Page 122

Just so he can catch me.

With tension polluting the air, he grabs my hand, spins us around, and points the knife at the mannequin.

“Stop picturing all the people you want to kill and picture the people you have killed. Recreate that night in your head. Replay it over and over until stabbing that knife in their necks feels liberating.”

It takes too long to pull my headspace away from the predator standing behind me, but eventually, I manage it.

The moment that night replays in my head, I want to curl in on myself. Remembering how I plunged that pen into Sydney’s body until the life was snuffed from her eyes. Or slashing my knife across Jerry’s neck and watching his eyes bug from his head.

I was protecting myself. Yet, I still carry their deaths on my shoulders as if they were innocent.

For the next hour, I continue to struggle. I’m growing frustrated with myself and picking myself apart to figure out why I feel guilty, particularly over Sydney. Is it because she was a victim too? She was forced into the same things I was, enduring the brutality of sex trafficking that ultimately sent her into a psychotic break.

Over and over, I turn it in my head until it clicks.

Sydney may have been deranged, but she was broken too. She deserved my sympathy, but that doesn’t excuse her from her actions. It doesn’t give her the right to hurt other people. And it doesn’t mean I was wrong for ending her life.

Though, with Jerry, Claire, Xavier, and all the others who decided I was nothing more than an object—they don’t deserve anything more from me than what they’ve already stolen. Not my sympathy, remorse, or guilt. It wasn’t my decision to be raped and brutalized, but it is my decision to slit their throats for it.

As I come up to the second hour, going through the movements with Zade becomes natural. Sliding the knife into the dummy’s neck feels just as he said it would. Liberating.

Others may believe it is never okay to take a life under any circumstances. We are not the judge. At one point, I might have even believed that, too. But then I came face-to-face with true evil. People who are not human at all, but vile things that will continue to destroy this world and anything good that inhabits it.

Now, I realize that choosing to look the other way and let God handle it is a fucking cop-out. It’s allowing evil to continue to live because they believe the afterlife is scarier.

If it’s so scary, then why wait to send them there?

Now, I realize it’s selfish. They’re too fucking scared about making it into heaven to condone murder, even if it saves innocent women and children's lives.

Doesn’t that make them just as evil?

Condemning those who are capable of being the executioner doesn’t make them better people. It makes them compliant.

By the time the third hour passes, I’m panting heavily, sweat pours down my face and back, and I feel invigorated.

When I face Zade again, it feels as if I’m viewing him from a different set of lenses. I wonder if he sees me differently, too, and if he’ll be able to let go of who I used to be and love the person I’ve become.

“Adeline, I feel as if this house is taxing your mental health,” Mom announces with finality, brushing off imaginary lint on her Calvin Klein jeans. It's not very often I even see her in anything other than a dress, skirt, or pantsuit.

I feel so special.

“Why do you say that?” I ask, voice monotone and un-fucking-interested. I’m rocking in Gigi’s chair, staring out at the gloomy landscape. It’s storming today, and the windows are foggy from the rain. I tilt my head, fairly certain I’m seeing a handprint forming on the window.

Aside from the creepy hand, sitting here brings back a sense of comfort and nostalgia. Where a different version of myself would stare out the window, my shadow lurking in the darkness and watching me. Where I loathed every second of it, yet I would war with the fact of not knowing if I hated it because I was scared or if I hated it because I enjoyed it.

“Honey, have you seen the circles under your eyes? You can hardly miss them. They’re very dark. And on your birthday, no less.”

This is my mother being sweet. Caring. Concerned. And frankly, it’s fucking exhausting. She’s been trying harder to… I don’t know—fix things with me or something—since I’ve come home. Of course, my father has no interest in joining her efforts, but I can’t find it in me to care.

Her daughter getting kidnapped must’ve made her realize a thing or two about the state of our relationship and how utterly in shambles it was—is. Whose fault it is, I’m sure she’d have a different response depending on her mood.

But she’s trying. Therefore, it’s only fair that I try not to kick her out of the house. On my birthday. I’m already exhausted, and it would seem my dark circles are showing now.

Zade woke me up to my bedroom covered in roses and a gorgeous black knife with purple weaved throughout the handle. I’m getting better at handling them, but it’s a work in progress and his present was a testament to his faith in me.

Then, Daya wanted to do brunch, and now Mom is here and I’m ready for a nap. People-ing is still tiring.

“Concealer will fix it.”