ME, CINDERELLA?(57)

“What do you care?”

“Again, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to become involved with any of the other students,” I said.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It would be a mistake.” I nearly spat out the word. “And I wouldn’t want any more of those.”

Eliot said nothing, just stared ahead through the windshield where slush spattered the glass.I fumed out of the window, and we rode the rest of the way in silence. When we arrived at the academy, I slammed the car door shut behind me.

“Brynn?”

I spun around to see Eliot standing, his hands open in innocence.

“I’m sorry for how you feel right now. If it’s my fault—”

“Of course it’s not! Of course it’s not your fault!” Adrenaline tensed my muscles, and another wash of grief tore its unyielding way through my body. I shuddered.

“What is it, then?”

“I thought it would change things,” I said, blurting out the thought that had been at the forefront of my mind since I left her graveside. “I thought it would change things to see her grave. But nothing changed.” I looked up at him, wetness burning in the corners of my eyes. “Nothing.”

Eliot paused in thought. A snowflake fell on my eyelash, and I blinked it away, a tear falling from my eye.

“Go again. Go again tomorrow.”

I looked up at him. The distance between us felt huge, empty.

“Why? What will have changed tomorrow?”

“You will have changed.”

I held my chin up. If he thought I was only a child, he was wrong. I would not be manipulated again, not by any of his high speeches. Not when he didn’t have the courage to put into action the advice he gave to others. When I spoke again, my words turned his face white.

“And what about you?” I said. My voice was cold, dead. “When will you go visit your wife?”





In legends, nobody dies peacefully. Villains die violently, heroes die unluckily, and if it isn’t arrows or spears it’s poison or drowning.

My mother died violently, and that’s all anyone ever told me. She went to Hungary to take care of my grandmother who had hurt her back, and one day when she was walking down the streets of Budapest someone killed her and threw her body into the river.

My father went to identify the body and see her buried, but he would not let me go. I was too young, he said, and I had school to think of. Later, after he had come back, I begged him to tell me what he had seen, but he never did. I had dreams where a hooded figure would stab me over and over again, tear my body to pieces, throw me into a dark river. My father didn’t know how to comfort me. Some nights I would wake up screaming. Some nights we both would.

They say time heals all wounds, but not always. Sometimes wounds pucker over and leave scars, and sometimes they heal silently and secretly, so that only one person knows the hurt was ever there. Sometimes they fester until another person comes along to cut out the rot, and then they bleed clean and fresh again. A second chance to heal.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



Eliot didn’t respond to anything I said, and the meeting at the academy with Mark was brief and awkward. I sat on the other side of the table and listened as Eliot explained a number of different options we had to explore now that we had broken through the solution to the first, specific case. Occasionally he would glance up at Mark, but never at me.

Then he left, and Mark and I were alone in the university library. I began to gather up the papers to go, but Mark put his hand on my arm.

“Brynn?”

I turned to see him only inches away from me, his body so near mine that I could feel his breath on my skin.

“Mark—”

“I need to talk with you.” His face was so serious that I almost laughed out of sheer nervousness.

“About what?”

“Come on, Brynn, you know about what.” He leaned in as if to kiss me, and I stepped back.

A lump rose in my throat and I coughed. I didn’t want to do this to Mark. He had been one of the best and closest friends I’d ever had. But I didn’t feel the same way towards him, and he deserved to know that.

“Mark,” I said carefully. “I don’t think we should go any further with this.”

His face dropped into a mask of apathy. He only looked like this when it hurt, I could tell. “Why?”

“I just— I don’t feel that way towards you.”

“You kissed me back. Last night.” His voice pleaded with me, and his careful mask began to crack.

“I’m sorry, Mark. I was excited about the problem. We both were.”