Tahereh Mafi - Defy Me

I have to go.

WARNER KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE ELLA KENJI WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA

“I’m going to kill him,” she says, her small hands forming fists. “I’m going to kill him—”

“Ella, don’t be silly,” I say, and walk away.

“One day,” she says, chasing after me, her eyes bright with tears. “If he doesn’t stop hurting you, I swear I’ll do it. You’ll see.”

I laugh.

“It’s not funny!” she cries.

I turn to face her. “No one can kill my dad. He’s unkillable.”

“No one is unkillable,” she says.

I ignore her.

“Why doesn’t your mum do anything?” she says, and she grabs my arm.

When I meet her eyes she looks different. Scared.

“Why doesn’t anyone stop him?”

The wounds on my back are no longer fresh, but, somehow, they still hurt. Ella is the only person who knows about these scars, knows what my dad started doing to me on my birthday two years ago. Last year, when all the families came to visit us in California, Ella had barged into my room, wanting to know where Emmaline and Nazeera had gone off to, and she’d caught me staring at my back in the mirror.

I begged her not to say anything, not to tell anyone what she saw, and she started crying and said that we had to tell someone, that she was going to tell her mom and I said, “If you tell your mom I’ll only get into more trouble. Please don’t say anything, okay? He won’t do it again.”

But he did do it again.

And this time he was angrier. He told me I was seven years old now, and that I was too old to cry.

“We have to do something,” she says, and her voice shakes a little. Another tear steals down the side of her face and, quickly, she wipes it away. “We have to tell someone.”

“Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“But—”

“Ella. Please .”

“No, we have t—”

“Ella,” I say, cutting her off. “I think there’s something wrong with my mom.”

Her face falls. Her anger fades. “What?”

I’d been terrified, for weeks, to say the words out loud, to make my fears real. Even now, I feel my heart pick up.

“What do you mean?” she says. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s . . . sick.”

Ella blinks at me. Confused. “If she’s sick we can fix her. My mum and dad can fix her. They’re so smart; they can fix anything. I’m sure they can fix your mum, too.”

I’m shaking my head, my heart racing now, pounding in my ears. “No, Ella, you don’t understand—I think—”

“What?” She takes my hand. Squeezes. “What is it?”

“I think my dad is killing her.”

KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE KENJI WARNER KENJI JULIETTE ELLA KENJI WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA WARNER JULIETTE ELLA

We’re all running.

Base isn’t far from here, and our best option is to go on foot. But the minute we hit the open air, the group of us—myself, Castle, Winston, injured Brendan, Ian, and Alia—go invisible. Someone shouts a breathless thanks in my direction, but I’m not the one doing this.

My fists clench.

Nazeera .

These last couple of days with her have been making my head spin. I never should’ve trusted her. First she hates me, then she hates me even more, and then, suddenly, she decides I’m not an asshole and wants to be my friend? I can’t believe I fell for it. I can’t believe I’m such an idiot. She’s been playing me this whole time. This girl just shows up out of nowhere, magically mimics my exact supernatural ability, and then—right when she pretends to be best friends with Juliette—we’re ambushed at the symposium and Juliette sort of murders six hundred people?

No way. I call bullshit.

No way this was all some big coincidence.

Juliette attended that symposium because Nazeera encouraged her to go. Nazeera convinced Juliette it was the right thing to do. And then five seconds before Brendan gets shot, Nazeera tells me to run? Tells me we have the same powers?

Bullshit .

I can’t believe I let myself be distracted by a pretty face. I should’ve trusted Warner when he told me she was hiding something.

Warner.

God. I don’t even know what happened to him.

The minute we get back to base our invisibility is lifted. I can’t know for sure if that means Nazeera went her own way, but we can’t slow down long enough to find out. Quickly, I project a new layer of invisibility over our team; I’ll have to keep it up just long enough to get us all to a safe space, and just being back on base isn’t assurance enough. The soldiers are going to ask questions, and right now I don’t have the answers they need.

They’re going to be pissed.

We make our way, as a group, to the fifteenth floor, to our home on base in Sector 45. Warner only just finished having this thing built for us. He cleared out the entire top floor for our new headquarters—we’d hardly even settled in—and things have already gone to shit. I can’t even allow myself to think about it now, not yet.

It makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Once we’re gathered in our largest common room, I do a head count. All original, remaining Omega Point members are present. Adam and James show up to find out what happened, and Sonya and Sara stick around just long enough to gather intel before carting Brendan over to the medical wing. Winston disappears down the hall behind them.

Juliette and Warner never show.

Quickly, we share our own versions of what we saw. It doesn’t take long to confirm we all witnessed basically the same thing: blood, mayhem, murdered bodies, and then—a slightly less-bloody version of the same thing. No one seems as surprised by the twisted turn of events as I was, because, according to Ian, “Weird supernatural shit happens around here all the time, it’s not that weird,” but, more important:

No one saw what happened to Warner and Juliette.

No one but me.

For a few seconds, we all stare at each other. My heart pounds hard and heavy in my chest. I feel like I might be on fire, burning with indignation.

Denial.

Alia is the first to speak. “You don’t think they’re dead, do you?”

Ian says, “Probably.”

And I jump to my feet. “STOP. They’re not dead.”

“How can you be sure?” Adam says.

“I would know if they were dead.”

“What? How w—”

“I would just know, okay?” I cut him off. “I would know. And they’re not dead.” I take a deep, steadying breath. “We’re not going to freak out,” I say as calmly as possible. “There has to be a logical explanation. People don’t just disappear , right?”

Everyone stares at me.

“You know what I mean,” I snap, irritated. “We all know that Juliette and Warner wouldn’t, like, run away together. They weren’t even on speaking terms before the symposium. So it makes the most sense that they would be kidnapped.” I pause. Look around again. “Right?”

“Or dead,” Ian says.

“If you keep talking like that, Sanchez, I can guarantee that at least one person will be dead tonight.”