Cecelia Ahern - Perfect

“I’m sorry, dear,” she says, bottom lip trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

Everyone keeps marching right on by me while I stay on the ground, knee bleeding, pretending I’ve been more badly injured than I have. I must time this correctly.

“Back in line,” the Whistleblower orders.

I take my time standing, until I see Mona nearing me, then I get up and jump in line in front of her. Her face lights up at the sight of me.

“Hey, girl, fancy meeting you here. Nice work in the warehouse.”

I look to the men beside us and see Lennox, Fergus, and Lorcan.

“Looking good, Celestine,” Lennox says good-naturedly.

I smile, feeling energized to be back in the company of my tribe.

“I hate it when I go to a party and everyone else is wearing the same thing,” Lorcan says, and, despite everything, we laugh.

“So, Celestine, everything going to plan?” Lennox asks.

We all laugh at that again.

“Stop talking,” a Whistleblower orders as we pass.

“Where’s Carrick? Are Juniper and my mom safe?” I ask quickly, knowledge of their safety more important than finding out how these guys were captured.

“Juniper is out of the facility; she’s safe with your mom,” Lennox says. “You’d be proud of her, she raised quite the stink at the Whistleblower base. She showed up with a lawyer, a cop, and the newspaper editor. They had a look around at everybody who’s being held there: the guards, Pia Wang, the missing schoolkids. The cop is kicking up big-time, especially seeing as they’ve been doing an official search for the kids for the past few days. Crevan has a lot to answer for about that. I think it’s all about to be blown wide open.”

I smile with relief, so proud of my mom and Juniper, but there’s a long way to go yet, and I have no idea what lies in store for us.

“What about Carrick? Where is he?” I ask.

Lorcan looks at Lennox anxiously.

“Tell me,” I plead.

“We don’t know,” he says. “That’s the honest truth.”

I swallow hard, fight the tears that start to come again. I just hope Crevan hasn’t got his hands on him.

“How did you end up here?” I ask.

“Bad luck,” Lennox replies.

“Professor Lambert’s house got raided,” Mona says. “They discovered his secret basement.”

I gasp. I feel like it’s all my fault. I told them to go there; I promised them they’d be safe.

“It’s not your fault,” Lennox says, sensing my guilt. “Whistleblowers were becoming suspicious of Marcus and Kate. We all agreed he should alert them to us to stay on their side. Better to have Whistleblowers on our side than none. It was Lambert’s decision. Evelyn is still safe.”

I agree, having Marcus and Kate’s help is invaluable. But what a sacrifice. And I’m so relieved about Evelyn. I knew Alpha would cherish her.

“I ran away with my English teacher,” Mona says suddenly, out of nowhere.

“What?” I turn around.

“Head straight,” another Whistleblower orders.

I turn back around.

“You asked me what I did to become Flawed when we first met. I didn’t tell you. When I was fifteen, I ran away with my English teacher. He was twenty-nine. And married. It was my idea. I thought it would be okay. But it wasn’t. It was all over the news. As if I was missing. We got caught. He was sent to jail. I was under eighteen, so I got branded.”

“I couldn’t give up smoking when I was pregnant,” Cordelia says suddenly, loudly so that others listen in, too. “The suburban moms of Madison Meadows were disgusted. They held their own little Flawed court, after which they gave me a warning. But I couldn’t stop. I was caught, eight months pregnant, with my head out the bathroom window of the charity bake sale, and they all decided to report me. I pleaded with them to wait until after my baby was born to report me so that she wouldn’t be born F.A.B. and taken away from me. A single Flawed mother can’t keep her child. They all agreed, bar one woman.”

“I used to wear my grandmother’s clothes,” Lennox says, serious, then starts laughing. “Just kidding. I set up and managed a dating website that assisted people in cheating on their wives.”

We all look at him, disgusted.

“That was you?” Mona asks, her face scrunched up. “You jerk.”

“One million customers. Perfectly legal. I had a Ferrari and everything.”

“The Guild took it?” Fergus asks, more moved by the loss of a Ferrari than anything else.

“Nope. Wife got it in the divorce.”

We all laugh.

“Well, you deserve your brand,” Mona says, but we know she doesn’t mean it.

Fergus speaks up, serious for once. “I was a police officer. I swapped ‘intimate images’ with my girlfriend on my work phone. I was suspended on full pay for fifteen months. It wasn’t anything illegal and I was cleared of gross misconduct, but the force reported me, found me Flawed.”

I look at them all in surprise. As each person confesses, it’s like it gives the next person the confidence to tell their story, too, their secrets all coming out as we walk together.

Carrick’s mother speaks up. “I got a brand on my tongue for speaking out against society. Adam and I weren’t always bakers at plants,” she says almost sarcastically. “We were doctors. We had our own general practice. We wrote anti-vaccination papers, speaking out about the dangers of vaccinations. The medical profession and the government didn’t like our professional opinions.”

“I didn’t do anything,” an older man I don’t know joins in. “I was set up. The Guild told me I was lying and branded me.”

We all fall silent after that.

FIFTY-NINE

AS WE WALK over the bridge that connects the city to the castle, I start thinking about capacities and then I can’t stop. There is a space that people hold for you, within themselves. Every person has a space for every person they meet—sometimes the capacity is deep, sometimes it is shallow. The streets are lined with people and Whistleblowers, all this for us. The capacity these people hold for us is enormous, in each of them.

People who are loved can eventually be hated in equal amounts. How Art loved me before I was caught versus his anger with me now, the rage that led him to join the Whistleblowers. How guilty Juniper felt for not telling me about helping to hide Art, which led her to take my place in the hospital, risking her own freedom to make it up to me. Switching one with another.

If the space is there for us, all we have to do is alter the feelings. As I look at the faces of those who watch us parade through the streets, with our flaws on display, our weaknesses, our imperfections, I feel hopeful, I sense that the tide could change. If they hate us this much, they could love us equally.

We turn the corner and start to walk up the steep cobblestoned road to Highland Castle, and as if the people lining the streets could read my thoughts I suddenly hear cheering. Great, big, loud, happy cheering. It jars with the sounds that have led us here. I look around and up ahead on the right-hand side, my side, I see my mom, Juniper, and Ewan jumping up and down on the edge of the road, cheering everyone on, thumping their fists in the air.

“Whoooo!” Mom screams happily, tears in her eyes. “That’s my daughter; that’s my girl!”

“Mom!” I yell. “Mom!” I can’t believe it, I start jumping up and down. “That’s my mom!” I tell the others who start to wave at her as we near.

As they gather as much attention as they can, Juniper, Mom, and even little Ewan open their shirts, lift their sweaters over their heads, and reveal T-shirts that read ABOLISH THE GUILD in red print.

The Flawed who see grin and cheer, applaud my family’s bravery in showing their support, and I’m so proud of them. Everybody who passes them smiles and wipes their tears as my family, and the surrounding people Mom has managed to muster together, applaud us. I realize it’s not just the family and friends of the Flawed who have gathered at the gates of Highland Castle but also the students from Tobias’s school who have carried out their plans to protest. I see Tobias among the crowd, too, protesting his own mother’s organization. As we pass, Mom reaches out her hand and I grab it. A Whistleblower immediately tries to pull us apart, but we hold on, looking deep into each other’s eyes, tears flowing.