Page 52 of Together We Rot

“Wouldn’t shut up about you,” she tells me. It’s enough to make my insides burn. “She cared deeply; I can tell you that. She’d kick my ass for saying it, though.”

Cared.

“I want things to be normal between us again,” I confide in her, idly tracing the wood grain of the table with my finger. “We used to be so close before it happened. We’d never fought before, but... I mean, she accused my family of kidnapping. I told her if she didn’t drop the accusation, I couldn’t be friends with her. And... well, I’m guessing you can see where that went. She was right all along and now everything is ruined.”

“You both made decisions you thought were right.” Ms.Delacroix hums. The kettle whistles along with her. Before I can wipe the expression away, she continues: “I’ll let you in on a secret, kid. I’m not an old hag yet, but I’m old enough to know some things, at least.” She clicks the stove off, preparing us two mismatched cups, and waits for them to steep before bringing them over.

I nod my thanks, tracing the handle of my cup. It’s painted over with toadstools as red as her hair and dark green frogs perched upon them.

“Everyone’s bound to make a million mistakes growing up, but there’s always going to be that one nagging one. Something you regret deeply but can never truly fix or change. You two were only thinking of yourselves. Nothing wrong in that, but nothing right either.” She pauses for a large sip. “We have all seen trees grow in odd places. Bent out of shape, warped by their surroundings. You grow from mistakes. The two of you aren’t the same people you were last year. You won’t be a year from now, either. I’m barely the same person each morning when I wake up.” She flashes me a wink. “Assuming my insomnia lets me sleep, of course.”

“So, there’s hope?” I whisper.

“There’s always hope,” she answers with a nonchalant roll of her shoulders. “As hokey as that may sound.”

My finger circles the rim of my cup. The tea ripples like the skip of a stone across a pond. “Thanks, ma’am. I needed that.”

“Please stop with the ‘ma’am’ and ‘Ms.Delacroix’ nonsense. It’s Cherry.”

I nod, and she grins for real. “It’s funny,” she comments out of the blue, staring down at the reflection in her cup. “When you’re sad, the plants around you wilt and fade, but the moment you’re calm, they burst back to life. Take a look at the room around you.”

I crane my neck around, bracing myself for what I’ll see. The vines have drifted off the wall, growing toward me. They reach out, their tips inches away from my skin. All of them rush out to hold me, to twist around my flesh and claim me for the woods.

As I startle, they jerk, falling limp and slithering back in place on the wall. “You’d make one hell of a gardener, kid.” Cherry snorts.

I can’t help it; I laugh. The plants join in. Flower petals opening and closing like tiny mouths. The sight of it shuts me up fast. I turn my attention back to my cup. It’s a deep amber, warm enough to chase the cold from my bones. I cling onto it, tiny shivers running across my arms. The first sip goes down easily enough—nutty and full-bodied like the dense woods sprawled around us.

“So, I suppose we should start the tarot reading now, shall we?” Cherry’s long nails tap against the ceramic cup, a series of harsh clicking noises. “Tell me first, what’s on your mind?”

I have a sneaking suspicion she can see inside my thoughts already.

“Too much to put into words,” I confess, trying to make sense of my jumbled head. At the forefront, though, I see Mrs.Greene’s smiling face. Her notebook with the purple spirals and the bright ribbons she spun through her hair each day. I hadn’t noticed her smile slipping farther off her face each day or the fear building in her eyes. She knew about me. This whole time, she knew. “I feel... guilty. Mrs.Greene died because of me.”

Cherry’s eyes drop to the table. “Sophie knew what she was getting into. She made that choice on her own.”

“I keep thinking if I focus hard enough, all of this will go away somehow,” I say, and I notice the flowers sighing and wilting all around me. Petals shriveling and falling to the floor. Dead. Dead because of me. Wil’s old house razed to the ground at my touch. The fear in her eyes.

“Can you speak to it?” Cherry asks, drawing my attention away from the destruction I’ve caused.

“Speak to it?” I yelp. “I don’t want to speak to it. I want it gone.”

It came to me in a spark at the library, a subtle heartbeat thumping in tandem with mine. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. It hadn’t felt like anything out of my control. And at the party when it spun in my head and I coughed up a moth. Again, in Wil’s bathroom mirror, bugs bleeding from the walls and my face transforming into one I didn’t recognize. It had been a seedling then, not yet sprouted. Not yet powerful.

At the house, it was different. It grew and became insatiable; two bodies living beneath the same skin. I’d felt it flare and blossom. There was a sense of nothingness as it took over. Just a second and it had dug my fingers into the floorboards and destroyed everything in its path.

One wretched, helpless second. That’s all it took.

Cherry takes a full sip of her drink. “Like it or not,” she says, “it’s inside you, Elwood. You should at least learn who you’re sharing a body with.”

Sharing a body. The thought conjures up a disturbing image, another head sprouting from my neck, half of my body mine and the other half completely beyond my control.

“I’m not doing it.” I growl, and I curse myself for feeling angry. My fuse used to be one never-ending wick. Kick me, punch me, bully me. Brian Schmidt had tormented me for years and I’d tolerated it all. Bowed my head and hoped it would end soon. Now rage has flown out from the Pandora’s box inside me, and it shows no sign of going away.

If Brian jabbed me in the ribs again, I fear what I’d do. Maybe I’d lose myself. The darkness would wash over me and one second is all it would take. One second of darkness and the vines would crawl up his skin.

“I think it’s deeply important that you do.” Cherry rolls her shoulders in a loose shrug. She seems immune to my outburst, and I suppose I have Wil to thank for that one. “Discovering what’s inside of you is something I can help you with, but it won’t be easy. Here, why don’t you give it a try?”

I force myself to be gentle. I force myself to be the person I thought I was. “You don’t understand. It’s dangerous.”

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