Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(41)

“And what about when you went all Superman on me? Slamming me into the wall like that?”

“I was scared.”

“And then? In the research labs?”

“Angry,” I whisper, my eyes unfocused as I stare up at the ceiling, remembering the rage of that day. “I was angrier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I never even knew I could feel that way. To be so mad. And I felt guilty,” I add, so quietly. “Guilty for being the reason why Adam was in there at all.”

Kenji takes a deep, long breath. Pulls himself up into a sitting position and leans against the wall. He says nothing.

“What are you thinking …?” I ask, shifting to sit up and join him.

“I don’t know,” Kenji finally says. “But it’s obvious that all of these incidents were the result of really intense emotions. Makes me think the whole system must be pretty straightforward.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like there has to be some kind of trigger involved,” he says. “Like, when you lose control, your body goes into automatic self-protect mode, you know?”

“No?”

Kenji turns so he’s facing me. Crosses his legs underneath him. Leans back on his hands. “Like, listen. When I first found out I could do this invisible thing? I mean, it was an accident. I was nine years old. Scared out of my mind. Fast-forward through all the shitty details and my point is this: I needed a place to hide and couldn’t find one. But I was so freaked out that my body, like, automatically did it for me. I just disappeared into the wall. Blended or whatever.” He laughs. “Tripped me the hell out, because I didn’t realize what’d happened for a good ten minutes. And then I didn’t know how to turn myself back to normal. It was crazy. I actually thought I was dead for a couple of days.”

“No way,” I gasp.

“Yup.”

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s what I said.”

“So … so, what? You think my body taps into its defense mode when I freak out?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay.” I think. “Well, how am I supposed to tap into my defense mode? How did you figure yours out?”

He shrugs. “Once I realized I wasn’t some kind of ghost and I wasn’t hallucinating, it actually became kind of cool. I was a kid, you know? I was excited, like I could tie on a cape and kill bad guys or something. I liked it. And it became this part of me that I could access whenever I wanted. But,” he adds, “it wasn’t until I really started training that I learned how to control and maintain it for long periods of time. That took a lot of work. A lot of focus.”

“A lot of work.”

“Yeah—I mean, all of this takes a lot of work to figure out. But once I accepted it as a part of me, it became easier to manage.”

“Well,” I say, leaning back again, blowing out an exasperated breath, “I’ve already accepted it. But it definitely hasn’t made things easier.”

Kenji laughs out loud. “My ass you’ve accepted it. You haven’t accepted anything.”

“I’ve been like this my entire life, Kenji—I’m pretty sure I’ve accepted it—”

“No.” He cuts me off. “Hell no. You hate being in your own skin. You can’t stand it. That’s not called acceptance. That’s called—I don’t know—the opposite of acceptance. You,” he says, pointing a finger at me, “you are the opposite of acceptance.”

“What are you trying to say?” I shoot back. “That I have to like being this way?” I don’t give him a chance to respond before I say, “You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in my skin—to be trapped in my body, afraid to breathe too close to anything with a beating heart. If you did, you’d never ask me to be happy to live like this.”

“Come on, Juliette—I’m just saying—”

“No. Let me make this clear for you, Kenji. I kill people. I kill them. That’s what my ‘special’ power is. I don’t blend into backgrounds or move things with my mind or have really stretchy arms. You touch me for too long and you die. Try living like that for seventeen years and then tell me how easy it is to accept myself.”

I taste too much bitterness on my tongue.

It’s new for me.

“Listen,” he says, his voice noticeably softer. “I’m not trying to judge, okay? I’m just trying to point out that because you don’t want it, you might subconsciously be sabotaging your efforts to figure it out.” He puts his hands up in mock defeat. “Just my two cents. I mean, obviously you’ve got some crazy powers going on. You touch people and bam, done. But then you can crush through walls and shit, too? I mean, hell, I’d want to learn how to do that, are you kidding me? That would be insane.”

“Yeah,” I say, slumping against the wall. “I guess that part wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Right?” Kenji perks up. “That would be awesome. And then—you know, if you leave your gloves on—you could just crush random stuff without actually killing anyone. Then you wouldn’t feel so bad, right?”

“I guess not.”

“So. Great. You just need to relax.” He gets to his feet. Grabs the brick he was toying with earlier. “Come on,” he says. “Get up. Come over here.”