Page 12 of Shelter Me

“Sure,” Bianca says, and I hear her get up and move about the room. “Just a tiny heads up. Your classes start… Let me check.”Don’t check don’t check don’t check. “Seven minutes ago.”

I groan and bury my head in the pillow.

***

I have been taught my whole life that I have no other choice but to do what’s right.

Which always happens to coincide with what other people want from me.

But what if I had another choice? Or what if I made a choice out of nothing? I’ve never done that before, but what if now was the time to try?

I’m too old for a rebellion. But I’m not too old to try my own strength, am I?

Gosh, I hope I’m not.

I’m going to do it.

Not that I have endless choices, of course. I think that’s why I said what I did to Bianca, when she was looking at me with those huge eyes.

One, I’m used to talking to crowds of reporters, or crowds in general (doesn’t mean I like it, but no one ever asks). And two, I think most people confuse power with choices. With freedom. I have no freedom and very few choices, if any. But I do have power, and it’s not in the fact that I am a king’s daughter, even if he just happens to be one of the most hated people on the planet right now.

My power is that I have had to practically grow up by myself, even though I am always surrounded by people and have had no say in my own life. I have always thought that this made me weak, but what if I had been looking at it the wrong way? What if it has made me strong in very specific ways?

Like now, for example.

When I make a choice.

I decide to run away from my bodyguards, from the campus, from my father’s phone calls, from everything.

And just like that, I do it.

/Marco/

[audio transcript]

I am running out of time, mom. I don’t know what to do to stay alive.

I don’t know what to do to keep the people who should be alive, alive.

They gave me one month, at most, and it’s already been a month and a half. I have been keeping my boss at bay with idiotic excuses, but he has somehow swallowed all of my lies. He needs me. But for how much longer?

If I don’t do it soon, I know what will happen.

Even so, I won’t do it. That is out of the question. I want you to know that, mom. After I’m dead, they might say that I chose to do this, to take on this mission.

Don’t believe them.

They forced it on me, and I had no choice.

But even when you have no choice, you still have one, isn’t that what you taught me? Well, I chose. I chose to die.

I decided on the spot that I wouldn’t do it, mom. I didn’t even entertain the thought.

But. How to stay alive? That is the question. I haven’t figured it out, and I might never do. That’s why I’m recording these messages, so that you have something left of me when the time comes. So that I can say goodbye properly.

Sorry for being morbid. It’s been a long day, and time is running out, and they will be on my case soon. I have to figure out something—

{the voice message is interrupted, and the audio ends abruptly}

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