Burn (Pure #3)(85)

Partridge reminds himself that he’s impersonating himself.

Beckley says, “You ready or what?”

Partridge looks at himself in the full-length mirror—a mirror his father looked into many times. He thinks of his father just before he died, how he grabbed Partridge’s shirt with one clawlike hand and told him that he was his son. You are mine. Murder was the thing that finally bound them together. Partridge looks at himself standing there in his tuxedo, and he knows he’s a killer about to become a father too—and now a husband.

“Is anyone ever ready for something like this?” he asks Beckley.

“Yeah,” Beckley says, wearing a tux of his own, his gun wedged in the back of his pants. “I think it’s something people are compelled to do, actually.”

“You sound like someone who’s been in love.” Partridge realizes he doesn’t know much of anything about Beckley.

“I was in love once,” he says.

“With who?”

“It doesn’t really matter anymore,” Beckley says. And Partridge is sure that this means the one he once loved is dead.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

And there it is. Beckley was old enough to have fallen in love before the Detonations.

“You think you’ll fall in love again one day?”

He straightens Partridge’s bow tie. “I sure as hell hope not.”

There’s a light knock at the door.

“It’s time,” Beckley says. “This is it.”

Beckley opens the door that leads to the stage or the altar or the trophy platform—depending on how someone sees it. Partridge can hear all of the voices talking at once.

He pulls Beckley back. “Tell me I should do it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“But would you do it, Beckley?”

“I’m not you.”

“But if you were…”

“I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be you, Partridge.”

Partridge wonders if Beckley hates him. Does he resent him for everything he’s been given or is it something else? It’s the kind of thing Partridge has gotten good at picking up on, but he can’t quite read Beckley. “Still, you understand me on some level, Beckley.”

“Do you think that’s really possible? Don’t you know the trade-offs by now?”

“What? I can’t ever expect anyone to understand me—just because of who my father was and the life I was born into?” He thinks of Bradwell and El Capitan. Were they ever his friends? Probably not. They hated Partridge on some level too.

“Do you want people to like you just for being you? I’d have guessed you’d have outgrown that by now.”

Partridge feels sucker punched. He likes Beckley because he’s honest—but that honesty’s a double-edged sword.

Beckley opens the door wide and holds it open.

Partridge has no choice. He steps through it, and the large hall is filled with shushing. It reaches all the way to the back, and suddenly it’s quiet. Partridge moves to his spot in the middle of the altar and then turns to face the audience.

My God, Partridge thinks. Everyone is here. He sees a few rows of academy boys, his neighbors from Betton West, Purdy and Hoppes with their families, Foresteed, Mimi wearing a large jeweled hat and staring at the altar, and even Arvin Weed, who gives a nod. Maybe he’s forgiven him for the punch.

Partridge scans the sea of eyes staring back at him. People are gazing, smiling, already pressing tissues to their damp cheeks. They love him again. He glances at Beckley, who’s standing a few feet away, stiff and tough jawed. He wants Beckley to admit there’s something about this outpouring that isn’t just about who his father was. There’s something personal about it. How else could you explain these faces, these tears, this gazing?

He keeps searching the crowd, realizing that he’s looking for Lyda. Is she out there somewhere? Would she actually come to this event? She approved of it. In fact, she pushed him to do it. But would she even be allowed to be here? If Lyda isn’t here, is she at home? The cameras are poised on him. The bright lights are hot overhead. He looks into one of the cameras. He wants to tell her something. He wants her to know this isn’t real. I’m an impersonator impersonating myself, he wants to say. But he can’t. So he gives a wink and a small wave. Will she know that it’s meant for her?

The crowd notices the wave and they collectively sigh.

Beckley reaches forward and claps Partridge on the back. An apology or a consolation? Partridge isn’t sure.

And then with little warning, the faint background music that he hasn’t even really noticed fades, and for a few seconds, all is silent.

Then organ music pours triumphantly from the ceiling. The audience stands in unison and turns.

At first Partridge only sees the camera flashes bursting madly, and then Iralene comes into view, emerging from all the popping lights at the end of a long white carpet that leads to the altar—to him. Her face is lost behind a white veil.

For a minute, he thinks it could be Lyda under that veil.

But he can tell by the poised way that she walks, the lift of her chin, and the measured steps that this is Iralene. This is the moment she’s been groomed for.

As she steps up to the altar, attendants perfecting her train, Partridge can see her face behind the white veil. She’s beautiful. There’s never been any denying it, but today she looks even more beautiful, if that’s possible.