He nods.
Then the order to steal my phone, to torment me in the forest, hadn’t been Rebecca’s idea.
It was my sister’s.
46
Kit
DECEMBER 28, 2019
I GRIPPED THE wheel of the Hourglass as she bounced on the water.
“The sea is irascible today,” Teacher said from her perch.
I calmed my breathing. “We’ll be okay.” I waited a few seconds. “Should I head to Rockland?”
She quit jiggling her leg. Her eyes had plum-hued rings beneath them. “You know I’ll never set foot on the mainland again. That wretched society has cost me everyone and everything I held dear.”
“Where should I take you, then?”
“This was your plan. Figure it out.” She mumbled something about Jeremiah, how she’d always known there was something wrong with him.
After that we drove in silence. With each wave the Hourglass rode, an old stopwatch slid back and forth across the dashboard. When I couldn’t take another second of the rattling, I flung the watch into the bucket of my seat. Then there was nothing but the pounding of the current. I slowed the boat.
Every bone in my body warned me not to, but I steeled myself and turned around anyway. With control I asked the question that had been pounding in my head since I’d seen the death certificate: “Why didn’t you tell me how my mom died?”
Teacher stiffened. Her eyes widened a touch.
I felt everything tightening—my jaw, my shoulders, my hands—and forced them to slacken. “You knew she signed up for assisted death. Why’d you keep it from me?”
Traitor! my brain shrieked.
Teacher made a noise in the back of her throat but said nothing. A seagull squawked overhead.
“You preach that even white lies are poison,” I said.
This woman gave you a new life.
“What happened to honesty at all costs?”
This is how you repay her?
Teacher had tamped down the surprise, recovered her haughtiness by now. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m asking you to explain yourself.”
“Let’s talk about this some other time.” Teacher waved away my words like mosquitoes, as if to say, We can hardly worry about you when my life is on the line.
A ball of fury had been building deep in my chest since I’d realized Jeremiah’s story was true, since I’d held my mother’s annotated death certificate in shaking hands. For hours I’d swallowed my anger, kept it simmering beneath the surface so I could do what needed to be done. Now that rage cracked, spilled out, broke free. My tongue itched to lash.
“How come your moments of need are always more urgent than ours?”
Teacher gave me a scathing look. “Have we not discussed your pitiful mother enough in my office? This sounds like a path regression.”
People had always underestimated me. Easygoing, amiable Kit—She’ll go along with whatever we say; nothing but empty blue sky in that head. Teacher still didn’t understand what this was.
A final chance.
“I can’t have my favorite student backsliding, can I?” she cooed.
Yesterday that comment would have been enough to appease, to nourish, to silence. It had taken me far too long to recognize that she saw me—saw all of us—as a tool, not a person. Mom’s death certificate was something to hold over me, to control me with if I ever stepped out of line. In an instant Teacher could have released me of my guilt and suffering; instead she’d let me writhe in it for half a year.
She patted the seat next to her, but I stayed put. “Do you know how special you are to be this close to me? To be the one to save me?”
She loves you, a voice whispered.
I used to agree that Teacher was irreplaceable. Everyone on the island believed she was what made Wisewood special. Only recently had I come to understand it was the principles, the workshops, the community. Together we had all turned Wisewood into magic. If I was a cog, then so was she.
“Is this a game to you?” I said. “A social experiment to see how far you can push people? Do you even believe in your own program?”
“Don’t you dare insult me.”
“Wisewood’s principles mean something to me. To all of us. I value being in the IC. I take the quests seriously. You’ve built something more vital than power games.”
She glared at me. “I was merely trying to protect you. I knew you would suffer setbacks if you discovered your mother and sister had been colluding against you.”
She wants to keep you safe.