Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,39
destroy all of them. You can take them down and own this whole world and—”
A steam engine hits me in the face.
“I don’t want to destroy anyone,” I tell him. “I don’t want to hurt people—”
“But they deserve it!” He pushes away from me, frustrated. “How could you not want to retaliate? How could you not want to fight back—”
I stand up slowly, shaking with anger, hoping my legs won’t collapse beneath me. “You think that because I am unwanted, because I am neglected and—and discarded—” My voice inches higher with every word, the unrestrained emotions suddenly screaming through my lungs. “You think I don’t have a heart? You think I don’t feel? You think that because I can inflict pain, that I should? You’re just like everyone else. You think I’m a monster just like everyone else. You don’t understand me at all—”
“Juliette—”
“No.”
I don’t want this. I don’t want his life.
I don’t want to be anything for anyone but myself. I want to make my own choices and I’ve never wanted to be a monster. My words are slow and steady when I speak. “I value human life a lot more than you do, Warner.”
He opens his mouth to speak before he stops. Laughs out loud and shakes his head.
Smiles at me.
“What?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“You just said my name.” He grins even wider. “You’ve never addressed me directly before. That must mean I’m making progress with you.”
“I just told you I don’t—”
He cuts me off. “I’m not worried about your moral dilemmas. You’re just stalling for time because you’re in denial. Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll get over it. I can wait a little longer.”
“I’m not in denial—”
“Of course you are. You don’t know it yet, Juliette, but you are a very bad girl,” he says, clutching his heart. “Just my type.”
This conversation is impossible.
“There is a soldier living in my room.” I’m breathing hard. “If you want me to be here, you need to get rid of the cameras.”
Warner’s eyes darken for just an instant. “Where is your soldier, anyway?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I hope to God I’m not blushing. “You assigned him to me.”
“Yes.” He looks thoughtful. “I like watching you squirm. He makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t he?”
I think about Adam’s hands on my body and his lips so close to mine and the scent of his skin drenched in a steaming downpour soaking the two of us together and suddenly my heart is two fists pounding on my ribs demanding escape. “Yes.” God. “Yes. He makes me very . . . uncomfortable.”
“Do you know why I chose him?” Warner asks, and I’m run over by a tractor trailer.
Adam was chosen.
Of course he was. He wasn’t just any soldier sent to my cell. Warner does nothing without reason. He must know Adam and I have a history. He is more cruel and calculative than I gave him credit for.
“No.” Inhale. “I don’t know why.” Exhale. I can’t forget to breathe.
“He volunteered,” Warner says simply, and I’m momentarily dumbstruck. “He said he’d gone to school with you so many years ago. He said you probably wouldn’t remember him, that he looks a lot different now than he did back then. He put together a very convincing case.” A beat of breath. “He said he was thrilled to hear you’d been locked up.” Warner finally looks at me.
My bones are like cubes of ice clinking together, chilling me to my core.
“I’m curious,” he continues, tilting his head as he speaks. “Do you remember him?”
“No,” I lie, and I’m not sure I’m alive. I’m trying to untangle the truth from the false from assumptions from the postulations but run-on sentences are twisting around my throat.
Adam knew me when he walked into that cell.
He knew exactly who I was.
He already knew my name.
Oh
Oh
Oh
This was all a trap.
“Does this information make you . . . angry?” he asks, and I want to sew his smiling lips into a permanent scowl.
I say nothing and somehow it’s worse.
Warner is beaming. “I never told him, of course, why it was that you’d been locked up—I thought the experiment in the asylum should remain untainted by extra information—but he said you were always a threat to the students. That everyone was always warned to stay away from you, though the authorities never explained why. He said he wanted to get a closer look at the freak you’ve become.”
My heart cracks. My eyes flash. I’m so hurt so angry so horrified so humiliated and