Flawed (Flawed, #1)(66)

The girl is my sister.





FORTY-SEVEN

ART IS THE first to look up.

I realize I’m crying.

His eyes, his eyes that I love, run over me in shock. For the first time since all this began, my heart breaks. I feel the pain in my chest instantly. I didn’t cry out for five of my brandings, but I cry out now. This is a pain more intense than anything so far. More than the pain of the brandings, more than the humiliation in the shed. This tops them all.

Juniper twists around to look in the direction he’s staring, and her face gives it away, too.

Caught. Immediately my tears stop and anger takes over.

“Celestine!” Art jumps up. “What happened? Are you okay?” He comes toward me, worried, panicking, but I know it’s not about what I’ve just witnessed. He’s worried about the state of me.

“Stop!” I yell, and he freezes.

“Oh my God, Celestine,” Juniper whispers, looking at me, hands going to her face. “What happened?”

“Celestine,” he says, taking steps near me again. I take steps back, which makes him halt again. “Are you bleeding? Where are your shoes? What happened? Who did this to you?” I hear the emotion in his voice, how it cracks with anger and pain.

Juniper joins him, and the two of them side by side again angers me intensely once more.

“Don’t you come near me ever again. Either of you. You both betrayed me once. I should have known you’d do it again.” I turn to Juniper. “You knew where he was hiding all this time?”

“Yes, but—”

“Up here?” I ask, shocked. I think of his hiding in one of the garden sheds and being cared for by Juniper, the very space I was imprisoned in and had to break free from. “I knew you were missing every night.” And then I realize. “I knew this was happening, but I just didn’t want to believe it.… You made me look like a liar.” I know now why I was acting so cruelly toward her. I think I knew this but wouldn’t admit it.

“No, Celestine, please, let me explain. I was just helping him!”

“Shut up! You’re both liars!” I shout, and he backs down and looks away, not able to defend himself.

“This isn’t what you think it is. She was just helping me hide out. We weren’t, you know…” He runs his hands through his hair, in complete turmoil.

“You both looked very cozy to me,” I say, looking from one to the other.

“It’s not like that,” he says. “I told you I can’t go back to my dad. Not after what he did to you.”

“What he did to me? Don’t you think you two had a part in it as well?”

This brings tears to Juniper’s eyes, and Art’s jaw hardens. I know it was a cheap jab, but I am so angry I want to hurt them both more than they have ever known, so that they can feel at least some of what I’m feeling now. I’ve wanted him every day, and every day she’s known where he is, doing who knows what. She could have told me, she could have got a message to him for me, she could have helped me, but instead she helped him.

“Well, isn’t this nice for you.” I look around. “Cozy. Guess what, Art? I don’t have a hiding place. There is none in this world for me. I have to face it all, every day on my own. I don’t have the luxury that you do, using people to make things better for you like you always do. But you can’t stay here forever. Someday you will actually be a man and face it all.” That seems to deeply hurt him, and I’m glad. “You always said you’d be there for me, but you’re nothing but a coward. Both of you.”

“Celestine,” he says, his voice cracking as it nears a sob. “I miss you so much.”

The emotion from him is real. It’s raw. I might be stupid, but I believe him.

“Then why are you sitting here with my sister?”

“Let me explain,” he says, angrily now, frustrated that I won’t let him talk. He steps toward me, and I back away.

“I can’t.” I think of another face-to-face with Judge Crevan in his courtroom, and the fight within me returns. I’m not done yet. “I’m not going to let you two ruin my life again.”

I have four minutes. I turn around and run.

*

The next few minutes are a blur of leaves, branches snapping in my face, stones on my feet, and twigs cutting my legs, my breath loud as I run the fastest down the hill that I have ever run before. I don’t look at my watch; I don’t have time. I sprint to my backyard wall. I climb it faster than I ever have and land on our grass, which feels like fur in comparison with what I’ve trodden over tonight. I can see Dad, Mom, and Mary May in the living room. They are looking at the clock on the wall. Dad is pacing. Mom’s hands are clasped by her chest, begging, praying as I was earlier for a miracle to happen. I push open the back door and fling myself at their feet, on my knees, panting and crying, unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to see, I am so dizzy.

I look up. The minute hand reads one minute past eleven.

I look at Mary May in desperation, unable to speak, still panting.

“One minute past eleven,” she says.

Mom and Dad explode with anger at her, at the injustice.

Then suddenly the watch on her wrist starts beeping. Confused, she lifts it and studies it, and I realize our timings are different. Surely, I will be judged by the Whistleblower’s time. Mom and Dad must realize the same thing and freeze as they look at her for confirmation.