Ignite Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,79

to say.

Coward.

“Why today . . . ?” I ask tentatively. “Did something happen?”

Warner says nothing for a long time, just stares at the wall. “Today is her birthday.”

“Oh,” I whisper, heart breaking.

“You wanted to practice outdoors,” he says, still staring straight ahead. “With Kenji. I can take you with me when I leave, as long as he promises to keep you invisible. I’ll drop you off somewhere on unregulated territory and pick you up when I’m heading back. Will that be all right?”

“Yes.”

He says nothing else, but his eyes are wild and unfocused. He’s looking at the wall like it might be a window.

“Aaron?”

“Yes, love.”

“Are you scared?”

He takes a tight breath. Exhales it slowly.

“I never know what to expect when I visit her,” he says quietly. “She’s different each time. Sometimes she’s so drugged up she doesn’t even move. Sometimes her eyes are open and she just stares at the ceiling. Sometimes,” he says, “she’s completely hysterical.”

My heart twists.

“It’s good that you still visit her,” I say to him. “You know that, right?”

“Is it?” He laughs a strange, nervous sort of laugh. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“Yes. It is.”

“How can you know?” He looks at me now, looks at me as though he’s almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Because if she can tell, for even a second, that you’re in the room with her, you’ve given her an extraordinary gift. She is not gone completely,” I tell him. “She knows. Even if it’s not all the time, and even if she can’t show it. She knows you’ve been there. And I know it must mean so much to her.”

He takes in another shaky breath. He’s staring at the ceiling now. “That is a very nice thing to say.”

“I really mean it.”

“I know,” he says. “I know you do.”

I look at him a little longer, wondering if there’s ever an appropriate time to ask questions about his mother. But there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to ask. So I do.

“She gave you that ring, didn’t she?”

Warner goes still. I think I can hear his heart racing from here. “What?”

I walk up to him and take his left hand. “This one,” I say, pointing to the jade ring he’s always worn on his left pinkie finger. He never takes it off. Not to shower. Not to sleep. Not ever.

He nods, so slowly.

“But . . . you don’t like to talk about it,” I say, remembering the last time I asked him about his ring.

I count exactly ten seconds before he speaks again.

“I was never allowed,” he says very, very quietly, “to receive presents. From anyone. My father hated the idea of presents. He hated birthday parties and holidays. He never let anyone give anything to me, and especially not my mother. He said that accepting gifts would make me weak. He thought they would encourage me to rely on the charity of others.

“But we were hiding one day,” he says. “My mother and I.” His eyes are up, off, lost in another place. He might not be talking to me at all. “It was my sixth birthday and she was trying to hide me. Because she knew what he wanted to do to me.” He blinks. His voice is a whisper, half dead of emotion. “I remember her hands were shaking,” he says. “I remember because I kept looking at her hands. Because she was holding mine to her chest. And she was wearing this ring.” He quiets, remembering. “I’d never seen much jewelry in my life. I didn’t know what it was, exactly. But she saw me staring and she wanted to distract me,” he says. “She wanted to keep me entertained.”

My stomach is threatening to be sick.

“So she told me a story. A story about a boy who was born with very green eyes, and the man who was so captivated by their color that he searched the world for a stone in exactly the same shade.” His voice is fading now, falling into whispers so quiet I can hardly hear him. “She said the boy was me. That this ring was made from that very same stone, and that the man had given it to her, hoping one day she’d be able to give it to me. It was his gift, she said, for my birthday.” He stops. Breathes. “And then she took it off, slipped it on my index finger, and said, ‘If you hide your heart, he will never be able to take it from you.’”

He looks