The Girl Who Would Be King(128)

“Thanks,” I say. “For everything.”

“Do you really have to go?” he asks, seeming hopeful.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “But I’ll be back.” I stand up from the table and he does the same. Just as I’m about to swing the duffle over my shoulder and walk away, he reaches out and embraces me. It’s more powerful than I could have imagined. Sloppy tears fall out of my eyes and onto his t-shirt. He releases his grip slightly and we separate. I can’t wait to come back. I hope I get the chance to.



•

The sledgehammer never comes down though. There’s no Bonnie, there’s no sledgehammer. There’s nothing. It’s just me, my bloody cat suit pressed to my neck and an ugly red raised scar where I’d pulled out the glass earlier. I breathe deeply a few times, my heart still caught in my throat, before reaching into the covers behind me for another bottle. I drain half of it before I feel steady enough to stand.

I stumble-walk into the bedroom to look for Scarlett’s letters, to read them for the thousandth time, to try to imagine who she was, who Bonnie was, who Delia was. I don’t really know how much longer I can go on like this, afraid of all the ghosts, killing a body that won’t be killed.

Delia comes to me again, dancing around in her old green robe. She’s a bad dancer.

“That’s because you never saw me with power, my dear,” the Delia vision says to me.

“I’m sure it didn’t look much different,” I mumble.

“Well, I never started drinking until you came along and took away everything that was amazing about me,” she says with a little smirk.

“Yeah, right,” I say, not believing a word.

“Really. You think you’re so great and powerful, but I never touched that stuff you’re failing to kill yourself with until I was faced with losing all my power,” she says cruelly. I look up at her as she dances around the room.

“I don’t believe you,” I breathe. She bends down to me and whispers in my ear.

“Believe it my darling daughter,” she pauses. “Here’s something I know you’ll believe, since you always expect only the worst of me,” her lips nearly touch my ear. “I always knew you would be no good, and I tried to get rid of you when you were three months along.” She pirouettes into the other room and yells back. “Of course, it’s not that easy! We don’t always get to decide. It decides for us, whether we’re ready or not!”

I close my eyes, hoping she’ll go away forever. I’m sorry I ever decided to talk to her in the first place.

I place Liz’s ear on the chair in front of me, and I’m sitting on the bed, trying to form what it is I really want to say. Our therapy sessions need to go better if I’m going to get out of this funk and back onto world domination, especially before my minions stage a revolt and I have to kill them all and find new ones.

“Aha!” I yell at the ear. “I know!” And I pounce off the couch and rummage through a pile of junk in the corner until I come up with Scarlett’s letters to Delia. I toss them over my shoulder one by one searching for the right one. “Aha!” I yell again when I find it. I drag it and myself back to the couch and begin reading aloud to Liz’s ear.

“There’s this part in one of her letters that makes perfect sense, and really just, like totally justifies the fact that I killed her…hold on, lemme find it,” I skim the pages, mumbling as I read the words. “Here it is, -

‘we all have our own demons I suppose. And you’re right about Bonnie – I don’t resent her – and I’ll be honest, it didn’t ever occur to me as you said it wouldn’t. I’m sorry if that upsets you. I can understand why you might struggle with it, Delia. It’s a strange thing the day that baby is born and so much of you goes with it. But I think, maybe you just have to see it as not leaving you so much as carrying on through her. Try to focus on that.’”



I look up at Liz’s ear from the crumpled letter in my hand. “So what do you have to say about that?” I pause for the ear’s reaction. “I KNOW, right?!” I laugh, crumpling up the letter in the process. “She TOTALLY resented me, she even admits it here, to this stranger – her goddamn arch nemesis for Christ’s sake! Which, while we’re on that subject, why wasn’t she trying to KILL her!?!” I look over at the pile of letters. “Let me show you something else!” I dig through the pile again, tossing the letters everywhere and talking to myself. “Not that one, not that one, no, no, no…” I eventually give up and slump against the wall. I look sideways at Liz’s ear. “You see, it’s not like having a stranger in my head – these things I feel but don’t want to feel – because it’s my whole body that feels it. And really that doesn’t sound right either because while it feels like a stranger, the truth is it’s always been there – for as long as I can remember, long before I got the powers, just lurking under the surface of me, and it’s just like the powers freed it – so if it’s always been there, how can it be anything but me?” I ask. Liz’s ear just sits there staring at me. I kick it off the chair and it lands over in a pile of broken glass. I stare at it for a few minutes before crawling over to it on my hands and knees. “I’m sorry,” I say to the ear. “Do you forgive me?” She doesn’t answer. I’m prone on the floor whispering into Liz’s ear, clenching a shard of glass, when I hear a henchman clear his throat.