“What about your father?”
“I told you, I don’t know who he is, or was. He wasn’t around. I never even asked. I thought you were taking notes…Jeezus,” I say, crossing my arms, pissed that I have to repeat myself.
“What else would you have asked Delia?”
“I don’t know. Why we are, how we are, WHAT we are. If there’s a way to change it or make it different. Why there’s apparently another girl out there like me she never bothered to warn me about.”
“There’s another girl like you?”
“I guess. I think I felt her at one of the carnivals. I went back home and found some old letters of my mother’s – apparently her name is Bonnie.” There’s a beat and then Liz remembers.
“Oh. The pretty, the good…”
“Yeah,” I say, sulking.
“Where is Bonnie now?”
“I have no clue. I don’t know how to find her.”
“Well, why do you think she was at the carnival?”
“I don’t know…I used to think it was just a coincidence…”
“And now?” Liz presses.
“And now,” I press my fingers to my temples and clench my eyes shut. “Now I guess I just think she was looking for something like her too. So she wouldn’t be alone.”
“Is that why you think about her? Because you’d like to not be so alone too? Because it might be nice to know there’s someone else out there like you?”
“Nice?” My head snaps up at the suggestion and I narrow my eyes at Liz. “I don’t want to feel all nice with her. I don’t want to…cuddle.”
“Well, then, why do you want to find her?” she asks. I look at Liz, my head cocked. After all this time talking with her, she continues to miss the big picture. Even if this girl is like me, she’s not someone that can help me be less alone in the world. Bonnie is one thing and one thing only: a threat to me.
“To kill her, of course.”
°
After outing myself to Liesel and then to Ben – because as I’ve quickly learned with the two of them, trusting one of them is trusting them both, they keep nothing from one another – things in my life shift again. I suppose it would be silly to assume things would stay the same after a declaration like that, but saying it out loud somehow makes it more true, more powerful. And I can’t deny myself…what I am…or at least what I know I should be doing, anymore.
And there’s wonderful beauty in that. Accepting myself and what I can do and be. But there’s horror in it too. Because I don’t ignore the screams anymore. I go after everything I reasonably can. Over the next few weeks I do amazing things – I stop twelve rapists, twenty-six muggings, five convenience store robberies, two car accidents, and rescue two kittens from trees. Actually, it turned out to be the same kitten twice, but who’s counting?
I feel euphoric most of the time, almost high off of my good deeds like they’re drugs I’ve long been addicted to. The rest of my life is in chaos though. Things are coming apart, and fast. I almost get fired, from both my jobs, and then I do get fired from my barista job, although it’s hard to care too much about that since I hated it anyway. I leave Clark suddenly and in mid-sentence more times than I can count. I break dates and when I do show up I’m painfully late or ditch out early. Twice he’s found strange holes in my clothes and when I can’t explain any of it – the absences, the holes, the sudden departures – we have terrible fights. He’s starting to not trust me and it feels horrible, in part because he’s right, he shouldn’t trust me. I’m lying to him. But I don’t know how to explain anything, and even if I could would he even believe me? And if I could convince him, would he stay with me? Would he tell me to stop? Is there any chance things could just be the same between us? Is it dangerous for him if I’m a superhero? I feel somewhere deep inside like it is dangerous for him.
I stay over at his apartment one night, after a decadent evening of movies and popcorn, as I try to make up with him after a particularly bad fight, but at three in the morning I feel a tug of nausea and I slide out of his bed and creep across the floor. I grab my jeans from a chair and my shoes that I left by the front door. I’m in the apartment hallway with my shoes in one hand and my key to his apartment in the other before I realize what I’m doing. Clark, sleeping in the quiet apartment behind me, silently, beautifully, and blissfully unaware. Once on the street I run as fast as I can, and it is like I’m speed incarnate, headed toward a fire in an apartment on the Upper East Side. I’ll be damned if I’m going to read about another family burned alive when I could have helped. Even if it does jeopardize the only happiness I’ve ever had.