Defy Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,30

be worth it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to save her. I’ve been away too long. I’ve missed too much. My mother is doing so much worse now, and no doctor has been able to help her. Nothing has helped. My efforts have been worse than futile.

I gave up everything—for nothing.

I wish I’d known how those two years would change me. I wish I’d known how hard it would be to live with myself, to look in the mirror. No one warned me about the nightmares, the panic attacks, or the dark, destructive thoughts that would follow. No one explained to me how darkness works, how it feasts on itself or how it festers. I hardly recognize myself these days. Becoming an instrument of torture destroyed what was left of my mind.

And now, this: I feel empty, all the time. Hollowed out.

Beyond redemption.

I didn’t want to come back here. I wanted to walk directly into the ocean. I wanted to fade into the horizon. I wanted to disappear.

Of course, he’d never let that happen.

He dragged me back here and gave me a title. I was rewarded for being an animal. Celebrated for my efforts as a monster. Never mind the fact that I wake up in the middle of every night strangled by irrational fears and a sudden, violent urge to upend the contents of my stomach.

Never mind that I can’t get these images out of my head.

I glance at the expensive bottle of bourbon my father left for me in my room and feel suddenly disgusted. I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want his opiate, his preferred form of oblivion.

At least, soon, my father will be gone. Any day now, he’ll be gone, and this sector will become my domain. I’ll finally be on my own.

Or something close to it.

Reluctantly, I pull on my blazer and take the elevator down.

When I finally arrive in his quarters as he requested, he spares me only the briefest look.

“Good,” he says. “You’ve come.”

I say nothing.

He smiles. “Where are your manners? You’re not going to greet our guest?”

Confused, I follow his line of sight. There’s a young woman sitting on a chair in the far corner of the room, and, at first, I don’t recognize her.

When I do, the blood drains from my face.

My father laughs. “You kids remember each other, right?”

She was sitting so quietly, so still and small that I almost hadn’t noticed her at all. My dead heart jumps at the sight of her slight frame, a spark of life trying, desperately, to ignite.

“Juliette,” I whisper.

My last memory of her was from two years ago, just before I left home for my father’s sick, sadistic assignment. He ripped her away from me. Literally ripped her out of my arms. I’d never seen that kind of rage in his eyes, not like that, not over something so innocent.

But he was wild.

Out of his mind.

She and I hadn’t done anything more than talk to each other. I’d started stealing down to her room whenever I could get away, and I’d trick the cameras’ feeds to give us privacy. We’d talk, sometimes for hours. She’d become my friend.

I never touched her.

She said that after what happened with the little boy, she was afraid to touch anyone. She said she didn’t understand what was happening to her and didn’t trust herself anymore. I asked her if she wanted to touch me, to test it out and see if anything would happen, and she looked scared and I told her not to worry. I promised it’d be okay. And when I took her hand, tentatively, waiting for disaster—

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened except that she burst into tears. She threw herself into my arms and wept and told me she’d been terrified that there was something wrong with her, that she’d turned into a monster—

We only had a month, altogether.

But there was something about her that felt right to me, from the very beginning. I trusted her. She felt familiar, like I’d always known her. But I also knew it seemed a dramatic sort of thought, so I kept it to myself.

She told me about her life. Her horrible parents. She’d shared her fears with me, so I shared mine. I told her about my mom, how I didn’t know what was happening to her, how worried I was that she was going to die.

Juliette cared about me. Listened to me the way no one else did.

It was the most innocent relationship