SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

24: I should be of misery

Ella 24

"Who?" I beg, stepping forward. "Who don't you trust?"

Eli's face is frozen before me. You know, I want to imagine that Eli is just as excited to betray WICKED as I was, but that can't possibly be. I recognize that look. It is the one he gave me when I tried to insist on remembering a name that was burned out of my skull. One of pain that he feels with me, not just because of empathy, but because he feels tied down to train tracks next to me while I willingly lie with him. I am never struggling to get out of danger. In fact, I present myself to it as if I am a dish waiting to be consumed. Though I am the smallest, I am the most fearless. I will do anything for her, and he knows it. If he were to ever find the strength to tell me I was wrong, he would know that I would never believe him.

It is unfortunate that he loves me.

"Jane," he gulps, not daring to take a step closer. "I don't trust Leo either."

I had hoped that the girl I had most trusted would not be the one to cut me open and spill my remains. Perhaps it was unintentional, but she did it none the less.

Jane Austen is the girl who had nothing to gain. She is the girl who wanted WICKED to find a cure, to protect the girl she loved. And so, she is the girl who betrayed me.

Charlotte Bronte did not love Jane back. Instead, she was bitter that WICKED would take away her lover and send her to die to save others.

Unlike the pair of them, Mary Shelley was stolen to taunt a rebel group. She wanted WICKED to lose because losing was all she had ever known, and all she had ever wanted.

"I wouldn't make a mistake like this," I assure him.

The room is shaking up and down, but my body isn't moving. I hear a thump, and the room jolts with it. There is a motor, somewhere, but the sound is louder and closer to my ears.

Eli shakes his head back and forth. I wish that he looked happier in this memory, or just generally. I wish this wasn't a memory. The past is my home. I live here, but my body is bound to movements that don't reflect what I want to do. Knowing what I know now, I want to grab Eli's hand and squeeze it, not because I love him, but because I don't want him to kill himself.

How could I make a mistake which could ruin our lives? How could I be so foolish as to not trust him? Why would Jane burn us down? I want it to be her fault that he died, but it is undeniably also mine. We both are to blame. We both must suffer the consequences.

Eli's sniffles are blocked out by the motor.

I'm in a car. That is the sound I am hearing.

I want to reach for him, but I can't. My tongue moves but I cannot speak.

My arms are bound. There is a rag in my mouth.

"Emily," he sighs. "I wish we were incapable of making mistakes, but I think we both have made quite a few."