Page 110 of Worse Than Wicked
“It’s my fault too,” I admit. “I should never have interfered.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his shoulders shake and he holds me tighter, like he’s afraid I’ll slip away next, like he’s the spider and I’m his catch, not the other way around.
“It’s just us now,” I whisper, cradling his head to my hollow belly, holding all the pieces I have left of this beautiful, terrible boy.
The pillow is wet with my tears, but I still search for his scent in it, bury my face in it the way Baron buries his in me. The pillowcase is clean, though, smelling only of detergent. I wish we’d known, that we could have saved the last one he slept on here, so we could have that tonight.
“I can’t,” Baron says, pressing his face into my belly. “Mabel, I can’t. How can I?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, another tear slipping down my cheek. “We just do.”
And then he’s lower, between my legs, and his mouth is hungry and desperate, and I remember what Harper said. Because Baron never does this—not since one time, in high school, when he pushed a sucker inside me and then licked it out and told me I tasted like cherries.
This is Duke’s thing. And when he won’t stop, when he refuses until I give in, that’s Duke’s thing. When he forces me to keep going until my legs are shaking and I’m crying, I hate it even more than usual, because I want it to be him. I wish, and I wonder, and I pretend as I shatter, that it’s the right twin who lived.
twenty-eight
Baron Dolce
Everyone’s crying except me. Everyone thought I was the smart one, but Duke managed something in his short life that I’ve never been able to accomplish. He figured out how to get everyone to love him despite themselves, despite all the crimes and trespasses he committed, the same evil that they hate me for. They could forgive him, because though he was a monster, he was also human. I’m the inhuman monster, the one they can’t love because I don’t crave it, because I don’t see the point in getting them to love me.
All the tears flowing down the toughest faces in Faulkner can’t save him.
They don’t bring him back, rising like smoke from the grave, don’t make him laugh recklessly or dance wild as a flame.
They don’t turn back the clock.
They don’t open the eyes I watched close, don’t bring the light back into them, the spark, the life.
And what’s the point of love if it can’t do that?
Without him, I will never know. He can’t explain it to me, make me see. From this day forward, I will always be an outsider, an observer; this human world with its human emotions an alien land to me.
When I look down at Mabel, she’s crying too, her face wet and soft as a baby’s. She clings to my chest like one of those damn koalas Duke was always collecting at the end, so I put my arm around her in case she collapses with grief, falls on thecoffin and grasps that instead of me, demands to be lowered into the ground because what point is there in a life without him?
Maybe that’s what love really is. It’s not everything, but it’s a reason. A reason to stay up here when the priest closes the book somberly, and later, after we fly the body back to New York, a reason to stay up here when they lower the coffin into the ground next to Dad.
I look down at my brother, but he’s not there. It’s only a body, like a mannequin. He’s flawless in death as he was in life—his hair styled, his cheekbones strong, his chin square. He looks like he could sit up at any moment, laugh at us for believing anything could kill the invincible Duke Dolce. But it wouldn’t be him. He’s gone.
He always walked on the edge because he knew he’d never fall. That I would always catch him.
But I didn’t.
I lost sight of him, lost my grip and let him slip away. I didn’t know he’d already let go, that if I released him, even for a moment, he wouldn’t hold on. I should have noticed. I knew better than to lose focus. Only one of us could ever be anything at once. That’s how it worked. We were two halves of the whole. If he was being stupid, I had to be smart. If he was being reckless, I had to look out for him. If he was being selfish, I couldn’t be selfish at the same time.
But I was. I went after what I wanted, apart from him. I wanted this one thing of my own. For years, I dreamed of seeing the light vanish from a man’s eyes. Now, it’s the moment that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Everyone is silent for a long moment after Father Salvatore is done. I wonder what secrets he keeps about Duke, if he witnessed his trips to Thorncrown with Dad, if he was there. I wonder who else here keeps secrets about my twin, secrets he never told me, and now he never will.
There are so many faces in the crowd I barely recognize. I don’t know how many people attended Judge Darling’s funeral earlier this summer, but it couldn’t have been many more. And there’s no doubt that more tears flow here. Duke touched people in a way that’s rare, a way that not many people can. Even Harper is sobbing in Royal’s arms beside me, like she doesn’t care that it’ll ruin her tough-as-nails reputation, like he didn’t tie her to a tree and leave her for dead every bit as much as I did.
Even Royal is crying, silent tears carving tracks down his cheeks.
Suddenly, Mabel steps away from me, takes a deep breath, turns her face to the blank white sky, and screams. It’s a long, mournful howl that cuts through the silent sobs and muted sniffles, obscene in its power in the somber situation, hideous against the backdrop of assorted flowers that she insisted on, buying out every flower shop in town and then going to Little Rock for more.
Everyone stares at her in shock. Her face goes red, but she takes a deep breath and does it again. She knows she’s making a spectacle, which is so unlike quiet, bland little Mabel Darling that no one stops her.
Finally, as she draws a breath for her third scream, which seems more calculated than anguished, I grab her arm. “What are you doing?” I mutter.
