Shallow Imitations

chapter forty

All I need to do is point at the open page. It doesn't matter what I said and what I accused him of, Kal takes the notebook and sits next to me, reading. He's silent for a solid five minutes, trying to make out the words, while I cry silently.

It's almost impossible to stop the tears from flowing. There's so much going on in my head, so many ideas that I don't stare out loud.

Eventually, he decides to speak. "She did bad things. What does that mean?" he mutters. Kal points to the words, then says, "Does that look like 'thief' to you?"

"Identity thief," I say. "See. That's the curve of the Y—he writes it weird like that—and the D is colored in."

I peek at the letter again before cringing, looking away. The lack of punctuation kills me. Atlas hates writing improperly. He spends time rephrasing his texts and punctuating them. It's one thing I admire about him. He's not embarrassed about coming off weird. He has his point of view and he doesn't let anyone change it.

"He means Imogen, right?" he asks, turning to see me nod before looking down at the paper again. "Could it be?"

"She doesn't even care," I mutter under my breath, quoting Atlas.

Kal picks up the bottle of pills, carefully examining it as if he's using his x-ray vision to scan for fingerprints.

"My sister was just telling me all these terrible things about him, but it turned out she was wrong. We never went to Paris because he was lending the money to his mom." I turn to Kal, who has finally stopped staring at the paper and began staring at me instead, his eyes wide and attentive. "Why didn't he tell me any of this?"

"I think he didn't want to burden you." He puts the notebook down next to him, sighing.

This I can understand. He didn't want me to worry. I would do the same in his situation. Though I can't imagine something like this happening to me, I would avoid telling Eleonora if I knew she wouldn't be of any help.

"It feels like he died all over again."

Kal puts his arm around my shoulder, letting me lean into him. His head rests on top of mine. He leaves a small kiss on my hair.

"I hate that Imogen gets to roam free after everything she's done," I say.

"He did this for her, Luna. I don't think he could've been happy if something happened to his mom instead. He would be in pain, just like you are right now. Maybe even worse," he says. "But I bet you know that already, and it still hurts anyway."

"Is that what it felt like for you?"

He shrugs. "More or less. Though, perhaps less. They didn't care about me. That's not the case for you," he says. "Atlas obviously loved you. I can see it even in your letter."

A part of me wants to ask him why he still has it and how many times he's read it in the past month, but I don't want to make this worse than it already is. I don't care about that letter anymore, and I don't care about whether or not Kal has read into my soul the second he opened it.

"When did you realize they weren't come back?"

"The second she told me to start packing," he says. "I just had this feeling. I put every single thing I cared about in a suitcase and carried it down the stairs. She was sipping wine, frowning at something she read on her phone. I didn't think it would be the last time I saw her, but I knew she didn't want me at that moment. I knew the second I got out, things would change. And they did. I watched her drive away, and she never turned back."

"That sucks."

"Yeah," he breaths out, holding me tight.

The room is dark. It's almost midnight. Eleonora hasn't called. Not that I expected her to. There's nothing more to say. She obviously knows the rest of the story. I have nothing to explain. I'm sure she'll be the one to tell Olive too. I don't even want to bring this up anymore.

"It wasn't an accident, was it?" I say. "They meant to kill him."

My eyes are closed, I make a silent prayer as the last tear rolls down my eyes. I can feel him nodding.

Kal picks up the notebook again, flipping through the pages. He suddenly stops, pausing on a particular page. I hadn't noticed this one before. The page had been ripped out of the book.

"What is it?" I ask.

He laughs, shocked. Kal reaches out for his pocket, pulling out a thin, brown wallet. He pulls out a piece of paper, staring at it and shaking his head in disbelief. "The time we met at the coffee shop wasn't the first time I've been there. I went there once before and walking around. In the corner, I found a loose floorboard. Because of who I am as a person, I decided to open it and check to see if there's anything hidden there." He smiles. "And there was. I found this scrap of paper that someone rolled up and kept in there. It's the only reason I ever came back. I thought I'd see the person who put it there."

I take the paper from his hand, reading it. "When was this?"

"Over a year ago. I completely forgot about it until now."

I reread it several times, trying to make sense of its meaning.

We are not ourselves. We are shallow imitations of the people we want to be.

This isn't the only page where he wrote his thoughts. A lot of the other pages are filled with ideas and phrases, some dark and meaningful and others simply morbid.

Is this really what he thinks?

Kal is smiling for some reason. "I thought it was clever, but also kinda sad."

Doing all of these things for Imogen and pretending to be a good person with me must've made him feel like a phony. A shallow imitation. I don't know why, but reading this makes me want to cry. This whole time . . . I didn't know what he was going through.

He was pretending to be happy when all of these intrusive thoughts were entering his minds, unbidden and unwanted. He has nobody to assure him that it was okay, that Imogen's state isn't his fault. And she just left him there.

I'm crying as I place the paper back in the notebook, closing it and putting it back where it was. Kal thinks it's destiny. I don't know what would have come of me if Kal and I never met. Believing in miracles isn't my thing, but I can't help but think that this is Atlas's doing. He brought us together without knowing it.

I haven't thought about this until now. But all of this mess . . . Kal was there through everything, even after I accused him of sending the letter.

He was here.