She stares at me, confused. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Look.” I hold her eyes, willing her to look at my body. We were too consumed at the drive-in, and in bed this morning I was behind her, so she hasn’t gotten a good look.
I light up my phone and hold it up, illuminating my skin.
Her eyes drop, looking hesitant, but slowly she starts letting her gaze drift over me. And I know exactly what she’s seeing.
Her eyes fall over the cassette tape high on my torso, musical notes stringing out of it, and the label on the tape reading The Hand That Rules the World. It was a play on words from a poem Ryen quoted in a letter once when she was encouraging me to start a band.
Her gaze trails down to the small black birds taking flight on the side of my stomach and over my hip. Words float along with the art, reading, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. It’s from Hamlet, Ryen’s favorite Shakespeare play. I got the tattoo after Annie died.
She takes my phone and slowly circles me, shining the light and taking in my chest and back, the Pearls of Wisdom down my arm—another letter about our parents—the decaying heart on my shoulder, stitched up down the middle and reconnecting the words You’re My Tribe—inspired by her words which even led to a song I wrote. And then there’s the countless other little quotes and designs, the scenes of things we talked about, dreamed of, and laughed over.
I wasn’t covered, and I didn’t have full sleeves going on, but it was a lot to take in. And almost all of it, she was the root of.
She comes around my front again, her breath shaking and her eyes glistening with tears.
“You were the only thing that was real to me,” I tell her.
She looks at me like she has no idea how to process all this. I mean, really. What did I expect? Even tomorrow, when I meant to tell her everything, how was I planning on doing that? Was there any way for her to find this out in a way she was going to understand?
“Misha?” she whispers, and all of a sudden she’s scanning me up and down, looking at me like she’s finally seeing me.
I take the phone from her and slip it in my pocket. Moving in, I bring my hands up to hold her face, but she flinches.
I immediately drop them. “You have to listen.”
“Ryen?” someone calls, knocking on the door.
It’s a woman. Probably her mother.
“Get rid of her,” I whisper.
Ryen blinks up at me, wiping her eyes. “Ye…yes?” she stammers, calling out. “I’m in bed.”
“Okay,” her mom says. “I thought I heard the TV or something. It’s late. You need sleep.”
“Okay, goodnight.”
I pull the shirt back on and lower my voice, hearing her mother’s door close.
“I never intended to let it get this far,” I explain. “I had business here, and I wanted…” I trail off, searching for the right words, because I’m scared. “Part of me couldn’t resist being this close to you. I think part of me needed you. I never thought we would speak again after the scavenger hunt. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, but then I came here and...”
She runs her hands up and down her face, starting to cry again, and I can tell I’m losing her.
“But then you steal my shit,” I keep going, “and I see you harassing Cortez. And then you try to fuck with me in the lunchroom, and one thing leads to another, and we were constantly in each other’s faces. It was like… It was like, even if we’d never been pen pals, we still would’ve found each other, you know?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cries. “At any time you could’ve said, ‘Hey, I’m Misha!’” She shakes her head, glaring at me. “I kissed you. I went to bed with you! The whole time you knew me, and I had no idea. You humiliated me! You’ve been right here in front of me this whole time. Do you have any idea how fucking creepy that is?”
“I had no reason to tell you!” I growl in a near whisper “I didn’t even know if I liked you anymore that first day! And I definitely had no reason to trust you. You were a snotty, little brat, and you know it. Why did you lie to me?” I scowl. “Why did I think, for seven years, that you were strong and fucking nice? Someone who has balls and stands up for herself?”
Her shoulders shake, and little gasps escape as she struggles to breathe. I quickly look around, angry and guilty at the same time. Seeing an inhaler on her desk, I grab it and hand it to her, but she knocks it out my hand.
“I lied about the people in my life and the parts of me I fake for others,” she explains. “Everything else was true. The movies and the music, my ideas and my dreams, everything else was true. The rest wasn’t important.”
“I trusted you, too,” I point out. “I believed in you.”
“I’m everything I said I was.”
“You can say whatever you want,” I retort. “Doesn’t make it true.”
Her head falls, and she inhales shaky breaths through her nose, clearly trying to calm herself and get her body under control. The inhaler lays on the floor. I wish she’d just take the fucking thing. She’s making me nervous.
“I was the real me when I wrote you those letters,” she says quietly. “I was everything I wanted to be.”
And I can understand that. There are definitely some minor things I haven’t told her, because I wanted to be free with her, like I can’t be at home. But she has to know that, even though what I did was crazy and things got way out of hand, it hurt me, too, to be tricked. To find that the person you care about and hold on a pedestal is shallow and mean to the rest of the world.