Cecelia Ahern - Perfect

“And everything changed for me after this test. I knew that everything they were telling me about my parents was a lie.”

I want to reach out to him, hug him, tell him I’m sorry he was taken away from his parents at such a young age, but there’s something about Carrick that stops me each time. He’s so contained. It’s like he has a force field around him, like the glass that was between us in the castle cells is still between us now. He’s there, but I can’t reach him.

He clears his throat. “You have nerve endings on the surface of your eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. They detect the coolness of mint, the burning of chili peppers. Use them. You’re not alone in this, you know.”

“Your mom had the same thing after her branding?” I guess. What was her lie? I want to ask.

“It’s not just Flawed people who experience this. Not being able to taste is called ageusia.”

“So it’s a thing?” I ask, surprised.

“It’s an actual thing.”

I feel happy about that.

“So here is a taste bag.” He places a bag down. “And here is a smell bag.”

I laugh.

“Let’s use”—he scans the shelves in the large refrigerator—“Bahee’s jelly beans.”

“Jelly beans?” I laugh. “In the fridge?”

“He’s an odd man. Consumes more sugar in one day than Evelyn does in a week, and he never shares, which is what makes this all the sweeter.” He takes the bag of jelly beans out, tells me to look away.

“What are you doing?”

“Crushing the jelly beans, so the odor is released in the smell bag. Now.” He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a bandanna. “Close your eyes.”

He moves behind me and gently ties the bandanna around my eyes, his fingers brushing against my skin at one point, and I feel my skin tingle and the hairs stand up on my arms. The last time I was blindfolded, it was by some kids from school, playing a cruel joke on me. They stripped me and examined my scars with ghoulish curiosity like I was in some freak show at a circus. I felt terrified then, broken, had lost all faith in people and my new life. But now, I’m completely relaxed, excited even. Despite the terrifying feeling I had when we approached the gates of the CCU plant, I realize I completely and utterly trust Carrick. He feels like my partner in all this. If my sixth brand is as powerful as Carrick says it is, he could have used his knowledge of it for his own purposes. He could have threatened Crevan himself, but he didn’t; in fact, he didn’t tell anybody. He wants to help me reverse my own branding.

“Okay.” He’s back in front of me. “Taste this.”

“You better not slip a chili pepper in.” I laugh.

I open my mouth and feel him place a jelly bean on my tongue. I close my lips and self-consciously chew. I don’t taste anything, unsurprisingly. I feel the texture, though I don’t think I would have known it was a jelly bean had he not told me.

“Take a sip of water.”

I suck through a straw.

“Now smell.” He holds the bag up to my nose and I breathe in the crushed jelly bean.

“Strawberry,” I say easily. Nothing wrong with my sense of smell at least.

“Now taste.” He places the jelly bean on my tongue.

I expect it to be strawberry again but I frown. “That’s not strawberry,” I say confused. “I know it’s not strawberry but I don’t know what it is.”

“Aha,” he says happily. “Progress.”

“Yay,” I cheer myself.

“Smell.”

I sniff. “Orange.”

“Now taste.”

I feel his fingers brush my lips as I open my mouth. I’m so distracted by everything around the jelly bean, everything that’s happening, I can barely concentrate on what I’m doing. All of my other senses are on fire. I try to focus. I smell as I chew, waiting for my nerve endings to recognize whether it’s bitter, salty, sweet, or sour flavor. I recognize the taste as being the same as the previous taste. Bitter. “Orange.”

“Yes,” he says happily. “Now let’s go again.”

Carrick is nothing if not efficient, and persistent. Over and over again, we try the test until I think I get the hang of using my gift of smell. He’s practically emptied out the fridge of flavors. I have correctly identified most without needing to smell the bag first.

“Right, last one.” He places it on my lips and I concentrate, I concentrate so hard. He said there are taste buds in my throat—I never knew that. I can also smell as I chew. I feel like an animal, zoned in on my food, sniffing as I chew in the dark, hoping for scents and clues.

“Mint?” I ask hopefully.

“Perfect,” he replies.

I smile. It’s been a while since I’ve heard that word, or felt anything close to it.

TWENTY

ART AND I never had sex. We had been dating for six months and we were close to it happening but we never got there before the branding, before both our lives changed. In the few days before I left, he told me that he’d been in love with me. Not that he was in love with me now, but that he had been in love with me. It took me only a few seconds of silent celebration before I distinguished the difference, and then the party inside me died.

When Art and I were alone, we explored each other’s bodies, but shyly, clumsily. I don’t feel that way with Carrick. He shattered that transparent glass between us as soon as we began the taste test. I feel so connected to him, feel that our bodies went through so much together already that it links us tighter. We have a physical bond. And that was never Crevan’s plan. Instead, it was to mutilate us, make us appear ugly, dangerous, different, not to be touched. He said it himself, at the ruling. A tongue brand so that everyone who talks to me or kisses me knows that I’m a liar. I remember how repelled Art was by it, whether he noticed it himself or not. How I feel when I’m with Carrick is not what Crevan intended, for the people who are punished to find harmony and safety together.

I don’t know where Art is now. I don’t know if he’s gone back to his dad or if he has run away. I asked Granddad about him once and he quickly shot me down, but not cruelly; I suppose he was just being realistic.

“Why do you want to know about that boy?” he asked.

“Just because…” I’d mumbled something incoherently, embarrassed to be talking about feelings with my granddad, particularly when I knew he was never a fan of the Crevans anyway.

He stopped what he was doing and fixed me with a hard look. “He cut you loose, girl, I suggest you do the same.”

So I never asked again.

I take off the blindfold and Carrick is looking at me intensely, his eyes on mine. The light from the fridge dances from his dark pupils, like cat eyes.

To his surprise, I reach out and open the top buttons of his denim shirt. Three buttons it takes me to see the contrast between the color of his neck and the skin hidden below his collar. I see his F brand, only a month old, still new and fresh like mine, healing over, trying to settle, to find its place on his body.

His breathing is heavy; his chest rises up and down; he looks almost nervously from my face to my fingers as they hover above his scar. I press them to his skin and with my forefinger I trace the sign of the F and the curve of the surrounding circle. I feel his heart beating beneath my fingers. It was supposed to be a branding to symbolize his disloyalty to society, to the Guild, for seeking out his parents after thirteen years in an institution that tried to teach the Flaws out of him. He turned his back on the Guild. But his dishonor to them only proves his loyalty to what’s good and right, and proper and honest.

I move my body closer and press my lips to his scar, and I hear him breathe out. I look up to see if I’ve hurt him, but his eyes are closed, and his hand moves to my hair, to my right temple. His thumb rubs my temple. My brand.