done it. If I was as strong as you, I would have defended you. I would have stood beside you on that bus. Instead, I watched you do it all, in silence. I let the person I loved get dragged away.”
Loved? He loved me! Does he still? The celebration of that idea is killed by the uncertainty of whether it exists anymore.
“It’s not your fault, Art. None of it is your fault. I can’t lose you. What about school? What about university?” I plead with him. “We can do all the things we planned, and then you and I can go somewhere together, away from everyone else. We’ll take our time, build a plan.”
“Where, Celestine? Where exactl
y can you go?” he asks, and I detect anger at me again. “You can’t leave the country. And you can’t go anywhere without alerting the Whistleblowers. Every single Flawed person is accounted for at all times. You have to report your every move to them. If you move, you get a new Whistleblower. And if you do that, then he’ll know, too. He’ll always know where we are. We’ll never be free of him. He’ll make our lives hell.”
“We could make it work,” I say, holding on to him, trying to stop his pacing.
Just being with Art would be enough for me, even if I have to live under Flawed rules and Art doesn’t. Crevan couldn’t possibly make things any worse for us.
But there’s something else he has said that has my mind in overdrive, about every Flawed person having a Whistleblower, every Flawed being documented, their whereabouts known. I’m trying to find Carrick. Carrick will have a Whistleblower, his whereabouts will be documented. My heart pounds with excitement. “Art, can you help me find someone?”
“Who?”
“A Flawed guy. His name is Carrick.”
“Who?” His eyes narrow.
“Carrick. I don’t know his surname. He was beside me in the cells. I really need to find him.”
His jaw tightens. “Yeah? Become close, did you? Just like Logan?”
“Art!” I say, surprised.
“Forgive me, Celestine, if I don’t know exactly who you are anymore, if I have to question you.”
“You know exactly who I am.” I swallow hard.
He examines me again. He sighs and closes his eyes, the stress clinging to him, weighing him down. I don’t know where he’s been staying, but there’s an earthy smell to his clothes.
“Carrick was kind to me, Art. I was alone in there and so was he, and he looked out for me. I just want to say thank you to him. I just want to know … what it’s like for him. If it’s the same for him as it is for me. It would be nice to talk to someone who understands—”
“You think that I don’t understand you? Forget it.” He walks away. “Do you know how hard it was for me to come here today? Dad has people out looking for me everywhere. Do you know what I risked? What I’ve risked for you period? And in the middle of my trying to explain, you ask me to help you find some Flawed guy you met in a cell? You’re going to parties like nothing’s happened? Well, I’m delighted everything is fine for you,” he says sarcastically, storming down the aisle.