Page 3 of Misfit Monsters
People who do that… People like that are the reason my feet hurt.
I walk along the fence until I’m directly across from the bride. "Are you all right?”
At the sound of my voice, she startles. She spins to face me with a rustle of her massive skirts and knits her brow. “Are you one of Ted’s cousins?”
I shake my head. “I’m not a guest. You just look like maybe you need someone to talk to.”
The bride droops. “I—I don’t know.”
She presses her hand to her forehead. “I thought I wanted this, but… we haven’t been together for very long. Only a year. Everything’s felt soright, and I didn’t want to wait. But what if I’m being crazy? Who jumps into marriage like that?”
My understanding of human relationships comes mostly from fictional ones on screens, but that gives me context. “You’re afraid you’re rushing in too fast. You might not know him well enough.”
“People don’t normally do this. There’s obviously a reason why.”
Through her uneasiness and shame, the quivers of excitement still reach me. There’s the edge of a richer, more substantial sweetness like a honey-glazed roast.
“He didn’tdoanything to make you feel that way, did he?” I say. “He’s good to you.”
A smile lights up her face.
“He is,” she says, and it’s in her voice, in her sparkling eyes meeting mine: the whole roast and a heap of buttery mashed potatoes and caramelized squash besides. “When I’m with him, I feel like I can do anything. And he’ll be right there, cheering me on.”
She lets out a choked sort of laugh. “Even if I went in right now and said I want to wait, he’d just hug me and reassure me that we’ll sort everything out.”
My breath catches in my throat. I haven’t gotten to bask in this especially potent sensation very often. It’s filling in every bit of empty space inside me.
I can repay her for that.
I reach across the fence to pat her arm. “You love him.And you know he loves you. That’s bigger than anything you’re afraid of.”
Humans are strange beings. They’re the ones feeling the feelings, but so often they need to be told what’s inside them before they can recognize it.
A brilliant smile crosses the bride’s lips as a flood of relief courses off her. “You’re right. The worries seem so silly when I think clearly. Thank you.”
She turns and hurries back into the church, nothing but elation radiating off her now.
I sent her on that path. A surge of my own joy swells inside me.
Too quickly, too vast.
Panic jolts through me amid the rushing whirlwind. I only have an instant to push myself away from the fence before the hurricane of happiness bursts out of not just my hair but all of me in an explosion of light.
I crumple in on myself, hugging my knees, willing the blinding glow back under my skin. But it’s blazing too wildly for me to catch hold.
Frantic voices yell. Tires screech. Sparks of other people’s panic nip at me.
A metallic crunch reverberates through the air. The impact of the people hurt by my power stabs right down the center of my body: an acidic spurt of agony, a searing flare of anguish.
A crackling of pain before a life snuffs out.
A sob hitches out of me. I dig my fingers into the grass.
The light starts to contract back into me, and I dive into the first sliver of shadow I can reach.
I shouldn’t have come over to the church at all. I should have known it’d be too risky.
Why didn’t I walk away when I saw the bride?
