It would be so easy.
The sweet, bitter scent was like childhood and promises and fear.
She couldn’t do much. But she could do this. It would fix everything. And that had always been her specialty. Jake had been right: she’d make the hard choice if she had to. It wasn’t that the world would be better off without her, but that she would be better off without the world.
She’d shoved her grief aside as she tried to find a way to save Seth. But now, with the truth laid bare before her, that this was the only cure, it came roaring back. She didn’t want Seth to die. And she didn’t want him to live with this darkness. The emptiness. It was already killing her, even though she was still alive. And she could fix this for him.
The tea was too hot to drink so she went out to the back porch. A last look at her garden. Gigi’s cigarettes and lighter still lay on the glass table, and wanting any piece of her grandmother she could get, she lit a Virginia Slim 120 and inhaled. The smoke curled around her like comfort.
Stubbing the cigarette out a few puffs later, she went back inside.
The tea was cool enough to drink.
She swallowed hard. This is for Seth, she reminded herself. Still, the physical act of bringing the teacup to her lips was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
The first sip made her throat itch as tears began to fall.
She would fall asleep at the kitchen table, where she had so many times before. Only this time she wouldn’t wake up.
She took another sip. The tears fell harder, each one bursting on the tabletop like a shattered dream.
And then another. She wished she could have kissed Jake just once.
Her eyes grew heavy, and somewhere, nagging in the back of her mind, a small voice asked if this was the right thing to do. But the darkness begged her to enter it. It curled around her like a promise of sweet release.
And Seth would be safe. That’s all that mattered.
The thought of what her future might have been without magic and curses and life debts settled into her. It was a dangerous daydream that she rarely let in, but the present was all she had left, and a little indulgence seemed safe. She thought of Jake and a pair of toothbrushes and water splatters on the mirror from little hands brushing too vigorously. Of cold feet under covers that found warmth when they snuck over to his. Of family dinners and dancing under the moonlight and the magic of found things that had been lost.
Half the tea was gone now, and her limbs grew heavier in the space between moments.
I’ll get to be with Gigi again, she thought.
And that’s when she wondered if maybe that was the real reason she was doing this. If perhaps this was the easy way out. But as she brought the cup to her lips and said goodbye to the future she’d never have, she knew that this was the hardest way to go.
She was swimming through honey, or maybe it was jam. Each thought was murkier than the last, every movement growing sluggish.
When she heard a door slam, she thought it was a metaphor made tangible.
But then a pair of very real hands knocked the mug out of her hands.
“Damn it,” a voice hissed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Seth.
“This is not the answer, you idiot,” he half shouted, shaking her shoulders. And then he was gone, and Sadie thought she could finally fall asleep in peace. She wanted to tell her brother it was for him. Everything was always for him. But the words were too thick on her tongue.
There was a clatter of jars clanking and being tossed aside and onto the floor. It sounded like music.
And then he was back, one hand on her neck as he pushed her head back and none too gently forced her mouth open.
She tasted jewelweed. Ironically, or maybe not, also called touch-me-not.
An antidote to poison.
Realization turned like rusted cogs, and she tried to spit it out.
“You’re an idiot,” Seth hissed again. And the hiss slithered its way into her ears and Seth himself became a serpent with arms and slit pupils. She’d forgotten hallucinations were a side effect of never-wake-up berry tea. “I’ll kill you for this,” snake Seth spat.
She heard his phone ringing on speaker.
Was that Jake’s voice?
Why was her brother calling her boyfriend?
Or wait. That wasn’t right. Was it?
And then she was flying. At least that’s what it felt like until the couch became solid beneath her and she realized that Seth had carried her there.
More jewelweed found its way into her mouth.
She knew somewhere that she wasn’t supposed to want it. But her throat opened obediently, and this time the bitterness choked her, and the tangled mess of thoughts started to untangle in a way that made her head pound harder than her heart.