Though I suppose we all have our masks. Some look different, and some, like hers and Sutton’s, are all too similar.
“He loves me,” I tell her. “And you’re projecting. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but… You told Dean Bauer, and Pythia found out.”
“So? Pythia finds out everything anyway. You guys—I saw you that day in the Obeliskos. It was only a matter of time.”
“Pythia found out, and while I was trying to figure out how to deal with that mess, I learned I was responsible for killing the sister of the man I love. He sent me away so he could processthat, and in the meantime, I was abducted. Beaten nearly to death and threatened with worse. The only reason I came out of that cave alive was because ofhim.”
She snaps her mouth shut.
“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” I tell her. “I never would’ve done this to you. Not in a million years.”
“Noelle, I’m?—”
If she’s going to apologize, she seems to think better of it at the last second. My heart shatters when she turns away and starts back in the direction she was originally heading, leaving me to be swallowed by uncertainty and heartbreak.
She really never believed in me at all.
58
SUTTON
Drowning,it turns out, is not as painless and serene as you’d think.
It’s lonely, waiting for your lungs to fill up. Despite being surrounded by water, cradled in its icy, liquid embrace, the knowledge that everything is slowly ending makes you feel further away from humanity than ever before.
There’s no time to act when you’re dying. When your efforts have been exhausted, fear and determination take a back seat to acceptance.
The longer I float, descending in a sea of pitch-black toward my demise, I wonder if this is what Bellamy felt. It seems fitting that I’d reach the same fate as my twin—nature balancing itself out.
Of course, I don’t get a happily ever after. No chance to see my mother’s face or check on my brother or tell the woman I left in my apartment this morning exactly how I feel about her.
Hazel eyes and long, dark brown hair appear before me, just out of reach. I lift my arms, aware that making it out isn’t an option but desperate to touch her one last time.
She slips from my grasp just as my fingers graze her locks, like seaweed being swept away with the current.
One last touch would have been nice, but I suppose I don’t deserve even that.
I wonder if she’ll cry—no, I know she will. She’ll be sad and perhaps even a little angry. Confused.
Alone.
She’ll be alone again.
I can’t tell if it’s the water infiltrating my lungs or if sadness and guilt weigh me down instead. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. They have the same effect either way.
Down, down I sink.
Hand outstretched toward the surface, where a tiny sliver of light shines through. That light wraps around my wrist, pulling against my descent.
A fitting metaphor.
59
ELLE
The forest is definitely watchingme suffer.
As the sky darkens with rain clouds, it feels like the trees might even be laughing.
