Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

30. Bogdan

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"Bogdan?" Yara whispers when her blue-haired friend calls her from another room. "Wait."

I don't wait. Taking a step back, I vanish within the shadows. To be seen only when you want to be seen is as much of a curse as of a blessing. I glide away, light as a breeze, moving through the darkness and the walls and the air itself. I watch Yara and Nilam sneak out of the restaurant and walk down the alley, I don't follow.

Not tonight.

Shadows don't follow, and I was a shadow long before I died. I was three when the accident happened, confining me to a wheelchair. Since then, my whole life was the four walls of my room, a road to the hospital where my granny worked, and a park with the river nearby. I couldn't climb onto a roof and watch the sunset, I couldn't take a bus and see the city. I ate at home, slept at home, studied at home. For my whole life, nobody expected me to be anywhere but at home.

Alone.

"You're not alone, my boy," Granny used to say. "God's angels watch over you, and God has a plan for everyone. This is a test of your patience and faith. Just wait, and you'll be rewarded."

I waited, I really did.

Every day I waited for my parents to visit, but they only visited me on my birthday. We're busy with our lives, they said. So busy that apparently it was easier to leave their crippled son with his granny. Then they divorced, and stopped coming at all. They called once or twice a year—until they stopped calling, too.

I waited, and a girl named Yaroslava once came to the hospital. Yet, she only came because she had a terrible bruise after a school fight and was worried that it didn't come off for too long. So that was the reward? The angels gave me a friend, but they also gave my friend bruises so we could meet?

Still, Yara hated the hospital, I knew, it reminded her of her fights and her bruises, and her pain. And I couldn't make her stay with me all the time anyway, she had her life, she could go anywhere she wanted. I couldn't come with her.

Reading was a good way of killing time--cheating on your own dull life, pretending you had another. Living a life a book's character did. Yet, books ended, books had plot and meaning, and my life seemed to have none.

What was the plan then?

Just wait.

Granny's answer was enough for me when I was nine. When her baked apples could brighten my day and another book of tales could shoo my loneliness away. But it was no longer enough when I was fifteen. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to meet people, to leave that damn chair behind, but all I got was apples and God has a plan.

For Granny, our peaceful, measured lives were a gift, for me--a torment.

I waited. Waited for a plan, for a change, an opportunity. I'd wasted eighteen years, waiting, and nothing had changed. Only Granny grew old, her apples oversugared, her prayers loud. And my world was but the four walls of my room, and a road to the hospital, and a park nearby.

Then Yaroslava left me, too. Just like my parents, she went on with her life, moved to the city, tore free from her childhood bruises. And I couldn't follow.

This is a test of your patience and faith.

When I first met Vlad, I thought of him as a test, too. I hated him. And it wasn't his broken leg that, for a while, made him just as useless as I was or his fancy clothes that looked more expensive than my entire wardrobe. No, I hated the audacity he spoke with. He questioned everything--heroes and villains, good and evil, God and Devil.