Unravel Me: The Juliette Chronicles Book 2

It’s always ‘Shut up, Kenji.’ ‘Go to sleep, Kenji.’ ‘No one wants to see you naked, Kenji.’ When I know for a fact that there are thousands of people who would love to see me naked

“Please.”

He says “Please don’t shoot me for this.”

And he kisses me.

Finally, he whispers, “Are you okay, love? How do you feel?”

And I smile to myself, thinking of all the ways I could answer that question.

I think of how my body is more exhausted, more defeated, more drained than it’s ever been in my life. I think about how I’ve had nothing but a glass of water in 2 days. How I’ve never been more confused about people, about who they seem to be and who they actually are, and I think about how I’m lying here, sharing a bed in a house we were told doesn’t exist anymore, with one of the most hated and feared people of Sector 45. And I think about how that terrifying creature has the capacity for such tenderness, how he saved my life. How his own father shot me in the chest. How only hours earlier I was lying in a pool of my own blood.

I think about how my friends are probably still locked in battle, how Adam must be suffering not knowing where I am or what’s happened to me. How Kenji is still pulling the weight of so many. How Brendan and Winston might still be lost. How the people of Omega Point might all be dead. And it makes me think.

I feel better than I ever have in my entire life.

I’m amazed by how different I feel now. How different I know things will be now. I have so many things to do. So many scores to settle. So many friends who need my help.

Everything has changed.

Because once upon a time I was just a child.

Today I’m still just a child, but this time I’ve got an iron will and 2 fists made of steel and I’ve aged 50 years. Now I finally have a clue. I’ve finally figured out that I’m strong enough, that maybe I’m a touch brave enough, that maybe this time I can do what I was meant to do.

This time I am a force.

A deviation of human nature.

I am living, breathing proof that nature is officially screwed, afraid of what it’s done, what it’s become.

And I’m stronger. I’m angrier.

I’m ready to do something I’ll definitely regret and this time I don’t care. I’m done being nice. I’m done being nervous. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.

Mass chaos is in my future.

And I’m leaving my gloves behind.

Wind is gnawing at the windows, straining against the walls. Rain is popping against the roof like popcorn against a pane of glass.

The message from the sky is clear: we are pissed.

We are pissed and we will punish you and we will make you pay for the blood you spill so freely. We will not sit idly by, not anymore, not ever again. We will ruin you, is what the sky says to us.

How could you do this to me? it whispers in the wind.

I gave you everything, it says to us.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

I’m supposed to hate him, I try to remember all the horrible things I’ve seen him do. But I’m tortured because I understand too much about what it’s like to be tortured. To do things because you don’t know any better. To do things because you think they’re right because you were never taught what was wrong.

Because it’s so hard to be kind to the world when all you’ve ever felt is hate.

Because it’s so hard to see goodness in the world when all you’ve ever known is terror.

And I want to say something to him. Something profound and complete and memorable but he seems to understand. He offers me a strange, unsteady smile that doesn’t reach his eyes but says so much.

“On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.”

“I can’t believe you have that memorized,” I whisper.

He leans back again. Closes his eyes again. Says, “Nothing in this life will ever make sense to me but I can’t help but try to collect the change and hope it’s enough to pay for our mistakes.”

“I wrote that, too?” I ask him, unable to believe it’s possible he’s reciting the same words that fell from my lips to my fingertips and bled onto a page. Still unable to believe he’s now privy to my private thoughts, feelings I captured with a tortured mind and hammered into sentences I shoved into paragraphs, ideas I pinned together with punctuation marks that serve no function but to determine where one thought ends and another begins.

This blond boy has my secrets in his mouth.

“You wrote a lot of things,” he says, not looking at me. “About your parents, your childhood, your experiences with other people. You talked about hope and redemption and what it would be like to see a bird fly by. You wrote about pain. And what it’s like to think you’re a monster. What it was like to be judged by everyone before you’d even spoken two words to them.” A deep inhale. “So much of it was like seeing myself on paper,” he whispers. “Like reading all the things I never knew how to say.”

And I wish my heart would just shut up shut up shut up shut up.

hell is empty
and all the devils are here

“Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you’re a blur that blends into the background.

“Run, Juliette, run faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it beat too fast for too long and run.

“Run run run until you can’t hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.

“Run until you drop dead.

“Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.

“Run, I said.”

I’m rooted to the ground, frozen in my own skin, unable to move forward or backward for fear of waking up and realizing that this is actually happening. I feel like I might die of embarrassment, of this invasion of privacy, and I want to run and run and run and run and run

“Run, I said to myself.” Warner has picked up my notebook again.

“Please.” I’m begging him. “Please s-stop—”

“I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not I’m actually alive. So I sit here. I sit here every single day.”