Cecelia Ahern - Flawed

“Well, isn’t this nice for you.” I look around. “Cozy. Guess what, Art? I don’t have a hiding place. There is none in this world for me. I have to face it all, every day on my own. I don’t have the luxury that you do, using people to make things better for you like you always do. But you can’t stay here forever. Someday you will actually be a man and face it all.” That seems to deeply hurt him, and I’m glad. “You always said you’d be there for me, but you’re nothing but a coward. Both of you.”

“Celestine,” he says, his voice cracking as it nears a sob. “I miss you so much.”

The emotion from him is real. It’s raw. I might be stupid, but I believe him.

“Then why are you sitting here with my sister ?”

“Let me explain,” he says, angrily now, frustrated that I won’t let him talk. He steps toward me, and I back away.

“I can’t.” I think of another face-to-face with Judge Crevan in his courtroom, and the fight within me returns. I’m not done yet. “I’m not going to let you two ruin my life again.”

I have four minutes. I turn around and run.

* * *

The next few minutes are a blur of leaves, branches snapping in my face, stones on my feet, and twigs cutting my legs, my breath loud as I run the fastest down the hill that I have ever run before. I don’t look at my watch; I don’t have time. I sprint to my backyard wall. I climb it faster than I ever have and land on our grass, which feels like fur in comparison with what I’ve trodden over tonight. I can see Dad, Mom, and Mary May in the living room. They are looking at the clock on the wall. Dad is pacing. Mom’s hands are clasped by her chest, begging, praying as I was earlier for a miracle to happen. I push open the back door and fling myself at their feet, on my knees, panting and crying, unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to see, I am so dizzy.

I look up. The minute hand reads one minute past eleven.

I look at Mary May in desperation, unable to speak, still panting.

“One minute past eleven,” she says.

Mom and Dad explode with anger at her, at the injustice.

Then suddenly the watch on her wrist starts beeping. Confused, she lifts it and studies it, and I realize our timings are different. Surely, I will be judged by the Whistleblower’s time. Mom and Dad must realize the same thing and freeze as they look at her for confirmation.

I look up at her from the floor, and I have a sudden fit of giggles. I start laughing, and it hurts my ribs where Logan winded me, but the pain makes me laugh even more. The three of them watch me on the floor, lying down and holding my sides, my head bleeding, my legs and arms scraped and cut, laughing like a maniac.

I did it.

I beat them all.

FORTY-EIGHT

MY PHONE RINGS at 4:00 AM, waking me in the middle of a terrifying dream. I’m standing in the viewing room, hands up against the glass, and Carrick is in the Branding Chamber, tied to the chair. They have forgotten to give him the anesthetic, and he is screaming so loudly, his face contorted in pain, the veins bulging from his muscular neck. Instead of Tina, June, Bark, and Funar in the Branding Chamber, it’s Logan, Natasha, Gavin, and Colleen.

“There’s something you didn’t tell me, isn’t there?” Pia says on the other end of the phone. Her voice is low and urgent, not her usual perky TV voice, and it takes me a moment to register what’s going on, to differentiate between being asleep and awake.

“What? About what?”

“In the Branding Chamber. Your family was all sent away before the fifth brand, but there was somebody else in there who saw what happened. Wasn’t there?”

I’m suddenly wide awake. I sit up and feel the pain in my body from Logan’s kicks. I groan.

“Are you okay?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

“Celestine?”

“I’m here.”

“I know you were looking for Mr. Berry at the castle.”

She knows something. “He’s my solicitor. There were things I needed to discuss with him about my case.”

“Why have you left seven urgent messages on his voice mail over the past few days?”

This stops me. How does she know that?

“Mr. Berry was in the Branding Chamber at the time of the sixth branding, wasn’t he?” she says quickly, urgently. “He saw.”

I freeze. I don’t know if I can let her know this. I don’t know if I can trust her.

“Who’s there with you?”

“No one.” It sounds like she’s moving around. There’s a clicking sound on the phone again. Her presence comes and goes. “I’m alone, I promise. Celestine, trust me.”

Goose bumps rise on my skin. This is the moment. It’s either make or break. If I trust her and she’s lying, I’m putting Mr. Berry in grave danger. And after tonight, there is no one that I can trust. Then again, I’m alone in all this, whom else have I got to help me?

“Pia, this can’t all be on your terms,” I say. “I need to know why you’re asking.”

She says something I can’t hear properly.

“What? Pia, where are you? This is a bad line.”

“Doesn’t matter. Think , Celestine. There’s something you’re not telling me and I need to know it.”

I’m sick of all this, sick of everyone taking from me. “Why the hell should I tell you?” I hiss, not wanting to wake anyone in the house. “So you can twist it in Crevan’s favor? He’s not going to let you print any of this. If nobody knows about this now, it’s for a reason. He’s gotten rid of just about everybody who’s a witness to it. In fact, he’s probably listening to us now . How do I know you’re not trying to set me up? How do I know you’re not working with him to make sure there’s nobody left who saw what happened?”

“He can’t hear this conversation,” she says through clicking noises, her voice coming and going. “And you can trust me. You have to trust me,” she says, more clearly this time. “Who else have you got, Celestine? Who else do you know can find out information for you?”

I think fast. “What do I get in return?”

“Celestine,” she almost shrieks, “I’m trying to help you here.”

“You’re trying to help yourself.”

She sighs. “What do you want?”

“I want information on a person.”

“Who?”

“Carrick.” I don’t even know his surname. “He was in the cell beside me in Highland Castle.”

“The Flawed boy? Why?”

“No questions. It’s my own business.”

“Does he know something?”

“No!” I lie. “I just want to find him. Let’s just say I’m running low on friends right now. I need someone who can understand what I’m going through.”

“Fine. I’ll get whatever details I can, but I never interviewed him. It wasn’t a story we wanted.”

This maddens me.

“I’ll find out something and get back to you. Now you think for me, Celestine. I need something. I need more. Was Mr. Berry in the Branding Chamber? Did he see the sixth brand? The reports say he wasn’t there after the fifth, that he was removed with your family. Are they wrong?”

A long pause.

“Yes, Mr. Berry saw the sixth brand,” I finally reveal. She’s right, I need her help.

I picture that day again, in the Branding Chamber. I have tried so hard to block it out, but I can’t. It comes to me in my nightmares, at certain times of the day when I’m least expecting it, the pain, the smell, the horror of it, and I want to escape it. It happens when my dad comfortingly puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He doesn’t know it, but I tense up, immediately taken back to the chair, feeling Tina’s touch before each branding. To willingly put myself back in that chamber, while in the comfort of my own bed, is against everything I have been trying so hard to do, especially after the events of tonight, when I’m scared and sore and want to forget it all. But I go there. The smells, the sound, the fear, my banging heart, the ache in my wrists and ankles. Crevan shouting at me in his bloodred cape, the angry spittle flying from his mouth.