Page 83 of Echoes of a Silent Song

But for me, a nuclear bomb had exploded, and I was now dealing with the fallout.

Victor had never showed me that note on the back of his acceptance letter.Never even told me about it.

He probably hadn’t seen it at first.We’d both been pretty focused on reading the main text, after all.But at some point, between the excitement, the telling his parents, the whole week I’d spent in bed, the time I’d been back at school ...sometime in the last few weeks he had to have seen it.He had to know what it said.

He had to know it was about me.

And maybe that was exactly why he didn’t tell me.

He didn’t want me to know what Whitehall said about me.

I’d let him have my best work, but he needed everyone to believe that it was his work.Maybe he needed to believe it himself too, because that was the level of work they’d expect from him.

He’d absorbed the best thing I could give him into himself and claimed it as his own.Next fall, everyone would think he was some genius.He had a wonderful future ahead of him.

A future that should’ve been mine.A future I’d handed him on a silver platter.A future he might not have had at all thanks to his birthday being drawn in the lottery.

And he’d never even said thank you.

Wait a minute.Did he even love me?Or did he just love my talent, the fact that I’d give him my best and ask for nothing in return?

Did I mean anything at all to him?Or was I just someone he had to step on—stepover—to get where he wanted to go?

The room spun.My stomach churned.I couldn’t be here anymore.Not now.Not with him.I needed space for my drug-dulled brain to make sense of this.Because it wasVictor.The man I loved.He couldn’t be this person.

Could he?

Maybe he wasn’t.He probably wasn’t.It was probably the new medicine making me paranoid and anxious and seeing ghosts where none existed.

But it sure didn’t feel like nothing.

It felt like ...the truth.

Maybe I wasn’t crazy.Or maybe I was.Maybe the drugs helped me think clearly.Or maybe they made me see monsters.

I needed fresh air.I needed to walk home.I needed to be by myself in my pink-flowered prison and go back over my relationship with Victor and hope and pray that something—anything—from the past few months would convince me he really did love me.

“I’m sorry, Victor.”I gathered my books.“I just remembered my mother needed me home by five tonight.”

“I can’t walk you.”He didn’t even glance up.“I have to get these finished here.You know I can’t concentrate at home.”

For the first time, his excuses didn’t disappoint me.

Would they, if I were capable of feeling disappointed?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t care.

All I knew was that I could leave right then and Victor wasn’t even asking why.I should take the win and skedaddle.

So I did.I walked out of the café and turned left down the broad, tree-lined street toward home.

This all had to be a dream.Any minute now I’d wake up and look at the clock and realize I’d overslept.That’s how this had to go.It couldn’t be real.None of it could.

Because if it was real?

Then I’d been completely and totally fooled.