Tahereh Mafi - Fracture Me

My body goes rigid. “We’re not having that conversation again.”

“But Kenji said—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Kenji said! You are a ten-year-old child ,” I say. “You are not fighting in any war. Not walking onto any battlefield. Do you understand me?”

James stares at me.

“I said, Do you understand me? ” I walk right up to him, grab his arms.

James flinches a little. “Yes,” he whispers.

“Yes, what ?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, staring at the ground now.

I’m breathing so hard my chest is heaving. “Never again,” I say quietly now. “We are never having this conversation. Not ever again.”

“Okay, Addie.”

I swallow hard.

“I’m sorry, Addie.”

“Get your shoes on.” I stare at the wall. “It’s time for breakfast.”

“Hi.”

Juliette is standing next to my table, staring at me like she might be nervous. Like we’ve never done this before.

“Hey,” I say.

Just seeing her face still makes my chest ache, but the truth is, I have no idea what’s going on between us anymore. I promised her I would find a way through this—and I’ve been training like hell, I really have—but after last night, I’m not gonna lie: I’m a little freaked out. Touching her is more serious than I ever thought it was.

She could’ve killed Kenji. I’m still not sure she hasn’t.

But even after all this, I still want a future with her. I want to know that one day we’ll be able to settle somewhere safe and be together in peace. I’m not ready to give up on that dream yet. I’m not ready to give up on us.

I nod at an empty seat. “You want to sit down?”

She does.

We sit in silence a little while, her poking at her food, me at mine. We usually eat the same thing every morning: a spoonful of rice, a bowl of vegetable broth, a chunk of rock-hard bread, and, on good days, a little cup of pudding. It’s not amazing, but it gets the job done, and we’re usually grateful for it. But today neither one of us seems to have an appetite.

Or a voice.

I sigh and look away. I don’t know why it’s so hard to talk to her this morning—maybe it’s the lack of Kenji—but things feel different between us lately. I want to be with her so badly, but being with her has never felt more dangerous than it does now. Every day we feel further apart. And sometimes I think the harder I try to hold on, the more she tries to break away.

I wish James would hurry up and grab his breakfast. Having him here might make this easier. I sit up and look around the room, only to spot him talking with a group of his friends. I try to wave him over, but he’s laughing at something and doesn’t even notice me. The kid is kind of amazing. He’s such a social guy—and so popular around here—that sometimes I wonder where he got it from. In many ways he’s the exact opposite of me. He likes to let a lot of people in; I like to keep most people out.

Juliette’s the only real exception to that rule.

I look back at her and notice the red rims around her eyes as they dart across the dining hall. She looks both wide awake and crazy tired and she can’t seem to sit still; her foot is tapping fast under the table and her hands are trembling a little.

“Hey are you okay?” I ask.

“Yes, absolutely,” she says too quickly. But she’s shaking her head.

“Did you, um, get enough sleep last night?”

“Yes,” she says, repeating the word a few times. She does that occasionally—repeats the same word over and over again. I’m not sure she’s even aware of it.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks. Her fingers drum against the table, then against her arms. She keeps glancing around the room. She doesn’t even wait for me to respond before she says, “Have you heard anything about Kenji yet?”

That’s when I understand.

Of course she’s not okay. Of course she didn’t get any sleep last night. Last night she almost killed one of her closest friends. She’d just started trusting herself and not being afraid of herself; now she’s back to where she started. Shit. I’m already sorry I even brought it up.

“No, not yet.” I cringe. “But,” I say, hoping to change the subject, “I have heard that people are pretty pissed at Castle about what happened with Warner.” I clear my throat. “Did you hear about him breaking out of here?”

Juliette drops her spoon.

It clatters to the floor and she doesn’t seem to notice. “Yes,” she says quietly. She’s blinking at her water cup, holding her napkin in her hands, folding and refolding it. “People were talking about it in the halls. Do they know how he escaped?”

“I don’t think so.” I frown at her.

“Oh.” She says that a few times, too.

She sounds strange. Scared, even. Juliette has always been a little different from everyone else—she was like a crazed, skittish kitten when I first saw her in that cell—but she’d been getting a lot better over the last few months. Once she finally started trusting me, things changed. She evolved. She started talking (and eating) more and even got a little cocky. I loved seeing her come back to life. I loved being with her, watching her find herself.

I think this experience with Kenji really set her back.

I can tell she’s only halfway here, because her eyes are unfocused and her hands are moving mechanically. She does this a lot. It’s like sometimes she just disappears, retreats into a corner of her brain and stays there awhile, thinking about something she’ll never talk about. She’s acting a lot like her old self right now, and right now she’s eating the cold rice on her plate one grain at a time, counting each bite under her breath.

I’m about to try speaking to her again when James finally comes back to the table. I stand up immediately, grateful for the opportunity to shake off the awkward. “Hey buddy—why don’t we go have a proper good-bye?”

“Oh,” James says, sliding his tray onto the table. “Okay, sure.” He glances at me before glancing at Juliette, who’s now chewing a grain of rice very carefully.

“Hi,” he says to her.

Juliette blinks a few times, her face breaking into a wide smile the moment she notices him. It changes her, those smiles. And those are the moments that kill me a little.

“Hi,” she says, so happy so suddenly you’d think James had hung the moon for her. “How are you? Did you sleep well? Would you like to sit down? I was just having some rice; would you like some rice?”

James is already blushing. He’d probably eat his own hair if she asked him to. I roll my eyes and drag him away, telling Juliette we’ll be right back.

She nods. I look over my shoulder as we walk away and notice that she doesn’t seem to mind sitting alone for a little while. She stabs at something on her plate and misses, and that’s the last I see of her before we turn the corner.

“What’s going on? Why do we need to talk?” More questions from James. He’s a freaking question machine. “Is everything okay? Can you tell Juliette not to eat my breakfast?” He cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of her, still sitting at the table. “Sometimes she eats my pudding.”

“Hey,” I say, grabbing hold of his shoulders. “Look at me.”

James turns to face me. “What’s wrong, Addie?” He searches my eyes. “You’re not really going to die, are you?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Don’t say that,” he says quietly, dropping his gaze. “Don’t say that. It’s not nice to talk like that.”

“James.”

He looks up again, slowly this time.