Page 23 of Torn

“I have an idea.” She pitches the board forward, wheeling around him again. “We have the carnival to ourselves, so join me for an escapade tonight. By dawn, I’ll bet that I know more about you than you’ve ever told anyone. And if I’m right, I’ll tell you my secrets.”

His gaze meets hers. “Any secret?”

“Cross my helpless heart. I’ll even tell you why I named myself Merry. Come on, God of Anger, it’ll be exhilarating. Just imagine: two strangers exploring a theme park under the cloak of night. At the end of it, we’ll be soul mates.”

“It’s that easy, is it?” He sounds dubious. “Are you incapable of simply walking?”

“I always ride a skateboard when I’m about to spend an evening with a tall, dark, and handsome outcast. It helps to psych myself up. You see? You already know one of my secrets.” Merry surges ahead of him. “Are you coming or not?”

She hears him speak under his breath. “Yes.”

Is it her imagination, or does his timbre deepen? He sounds motivated—furious and voracious, like he wants to take something from her and snap it in half.

That can’t be. True love isn’t greedy, nor deceitful. Even if it were, she has nothing breakable but her skateboard.

What else could he possibly take from her?

7

Merry

Merry doesn’t look back. It’s more exciting that way, the sensation of him watching her float on the skateboard, the hem of her dress flouncing with each stroke of her limb. Her ears detect his boots hitting the tiles, swift but keeping a prudent distance, moving in her wake amidst the twinkle trees.

“Just in case it skipped your mind,” she calls out behind her, “I know what a home means to someone who’s lost it. Points for me, I’m already relating to you on an intimate basis. Doesn’t that sound marvelous?” She speeds up, launches into the air, sails across an illuminated model of Neptune, and lands on the path. “You think a home can’t be replicated, and you’re right, since no landscape is the same. But people get so used to that, they don’t see what exists elsewhere, the other places they can call home. You’re unwilling to give yourself that chance. Is that a coping mechanism?”

He catches up to her, his quiver and arrows clacking. “Your spirit rivals Wonder herself.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Let’s quiz each other. How old are you?”

“Two-hundred and five. And you?”

“Two-hundred and fifty-five. Alas, we just missed each other.”

“Real name?”

“Merry.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says, miffed.

“But it’s what you should have meant,” she chastises.

His hand makes contact with her elbow, halting her. The moment it does, he jerks his fingers away, but it’s too late. Kilowatts radiate up Merry’s arm.

Anger flexes his palm and then makes a fist. He’d been about to ask another question, but he just shakes his head, more to himself than her.

Is that good or bad? The only thing Merry can tell is that Anger’s tongue-tied, and that she’d like to help him untangle that tongue with her own.

“I don’t want to carry my failure on my shoulders,” she argues. “Keeping my original name, an emotion that I didn’t get to wield, would be like wearing a stamp that saysDamaged Goods. I don’t want to be reminded of that.”

“Neither can you deny where you came from.”

“I’m not denying anything. They denied me.”

A thought unspools across Anger’s face. “In which case, perhaps it wasn’t your deficiency. Perhaps it was theirs.”

Merry feels a prideful crimson rush up her cheeks. “If you want to know the name that I hatched with, fine. But you have to know me beyond that, as I want to know you.”

“There’s very little to learn about me.”

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