Because You Love to Hate Me(13)

“Are you familiar with the place?” Jack says.

It’s a lot windier than last time, and my palms are slippery. “What?” I say, still refusing to see anything but the backs of my eyelids.

“The desert. Mysterious forces . . . ?”

“Let’s talk about it back at the castle.” I’m embarrassed at how breathless I sound but too scared to sound any different.

“I’d love to see a rock pushing itself across the ground,” Jack says, as if he can’t tell I’m this close to breakdown mode. “I’m going to see it one day. It’s all in the mind, you know. Be clear about your desires and you’ll achieve them.”

“I can’t concentrate on anything you’re saying. Can we please—”

“Take a peek. Then we go back and we don’t come here again unless you suggest it.”

“Jack—”

“A peek. Otherwise I will haunt your dreams with my bucket list.”

The guy’s persistent enough to figure out a way to do just that. I want to kick and applaud him at the same time. How can so much bravery fit into such a tiny body? How beautiful the human world must be, to create creatures as fearless as Jack. And it used to be ours. I’m the future Empress of the freaking Northern Hemisphere. I should at least be able to see it beneath my feet and be unafraid.

I can be like Jack.

No. I grip the railing even tighter.

I can be more.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I crack open my eyelids.

Pinpricks of light shine against the dark curtain spread before me as far as I can see. And then I see past it, to everything I’ve only experienced on television: salt-spraying waves; rustling trees; red canyons; rolling knolls; sweltering jungles . . . The potential of it all is enough to make this cloud feel more claustrophobic than ever.

I can be more. My own voice sounds so much stronger in my mind than it ever has in real life, and for one second I really believe it. I can be—

A gust of wind rushes in, and my knees buckle, and just like that, my eyes are shut again.

But I don’t step back. I take a deep breath and dare one more glance at the world below. A second later I feel like I’m going to fall over and I know I’m done. “I’m ready to go, Jack.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

I back away, and when the firm stone beneath my feet turns to soft cloud, I remember the way I felt just moments ago and I promise myself this won’t be the last time.

We head back to the castle and Jack chuckles. “Your breakout moment,” he says, nudging my calf. “And you didn’t even need a tattoo.”





“Spend a night in an ice hotel.”

“Traverse the piranha-infested waters of the Amazon on a log raft. No paddle.”

“Ride the back of a blue whale.”

“Swim through space. Naked.”

“Jack, you can’t swim through space naked.”

“I don’t care. I want to do it anyway.”

Jack and I are standing at the cloudline, leaning over the railing of Lookout South to stare at the land far below, lights winking through the darkness like stars in the midnight sky. We’re rattling off a bunch of things we’ve never done but want to. I’ve gotten better at this game, at being specific as I stare down the world.

“Swim in the turquoise waters of Oahu,” I say.

“Not too ambitious,” Jack says. “That will be one you check off first.”

I hold up my hand and position it so that a cluster of lights fits in the space between my thumb and forefinger. “Maybe,” I murmur.

Sure, I could swim off the coast of Hawaii, but right under my feet are all those lights, all that life. There’s a swath of black over to the left, where the ocean stretches into the horizon and a lonely light from some yacht reaches out. We’re like the ocean, us giants—always here, still a mystery. Humans have forgotten they don’t know everything.

The wind lifts my long hair off my shoulders and I close my eyes, and for a second, I imagine this is what it must be like to ride a beanstalk as it shrinks back down to earth . . .

“Gold coin for your thoughts?” Jack says.

I smile. He’s comfortable enough to make these kinds of jokes now that we both know he isn’t out to steal anything. But I don’t answer. Mom always says I’ll make a great ruler. You think but don’t talk too much, and you don’t wear your emotions on your face. I used to take offense to that because she might as well have been saying You’ll make a great robot. Sometimes it takes time to see the value in something.

“May I ask you a question?” Jack asks.

“Shoot.”

“You’re always sanding that chair, etching another flourish. But it could’ve been done ages ago, right?”

The wood chair is the best thing I’ve made so far. Sturdy, smooth, beautiful. It looks like the work of someone who knew what they were doing. I keep going over and over what I’ve already done, and if something has been holding me back from finishing the seat, I don’t know what it is, exactly. I shrug.

Jack says, “Do you want to hear something funny? Well, I suppose it’s more a question.” He laughs nervously. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but . . . when I first started coming here, I thought you were planning to skin me alive or whatever. You know, use me as upholstery or something.”