Celeste POV
I walk out of the infirmary in a daze. Seth. In a coma. It doesn't seem real. Joe, Jasper's nephew. Lockharte, my grandfather. All these words bounce around inside my skull but none of them register with me.
It seems like just when my life was getting back to normal it all had to fall apart again. Why should I be surprised?
I walk across the campus, not knowing where I'm going. Several minutes later, I slow down and come to a complete stop in front of the school building. Thoughts are warring in my head, telling me to man up and walk in or to stay outside if I know what's good for me.
I chew my lip to the point that it's painful. I close my eyes for a moment and I see flashes of all my classmates running for their lives and falling and bleeding. I take one deep breath in and take a step closer to the school building. Something in the back of my mind tells me that I have to see it again; that I have to make sure it's real.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I hear a voice and feel a hand grab my arm. I quickly pull away and refuse to look over my shoulder.
"Better than staying out here with you." I snap.
I hear Joe sigh behind me. "Listen, Princess... You don't want to see it. Agents picked up... all the students last night, but it still hasn't been cleaned." He trails off and I turn around. He shoves his hands in his pockets and gazes at me for a few seconds. "It's... terrifying to look at." He looks like he can't describe the horror inside the building. Like there are no words for the sins that have been committed.
"I'm going in." I say quietly; pulling my arm out of his grip. I turn on my heel and head straight towards the door.
I start to pull the door open but his hand comes from behind me and slams it closed. I whip around to see Joe standing only inches away from me. I press my back against the door, trying to get as far away from him as possible. Joe's eyes have turned that deep blue again and his stare pulls everything inside of me apart.
I've missed those eyes.
I put on the most hateful glare I can muster. He needs to know that he can't make my decisions for me. It was never that way between us, and it never will be. "Are you sure you want to do this?" He asks me after a few seconds.
"I need to see." I tell him and the words come out as barely a whisper. I'm still pressed against the door. He sighs and looks away from me, stands up.
"Okay." He says simply, and moving away from me. He pulls the door open and watches me as I stand in front of the threshold, hesitating for a moment. I walk in and Joe follows me. The door closes behind us and the sound fills the room. I suck in when I look around.
Any casualties that were here originally are now gone, laid out on the courtyard in black bags. Blood is spread out across the floor, on the walls. I can almost hear the gunshots and screams. A single light is still on, but it flickers, making the dark hallway fade into a black shadow.
I walk through down the main hall toward the wing where Jasper and I fought. I hear Joe's light footsteps behind me as I go. In a way, it brings me comfort. I keep thinking that a stray soldier is going to come running at me with one of his guns, and I won't be able to do anything and defend myself. But I know somewhere in the back of my head that it won't happen. Everyone is dead.
This is all my fault. This is all my fault. This is all my fault.
I feel my breathing become more and more rapid as my eyes take in the bloodstained hall and rooms. My throat begins to close and I don't feel like I'm getting enough oxygen in. Tears start to brim in my eyes and spill down my cheeks. My hands start to shake uncontrollably, and my knees buckle. I am on my hands and knees on the floor, gasping for air and sobbing.
This is all my fault. This is all my fault.
I hear Joe saying my name over and over again and he is kneeling down in front of me. All I hear is a whooshing sound in my ears and the pounding of my heart mixed with the voices of my classmates. The color red dominates my vision.
This is your fault. This is your fault.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to focus on one thing, but nothing is coming clearly. When I close my eyes I see all the terrifying moments of the last four months, all the things I wish I could reverse.
"You terrify me. Because you're intelligent and strange and beautiful and you're something that not everyone knows how to love. And that's solely because you yourself love with every bone in your body. Not very many people are capable of that love. And I want to know how you do that." Joe's voice whispers.
"Only the strong make the world go 'round."
"Love gets you killed, Princess."
"I'll find you! If it's the last thing I do, I swear to God I will kill you!"
"Not all the people in your life are meant to stay. Others will be with you forever... I'll be with you forever."
Tears continue to roll down my face as I remember what happened. I feel Joe's hands finally take hold of mine firmly and I look up to meet his frantic eyes. I can't make out the words he is saying to me.
This is all my fault. This is all my fault.
I feel one of his hands release mine and it touches my face gently; his thumb tracing my jawbone. I swallow and clear my ears and blink the rest of my tears out of my eyes. I catch on to his words. "Stop saying that. Stop saying this was you. It wasn't."
I shake my head. "What?"
Joe furrows his eyebrows. "That this is your fault. You've been saying it over and over again. It's not true."
"It is--" I begin, but he cuts me off.
"Jasper acted on his own accord, not yours. He was going to come here whether he got anything from you or not. He wanted to kill you to get under Lockharte's skin. It was all him and his own need for revenge."
"I still... couldn't... save anyone." I sob in between my words. He releases my other hand and it comes up to touch my face. Joe shakes his head and holds mine gently between his hands.
"You did more than you realize." He whispers. I process his words and fall quiet for a few seconds.
"I killed the only family you had." I say, suddenly feeling guilty. I see Joe is taken aback, but he looks down and drops his hands. His expression is blank.
"It had to be done," he says quietly, "I realized that a long time ago."
"Still, I'm sorry. I know that... I know that he loved you in his own way. Whether you realize it or not, he did." I say, wanting to reach out, to touch him. Joe doesn't notice, merely nods his head. He takes a deep breath in, stands, and offers me his hand. I take it and he hoists me up.
"He's still there," he says, "Jasper, I mean. The FBI left his body for examination."
This new information strikes interest in my head. I know exactly where Jasper lies dead, and something tells me to go to him.
"I want to see him. I want to see his body."
Joe furrows his eyebrows, shakes his head once. "I don't know if they'll let you--"
"I want to see him." I interrupt, and start to walk down the hallway before he can get another word in. I hear silence behind me, before footsteps as Joe begins to follow me. I think I hear him mutter something under his breath, but I don't dwell on the thought. I take a right turn down another hallway.
More blood is spattered on the wall. I remember all my friends that were here last night, bleeding and clinging to life. I remember seeing lifeless eyes and remember that the last thing they saw was terror before their hearts stopped beating. My throat begins to close up once again, but I push the ache in my chest away and continue to walk, leaving my guilt behind me.
The light that lit the room where I fought Jasper no longer flickers. The bulb is busted, the glass scattered across the floor. One of the bullets must have hit it last night in all the chaos. Clots of blood are pooled here and there, marking the locations of each body that was here last night. I see Colleen's blood and Seth's, fifteen feet away from each other. I see shells decorating the tiles, either from Jasper's or my gun. I see a pocket knife to my left with the engraving "JV" on the handle; the blade is red. I watch Joe pick it up and examine it for a few seconds. He carefully wipes the blood from the blade with his black shirt and sticks it in his back pocket. He looks up at me, and then his eyes cut to something else on the floor.
I see Jasper, but not Jasper. Only a body on the ground with no soul, no mind, no beating heart.
I freeze up, ten feet away. I catch Joe standing beside me out of the corner of my eye, staring down his deceased uncle. He doesn't look sad or angry, but he wears an emotion that can't be put into words. His eyebrows are furrowed and his hands are shoved in his pockets, his shoulders tense. He looks like he doesn't know what to do with himself. He turns to me when he catches me staring. "It's terrifying, isn't it?"
"What is?" I croak, my words not quite clear.
"Looking at the person you've killed. Because all the sudden, you wonder what they had before they died. Were they happy with the life they had? Did they have a family or a house to come home to every day? What were their fears in life and what did they care about the most? When I think about all that, you know it. You look at them and suddenly you see another human being, who has seen their last piece of the world before everything faded to black, and it was all your fault." Joe pauses and swallows, his eyes trained on Jasper. "But then it turns out that they were wrong all along."
"But I don't feel that when I look at Jasper," he goes on, "I only see... I only see him. Because I knew him. I knew everything about him, and I was one of the few people. He trusted me, and I turned my back on him. So now, I don't see his life. I only see Jasper. Is that wrong?"
I open my mouth, close it. Ponder all his words. "No," I finally say, "No, I don't think it is."
"Why?"
"You were his life, Joe," I say, "He raised you from childhood. You were the only family he had after he lost Jacqueline. You were probably the only thing keeping him sane."
"He wasn't sane, Celeste--"
"Yes, he was," I cut him off, "He just had a purpose that involved violence and death. Everyone has a purpose, and vengeance was his."
Joe shakes his head, but doesn't argue with me. We stand in silence for what seems like hours, gazing at Jasper's body. Flashes of the man who nearly took my life away from me pass through my mind. I see him in his crisp, black suit when we met for the first time. I remember his rigid but calm demeanor, his calculating eyes, his sick but intelligent smile.
I think of who he was before Jacqueline left this world. He had his first love, his first failure, his first heartbreak, his first loss.
I picture a happy man with a loving wife who left too soon. I see him carrying a small child on his shoulders, kissing his wife when he came home from work every day. I see him smiling at his child's mistakes, and gently telling her that it's okay to make them. I see him the day his wife died, holding her hand while tears roll down his cheeks. I want to hear the last bittersweet words that were said between them. I want to believe that she told him to move on and be strong. Take care of their daughter and raise her to be strong as well. I see him holding onto happiness by a very thin rope as his little girl grows up, gets older without a mother. I see him watching her leave for a school hundreds of miles away, and his happiness slowly fading to a very, very dim light.
I see him sitting alone in a chair one day in a dim living room, and a phone call comes through. He is told that his daughter is gone, that she perished for a good cause. I see him hang up, and finally lose whatever good things he had. I see him a few years later, teaching a little blonde boy how to fight and shoot a gun. I see him looking for his daughter in the little boy, for any resemblance and finding nothing but the blue eyes that will forever haunt his memories. I see him vow vengeance for the person he loved most in the world. I see the once good man he was fade away, never to return.
I am crying for the hundredth time today, but I don't care. For once, I am only conscious of me and Jasper's body in the room. Joe is gone, the blood is gone, the panic and chaos and tears are gone. It's me. And Jasper.
I think of the one thing that life has taught me that is absolute and will never not be true. Love is what will always remain, always make us good people. But who are we if we don't have anyone to love?
I approach his body and crouch down. I take a deep breath in and gaze into his eyes, his eyes that will not acknowledge my words ever. And I do something I didn't know I was capable of doing.
"I forgive you." I whisper.
~~~~~~~~~~
"So what's the deal with you and Preston?" I say, staring up at the ceiling. Kate and I lay shoulder to shoulder on my bed, gazing at the light above us.
"If I'm being completely honest... I have no clue. I haven't even thought about where we really stand with everything that's going on." Her eyes flick to mine but look away just as quickly.
"Well you have my blessing, if you need it." I say, shrugging my shoulders. Kate laughs out loud.
"But you hate Preston. You've said so yourself hundreds of times."
I shake my head. "I don't hate him... at least, not anymore. He did a lot for both me and you, and I'm grateful for it. I can't pretend not to like him now, sadly."
Kate is quiet for a few seconds, chewing her lip while thousands of calculations run through her head. It's always been easy to see when the wheels in her brain are turning, to see every single thought and possibility that she puts together and makes up an outcome of every situation. "So.. you... you're okay with it? You're not gonna use your seven tactics on how to kill him with a fork?" she asks. I chuckle.
"No, not unless he does something really unforgivable."
"Like what?" Kate turns her head towards me. I shrug again.
"Oh you know... the usual. Does anything to hurt you or make you angry. You're my best friend. It's my job to ward off any guy who thinks it's okay treat you wrong."
"I don't that'll happen with him though, Celeste." Kate says, her voice sounding far away.
"Why's that?"
She hesitates. "He sort of told me he loved me... upon multiple occasions."
I sit up and stare down her. "Oh my god."
"I know," Kate says, "That's exactly how I felt when I heard it for the first time."
"Do you think he means it?"
Kate bites her lip and sits up to face me. She crosses her legs underneath her, takes her glasses off. "I mean... he didn't sound like he was faking it. And he sort of told me at the most inopportune times."
"Like when?"
"In the hotel, before you and Seth... came in. And then literally right after we stopped the bomb planted in the chemistry lab."
"Wow. Talk about perfect timing."
Kate nods her head, fading away into her thoughts again. I let her, watching memories pass through her green eyes. Finally she looks up at me and smiles. "So what about you and Joe?"
"What do you mean, me and Joe?" I ask, suddenly getting uncomfortable.
"Don't play dumb, you know it doesn't work on me. I know about you two."
"I..." I pause, taking a deep breath in. "I don't know where we stand. I'm so confused about everything right now."
"I'm sure you guys will figure everything out eventually," she says lightly, "You know after everything calms down." She hesitates before she continues. "I know this is touchy but... what about Seth?"
I glance up from my hands. I swallow hard, feeling that ache in my heart once again. "What about him?" I croak out. Kate presses her lips together. She knows how hard it is for me to cope with Seth's condition right now and the fact that he's hanging on to life by a thread.
"I know he's in love with you," Kate says quietly, "I think I've always known it, I've just never really acknowledged it. Did anything... happen between you two?"
I pause for a minute to think about everything that happened between us. I think back to the way he gently held my face and kissed me in the cold crisp air. The way he looked at me when we sat in front of the library.
I open my mouth to answer her before there is a knock on the door. Both of us jump and Kate slides off the bed. She glances at me over her shoulder, asking me the same question that lingers in my mind. Who is it?
I shrug, shake my head. Kate approaches the door, unlocks it, opens it slowly. She peeks around the corner, and I can't see who it is from this angle, but I hear a low voice.
"Is she here?"
Kate nods her head, opening the door wider. She looks at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide. I stand from the bed and catch Joe's blue eyes. He stares straight at me, doesn't cross the threshold. "I need to talk to you," he says, glancing at Kate, "If you're not busy."
I look back at Kate, who nods her head, offering a small but encouraging smile.
"Yeah," I say, "Yeah, sure." I throw my boots on and pass through the door, glancing at Kate over my shoulder.
"Um..." she says, glancing at Joe, "I'm just gonna... create a new GPS software or something." She rolls her eyes and closes the door, muttering something about stupidity under her breath.
I turn to Joe, who watches the door with an amused look on his face. "She's different. She makes softwares for leisure?"
"It's a regular thing for her," I say, crossing my arms, "What do you need?"
Joe's attention turns to me and he glances around the empty dorm hallway. Then he grabs my hand and leads me down the stairs to the foyer. I try to protest, but each time he shushes me. He pulls me outside the building and down the path that leads to the woods.
"God, not this again..." I say under my breath, suddenly breaking away. "Joe, I don't--"
We stop once we break out of the brush of trees. I get a good look of my surroundings, realizing that the path he led me down is one I've never walked. In all my years of breaking curfew, I've never thought about where this one could lead.
I've never truly appreciated the beauty of the mountains in Wyoming. Joe and I stand on a cliff that has a hundred foot drop, and the scenery lay out before us is utterly breathtaking. Straight in front of us and to the left and right, the mountain range stretches for thousands of miles. Birds circle around the peaks, their bodies gliding gracefully through the air. It's the late evening, and an aroma of colors paints the sky. Red, yellow, orange, purple, and pink all combine together to create a canvas that could never be duplicated.
"I've never been here before." I say lamely, approaching the end of the cliff. I lean over and see jagged rocks at the bottom. I slowly back up, wanting to be as far away from the drop-off as possible.
"Why did you bring me here?" I say, turning around. I notice Joe has his hands stuffed in his pocket, his right one balled into a fist. He has a look of determination on his face. "Joe?"
He walks to the edge of cliff without hesitating. He sits down on the edge, letting his feet dangle a hundred feet above the ground. I nearly tell him to come away, but I restrain myself. I freeze when he beckons to the place beside him. I slowly shake my head. "I don't... I don't like heights."
"What do you know," Joe says, grinning, "Celeste Blackwood is scared of heights."
"Yeah, it's part of being human. Having fears and all."
"Well, if you just so happen to find a way to slip off the edge, I've got you. You're not going anywhere."
"How can I trust you?"
"You can't." He says, shrugging his shoulders. "Come on."
I hesitate, before slowly walking to the edge once again. I carefully lower myself down next to Joe, holding his shoulder for balance. I don't let my feet dangle like him, and instead cross them under me.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, gazing out at the setting sun in the distance, slowly disappearing below the mountain horizon. "It's beautiful. I've never really taken time to appreciate it." I say at last. Joe mutters his agreement.
"What about you?" I ask, inclining my head towards him.
"What?" He asks, still gazing at the sunset.
"Any fears?"
"Why do you care?" He says. He doesn't sound closed off or accusing when he says, just merely curious.
"Well, I feel like we don't know much about each other considering all that's... happened."
"And fears is the first thing you wanna know. I feel like I should be worried."
I nudge him on the shoulder and he chuckles, but his smiles quickly fades away. "You really wanna know?"
"Yeah."
He sighs and looks off. "All right. First off... spiders."
I laugh out loud. "You can't be serious."
"I have my reasons. When I was nine I got bit by one on my palm. My hand swelled to the size of a tennis ball."
"That's terrible. What else?"
He thinks for a minute, his eyes squinting and his fingers tapping his knee. Finally, "The future. Where am I gonna be in one, five, ten years. I hate not being able to control what happens, and not knowing either. I need to know everything in advance."
I nod my head. "Is that all?"
"No," he says, his voice growing quieter, "There's one more thing. I don't want to be alone. That's why I probably never made the right decisions when it came to following Jasper. I didn't want to be rejected by him, because I knew that I would have no one else to turn to."
"I don't think anyone is alone in this world," I say, "I mean, sure, it may seem like it. But we get to choose whether we want people in our lives or not."
Joe nods his head, but says nothing. I look up at the sky and notice that the first stars have started to appear. Colors still remain, but directly above our heads navy blue has started to push them away. "Why did you bring me here, Joe?" I ask.
For a few seconds, there is no response. I glance down at him, and he has his head inclined straight up, gazing at the dark blue sky. "It should be here in a few minutes..." He says, almost to himself.
"What will?" I say, but he won't answer me. Instead, he takes my hand in his. He turns it over and observes the scars that I have tried so hard to forget in the last months. No longer are they red or scabbed over. They're just jagged tissue that will never fade away. Joe gently traces them with his fingers, his eyebrows furrowed like he's studying something new and extraordinary. I find myself wanting to shift away, but I force myself to stay put.
"Do you remember what I told you about my mother?" He asks quietly. I look up at him through my lashes.
"Yes, I remember." I say, not wanting to elaborate on the timid subject. I know how much it hurts Joe to think of his mother.
"I used to dream about her all the time," Joe goes on, "I used to sit under a tree with her and she would talk to me for hours. I had the same dream nine times. But then you showed up and suddenly she was gone." Joe pauses and glances up at the sky, which grows darker every second.
"You know what the last thing she said to me was? She told me to take care of you. Protect you and watch you. At first I didn't know why. I thought that I would have that dream again and I would get the chance to ask her what she meant. But after that dream, I never saw her again. Over the past months I've started to realize something."
"I've always thought of my mother as the most valuable person in the world to me, even through all the years I was with Jasper. She was always who I found hope and comfort in. Even though she was gone, I depended on her to get me through every day. When I stopped dreaming about her, I didn't know what to do. I was lost until... until you came along. I put two and two together. And I realized that even though it made me feel guilty at first, you had started to become that one person. You became the person that I put my hope in instead of my mom. I know that's what she wanted me to do. That's what she was telling me the entire time."
My heart has begun to pound inside my chest. His words are taking up every rational thought in my brain and I want to tell him something, but I don't know what.
"I don't know how, Celeste... but somehow she told me that it was always going to be you. And it's true because you've changed me. You've become the person I care about most in this world. That used to be my mom but now it's you. Now all I see is you. That's what she wanted."
My mouth has dropped open and I'm shaking my head, trying to find words. He has given me his heart and I'm too afraid to hold it because I don't want to drop it. I don't want to lose him.
"Say something, Celeste." He whispers, leaning his forehead against mine. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.
When nothing comes out, Joe glances left towards the mountains. "It's here." he says.
"What is?" I say, in a daze.
"Look," he says, and points at the mountains. I haven't noticed that it's completely dark now. Stars hang everywhere in the sky and cast shadows down on every rock and tree.
But the full moon outshines them all. It's a perfect pale circle in the sky and it takes my breath away for a few seconds. I find my eyes glued to it, like it's one giant magnet and I can't look away. "It's beautiful." I say under my breath, a small smile spreading across my face.
I look back at Joe, and notice that he isn't watching the moon. He's watching me. He reaches into his pocket and brings out his fist, a silver chain dangling out. I watch as his fingers open and he reveals his mother's necklace that he showed to me all that time ago. The tree and the chain and the moon. The full moon that gives the pendant color.
"How ironic." I say under my breath, then slap myself mentally. Smooth, Blackwood. That was real smooth.
Joe doesn't seem to mind. He only sees me. "I want you to have it."
I look up at him. "Joe, I can't. It's your mother's--"
"That's why I'm giving it to you," he interrupts, "So that every time I see you, I see it as well. And I'll remember her."
I open my mouth to argue again, but find myself at a loss for words for the hundredth time tonight. Silently, I open the palm of my hand and let him carefully drop the necklace into my fingers. I hold it gingerly, tracing the branches of the tree lightly. "Can you help me put it on?" I ask. He nods.
I turn around and lift my hair up. Joe takes the chain from my hand and carefully wraps it around my neck. The tips of his fingers touch my neck lightly and I shiver. He fits the clasp together and lets it fall. I drop my hair and turn around, and he is right there; centimeters away from me. He whispers my name and I close my eyes. "I need to hear you say it," he says, "Even if it isn't true."
Somehow I know exactly what he is talking about. And I'm also confused because he doesn't know...
He doesn't know I love him.
I can't say it. I'm incapable of speaking right now. I have forgotten how to use words and so I do the only thing that can say these valuable words. I grab his face in my hands and I pull him towards me and I kiss him.
His lips are familiar to me. I remember him, the way it felt to kiss him like this. Suddenly we are closer than we were before and his arms are around my waist and I'm pressed up against him and my hands are in his hair. I love you, I love you, I love you...
I say it over and over in my head and I try to tell him without words. I try to tell him how much he means to me, how much I want him to stay forever. I love you, I love you, I love you...
I wish I could somehow save this moment so I can revisit it whenever I need to. But I know that isn't possible, and someday I will look back and I will regret never admitting the things that are true.
I kiss him for what seems like hours and he kisses me until time topples over and neither of us can breathe anymore. We pull away from each other and breath for the first time, but we don't let go. I stay right where I am. I love you, I love you, I--
"I love you." I breathe.
He stops breathing. He opens his eyes and looks straight at me. I say it again, getting used to how it feels when I say it. His eyes are asking me all types of questions that I can't answer right now because my brain can't shape very many more words, but I still tell him what I can. I try to tell him that he has me, he has my heart and I will always be here. I will always be close.
And we kiss and kiss under the full moon.