“Nathan’s all, ‘We did it. We’re guilty.’ And you’re like, ‘No, I want to be the hero. I want to prove it with my own cunning.’”
“Feel bad for him,” she types.
“Oh, so you’re stupid!” I shout. Monday clamps her hands over her ears and is pressing herself into the wall. “Naive, manipulable, and stupid. He needs therapy because he feels so sad he poisoned us, especially since he’s trying really hard to do it again, and you feel bad for him?”
“Yes.”
“You got played.” I can’t even look at her.
She shrugs the one shoulder she can shrug. Then she types, “Moral high ground.”
“Bullshit,” I say.
“Difference between us and them.”
“They’re smart, and we’re dumb? They’re solvent, and we’re destitute? They’re living in the real world, and we’re dying here? In the unreal world? Abandoned, forsaken, and dumb as rocks?”
She’s ignoring me, typing while I yell at her. Her Voice says, “If we behave like them, we are no better.”
“Sure we are.”
“No.”
“Fine, then. I can live with that.”
“No.”
I grab fistfuls of my hair at both temples and pull hard. Mirabel and I usually understand each other without the Voice, and it is part of the genius of her that she says what she means in fewer words than you can. But right now her nos are more than succinct, more than stubborn even. They’re petulant, dismissive, a refusal to defend herself, not because she knows she’s right but because she doesn’t care whether she is or not, doesn’t care what I think, has already made up her mind and will not be moved. Which is not how it works between us.
“Just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean you get to make decisions unilaterally.”
“Big word,” her Voice mocks. She’s had that one saved since Petra and I started SAT prep, but it’s been a while since she used it.
“Just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean I don’t get a say.”
“Yes.” Mirabel has the luxury of her Voice speaking one thing and her face doing something else. Can you stick out your tongue and talk at the same time?
“I won’t just acquiesce. I won’t just bow to your pronouncement. I’m not other people.”
“Truth,” Monday says from the corner. “You are you.”
“No,” says Mirabel.
“Just because you can’t walk or move or speak or eat or do really anything for yourself doesn’t mean you always get your way.”
“Lie,” Monday whispers from beneath her hands. Getting her way tends to be exactly what Mirabel’s limits mean.
“I don’t care what you think anyway,” I say.
“Lie,” Monday says again, but I keep right on going.
“I’ll tell Russell.”
“Hearsay. Inadmissible,” Mirabel’s Voice says immediately. She must have known I’d get here eventually and saved that in advance.
“Fine.” I am talking through my teeth, but it’s so they won’t chatter. “Then I’ll tell River. He’ll tell his father you told, and then it won’t matter whether you respected his privacy and confidence—which you didn’t, by the way. You told Monday. You told me. He won’t believe you didn’t tell everyone else in the world too. Mama will lose her job. He’ll warn his lawyers. And this whole thing will be in vain.”
“Stop!” Monday’s hands do not move from her ears. “One, Three, stop, stop!” She sounds like a stuck video game.
“You would,” Mirabel’s Voice says.
“Truth,” I say. “I would unless you—” but she interrupts because she wasn’t done.
“You want the plant to reopen so your boyfriend will stay.”
This takes my breath away. When it comes back I get all debate-clubby. “If I wanted the plant to reopen, why would I be begging you to tell Russell what Nathan said in therapy? If I didn’t want you to tell, why would I be standing here screaming that you have to tell?”
“Deep down,” her Voice says while her face does smug and angry and hurt and scared and superior all at once.
“You’re the one who won’t use what you know,” I throw back at her. “Maybe you’re the one who wants the plant to reopen deep down.”
“Why?” her Voice asks. Then there’s a pause while she adds, “He’s not my boyfriend.”