Is it because I need more exercise?
Or is it because I need more purpose in life?
When we get back home—
Whoa.
How in the world did I end up thinking of Icelle’s place as home?
—Icelle takes one look at me and nods slowly like she always does when she’s realized something profound (and usually annoyingly true, for whoever it is she’s talking to, which unfortunately in this case is me).
“The women got you thinking.”
I join her at the table. We’re in their home library, and it’s an actual library with shelf ladders and dark wood shelves that go all the way up, and normally I’d love to see all the titles they have in high fantasy because those are the only kind of books that can make me forget how unfantasy-like my real life is—
In a normal day, I’d do that, but now?
“I think I wasted my life away,” I whisper.
She shakes her head, which for Icelle is equivalent to her telling menotto be an idiot—
“You were just afraid to hope.”
Because she thinks it’s something else.
That I was afraid to hope.
But can it really be just that?
Can it really be that when—
“I know it’s bad to hate your own parents...”
—I find myself wringing my hands because otherwise, I’d be forced to admit that it’s someone else’s neck I want to wring.
“But she just makes me feel so angry.”
Icelle shakes her head at me again, and well, I guess, I’m being stupid again?
“She makes you feel helpless.”
How matter-of-fact she says this.
“And that’s what makes you angry.”
And because it’s Icelle who’s saying these things—
“No one wants to feel helpless, not in this world.”
I don’t even feel like I have the right to argue, not when Icelle’s own mom is one of the few women who’s even worse than mine.
“You...you r-really believe that?” I hate how my voice is shaking.
“I do.”
But I just can’t help it.
Because what she’s saying...
