Page 54 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
It hurts, but it should. He deserves it.
“Are you okay?” Birdie murmurs to Aspen.
“Yeah,” Aspen says cautiously. Holding the key, eyeing Crane likehe’s a wild animal. Aspen and Birdie have never looked at him that way before. “Think so.”
“Okay.” Those pale eyes go back to Crane. “We’re leaving.”
Aspen, though, doesn’t move until Birdie takes them by the arm and pulls, so gently.
They step out of the auction pit.
Crane can’t remember how to breathe. It’s getting caught in his throat. His hand throbs where it hit the bone of Aspen’s jaw.
A few moments later, in the stands, Levi lowers the shotgun. He’s whispering. Counting out the time it takes to leave the auction building, get into the car, drive away.
One, two, three.
They’re safe, Crane tells himself. Aspen and Birdie and Luna are safe, and they’ll never come back to Washville again.
Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six.
They’re alive, and they’ll stay that way, far away from him.
Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine—
One hundred.
They’re gone.
Levi lowers the shotgun, and Crane crumples onto the dusty, rotting floor.
Twenty-One
Levi says, “There we go.”
He climbs down to the showroom floor and crouches beside Crane’s slumped body, cradling his temple.
“See how easy that was?” Levi says. “You did the right thing.”
It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like he wants to die.
“I keep saying, if you just do what we tell you, it’s gonna be so much better for all of us.”
Crane hiccups.
Sobs.
Jess was right: he’s spent all this time waiting for permission. Permission to transition, permission to be silent, permission to make it stop.
“Are you going to keep being good?” Levi asks.
Crane nods.
Levi puts Crane onto his back and shoves calloused hands under his shirt to feel his bulging stomach, then higher; to grope possessively at his tits, pinch his darkened nipples. They ache but Crane doesn’t push him away. Crane likes when it hurts.
“That’s what I thought.”
Levi is breathing hard now. Tugging Crane’s shirt up to expose his swollen breasts to the warm air. Strips Crane of his shoes, his jeans, his boxers. Nudges apart his knees to settle between them. The dog tags drag across Crane’s skin. The shotgun lies within arm’s reach.
