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Callie: he’s trying to isolate you
do not go anywhere with him, I typed.
Priya: I hope you come up with a plan, Marlowe
Damian arrived at exactly eight-thirty, and unlike me, he was dressed like he knew what he was doing: a black thermal shirt, a waxed jacket, and technical pants.
The drive was quiet at first. I fiddled with the hem of my shirt while I questioned my own sanity for committing to torturing myself. But another worry was also gnawing at me.
“What if Kai follows us tonight?”
“He won’t. He’s busy with Callie.”
I watched him in the dashboard light. “Are you and Kai close? You said you know him better than he knows himself.”
It took him a moment to answer me.
“Close in that we’ve lived through things together we’d rather forget.”
“But he…spied on you.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I’ve done the same to him. That’s how it works. Not reporting something is the same thing as hiding it, and hiding it is how you get hurt. So you report, even if you don’t want to. You learn to tell them just enough to stay useful and not enough to screw anyone over, and you hope the other guy’s doing the same for you.”
“That’s horrible.”
“And very efficient. We can’t trust each other, and we can’t not need each other. I don’t blame him for following us to Moonstone Beach. He had a choice between telling them I was up to something and explaining why he didn’t later.”
We drove in silence for another stretch. The road bent west and the trees gave way, and there was the Pacific, flat and gray and enormous, taking up more of the world than should have been possible. The fog sat out past the break, ready to roll in and suffocate the shore.
“You’re quiet,” Damian said.
“I’m looking at the water,” I said. Then I asked a question I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to: “Where did you learn this… this thing you’re about to teach me?”
Damian was quiet for long enough that I wished I hadn’t asked.
“The same place I learned most things,” he said quietly.
I looked at him. The steel gray cold of the ocean seeped right into the cab of the jeep.
“They started when I was very young,” he said. “Years before they made me take a knife to my own dog. Before I really understood what fear was. Back when I didn’t even know that there are houses where children are allowed to cry.”
I swallowed. I didn’t have anything to say that wouldn’t sound hollow. I let him continue instead.
“You learn what happens when your breathing changes or your hands shake. Or when you look too long at the door.” His mouth tightened slightly. “At some point, I learned to keep my face still while someone decides what lesson they’re going to teach me.”
“Damian—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It may be sick, but it is useful.”
“And now you’re teaching me.”
He glanced at me. “Yes. But I need you to understand the difference.”
“What difference?”
“They didn’t ask me.”
I asked myself if I had consented. For the last month, I’d been struggling to keep my head above water, and I’d spent so much time trying to understand the thing that wanted to drown me, I wasn’t even sure what I’d agreed to. I thought about it for a moment. Then I answered:
