Page 133 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
I squeeze my eyes shut, furious. The woods blur, the world inside twisting out of shape. The ground and the boy meld together. There’s nothing more than a vague shadow where he stands.
“Stop this.”I stare at my feet—nothing more than a scribble.“Let me see.”
Slowly, my vision focuses, the boy turning from shadow to flesh, the trees coming into view. His eyes stare at me, but they’ve changed. No longer a reflection of Xander or a manifestation of my guilt.
I remember the day I created the boy. More than just his eyes have changed since that day. He’s grown with me. He was fifteen with me, sixteen, seventeen, and so on.
Now, the boy barely resembles how he began. His freckles have disappeared, his brown hair has grown shaggy and black, and the bags under his eyes match mine.
But he doesn’t match me.
He reads my mind, but he is not always of my mind.
I don’t know who he is.
We used to have fun together. When I would dance in the woods—the very dancing Azaire told me he watched from a distance—I was dancing with him. I’d swim with him in the lake. Take him to the house beyond the border on Ma’s birthdays. He was my only friend.
A rift grew between us when I befriended Calista. Never would I have thought him to be jealous—hewasme. But this, what he’s become, it has to be jealousy.
“Xander,”I say.“Your name is Xander.”
The boy’s face visibly breaks. He knows who Xander is, he knows what I’ve done. He knows because he’s me.
Because he did it, too.
“Wendy, I—”
I cut him off.“I created you because I needed you—neededsomeone. I don’t need someone anymore. You’re dismissed.”
The boy steps closer, his features drawn into a frown. He’s about to beg as he picks up my hand, and I’m about to stand my ground. Tell himno. Tell him togo away.But instead, he smiles.
“You think you can be rid of me”—the boy raises his free hand, snapping his fingers—“like that?”
His tone isn’t something I’m used to. It’s prideful, it’s sinister—two things I’ve never been.
“Of course I can.”I step away, trying to rip my hand free.
But his grip is too strong. Like a tree, his branches have wrapped around my mind.
The boy shakes his head.“I am the darkest parts of your mind, the shadow of your soul, the wreckage of your heart.”Then he pulls me closer.“I am not something who comes and goes as you please. I am ever present, whether you grant me a face or not.”
“No,”I whisper. That isn’t right.“You’re myfriend.You’re a companion because Ineededone.”
What he said—it makes no sense. This whole time, he’s been jealous of Azaire. He told me he loves me.
He can’t simply be my darkness.
“I can be your darkness, and I am,”the boy says, answering my thoughts.“Because I, my love, am you. And you so desperately want to be loved, yet you run from it. I was trying to give you what you desire. I was trying to give you both your contradictions.”
“You wanted me to bring you to life.”I force my hands free with all my strength, stumbling into a tree behind me.
The boy takes a step with every word. “Youwanted to bring me to life. What I want is only whatyoulong for. But you already put those pieces together.”
I shake my head, my mind throbbing.“I don’t—”
“You do,”the boy says. But the longer I look at him, the more he looks like Xander.
My first crush.
