Brutal Precious (Lovely Vicious #3) (21 page)

“It sounds terrible,” Jemma says softly.

“It is! It’s the worst,” I laugh. “It’s everything you don’t want to happen to you. You think you’re strong and that you’ll always love living and want to live, but sometimes you get so tired…”

“You’re tired a lot, then.”

I shrug. “Sometimes. But I’m Isis Blake. I’m the opposite of tired. Derit. Being tired just isn’t something I do.”

“We all do it once in a while, Isis,” Jemma assures me. “No one is an exception.”

“But I’m special!” I whine. “You don’t understand! Crazy shit is my forte and I
do stuff,
the best stuff, and I never stop moving ever except when I am peeing and even then sometimes not, sidenote: the janitor hates me.”

Jemma tries to hide the laugh-snort behind her hand, eyes twinkling, and suddenly I start laughing too. But it’s a different laugh from the angry short ones I’ve been making lately – it’s loud and happy, and it only gets louder and happier, and it’s light, the lightest thing I’ve done in a long time.

“That wasn’t even my best joke,” I sigh when we both calm down. “And I broke rule numero uno.”

Jemma wipes away a tear. “Which is?”

“Never laugh at your own joke, because that means it’s probably not a very good one and also you look like an easily amused, self-absorbed asshole. Also; it’s grossness.”

“I see what you mean now,” She says. “Someone like you, so vibrant and funny, is rarely tired. It must be so strange for you when you are.”

“It’s like….like losing a leg but trying to run a race anyway,” I say. Jemma nods, then inhales.

“I know this isn’t going to sound very sensitive, and please don’t take this to mean I’m diagnosing you with anything, because I’m not qualified to do that, but does anyone in your family have a history of depression?”

I melt all over the chair dramatically and grumble. “My mom. But I don’t have it!” I protest, sitting straight up. “I swear to you I definitely don’t because I’ve worked really hard to not have it and I’m happy all the time so I don’t have it. Ever. And I never will.”

Jemma nods, and writes on the clipboard, but my words are so hollow and wrong-sounding I burn to fill them up with the truth. I squirrel my hands together and clutch them together tight.

“I had it. Maybe. I think. When I was fourteen.”

“What made you think that?”

“I didn’t like myself. I still don’t a little. But I really didn’t like myself because I was huge and I thought being huge was wrong but it’s not, but when you’re in love and a guy tells you you’re ugly and fat you start to believe it, you know? Also it wasn’t love. Maybe it was. But probably not, because it made me feel horrible, and love’s supposed to make you feel good.”

“Some people say it’s supposed to make you feel good and horrible at the same time.”

“Well, those people are dumb and wrong,” I jut my chin out. “That’s just….that’s just the old-man-poetry-romanticism of it. People like to sound deep so they say pain is a part of love but it’s not. Love is –”

"There is nothing about it that is ugly," Jack says. "May I?"

I hesitate, and nod. He reaches around and brings my forearm up, gently running his fingers over the cigarette burns on my wrist. He traces around each circle with his thumb gently, so gently.

"It looks like a galaxy," He smiles. "Full of stars and supernovas and conductive cryogeysers and a lot of wonderful science things I could go on to list that would probably bore the hell out of you."

I laugh against his chest, and burrow deeper into it.

“ – Love is being accepted and adored for who you are, scars and all.”

My eyes get wet and my lap gets wet and I curl in on myself, hugging my arms.

Now I know the difference.

Now I know what love is, and what it isn’t.

Jemma puts the clipboard down and her arms up, enclosing me in them as the darkness comes rushing out of my mouth and into her sweater.

“I w-was….I was r-raped. When I was fourteen. By the guy I thought I loved.”

It pours out of me, it falls on the floor and pools on the tile and slithers down my cheeks. Four years of carefully silent suffering floods her office, and her lap, and I’m a stranger and she must hate me for it but all she does is hug me closer, and I hate myself I hate who I used to be and I hate who I’m trying to be and the people I loved betrayed me, and I betrayed myself, I hid it away instead of telling, telling somebody, anybody, I stayed quiet instead of asking for help from somebody, anybody, and all the hurt is being pulled out of me sideways, the thorns scraping my mouth and eyes and this must be what it’s like to die, except the pain doesn’t end, not for hours and hours, and Jemma just holds me, and cries with me, and whispers
‘I know’
, over and over again, because she does know, because she went through it too, and I’m not alone, not anymore.

***

In the entire history of planet Earth, no one has been more of an idiot than I have. Except God, or the Big Bang, or whatever you wanna call it because it made this place, and us. And that was, obviously, a very bad move.

Anyway, god and I are tied for Universe’s Biggest Morons because I did something equally stupid, which was to hurt myself. For years. By keeping a nasty secret inside me.

I thought I was stronger than the traumatic event, which is entirely true except for the part where I forgot to admit it was a traumatic event to begin with, because, as Jemma tells me after I pass out on one of the cots in her office and wake up to birdsong and a Styrofoam cup coffee she hands me, no matter what happened, or for how long, it still happened. Just because it wasn’t prolonged or penetrative doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape.

He still held me down and masturbated on me.

It was still rape.

Jemma invites me to come in next week to talk some more when she changes my bandage again, and I agree. She’s not a therapist, and she’s not getting paid to do it, but she’s taking a chunk out of her free time to listen to me talk, and I’m grateful. Also, sore and worn out and mentally exhausted from reliving the entire event in one night, but mostly grateful and ready for nine pizzas.

But I walk different, now, like all the space in my body was replaced with helium overnight. My shoulders feel lighter, my head feels lighter. I flip my hair dramatically as a couple walks passed and realize I don’t actually harbor the urge to kill them anymore.

Nameless, though, is a different story.

I duck into the front office and grab a cup of water, the office ladies’ chattering following me out the door.

“Summers? That’s impossible. He’s such a nice looking man.” One lady sighs.

“Well one of the students did it,” another lady says. “And we had that harassment complaint against Summers a year ago that the Dean refused to listen to, remember? The poor girl dropped out.”

“Do you think it’s true, then?”

“College students do a lot of silly things,” the first lady says. “But they don’t typically write ‘pervert’ in fake blood on doors unless they have a good reason to.”

“If he’s been inappropriate to the female students, so help me, I’ll –”

“Campus security is interviewing his students now, you know, and they’re looking at all the cameras, but there’s no footage…”

The door shuts and their voices cut off, but word of my exploits doesn’t stop. It filters around a few people eating cream puffs on the steps of the Culinary Sciences building.

“Ew, blood?” A girl wrinkles her nose.

“It deserved to be written in shit,” A guy scoffs.

“I’ve always thought he was
too
nice,” another guy shakes his head.

“Why does a guy with his looks need to perv on girls? That’s fucking sleazy as hell.” The scoffing guy scoffs again.

I keep walking. A group of frat boys sees Summers crossing the lawn and hoot at him, and, startled, the handsome, tall, slightly pot-bellied professor drops his notebooks and scrabbles to pick them up. The snide glances and doubting whispers are proof I’ve turned the school against him. It’s proof I still got the magic, sweetass Isis touch that strikes fear into the hearts of evildoing men everywhere –

“Isis!” Kieran runs up to me, a scowl on his face. “I told you not to do anything!”

“Yes well, me and orders don’t exactly jive. I mean, we jive, but it isn’t smooth and it isn’t pretty to look at.”

“You’re going to get so busted. They have cameras, you know.”

My stomach twists unpleasantly, but I shake it off.

“Never fear, they spontaneously combusted because of my hotness.”

“Nothing is spontaneously combusting, and you’re going to get kicked out!”

“Then we must make do with what little time we have.”
 
  
  

“Isis –” I feel his hand on my wrist, jerking me back. I whirl around and plant my feet and clear my throat.

“I know that kiss was nice,” I say. “And we kissed a lot for two people who met each other next to a shirtless guy throwing up on some petunias, and you’re a really nice guy and you look sort of Welsh which is always a good thing, ladies love kilts, not me specifically but most ‘ladies’, in air quotes, denoting roughly seventy percent of women aged eighteen to thirty-eight, and I know you think you like me as a person, and that you want to date me and that we’d get along well but here’s me, overturning your hopes and dreams; I don’t wanna date anyone. Or that’s not true, actually, the butthead I want to date just doesn’t want to date me. So. So I was just trying to get over him. And I was using your lips to get over him like a terrible person in a movie would, a villain, but I’ve always been the villain or the dragon and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m a dragon and I burn stuff down and I’m sorry.”

Kieran’s dark eyes well with shock, and his grip goes limp. I tear away and leave another person I hurt behind, and I’m sorry for it but I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I hate walking around with black eyes on my heart all the time.

I march away so hard I don’t even notice when Diana passes me. She squeals, backtracks, and catches up with me.

“Isis! There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for yo-”

“Not now, moon goddess, I have boys to confront.”

Diana laughs, and slows. “What about the county fair tonight? You said you wanted to go –”

“I’ll be there!” I shout, and push through the door to the boy’s dorm. I take the stairs two at a time and knock hard on his door. There’s three seconds of silence, and then it opens. Jack looks like he’s taken a casual jog through a meat grinder , if said meat grinder ground only the souls of good-looking boys.

“Hello,” I say crisply. “I want you to help me kill Will Cavanaugh.”

Jack’s ice-cold eyes crack a little with surprise as I say Nameless’ full name out loud for the first time in four years. I suddenly remember my priorities.

“Oh, but actually we can put that off for a while. First, I want you to come with me to the county fair tonight, and if your new girlfriend Hemorrhoid doesn’t want you to, she can go explode in a spleen for all I care.”

I expect him to refuse or get angry, but his eyes crinkle on the outside - the Jack-version of a smile.

“Alright.”

“I’m driving.”

“Alright.”

“Meet me by Warrick Building at nine.”

He nods, and opens his mouth to say more, but I quickly pivot and walk away. I can’t have any more words with him – not until I’ve practiced what I want to say. Six hours and a flurry of closet raiding is all that stands between me and figuring that out. Yvette watches with the casual interest of a hurricane observer as I chuck socks and pants and shirts over my shoulder.

“Where were you, though, seriously?” She asks finally. “Diana and I thought –”

“I was talking to a nice lady,” I say. “And she helped me figure some stuff out. Contrary to popular belief, strangers are nice to divulge your desperately nasty secrets to.”

I hold up the pink blouse, and Yvette makes a cooing noise.

“Oooh, that one.”

The Isis of a day ago would have wrinkled her nose and thrown it aside. I pick it up and pull off my shirt, replacing it with the blouse. It’s cool and airy on my skin, the ruffles flickering with my every move. Yvette helps me pick out jean shorts, and lends me an old, ratty army surplus jacket that looks balls rad and is perfect for the cool fall weather. Yvette pulls my hair back from my neck, and puts it in a ponytail for me.

“You look way hotter like this,” She says.

“I just want people to look at me and think ‘
I want to give her a million cash dollars’
.”

“Why are you so obsessed with money?”

“Because with it you can buy stuff and also things.”

Yvette laughs and shakes her head. “I want to give you maybe a ten. And a dime. A single dime.”

I hold out my hand expectantly and she rifles in her wallet for a single dime. I tuck it in my bra for good luck.

I practice what I want to say in my head, over and over and over and under, through all the possible loopholes of conversation I create counter-arguments, quips, and the finest of snarks, but they all drain out of my ears when I see Jack waiting for me near the parking lot. He leans against a peach tree, hair combed but still somehow messy, with dark jeans and a red flannel shirt on. His legs are so long, his shoulders so broad, his face proud and fine like a lion’s. It hits me just then - he’s getting older. I’m getting older. Time isn’t waiting. I spent four years of my time mourning over someone who was never worth it to begin with.