Electric

chapter seventeen

"Parker?" I whisper into the dark and squint as an attempt to see. I notice the light to his office is on. I blink a few times, get out his bed, and before I can change my mind, I walk over to the office door and open it.

Parker sits in his desk chair, surrounded by maps and papers and soldier profile files. He looks up at me immediately. I become hyper-aware of the fact that I'm barefoot. My hair is down too and it cascades down the length of my back. With every movement, my hair sways and my body aches from the events that occurred last night. None of this matters but that's all I can think about as he stares at me in this dreadful silence.

"I'm sorry." I say and he sets down the pencil he was holding. "I couldn't sleep." What I don't say is that I have to relive my family's murder and Mile's attempt at murdering me every time I close my eyes.

I watch as he leans back in his chair and takes in the sight of me just standing there. My lips refuse to move so I don't smile at him like I want to. What I want is to say more but it's his turn to speak. The next move is his to make. My heart beats loudly in his hands because he took it long ago, and my ribs still ache from when he reached in and removed it.

He tilts his head sideways at me and the silence is taking an axe to my confidence. He looks down at all the papers in front of him and then back up at me. How can I stand here in this silence when so many words can fit into this absence of noise? In this time, I could tell him so many things.

My mouth could tell him that the weather was fair today. Or it could frown about how one of the soldiers laughed at me as I tripped over my own foot when Parker smiled at me after dinner. It could tell about how I'm afraid someone is going to come into my room and try to kill me again, or it could simply ask him to speak.

Instead, it remains closed.

"I couldn't either." He finally says and I manage a small smile. I glance down at the papers all around him on the desk and he stiffens. Right on top is my file that I wasn't aware I had. My eyes catch words like unstable and insane in Dexter's handwriting before Parker reaches forwards and closes it.

"Am I unstable?" I ask quietly and he sighs.

"No, love. He just doesn't understand you." He tries to soothe and I give him a look of disbelief. Dexter has studied me for years; I think he would know better than both of us if there was something wrong with me. "Hawkins told Dexter that you are a little unhinged. He would not have agreed to observe you if he did not think there were something off about you."

"But there is something off about me."

He sighs again as if he really wished I would just understand what he's saying. I do understand, but that doesn't mean I agree with it. I look up at his ceiling and frown. There are no cracks or other eccentricities. It's simply smooth cement. There is nothing to count on his ceiling which means that I have nothing to do while he tries to figure out his lie. I could count the seconds it takes Parker to stand up and walk over to me. I could count the milliseconds it takes for him to lace his fingers with mine and drag me out of the office. I could count the minute it takes for him to walk us over to the mirror above his dresser and point to my reflection, but I don't.

Instead, I look at my deprived figure with its hair too long and its face too thin. My eyes rank over my defined cheek bones and jawline and how my eyes look really dark in this minimal lighting. I lift my hand up to push the hair out of my face and see that my wrist is practically just bone. It's just bone like the rest of my starved body.

"What do you see, love?" Parker asks and I look at him towering behind me. He looks perfect. He doesn't look like a General in the Prominence's army. Next to me, he looks like one of those models you see in the magazines I used to look at when I was little. But yet his hand is holding mine and he's looking at my reflection with this small smile like he wouldn't want anyone else in his room in the middle of the night.

"I see a sad girl who doesn't have a family and hasn't eaten properly in years. Her hair needs to be cut and I must say that the lighting is not helping one bit." I smile, and he laughs and rolls his eyes at me.

"Well, I see a girl that has suffered far more than anyone else I know and yet manages to make everyone around her laugh. She never complains about how ghastly life has treated her and her eyes light up at the littlest things like she still has hope that there is some good in the world. There isn't, but I won't tell her that." Now I laugh at him and roll my eyes. "You see, love, there is nothing wrong with you. You just choose to see that there is."

"On the outside, Parker, it may seem like everything within me in fine." My voice shakes as one of my fingers lifts and traces the crack I caused last night. "But I did that. How can nothing be wrong with me if I didn't even touch it and it cracked? There is something wrong with me. You choose not to see it."

My eyes are puddles in a rainstorm and I am trying to prevent them from splashing. I blink a few times but the tears will not diminish. I shouldn't be crying but I am because he thinks so highly of me when I have done nothing to deserve such treatment. I have been weak and pathetic and Parker thinks I am some girl that believes the world is beautiful.

It isn't.

The world is cruel and mean, and humans cannot help their urge to cause destruction. They will harm and eradicate any notion of happiness they find. They will murder any compassion within you and never give it back because it's already dead. I don't have hope that there is good in the world when there is no good to hope for. He is looking through a cracked mirror at the reflection of a girl that isn't there.

"There is something amazing within you, love." He says and I sigh. "You have a power that is astounding and you don't accept it. Maybe if you came to terms with it, you would stop seeing that there is something wrong with you but see that you have something that no one else has. And what you can do with it is up to you but, love, it's incredible." This makes me glare at him and snatch my hand away from him.

"No. You're wrong." I'm pissed. "There is nothing incredible about something that has ruined my whole life and killed my entire family. There is nothing amazing about that." I step away from him and sit on his bed with my arms crossed and my eyes glaring daggers up at him.

"Alright fine." He sounds angry now. "If you refuse to see it my way and I'm not going to see it yours, there is no point in arguing over it. I need to finish my work. Just go back to bed." I watch as he strides into his office and slams the door shut behind him. I swallow hard and throw one of the pillows at the door. It hits the door with a soft thud.

He can't leave me feeling like the bad guy when he's the one who crossed the line. I shouldn't have to sit here feeling like I'm some horrible monster because I'm really not. Or at least I think I'm not. He may have said some really nice things to me and I might have snapped at him and gotten mad but that doesn't make me that bad guy. Well, now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like a real jerk. Great.

So left with nothing else to do, I do as he said and go back to bed.