“I am incapable of it,” he says dangerously, slowly, a breath away from my lips. Incapable of feeling? Emotions? Of believing others can spare sympathy for him?
My throat burns as if I’ve consumed acid. “Liar.”
His face contorts with rage, and he shakes his head as if chasing away wicked thoughts. “I won’t tell you again.” His voice quivers with emotion, making his accent heavier. Cameronstares into my eyes for a beat before he loosens his grip and walks out of the shower room.
I crumble to the ground and fist my hands against the hard tiles.
Fuck you too, Mori.
19
CAMERON
My pulse thundersthrough my head as I leave the barracks and walk straight past the men standing guard. They give me a wary once-over but decide I’m not their problem. I’m used to them all avoiding me as best they can. They know what I am… I’m glad for it. I prefer the embrace of isolation to their judgment.
“Where are you going, Mori?” Adams mutters from his desk at the edge of the gates. He’s leaning back in his chair, lowering a notebook and twirling a pen between his fingers boredly. His eyes drag over me, taking in my disarray. I’m keenly aware of the black liquid all over my shirt and the blood that stains my lips a bruised purplish-red. He gruffly looks back down at his notepad. “Out for a crisis walk, I see. Carry on then.”
I have half a mind to argue with him, but the headache that racks my skull at the moment won’t allow it. I storm past Adams and straight up the ramp back into the world above. It’s quiet now that all the cadets are below ground and sleeping, but the silence brings me no comfort.
She said she cares about me.I smack the side of my head and set a fast pace as I jog toward the forest. She’s lying to try to getme to lower my guard around her, I know it. She’s just like the rest of them.
Just like everyone else I let get too close.
“No one cares about you, Cameron. When will you understand that? Something as dirty and useless as you can never be more than what you are, nothing.”The words echo through my head, but I can’t recall who said them. The voice sounds like my mother’s, but I’ve heard it from so many people it all blends together in my mind. She’s going to try and kill me just like my mom did. She’s biding her time, waiting for the perfect time to catch me off guard.
I know it.I know it.
“Stop!” I shout, clenching my jaw and fisting my hands through my hair.
I break into a sprint. The trees blur as I race through them, trying to outrun my past. To outrun my thoughts. I don’t stop until my lungs are on fire and my body is so stiff that I trip and fall over roots.
The snow cascades around me and makes me still in its hold. It feels like frozen hands reaching up and gripping my arms, legs, and throat. I can’t breathe.
“Cameron, be good for me. Okay?” my mum said. She held my small hand delicately, gloved. Like she didn’t want to feel the warmth of my skin on hers. She took me to an odd building, the interior gray and cold. The walls were made up of cinder blocks, and old wooden chairs lined the hallway. The sign read “Intake,” but I didn’t know what it meant.
“Okay, Mum,” I replied softly as I took a seat. She didn’t sit down next to me. She stood anxiously, tapping her foot and checking her watch a few times.
After a while, a woman opened the office door and called her in. My mum looked at me sternly as she muttered, “Don’t move from that spot.” Then she disappeared behind the door.
I waited for a long time. Until the sun crept back beneath the mountains and the snow began to fall again. I knew I should listen and wait, but I had to use the bathroom and decided to stand by the glass doors and watch the snow for a while.
“Cameron, dear,” a woman’s voice called. I turned and looked over my shoulder and found a stranger with a clipboard in her arms.
I didn’t respond. My eyes moved past her and down the hall where I saw a flash of my mum’s purse. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, and my mum was right there. Fear struck through me, and I walked down the hall toward the woman and my mum, but she walked away. She didn’t look at me.
“Cameron, honey, can you come with me for a moment?” The woman tried talking to me again and attempted to grab my arm when I passed her.
I broke into a run and started screaming. “Mum! Help me!” She didn’t turn to face me. She kept walking toward the exit.Can she not hear me?“Mum? Mum!” I shouted over and over, but she only gripped her purse tighter and shut the door behind her.
The sound of those heavy doors rolled through my being, creating cracks and crevices I’d never fill properly.
I didn’t realize it was a school for bad children when she dropped me off. It took me years to come to terms with the abandonment she put me through. A few more to open up to others again. She’d visit twice a year. Once on my birthday and again during Christmas.
Something hardened inside my heart during my time there. I had Clara, who was as close to a sister as I could’ve hoped for, but she was five years older than me and left long before I did. The only things I learned from her were how to drown out the world with depressants and how to braid hair properly. Thebeatings and lack of love made me grow cold. Then came the news of Clara’s death only a few years after her departure.
“People like us don’t live long,” she told me once, and the thought replayed often through my mind.
By the time my mother brought me home, I was already sixteen. Already dead inside.
