I try to speak softly, but my heart is racing in a sickening way.
“Are you saying my mother is alive?”
“Yes!” Cat cries happily. “Or at least, I’m almost certain.”
The uneven floor of the tower seems to lurch under my feet.
I really thought she was dead.
I thought that’s why she never tried to contact me.
Now Cat is telling me my mom was alive all along.
She could have called me any time.
“She’s in Chicago,” I say dully.
“That’s right.” Cat nods. Her expression is eager and hopeful. It hurts me almost as much as her words.
I always wanted to move back to Chicago. I wished I lived there instead of Moscow.
My mother went without me.
“There’s something else,” Cat says, unfurling the paper she’s been clutching so tight. It’s a grainy black and white photograph, printed on the shitty printers in the computer lab.
I take it from her though I don’t want to.
I’m afraid to look.
I smooth out the wrinkles, battling against my churning stomach and the frantic thudding in my chest.
I see my mother, older but instantly recognizable, holding the hand of a small girl with blonde pigtails.
“I think you have a sister,” Cat says.
I look at that image, my mother holding the hand of the girl the same age that I was when she left.
The little girl looks up at her, happy and trusting.
I tear the picture in half, ripping mother and daughter apart.
Cat stares at me, stunned.
I rip those pieces into smaller pieces and I throw them on the floor.
It does nothing to stifle my rage.
That paper might as well be tinder—my fury flames up ten times higher.
Cat is open-mouthed, already backing away from me.
“You had no right,” I hiss, the anger rising and rising.
“But I—”
“YOU HAD NO RIGHT!” I howl, snatching up the closest thing at hand, which happens to be my speaker, and smashing it against the wall. Cat jolts at the impact. The music abruptly cuts out, leaving a deathly silence between us.
“Dean . . .” Cat whispers. Her eyes are filling with tears.
“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHERE SHE IS! I FUCKING HATE HER!”
Cat flinches away from me, her hands held up in front of her in helpless defense. It’s less than useless—we both know I could tear her apart as easily as that paper.
“I didn’t know—”
“YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME!” I shout. “You don’t fucking know me at all. You thought I would like that? Are you fucking stupid?”
Now the tears are running down her face, both sides.
They don’t placate me.
They only make me angrier, because now I feel guilty as well as enraged.
How dare she do this to me? How dare she make me feel this way?
I knew this would happen. I knew Cat was too good to be true.
I knew she’d lie to me, and sneak around behind my back, and stab me in the place that hurts the most. It was only a matter of time.
“I’m sorry—” she starts.
“Yeah, you’re fucking sorry,” I hiss. “You’re pathetic and sorry.”
She’s fully crying now, sobs shaking her shoulders.
And I hate myself far more than I hate her, but I can’t seem to stop.
“You’re nothing to me,” I spit.
She’s shrinking down, huddling away from me like a little kid scared of a monster.
I am a fucking monster, I know that. It was stupid to pretend any different.
Why did I think I could be happy?
I don’t deserve that.
I expect Cat to break down entirely.
Really, I’m the one who doesn’t know her. Because she surprises me yet again.
She straightens up, still shaking, pulling her shoulders back. She faces me with swollen eyes and trembling lips.
“This is over,” she says. “I don’t want to see you anymore. You’re broken, and I can’t fix you.”
Her words hit me, straight and swift like arrow shafts.
All in an instant, the world flips and reverses.
I thought I meant what I said while I was saying it.
Now I see it for what it was: rage pointed in the wrong direction.
Whereas, with horrid clarity, I see that Cat is not speaking in anger at all.
Every word is true, and she means every bit of it.
I finally went too far. She’s done with me.
“Cat—” I say, reaching desperately to take her hand.
Too late.
She wrenches it away from me and flees down the steps.
22
Cat
Arcade — Duncan Laurence
Spotify → geni.us/bully-spotify
Apple Music → geni.us/bully-apple
I run away from Dean, down to the Undercroft where he can’t follow.