It took a week before my roommate showed up. Rosey was quirky and blissfully ignorant of how my eyes traveled down her entire body as my mind imagined stabbing her in different places. Where would she bleed out the fastest?
She was thin. What would it feel like to slice someone who wasn’t so skinny?I craved feeling the plunge of the knife slicing through tissue and fat. It was the thickness and how it bled that I loved. Subconsciously, I slid my thumb over my lower lip, sometimes biting it. By the time she turned from hanging the poster on the wall, my cheeks were red and I needed air.
“Hey.”
“Huh? Did you say something?”
Her chuckle was fake, awkward. Fuck. She fidgeted, scratching her nape then crossing her arms then not wanting to cross them then doing it anyway, then pulling in her lower lip, then stuffing her hands in her daisy short pockets. Fuck. She was scared. “Ihavebeen talking to you. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Oh, sorry, I was reading my book. What was it?”
“Do you want to go to the Alpha-Delta party with me? I mean, there’s a bunch, but I got the entrance to that one. It’s supposed to be where the cutest boys are.”
“Oh. Sorry, but no. I don’t go to parties. Good luck.” I picked up my backpack, headphones, and books and left to spend the rest of the afternoon reading and writing in the library. Mom had given me a new journal to fill before letting me come up to London with Dad.
I resisted calling home for as long as I could, so weeks passed, then months, and in those months, I somehow managed to avoid attracting other humans. Sure, there was the occasional jock who would cat call me but then he’d cower away when I’d glare at him. I sat at the back of all my classes and tried not to look at anyone’s body or face.
Dear Diary
The very first thing I did when I arrived at Cambridge was set up the new laptop Dad purchased for me in downtown. My first web search? Killian Oster. I don’t know what I wasthinking. It wasn’t like I could be with him anyway, not like this. I told myself I just wanted to make sure he was okay… happy, maybe even married with kids. I mean he’d said that his people marry early.
Anyway, at first, I found nothing, but when I added the town we grew up in, I got the newspaper and TV channels’ stories. It confirmed everything Mael had accused him of. My heart dropped. For too long, I sat there with my elbows on the desk and my hands holding my head. I’d thought him a good person, but… maybe it had all been an act. It would have been fine for him to be like me but if what the media said was true then two things bothered me: he fooled me and he killed his own family. Why? I kept remembering his mother’s beautiful face, her amazingly long black hair, dark-teal eyes. How could anyone want to kill her? I reminisced about that day when she visited, the way her and Killian looked at each other. She was so sweet, just like Mom.
No. It’s just not possible.
Obsessively, I’ve filled my days by searching for his family’s name, researching which cities have the largest population of Irish Travelers,bed and breakfasts where I could stay at, and transportation. I have almost everything ready for my first trip.
17. Searching for Killian
MAGDALENA
Traveling to Dublin from Cambridge turned out to be almost too easy, but at the same time, I was nothing but a girl who’d never gone anywhere significant without my family. The first trip turned out to be a disaster. Don’t get me wrong, Ireland looks like a place where fairytales are born, but everywhere I went, I felt lost. The old buildings and streets quickly blended. I couldn’t understand anything the people said to me, and they couldn’t understand me with my thick French accent. Sometimes, my paranoia would spark, and I felt like I was being followed, so I’d take a sharp turn and get even more lost, stumbling into areas of the city that were not deemed safe.
Eventually, on the first afternoon, I managed to grab a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the nearest Irish Traveler site. Of course, he turned around and asked me to repeat, but then he simply drove. Soon, all the touristy cafés, stores, and hotels disappeared. The neighborhood was dirtier, many of the buildings abandoned or rundown and almost falling apart. The few people walking in the streets looked exhausted and unhappy. I’d never been in a place like that—Monaco had no poor areas.
The taxi drove off as soon as I got out of it. I simply started walking through the streets of the halting site. It didn’t take long before I had children of all ages following about a yard behind me. It made me smile how some of the toddlers following me were doing it in their unicorn-shaped cars. The whispers soon became shouts. “Hey! Who the hell are ya?” When I finally stopped walking and turned around, the whole street was packed with kids.
“Who the fuck are you?” one boy asked.
“You looking for someone?” a girl with a much softer tone asked.
I chuckled because they sounded exactly like him. It was as if I were home. Their faces… If I chose an eye here, a lip there, it would be him. I was so sure it would be the place where I’d find him.
“Does anyone know a Killian Oster?” I raised my voice so they could all hear me. They whispered among themselves, and many shook their heads.Please. Please give me some information, anything at all.The bang of a door closing caught our attention. To my left, a woman climbed down her steps to the street, joining the kids with a protective demeanor, her eyes scanned me up and down then glared. Her arms crossed over her chest.
“What you want?” Her chin lifted toward me. Her glare didn’t scare me because I was too saddened by their answers already. My heart was dying of loneliness, so cold and alone.
On the cusp of wailing inside my mind, I managed to beg, “I need to speak to an elder. C-can you please help me?” My voice broke.Killian, come on. Please. Please. Please.I shut my eyes tight and took a deep breath, hoping the painful hollowness that was spreading in my chest would disappear. Later that night, I tossed and turned, feeling stupid for being so optimistic; of course it wasn’t going to be that quick and easy.
Dublin
Sites outside Dublin
