Cecelia Ahern - Perfect

“Carrick!” I yell.

My cell door opens and I fire whatever I can at the guards, over and over again.

“Grab her,” a guard directs another, and two of them come after me, batons in hand.

“Leave her! Stop!” a voice shouts.

It’s Art.

SIXTY-EIGHT

ART IS WEARING his Whistleblower uniform.

“Don’t touch her,” he says.

“You disgust me,” I say, kicking a chair toward him.

“Whoa, whoa, Celestine, stop!” His voice is like thunder.

“You drugged them!” I yelled.

He looks around the cells and sees the others.

I pick up my bowl of soup and throw it at his feet. “I wasn’t hungry.”

They all run at me, but it’s Art who reaches me first. He wraps his arms around me, and even though he’s not Carrick, even though he’s smaller, he’s still bigger and stronger than me. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes, to stop me from lifting my arms. It’s not so much his strength that stops me, it’s his scent, and the familiar feel of his body so close to mine, and his arms wrapped around me. It feels wrong to struggle against him. Unnatural. It’s Art. My Art.

I start to wriggle again.

“Celestine,” he whispers in my ear. “If you stop, they will go away.”

I freeze. It was the they . The hint that it’s us against them. Is that what I’m supposed to think, is that what he wants me to think, or is that what I want to think?

“We’re fine,” Art says firmly. “Thank you, I’ll take it from here.”

They begrudgingly close the door.

“Christ, they don’t trust me, you don’t trust me—when can I get a break?” He keeps his arms wrapped around me.

They don’t trust him? I don’t blame them.

“I’m not going to throw anything,” I snap. “You can let me go.”

He looks at me, deep into my eyes. I have to look away, just seeing them confuses me too much. His grip weakens and I push away from him. I move to the far side of the cell, the farthest I can get from him.

“What did you do to them?” I say, gesturing to Carrick, Raphael, and Granddad.

“I didn’t do anything,” he replies, studying them. Carrick is lying on the floor, passed out.

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am. He was throwing furniture around, maybe they needed to calm him down.”

“They didn’t, he was already calm,” I say. “And my granddad wasn’t doing anything, nor Raphael. Neither was I. I’m the only one who didn’t eat it.”

Art looks at Carrick, a look of hate, and then he looks at Granddad and I see his resolve weaken. Art liked that Granddad never watched what he said in front of him, in fact his conspiracy theories seemed to grow whenever he was in Art’s company. It amused Art; he was always fond of Granddad. “The spawn of Satan,” Granddad used to call him, which bizarrely made Art laugh. I think he found Granddad refreshing, when he felt everybody else around him was always nice to him because of who his dad is.

“How did you know Carrick threw a chair? Were you watching us?”

“Celestine, the room is covered in CCTV cameras.”

I wonder if he saw the meeting with the judges. I doubt it. “Spying on me for Daddy, Art?”

“Shut up.” He stands. “I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on here.”

“You know what’s going—”

“With him,” he shouts, pointing at Carrick. “Did it happen in here? While I was out of my mind with worry, you were in here, cozy with him? Did it happen then?”

“Cozy?” I ask, then laugh. “Yes, because you can see how cozy this is, how much human contact is completely possible in here,” I say sarcastically. “And what exactly do you think could have happened between me and him when I was scared out of my wits after your dad locked me up?”

He paces back and forth.

I take a deep breath. Try to calm down. “It was after,” I say quietly. “After I got out. You weren’t there for me. I had to run away. He was the only person who would help me, the only person who understood—”

“I would have understood. I was your boyfriend!”

“You went into hiding, Art. I had no one.”

“I needed to figure things out.”

“You obviously did. Now that you’re wearing that uniform, I can see you decided what and who was right and wrong.”

“When I came back you were gone,” he says, trying to make me understand.

“I had to go.”

“To him?”

“Art, stop it. It’s not just about Carrick. I had to get away from your dad. He was hunting me down.”

“He wouldn’t have if you hadn’t run. Why do you keep making everything worse? And that speech today, why don’t you just stop ? Just do what you’re told. Every time you do something it just makes it harder for…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Harder for us to be together.”

I’m stunned. For a long time I don’t know what to say. I can tell he’s hugely embarrassed and maybe even close to tears.

“You still want us to be together?”

He doesn’t reply.

“You’re a Whistleblower, I’m Flawed, and you still want me?”

No response.

“Art, you know that regardless of these brands, I’m still the same person. Whatever I do, whatever I say, I’m still me.”

“No, you’re not.” He shakes his head.

“Just like when you put that uniform on, you completely change?”

His head snaps up so fast. “I don’t.”

I leave the silence. Same thing .

“I need some air,” I say, putting my head in my hands, feeling faint, unable to deal with this bombshell. Art still wants me?

“Good idea,” he says. “We can talk more openly outside in the courtyard.”

He opens the cell using his key card and we walk down the corridor. It’s the same walk I took for the first time when Funar pretended he was taking me and Carrick to get some air but then forced us to sit on the bench and witness the screams of the Flawed man being branded.

The second time I took this walk, Carrick was sitting on the bench in support of me as I was branded. I’ll find you. His words comforted me for so long when I got home.

The bench sits empty now. My head whirls with everything that has happened and all that Art has said.

Suddenly I break away from Art. He just misses me as he tries to grab me. I run into the Branding Chamber and lock the door. He appears in the viewing room, angry. I can’t hear what he’s saying but he can hear me. He’s going to have to listen to me now—he has no choice.

“The last time I was in here, do you know what your dad did to me?”

He covers his face with his hands.

“They put me in this chair. They tied me down. Five brands, Art. For trying to help that old man. And in the end the brands weren’t for helping him, they were for lying to the court about it, for embarrassing your dad, for making him look stupid. You might be wearing that uniform, but I know you don’t believe that’s right.”

I open the drawers filled with tools. So many F ’s of different sizes, for different parts of the body, depending on the size of the person. I hadn’t realized that, I’d thought one size fit all.

“I kept my anklet on during it all. You’d just given it to me and I wanted to believe that you were still with me and that you still believed I was perfect. Bark let me keep it. It was him who made it, wasn’t it?”

Carrick had told me somebody at the Castle had made it, and I remember the flicker of recognition in Bark’s face as his eyes clamped on the ankle of the person he was about to brand as Flawed, as he battled with the hypocrisy, the irony, the fragility of life.

Art nods, tears welling in his eyes as I relive it.