“Shh, Mommy can’t hear you.”
I shook my head in panic, trying to focus on my hands that were shaking again, blue as if I were frozen.
“Don’t make it so hard for me...”
The space I had just gained in my chest filled again with pain, which robbed me of the last air I could breathe.
I was weak. This feeling had power over me. It ate and ate…always a bit more of my bleeding, scarred soul.
And the next thing I knew, I felt chaos, unbridled chaos.
“Just close your eyes, girl.”
I screamed as loud as I could.
My voice broke, and along with it, the ice of the aquarium, so that the container of glass was carried away and shattered on the floor. The ice dissolved into water as I moved, flooding my entire room floor.
I stumbled back against my window sill. My eyes wandered to the door of the room, which had opened a crack.
Ivy’s wide eyes were on the lifeless fish. Her face was ashen, as was my whole body.
Over the years, I had become used to the panic attacks, seeing them as the bane of my inability to fight back.
But what had just happened was not supposed to happen. I was an Air Quatura. Telekinesis was my ability.
Whatever just came out of me was inexplicable. And to make matters worse, Ivy, young and innocent, had witnessed this chaos.
“Julie?!” someone yelled from the hallway, and five seconds later, Grace was standing in the doorway. “What the...”
Then Margot, and finally Amara, who dashed across the soaking wet floor to me, gently placing her hands on my shoulders and looking into my eyes.
I instantly felt her warm hands.
“What happened, Julie?” she asked me urgently.
I felt a calm that almost made me want to just let it all out, to cry.
But the hatred for myself grew stronger.
Amara could not help me. No one could. No one would ever understand, when not even I understood myself.
I gathered all my strength to put my mask back on and looked at Amara, ready to find any excuse for this whole mess in my room, but Ivy was faster.
“She said to me that university was too stressful for her, and then she moved the fish tank.”
My heart had stopped because Ivy might as well have told them the truth.
Amara eyed me, then my neck. Finally, she looked around and spotted my pendant in a puddle of water. It was still whole, but the inside was a bit splintered and the silver chain was broken.
Amara bent down, picked it up and put the silver chain around my neck. I felt her melting the metal on my neck. Instantly, I felt trapped. And the feeling wasn’t that wrong. I was trapped in a cage of obligations in a dark city full of hostility, and there was not a single way out of here.
Whatever had just happened, I would talk to Ivy, that she kept quiet, and the only thing I could hope was that it wouldn’t happen again.
Chapter 38
Julian
The rain pelted against my window pane as if it wanted me to stop playing, and when a fat raven finally flew against the window, slid down, and left a disgusting grease stain on the glass, I flipped the lid of the piano key closed in annoyance.
I had made too many mistakes today anyway, and I didn’t just mean the wrong key combinations while playing.
I looked through the dirty window.
She was still sitting there, curled up like a baby animal in need of help. Her cheeks glowed red, surely from all the tears she had shed until a few minutes ago. Her shoulder-length hair was all messed up as she kept tussling it with her hands.
Bay stared into nothingness, though I was pretty sure she knew of my presence. But recent events had to be getting to her. Her mother, the environment, this whole damn town...
In any case, I wouldn’t have felt any differently if I had been taken to a completely strange environment, to a place teeming with dark creatures whose existence I had only heard about in fairy tales up to that point.
I thoughtfully pushed myself off the piano to stand up.
We were all so fucked up in this stupid system, and I could very much understand Ms. Adam’s decision to keep Bay in the dark about her origins. I would have done the same, but I wouldn’t even let it get that far. Children did not belong in such a world. And even less of my kind.
I looked over at Bay again.
I felt sorry for her, sitting there, completely confused. And at that moment I realized who was really to blame for her unpleasant circumstances.
Damn it, I should have kept my mouth shut, and Grace and Julie could have just let her forget.
