“So because you think they’re all going to fail, that makes what they have right now fake?”
“Not fake. It’s just…what’s the point?” I feel like I should sit down for this. That way, Elodie can stand above me and lecture down at me instead of looking up at me and doing it. I think I’m doing her a favor. Maybe we can get this over with faster so we can go downstairs and get that over with too.
I sit my ass down hard on the edge of the bed and wait while Elodie eyes me. Her mouth works like she’s chewing the inside of her cheek furiously, though I sure hope not because that would hurt. Her face changes, cycling through disbelief to disgust, hope to hopelessness, and anger to possibly joy? It’s hard to tell. But no, not joy. That’s wrong.
I’m surprised when she walks over to the door. I expected a good sand blasting, the sand being all the reasons I’m an ass. I stand up slowly and warily, waiting for her to turn around, but that’s not Ell. Maybe I’m making this up because I can’t remember a time she ever blasted me for anything, as that’s not her way. She’s too nice for that, too thoughtful. When she has a problem, she works at it from all angles, and her patience is endless, which is what makes her so good at her job. She’s a good person. In fact, she’s the best person I know. Possibly the best in the entire world.
And she chose me.
I feel humbled.
I feel…I feel something sticky and aching in my chest.
I feel a kind of pressure coming down on my shoulders, but it’s not the kind that weighs a person down. It doesn’t feel like grief or problems. It’s a good kind of pressure if there is such a thing.
“If you don’t believe anyone can make it, that even what people have right now in the present isn’t worth it because, in the future, things might go to shit, then that’s very cynical. We just took things to another level, and it was good. It was…it was incredible, and I had hope for us. But with what you’re saying, I don’t even think the curse could help us.”
She’s not mad. She’s disappointed. And somehow, that’s a thousand times worse. This woman, this kind, generous, wonderful woman who is my best friend and who has stood by me through everything in my life, is disappointed in me.
“Ell…” I walk over, intending to wrap my arms around her. It’s a new impulse, but it feels as old as we are.
She dodges past me quite nimbly, making it clear there will not be any hugging it out until I find the courage and start using the defunct parts of myself. The feels? Is that what people call them? Short for feelings? I wouldn’t know. I’ve shut them down for so long that I have no experience with them. I hide behind jokes since making people laugh is a way to make them feel. Everyone loves to laugh. It’s the serious parts that I can’t handle.
I crank the handle, sure of one thing only…that what’s waiting for us downstairs is going to be nothing short of a disaster. I stop dead when I see the brooch.
“Oh, that’s funny,” I choke, but my voice is all wrong, and my head is cloudy and jumbled up.
“What’s funny…oh.” Elodie steps beside me and lets out an epic gasp. She sounds like a vacuum sucking in the air.
Or maybe that’s me. My breath is coming out messily, gasping, sucking in, bursting out. “Shit on a stick. How did that get there?”
“Maybe someone put it there.”
“No, I would have heard them coming up the stairs as the stairs creak. It’s impossible to get past them.”
“They could have climbed the railing.”
I give Elodie a look that says I think it’s doubtful my cousins spidered their ass up the banister. Granny, maybe. I can picture her going all stealthy spy on it. Or Lindy, since she has a history of breaking and entering. Toren? No, my brother is too big, and my sister wouldn’t be caught dead doing something like that. My cousins are so huge that they’d probably break the railing clean off.
I bend to grasp the brooch, and when I do, the bastard pricks me. Again. The pin part is open on the back, which I didn’t notice. It’s the same way it stabbed Elodie first.
That’s about all I can take. My head feels heavy, and I make a sound that comes out like a snort-grunt as dread pours into me, filing up my veins with its ice water tendrils. With that, I know I’m fucked. Man-down kind of fucked. Now I’m burning, shriveling up inside, and coiling into something…oh wait, that’s my stomach cramping up. My lungs and my breath, which hasn’t been pushed out in a good long while, are sloshing. Something else is also spinning, and my head is so heavy that I can’t process it.