Evangeline (Unedited)

33

M A S O C H I S M
(The amount of songs I added to the playlist I have for Evie while writing this is astronomical. This one is really messy, and sucks, and you may notice Evie's acting a bit out of character. This is on purpose! Happy/sad reading!)

I open my eyes groggily, wiping them. Wilbur is sitting beside me on the living room couch, on the edge. He's touching my head. I can feel a sharp sting beneath his fingers, the skin being stretched slightly.

"What's going on?" I ask softly, naturally pushing his hands away from my head.

He looks down at me, his eyes widening slightly. He retracts his hands.

"Hey, Sandro, she's awake." He calls out to someone behind me. I hear shuffling and then Alessandro his kneeling beside my head.

"How are you feeling Evie?" He questions, examining me.

"I'm... fine. Confused, I guess."

He nods, making eye contact with Theo.

"You fainted. You hit your head." He gestures to my forehead. Instinctively, I reach up to touch it. I feel a big bandage on my head, and cold sweat. I frown. "Will is just fixing you up."

I nod slowly. Why did I faint?

As if reading my face, Alessandro sighs. He straightens up a bit.

"Evie, we think you had a panic attack." He tells me softly, his hand brushing my hair out of my face. I stare at him, confused, not even registering how foreign the simple touch felt. "Do you know what might have caused it?"

I close my eyes for a moment. I was talking to Andreas about Lukas, and then...

I'm going to do it. I'm going to get the answers I want, even if they hate me for it. I pick up my pace when I sense my mind begins to wander—fret—over my decision. The elevator dings as I arrive on the floor of Alessandro's office—I took the elevator without freaking out—and I walk out with a purpose out of the machine. My stomach swirls with anxiety, the sickness piling in my stomach almost making me turn back. My vision grows blurry as the anxiety tries to warn me to turn back, but I don't.

Not until my footsteps halt when I hear Tommy say something.

Something that made my mouth fill with puke, something that made my eyes water from the exploding uncertainty and anxiety that I seemed to hone more than any other feeling.

"We have been running for years, we cannot stop now. Especially not after they killed them. Not after what they did to Elio."

I sit up straight. I stare at them, my eyes glaring harshly.

"Elio. You said something about him. What—what did it mean?" I ask, closing my eyes for a moment, before opening them again.

They exchange eye contact, and I know I'm right. I know I'm onto something. I can feel myself growing angrier, the pool of fire in my stomach spreading. Maybe it was the fact that they still—even after I had heard whatever that was—refuse to tell me what it meant. Maybe it's that they were lying the whole time I had known them while I tried to learn to trust them. Maybe I'm just tired.

I've always had a big distaste for lying. My dad always used to stress to Elio and I that dishonesty was one of the most betraying things you could do to someone you love. I agreed, usually. Of course, there were exceptions, like when I didn't want to tell my mom I disliked her cooking, or when Elio would ask if he looked presentable in a new shirt and I'd tell him no—he always did. So I'd lie, and everything was fine. But then there's big ones. Ones that make your stomach twist, ones that make your heart beat, your head spin. I refused to lie in that way, and even more than that, I refused to be lied to. I internalized my dad's teaching because I had to. Because what honesty promised was trust and loyalty. It made sense to me. Finding out the the only people in my life now, the people that have tried to effectuate that they love me, or care about me, broke that. I feel like an idiot. I feel completely alone. And it makes me so furious that I was finally starting to think that people don't only speak to me to lie, that perhaps I am not cursed, and I wasn't born to be sad and emotional and then die. I wasn't so sure now.