Shadow Me (Shatter Me, #4.5)

by Tahereh Mafi

I’m exhausted, overworked, and stressed out, but I’m grateful.

I force myself to say it, out loud. I’m grateful. I take a few moments to feel it. Recognize it. I force myself to smile, to unclench the tightness in my face that would otherwise default too easily to anger. I whisper a quick thank-you to the unknown, to the air, to the lonely ghosts eavesdropping on my private conversations with no one. I have a roof over my head and clothes on my back and food waiting for me every morning. I have friends. A makeshift family.

I’m lonely but I’m not alone. My body works, my brain works, I’m alive. It’s a good life. I have to make a conscious effort to remember that. To choose to be happy every day. If I didn’t, I think my own...

“Kishimoto, if I considered other people’s mediocre standards a sufficient metric by which to measure my own accomplishments, I’d never have amounted to anything.”

impassive.

I sigh, hard, and turn away, hating myself for always noticing this kind of thing, and hating myself even more for my constant need to follow up. I can’t help it. Castle said it to me once when I was a kid: he told me I was unusually compassionate. I never thought about it like that—with words, with an explanation—until he’d said it to me. I always hated it about myself, that I couldn’t be tougher. Hated that I cried so hard when I saw a dead bird for the first time. Or that I used to bring home all the stray animals I found until Castle finally told me I had to stop, that we didn’t have the resources to keep them all. I was twelve. He made me let them go, and I cried for a week. I hated that I cried. Hated that I couldn’t help it.

Everyone thinks I’m not supposed to give a shit—that I shouldn’t—but I do. I always do. And I give a shit about this asshole, too.

He’s giving me an out. I should take it. I should take it and pretend I don’t notice the strain in his jaw or the raw, red look around his eyes. I’ve got my own problems, my own burdens, my own pain and frustration, and besides, no one ever asks me about my day. No one ever follows up with me, no one ever bothers to peer beneath the surface of my smile. So why should I care? I shouldn’t.

“I don’t think you do, actually. In fact, I hope you don’t. I wouldn’t want you to know how I feel right now. I wouldn’t wish that for you.”

Somehow, I’ve become a magnet for pain. Other people’s pain. My own pain. The thing is, I have no one to blame but myself. I ask the follow-up questions that land me here. I care too much. I make it my business when I shouldn’t, and I only ever seem to get shit for it.

Winston’s been in love with Brendan for a long time, but I’m the only one who knows about it.

I’m so happy for my friends. I love them, even when they piss me off. I care about them. I want their joy. But it still hurts a little when it feels like, everywhere I look, everyone seems to have someone. Everyone but me.

Instead, I’m a big, raw, bleeding heart, and I spend my days pretending not to notice that I want more. That I need more. Maybe it sounds weird to say, but I know I could love the shit out of someone. I feel it, in my heart. This capacity to love. To be romantic and passionate. Like it’s a superpower I have. A gift, even.

She smiled. It was a happy, genuine smile. I had a feeling that smile was going to kill me. In fact, I was pretty sure this whole situation was going to kill me.

rudimentary

And then, with a seismic jolt of terror, sense was knocked sideways into my head. I bolted upright in my own skin. I thought I might die. I thought I might actually die of embarrassment. I wanted to. I wanted to melt into the Earth. Evaporate. Disappear. Jesus, I nearly did.

I couldn’t believe I’d said the words out loud. I couldn’t believe I’d been betrayed by my own goddamn mouth like that.

Her eyes move up, meet mine, and then she’s staring at my mouth again. I wonder if she knows she’s doing it. I wonder if she has any idea what she’s doing to me. My lungs feel too small. My heart feels both fast and absurdly heavy.

“You reek of it.” He nods at me, my body. “You’re practically emanating lovelorn agony.”

eviscerate

She’s different. She gets me. I give her a lot of crap for being emotional all the time, but I love how empathetic she is. I love how she feels things so deeply that sometimes even joy manages to wound her. It’s who she is. She’s all heart.

I want to ask him why he kept all this from me. I want to demand an explanation. But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to do it. Not yet, anyway. I think maybe I’m afraid to hear the answers to my own questions. I worry about what they might reveal about me.

They clearly have crazy chemistry. Their relationship never made a lot of sense to me—I couldn’t understand how someone like Warner could be an emotional partner to anyone, much less someone like Juliette: a girl who eats, sleeps, and breathes emotion. I rarely saw him emote anything. I worried that Juliette was giving him too much credit, that she put up with too much of his bullshit in exchange for—I don’t even know what. A sociopath with an extensive coat collection?

mutinous.

“J,” I say, “c’mon.” I shake my head, hard. I can’t believe I even have to say this. I can’t believe she doubted me—that she didn’t talk to me about this sooner. “You know me,” I say to her. “You know I don’t bullshit. That’s not my style.”

A single tear escapes down the side of her face and the sight of it is simultaneously heartbreaking and reassuring. This is the girl I know. The friend I love. She’s all heart. She whispers, “You promise?” “Hey.” I hold out my hand. “Come here, kid.”

It doesn’t seem right that so much horrible shit should be, like, allowed to go down in such a short period of time. There should be a fail-safe in the universe somewhere, something that automatically shuts down in the event of extreme human stupidity. Maybe an emergency lever. A button, even. This is ridiculous.

Maybe all this is why I feel like I understand Adam. Why I fight for him, even when he’s a dick. He comes off as an angry, explosive guy—and sometimes he really is an asshole—but it must be hard to watch your kid brother live all alone on a compound for tortured, abandoned children. It slowly kills your soul to watch a ten-year-old kid sob and scream in the middle of the night because his nightmares keep getting worse, and no matter what you do, you can’t seem to make it better.

Because it’s not the pain that’s unendurable. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the hopelessness that makes you reckless. I would know.

Adam doesn’t want to participate in anything even remotely hostile anymore. Not unless he has to. I get it. In my less charitable moments I might call him a coward, but I get it. I’d opt out, too, if I could. I just don’t feel like I can. There’s still too much I’m willing to die for.