Freshwater(29)

“We came all the way here,” Saachi told her. “The least you can do is spend time with us.”

None of it fucking mattered, honestly. Ada and I had lost Ewan. Since the night he’d rejected us, I’d slept with him once, a final time before Ada’s graduation. He and I were in her room, on the raised bed, moonlight spitting through the glass of her window. Ewan was drunk and high, back from a night of bad decisions that ended, as usual, with him looking for Ada and fucking me. He wrenched her hair until her neck and spine cracked loudly, and when we were face to face, I found myself opening Ada’s mouth and saying the same words Soren once told her.

“I fucking love you,” I said.

Ewan kept thrusting, pounding in the dark, and when he spoke, his voice was a stranger’s, slurred and hard.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said.

I swear, I never felt more stupid and useless than I did in that moment; like I was some whore he was just dumping into. Ada knew how Ewan was when he was drunk and high, when he pissed on coffee tables, when he couldn’t remember a thing that he’d done or said—which was the case this time. He went back to himself in the days afterward, but it didn’t matter. He had already insulted me, and wallahi, I was unforgiving and petty and vindictive. Don’t expect anything else from an ?gbanje.

I targeted one of Ewan’s friends on the tennis team, a boy who had always seemed to hate Ada, but I could see him and I could smell the truth. Ada was a beautiful girl and this friend had to watch her, knowing that Ewan got to fuck her and he didn’t. He was human. There was bound to be desire lying under his hatred—there always is. So it was easy to take him home at the end of one night, and of course he agreed. He kissed me and sank his fingers into Ada’s body before coming with my hand wrapped around him. I kicked him out of Ada’s room as soon as we were done and turned inward.

“Really?” said Ada. She was folding her arms and leaning against the marble, her eyes red from crying over Ewan. “His friend?”

“And so?” I answered. “Ewan won’t care. He let us go, remember? He doesn’t love us. He made that fucking clear.”

Ada winced and looked away. I came close to her and ran my hand along her cheek.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Fine girl. There are others who will want us, who I can make want us. It’s easy.”

I had her put her pain with me because I could use it as fuel, I could do things with it that she couldn’t. Like fucking one of the track runners, a boy with a silken Southern drawl and hooded eyes that dripped sex from the lashes. Trust me, I didn’t need Ewan, and if Ada thought she did, I would make her forget. There were many, many other things we could be doing.

Saachi and Chima were angry because Ada insisted on flying to Georgia to spend a month with her friend Itohan, instead of coming straight to Saachi’s house with them. I didn’t give a shit about their anger—mine was much larger and stronger. Except for A?uli, they’d soured the graduation for Ada, keeping her from her friends, the people who really knew what was going on in her life. She didn’t know when she’d see Malena or Catia again. Luka was going back to Serbia. Axel and Denis were going to Iceland to coach volleyball, Juan was going back to Mexico. The house at the bottom of the hill was going to be empty.

We had lost Ewan. Ada was devastated, but I had work to do, so we went to Georgia.



It felt strange to be back there. Things there were the same, but everything for Ada and I was completely different because we’d just spent a whole year with Ewan. I was done with him. I wanted him out of Ada’s head and I wanted her to stop loving him. I was furious. I wanted a new toy and I already knew I was going to play rough. It’s not as if there was gentleness in me to start with. I was hungry and I was hunting. I couldn’t stop myself and I didn’t want to—the whole point of my existence was to run wild and tear whoever fell into my mouth into pieces. I picked Itohan’s other brother, the older one. I started grooming him, which was easy because he and Ada were close, and after about a week or two of this, Itohan pulled Ada aside, saying they needed to talk.

“What’s up?” Ada asked, her face open and friendly. I lurked behind it, as usual.

“I know you don’t know how it looks,” Itohan said, her long hair roughly pushed behind an ear, her lipstick matte and red. “When you and him are hanging out upstairs and the rest of us are downstairs.”

“He was just showing me his books,” Ada said, and I fought to keep from laughing out of her mouth.

“I know.” Itohan kept her voice friendly. “But it’s just somehow when you and him are alone in his room together.”

She smiled, trying to be kind. Inside the marble room, I let out a shriek of laughter and Ada kicked me in the shin, hissing at me to shut up. On her face, she was maintaining a worried and slightly scared frown for Itohan’s benefit.

“I know it’s not intentional,” Itohan was saying, “but just think about how it looks, okay? You two can’t date, not after you dated my younger brother.”

The marble suddenly felt cold around me. “Wow,” I said, my laughter fading. “She really thinks we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Good,” muttered Ada. “Lucky for me.”

I couldn’t fucking believe it. They still saw only Ada; they still gave her the benefit of the doubt even when you’d have to be an idiot not to realize how it looked, as Itohan put it. It was amazing. I had planned every touch of skin, every coy glance that wove the older brother in, yet everyone stayed blind. It was as if they were all stuck in that nice, innocent Christian world Ada used to be a part of, before she was ripped out by my birth. And now, after everything that had happened with Ewan, there was absolutely no way Ada could return. She was an imposter; she was now me. I’d contaminated her too much—we had done too much together.