I brought my gaze back to hers. “Because they are?”
That made her laugh lightly, but she still looked concerned. Now, sitting here, looking at my behavior over the last hour or so, I understood why she was concerned.
After Abram left, unceremoniously shutting the door in my face, I’d watched the funicular until it disappeared down the mountain. I then stared at the darkness where the small car should (approximately) be for much longer, all the while arguing with myself.
He knows the truth. He doesn’t.
He does. He definitely, definitely does. He doesn’t know. How could he know? And at this point, why would he care?
The way he looked at me, like he hates me. He knows, and he hates me, and now I feel like becoming one with the snow. I want to make snow angels until every part of me is numb and I can’t think, or feel my toes, or my heart. He doesn’t know and stop being so dramatic. If he knew, wouldn’t he have reached out? Confronted you? Or told your parents? Or told Leo? Or a million other things?
Then why did he look at me like that? Maybe he still has feelings for Lisa? Maybe you remind him of her and that’s why he was distant?
But he wasn’t just distant, he was aggressively aloof!
I’d rubbed my chest, wincing. It hurt. It hurt reminiscent of those early days after Chicago, with the searing intensity of sitting too close to a campfire, in a sauna, while severely sunburned, under a heat lamp, and sitting on coals. My brain was a mess—again—and I couldn’t draw a full breath no matter how much I tried.
What are you going to do? I don’t know.
I didn’t know what to do. Standing there in the funicular structure, staring at black nothing, I hurt all over and I didn’t know what to do.
DAMMIT ALL TO HECK!
Therefore, I’d growled. Glaring at the ceiling of the funicular house and foisting my free hand into the air while I gripped the backpack to my chest with the other, I turned and marched down the hallway, growling. Once I was outside, in the snow and wind, I growled again, raging. This time louder and longer, like maybe a tiger might do, or a mountain lioness. And then I did it again and again and again.
I wasn’t thinking because I didn’t know what to think. The truth was, I didn’t want to think. But I also didn’t want to feel, because it hurt, and it was an inescapable hurt. It hunted me relentlessly, except when I growled—or, I guess, yelled—all I felt was the cold beating against my face and the rawness of my throat and the constricting of my abdominal muscles. Yelling had been a relief, until I sucked in another breath and—
“Mo-naaaah!”
I’d stiffened, squinting at the snow around me, wondering at first if what sounded like my name was actually an echo of my growl/yell. But then I spotted movement on the path ahead and heard a second call, “Mo!”
It was my brother.
Exhausted, I’d exhaled a sigh, but then pressed my lips together when the sigh sounded dangerously like a sob. Stumbling forward, I pushed my arms into the straps of my backpack and attempted to gain control or administer some semblance of order over my chaotic thoughts:
I needed to go inside, because I was freezing. I needed a minute, or sixty, to come to terms with the sudden reality of seeing Abram. I needed to figure out whether Abram knew the truth. If he didn’t know, I needed to figure out what to do next.