Page 51 of Antihero
I didn’t even realise she could stand up from her wheelchair. She’s leaning over me, clutching my hands in each of hers with that oddly strong grip. More lucidity than I’ve seen up until now comes to her eye. “Please, will you take me to the cliffs?”
“Why?” I ask, voice trembling, my heart thumping as I lean back.
“They won’t let me fly. I want to fly.”
“Why would you want that?”
Her grip loosens, her legs wobble, and she sits back. She’s still holding my hands together, but her grip loosens. Gina turns her face to catch the moonlight, staring beyond the window, the bars. “To go someplace else.”
I steady my breathing. “You don’t like it here? Are they cruel to you?”
“No, no.” There’s a vagueness coming back to her. “They’re kind.”
I squeeze her hands, trying to keep her with me. “Then why would you want to leave? To fly?”
Then person who looks back at me then—it’s Gina. From fifteen years ago, before they took her mind, before this place became her one and only reality; anything like a normal life made impossible.
“Wouldn’t you?” she asks.
I blink. Fifteen years of this. A mind that comes and goes, that’s not yours, not since they took it. But I couldn’t… can’t. She’s holding my gaze.
I nod to her.
Relief flits across her expression before the softness, the emptiness, returns.
I should untangle myself from this, should never have come. I still can leave her to live out another fifteen years, another thirty. Fifty.
I don’t. And I’ll have however long I’ve yet to live to wonder if I did the right thing.
***
Needler
I can’t wait for her any longer.
Just when I want her to break into my place, to surprise me at ungodly hours of the night, to draw me to her, she stops. Practically vanishes. I follow the ones I suspect will soon have her interest more than she follows them.
I’ve given her space, waited. But I can’t bear it any longer. I’ve come to check on her.
Apparently, I’m not the only one.
He paces in front of her cabin, movements full of rigid anxiety, head shaking as he murmurs worry to himself. I stop at the edge of the treeline. “James?” I take a guess at his identity. Paige’s neighbour, the one who came by that night I had her tied to a chair. I haven’t been able to find out anything about him by asking around town, though everyone knows him. It appears he’s merely another orphan, one of the few male ones left on this island.
He jumps to a stop, his wide, frightened eyes find me, an expression too young for the lanky man’s body he inhabits. His brown hair is cut close and without great care, almost to his scalp.
“I’m here to see Miss Paige!” he stammers out, like theres a chance I'll think he might be here to commit a crime instead.
I take a step forward, but keep my distance. “She’s not letting you in?” I ask calmly.
“She swore at me! She’s not in a good way, no, no…” He sounds like he might be about to cry.
I nod, and suggest, “I’ll make sure she’s feeling alright, okay? You can go…”
“No, I’ve got to check on her!” he insists, shifting urgently from foot to foot.
I frown. “What do you mean, youhaveto?”
James shakes his head, and drifts away from the cabin, back in the direction of his own place. “Didn’t mean anything. She’s just asleep. Sick! That’s it…” Before I can say anything else, he’s crunching through the underbrush, disappearing into the trees. I frown after him, waiting for the noises to fade. Odd.
