Page 71 of The Reveal
I have a lot of time to think about that, especially when I stop trying to chat with her as we go.
“You seem a little broody,” she says at one point.
I wave that off, while panting. “Oh, I’m just contemplating my fitness level compared to your fitness level, wondering why anyone thinks hiking is fun, and in between all that, I’m focusing on the great many people who have decided to lie to me over the past few years. You know. Light and easy stuff.”
She laughs. “I mean, part of that is that I’m not a human,” she reminds me. “You’re doing great for a human who also hasn’t trained for this.”
“I was born here. What training could I possibly need?”
That bravado lasts about three steps.
We hike on through the morning. We stop to eat lunch, though it’s pretty clear that I’m the only one who requires calories to go on. Maddox is lounging around as if she’s in a bar. Or perhaps on a poolside recliner somewhere. That’s how little this hike requires of her.
I eat what I can, hoping that it gives me more energy, because I’m going to need it.
We set out again. And it’s worse. Slower, steeper.
I know that I must look wretched when Maddox takes my backpack.
“I’ll take a turn.” She sounds so cheerful, complete with a smile. “It’s only fair.”
I know perfectly well she’s taking it out of pity, but I remind myself that there’s absolutely no point in attempting to prove my strength to an actual supernatural creature, so I don’t.
We climb. Everything hurts, then hurts some more, and still we trudge on.
I think about how I sneaked into Gran’s room early this morning, leaving her some breakfast and her coffee in an insulated mug.
Careful, child,she whispered, when I thought she was asleep.Fate does not look kindly on those who seek to thwart it.
I wanted to sink down onto the side of her bed. I wanted to crawl up and curl myself into her and let her hold me the way she did when I was little. When my mother had broken off another piece of my heart and smashed it on the ground. When I believed she could fix everything with a hand on my forehead and a few soothing sounds.
I wanted to tell her about Augie. About all the things I saw. About the things that are happening to me.
About this terrible pull I feel toward Ariel and how I wish it were as simple as sex.
How I can’t get past that moment when I ran up the stairs and out of that dungeon, and felt sheer relief that he was there. Waiting.
Likehecould fix everything, even me.
I wanted to tell her that I don’t know what this makes me and I don’t know who I am.
But I already know that if I said something like that to my grandmother, she would very likely tell me to snap out of it. And not soothingly.
You can’t be anyone but you, try though you might,she would say, the way she did when I was in seventh grade and was sure that everyone only pretended to tolerate me because they loved Augie so much, and I was their consolation prize.That’s your only power in any given situation, so it’s best to come to terms with it.
That’s what I tell myself now as my calves complain and my hamstrings scream and my feet swell up in these boots I haven’t worn in years.
I keep going.
But as the day wears on, it gets harder. Not just because it’s steep and relentless, but because the vision keeps pounding at me, more with every step.
By afternoon it begins to feel as if the vision itself is pummeling me with nasty psychic fists. As if the vision wants me off this mountain and away from the scene of the crimes that will be committed here.
I figure that can only mean I’m in the right place.
Maddox starts telling me stories. Silly tales of inconsequential things, like episodes of long-ago television shows we watched when we were kids. I understand at once that she’s distracting me, and I’m grateful. Though I can’t really concentrate on what she’s saying, that’s okay, because for a while it seems as if the sound of her cheerful commentary alone might keep the worst of the visions away.
Sadly, this doesn’t last.
