I take a deep breath. “After my father forced me to complete the final round of drugs with no proof to show that it was effective, he became even more critical of me. My brother was still working hard to be the best he could be for our parents, but as the years went on, my mind began to wander. My illusions led me away from the path my parents wanted me on, but every time they’d drag me back with cruel words. My father lost his campaign, so of course he blamed it on me. Blamed it on the article that hit the news that his son was a super, losing him the backing of people who wanted to rid the world of supers.
“Not only did I have the weight of them expecting me to always do better and being despised as a super, but also the weight of destroying my father’s career. Now that I’m older, I know that it wasn’t because of me, but at that age I had no idea. And that’s when the spiral started.
“I began to resent Otto, who did so much for me. I still loved him to death, but sometimes… I’d look at him and realize that our parents really only liked him. They were hard on him, but it was still apparent that he met their standards. And… as an adult, I look back and see that in many ways, I did better than my brother. While we both had the highest GPAs, I often ranked higher than Otto did when he was my age. But it didn’t matterwhat I did; I would never get anywhere because of what I was. A part of me felt like forsaking my power, but another part knew that other than Otto, who was growing more and more busy as he prepared for college, the only support I had in my life were my own illusions.”
I take a sip of my coffee, needing a minute before I can tell them what I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ELLISON
Age fifteen
“Stop.”
I look up at Otto as he walks over to me. “I’m not doing anything.”
Otto’s eyebrow shoots up while he sits down on the couch next to me. “You think I don’t know you at this point? Do you? You think your brother knows nothing about you?”
“Possibly. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“We see each other every day at dinner.”
“You know what I mean,” I say, since he’s been studying day and night for the entrance exam required for admittance to the top private business school he’s planning to get into. It’s the very same school Father has had me lined up to join ever since I can remember.
“Once this is all over… let’s go do something fun,” he promises.
I just offer him a smile because I’m well aware that after today, I’ll be lucky if I’m allowed to even leave the house for anything other than school.
“I’m supposed to log in for my tutor soon,” he says as he picks his textbook up off the glass coffee table in front of us.
My stomach squeezes when I realize that he’s planning on leaving me. “Can you skip?” I ask. It comes out more like a plea than anything.
Otto watches me for a second before standing up. “Sorry. I can’t.”
“Please? Just this once. Tell them you’re sick. Father doesn’t need to know. You really think just one session will change anything?” I ask. “I need you.”
He kneels down. “It’s only two hours, Ellison. I’ll be right back. We can talk then, okay? You know if I miss, he’ll inform Father and then it’ll be a fucking mess…”
And he doesn’t want to get yelled at, either.
I give him a nod. “Yeah, sorry. We can talk after, for sure.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I fake a smile and watch him run upstairs so he isn’t late, not that he’s going to be. He still has fifteen minutes, but Otto is always early for whatever Father throws at him.
“Stop relying on him,” my illusion says as he appears. They’ve been appearing more and more often without permission, and I know it’s because I’ve been flustered. I’ve been pushed to my limits and whenever I am, I lose control over my power… just like I did earlier today.
“Stop fixating on it,” the illusion I call El continues. “You’re fine. Life continues to move on, doesn’t it? You need to build a wall and push everything that bothers you to the other side of the wall and don’t let it creep over.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” El says.
“Listen to him,” the one who calls himself Aspen tells me. While El took a part of my name, Aspen wanted to be his own person, and I understood that. I would never want to be me either.
“What if you ran away? Just fuck them. Fuck all of them and just… run,” Aspen says.
