The Wicked We Have Done

15

This place reeks of latex and disinfectant. Everything around me is blurry and white. White—unnaturally so. There is nothing so blindingly pure in nature. My head flops to the side, and I study my veiny hand where a taped needle pierces the skin of my wrist, feeding me clear liquid.

This isn’t the Compass Room.

I’m not awake for long before the nurse—the same one who had injected the monitor into my head—walks into the room.

“Miss Ibarra,” she says. “Good to see you awake.”

She hooks her tablet up to the monitors next to me.

“Let me upload your stats.” A few seconds go by. “Wonderful. Looks like everything’s okay.”

Wonderful. Okay. With one shaky hand I wipe the drool trailing down my chin.

“I made it out?”

Suddenly everything rushes back to me. The malfunction. The plan to get us out. Jace. Casey. Casey.

I choke back a gasp as the thought of him dying in my arms floods my entire being. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. One stupid decision after another and I’m killing everyone who ever loved me.

He loved me. Two fucking weeks and he said he loved me. And I destroyed him.

Tears burn in my eyes and I wish I could grieve, but the drugs work their way through my system, and the world—the clean-cut, whitewashed real world—is still a haze of stiff sheets and beeping machines.

“The remaining candidates were released early so the CR could be evaluated.”

“Candidates?”

She tilts her head to the right.

On the opposite side of the corridor, Valerie sits in bed with her knees to her chest. She’s fixated on the cup of green Jell-O in her hands.

She doesn’t notice I’m awake, not until my nurse leaves the room. We react at the same time, ripping the IVs from our arms and jumping out of our hospital beds. I almost fall on my face when my feet hit the linoleum. She stumbles and smacks into the wall.

We groggily limp toward each other, and when we meet, I throw my arms around her and sob into her shoulder, dragging her down to the ground with me.

Her skin is clammy and she smells like I do—of cheap soap and plastic.

“We made it out.” I breathe the words into her hair.

Her fingers close around the folds of my hospital gown, balling the fabric into her fists. The silent question is as clear as if she’d spoken it out loud.

Why does it still feel so unsafe?

“Everyone’s gone.” Her face crumples, like the thought is brand-new. She can’t hold herself upright, collapsing in front of me. I lean over her broken body, her broken soul, as she cries into the linoleum.

I killed them.

We should have stayed at camp. I’d clung so desperately to the idea of all of us leaving the Compass Room safely that it never occurred to me everything that could stem from my last-minute plan. In a truly just world, I would be the one to die while Jace had another chance. I was the one who kept proving myself to be a killer over and over in the Compass Room.

Jace—Jace finally wanted to live.

I took it away from her.

And Casey. Casey’s gone.

You should be numb to tragedy by now, he had said.

I rest my head on top of Valerie’s back. I am wicked in its purest form. I had gathered hope in the darkest of places for the sake of destroying it.

You should be numb to tragedy by now.

Casey was right, but he was a little too early when he said it. Now I think I finally am.

“This is all my fault,” I whisper.

I sit up when I feel her straighten beneath me. Her eyes are bloodshot, but somehow, after everything, I also see determination.

“No, Evalyn.” She takes both my hands in hers as a tear trickles down her cheek. “The only thing you’re guilty of is caring about all of us enough to not want to see us die. Promise me that you’ll never blame yourself for their deaths. You didn’t kill them.”

She squeezes my hands out of urgency.

“They did.”

I’m given back the clothes I checked into the prison wearing—a floral button-up and jeans that are much too big for me. But they’ll work.

A federal agent clips a thin titanium tracking bracelet around my wrist. I may be out of the Compass Room, but the water’s about to start boiling. I’ll be on probation until the events within the CR have been thoroughly investigated. Then I’ll be retried.

I don’t know what exactly I’ll be tried for, and I won’t until I have my debrief with a CR official. I might have to sit through a trial of the shooting again, but instead of a Compass Room, my sentencing will be different. Maybe better, maybe worse.

Or the crimes I committed in the Compass Room may be piled on top of the shooting.

The only thing that can redeem me now is the data on my thoughts and emotions stored in the CR files. If the Compass Room read me as redeemable, then perhaps I won’t be sentenced to death.

But the odds aren’t in my favor. Especially after killing someone in the place that was supposed to judge my morality.

The only thing I can do now is enjoy the few fleeting moments of freedom that I have.

The federal hospital in Los Angeles has a strict no-visitors-allowed policy, so I don’t see Mom until I’m released.

Valerie and I walk side by side out onto the lawn, where my family waits. Mom has a bouquet of flowers in one hand and holds the arm of one wriggly Todd in the other. She can’t keep him still when he sees me, so she lets him go. I drop to my knees, and he collides with me.

He’s laughing. Todd’s laughing.

“I’m never letting you go again, okay?” I kiss his pudgy little cheek over and over. “Never ever.”

He tugs on a lock of my hair. “Ice cream.”

I grin. “Every day.”

When I stand, Mom hugs me tight. I don’t want her to say anything, because this is enough. When she’s soaked through the shoulder of my shirt, I whisper, “I love you,” into her hair.

A car door slams. People run onto the grass, and a young woman shrieks. I pull away from Mom and turn toward the commotion, where a girl with golden curls and a face exactly like Valerie’s runs across the grass. She jumps into Valerie’s arms. The sisters are laughing and crying, and her twin is saying, “You did it. You did it. I knew you’d never leave me.”

A balding man waits patiently until the girls finish. He carries a child in his arms.

When Valerie sees him she instantly sobers up. Her sister takes the child and the man says something I don’t expect.

“Are you all right?”

Her face scrunches up, and instantly, she shifts from a twenty-five-year-old woman into a little girl.

“No, Dad.”

He pulls her close and holds her, pressing his lips to her forehead. She grips the back of his shirt until her knuckles are white. This must have been so hard for them, for her dad and my mom and the loved ones of all the other candidates, to harbor the doubt for a month and wait, wait, wait, hoping.

Praying.

Valerie turns to the little boy and reaches out, taking him from her sister.

“Say hello to your aunt, Charlie.”

He wraps his arms around her neck, and Valerie says, “He’s beautiful,” burying her nose in his blond curls.

Mom taps me on the shoulder to gain my attention. She hands me my tablet. “I met with an agent before I got to see you. He uploaded some information. Said you would be interested in taking a look at it.”

I uncover what she’s referring to, opening the file. I read the headline. It’s a summary of all the deaths in our Compass Room.

My hands tremble in rage. How cruel for an agent to think I’d need to relive the deaths of my fellow inmates. Salem Ramirez is the first on the list. Execution, it reads.

Erity Lin: Execution

Blaise Wilson: Execution

Stella Devereux: Execution

My fingers tighten around the tablet as tears threaten to spill. “Liars,” I hiss.

Tanner Saito: In-Room Homicide

Gordon Ostheim: In-Room Homicide

Jacinda Glaser: Malfunction

I turn the page. The tablet slips from my hands.

“Evalyn?” my mother says.

Nothing could have prepared me for this.

I sink to my knees and contain nothing inside me—nothing. Every moment spent with him bursts from my chest. His lips on mine, his arms around me. The way he began to say my name when the meaning of the word transformed from ally to something more.

The way he held me as Meghan died.

His expression when he told me that he loved me.

Sobs consume me, and I collapse on the grass.

Valerie finds me. She must have read the document. She must know, because as she holds me, she says softly, “Oh my God, Ev.”

“Oh my God.”

“Oh my God.”

I have to take a guard with me everywhere I go. It’s a complimentary federal guard at least, but he doesn’t seem thrilled that I’m making him walk everywhere.

The public wasn’t too happy concerning the agreement of our freedom. The media’s made us out to be monsters, deviants who misused the system to get out alive. And the world is eating it up.

Living in fear isn’t exactly freedom. But I guess I’ll take it, for now.

“I can get a car for you, Miss Ibarra,” my guard suggests. He wears a black suit in the near-hundred-degree Los Angeles weather. Sweat drips from his red face.

“I’m fine, thank you. It’s a short walk.”

After Mom gave me the clothes and belongings she brought for me, she and Todd took the train home. I told her I still had some things to do. A few loose ends to tie.

An ash tree stretches toward the sky in the center of a small, shaded park. Compass Room victims are scattered here by default, close to CR labs and headquarters. There are no plaques, no signs that suggest what this place is or who these people are. The government refuses to memorialize the evil. But there are flower wreaths, notes, and pictures. People never stop loving.

I stand at the edge of the park. A breeze catches my hair and cools the sweat on the back of my neck. I’m about to walk toward the tree when a horn beeps behind me. I turn. Valerie sits in the driver’s seat of a Porsche, her guard on the passenger’s side. She slides her aviators down her nose.

“Nice ride,” I say.

“Thank-you gift from Dad.”

“Thank you for what?”

“Not dying. Why are you walking?”

“Wanted some time to think.”

“Well, I’m headed out. I wanted to see if I could give you a lift.”

It’s strange that we’re having such a casual conversation.

“I’m headed to the—”

“I know where you’re headed,” she says. “You left the front of the hospital before a correspondent came outside searching for you. They moved him home.”

“Home?”

“It’s where his mom wanted him. She signed some paperwork and boom, he was hers.”

“Like, Illinois home?”

She raises her watch. “The next train leaves in fifteen. What do you say?”

Both of our huge guards are crammed into the backseat of Valerie’s Porsche. I almost feel bad for them. Almost.

When we arrive at the station, mine (his official name is James) actually gives a sigh of relief before opening the door and stretching his legs.

I touch Valerie’s shoulder. “When am I going to see you?”

She gives me a crooked smile and shakes her head. “Don’t know. Maybe gonna try and get my master’s between now and the time those fuckers bring us to court.”

“You know that if you need anything before then—”

“Trust me, Ev. You’ll be getting phone calls every week until the day I die, which may be soon, according to how important having a guard with me all the time was stressed.”

“Don’t joke like that with me.”

“But seriously.” Her face softens. “I’ll see you soon.”

I lean in and kiss her on the cheek. “Call me when you make it home.” I climb out and close the door behind me, bending down and meeting her eyes that have grown exponentially serious in the past few seconds.

“Let me know how Illinois goes. It’s going to be hard.”

“I know.”

My private car on the train is almost too quiet. I feel like I’m obligated to make small talk with James. Luckily for me, right when I’m about to ask him if he has any kids, his cell rings and he’s on it for the remainder of the trip, pacing the opposite side of the car where I can’t hear him. I gaze out the window for a bit, the hills rolling along. Finding my phone, I scroll through the national headlines.

Compass Room Mishap

Star Death Penalty Machine Hopeless or Hindered?

Secrets Behind CR Glitch Revealed: Criminals Tamper With System

Terrorist Evalyn Ibarra Back on the Loose: Are Your Children Safe?

I click off the screen, suddenly tired, more tired than I should feel well fed, well rested, and dressed in nice clothes. On a safe train. I can’t shake the butterflies in my stomach, and they’re so distracting that the only thing left to do is lean back and shut my eyes.

When we arrive at the Jefferson County Station four hours later, a car waits for us. My foot taps nervously on the floor as we roll through the countryside. Ten minutes pass. Twenty. I ask the driver how much longer. He replies with, “Almost,” as we turn onto a dirt road.

His mother’s house is cookie-cutter country, with flower boxes beneath the windowsills and a porch with a rocking chair. It’s almost unbearable. There’s a huge oak out front with a tire swing.

“Would you like me to wait here, Miss Ibarra?”

“Yes, please,” I reply, half-distracted as I slip from the car and close the door behind me.

The wind toys with the hem of my sundress. I’m frozen in apprehension at the memorial before me. A beautiful, white-stained cross leans against the tree. A single cabbage rose is threaded through the hook in the center of it.

My throat tightens, and I swallow.

The screen door slams. I recognize Casey’s mother from the illusion he and I shared in the CR. She’s dressed in dark jeans and a floral blouse. She’s beautiful and young.

“I didn’t call,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no.” She glances to the cross and then back at me. “I was expecting you. Please come in.” As I climb the porch steps, she holds out her hand.

“I . . . Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know your—”

“You can call me Stefanie.”

“Stefanie. It’s nice to meet you.”

She takes me inside. The house smells like pine oil and lavender, the kitchen quaint, with blue curtains and a round walnut table. “Would you like anything? Tea, lemonade?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’m sorry if the cross bothered you,” she then says. I furrow my eyebrows in confusion. She continues. “People don’t understand. He broke my family in half.” She talks through the window at the cross like she’s talking to him. “My husband was a terrible man, but I can’t stop loving him.”

“I understand,” I say.

“I felt that you would.” Smiling, she asks, “So, are you ready to see him?”

My face flushes hot. “More than anything.”

She nods over her shoulder. “Down the hall.”

The floorboards creak beneath me, noise of the newscast trickling from the end room. I open the door.

He doesn’t see me at first, propped up in his hospital bed, a pint of ice cream resting in his lap, a large spoon hanging from his mouth. He’s transfixed on the TV and doesn’t notice me for so long that by the time he glances over, tears are already jetting down my cheeks.

Casey Hargrove: Extracted with injuries

The spoon falls from his mouth. I gasp a laugh and wipe my nose. “They didn’t tell me they moved you from the general hospital. I was waiting around in LA before Valerie told me you were here.”

A pause lingers between us. He gapes at me, jaw unhinged slightly.

“Did you need surgery?”

“Evalyn. What the hell are you doing on the other side of the room?”

Running to him, I take his face in my hands and kiss him. I keep my forehead on his when our lips part. “I thought I’d lost you.”

He grins. “Most of me is still here. Bullet missed my vital organs. Shattered my hip, though. Surgery was a bitch.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“You have a thing for gimps or something?”

I pull away.

His expression falls soft, serious. “How are you?”

Me?

“I’m terrified.” I respond. I know I shouldn’t be. Not right now. Only he should matter. He is alive and breathing in my arms. This—this is a triumph.

And I know that in order to live—to really live—I must work to carry this feeling for the rest of my life.

Two Weeks Later

Home

There are two things that I’m afraid of. I don’t mean the blanket of anxiety I carry from everyone in the world wanting to kill me. I mean real fear, the kind that knots my stomach and keeps me awake for countless hours at night. The first is the thought of someone hurting Casey or Valerie. We are all over the television stations, the public radio, the Internet. Especially the Internet. Comments under articles are filled with nothing but torture suggestions and death threats for us. Conspiracy theories also, but those are usually correct. That we conspired together to break the Compass Room, and by doing so, killed an innocent girl.

The other thing that scares the shit out of me is the idea of seeing Liam.

I’ve bought a phone contract with a brand-new number, but somehow Liam ends up with it. Maybe it was Mom who gave the number to him. Maybe she thought she was being helpful.

When I hear his voice over the phone for the first time, it is even. Alien. And yet my breath still catches in my throat, tightening into a painful lump that refuses to let me speak.

“Ev? You there?”

This isn’t like when I heard his voice in prison. I had forced myself to be numb to everything, believing that he wasn’t even real. But those walls I built then are breaking.

“I’m here.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. I sit at the kitchen island at Mom’s house, clutching the edge of the smooth marble so tightly that my knuckles are white.

“I need to see you,” he tells me.

I don’t know where it would be appropriate to meet Liam. Any place except for Mom’s house is too public, and home can’t be tainted by anything that will make me feel vulnerable. But I don’t have another choice.

I decide to wait out in the backyard for him. Barefoot, I push myself back and forth on the swing. I remember when Liam and I were still in high school, we used to make out right beneath these swings, his body over mine as the chains creaked above our heads.

The wood gate opens.

He finds me right away, like he knew I’d be here, on this swing.

I stand.

He’s terrified, but somehow in awe too. I walk over slowly, and when I make to hug him, the old Liam comes back. He holds me to his chest, his lips finding my forehead.

“Oh my God, Evalyn. I missed you so much.”

His hands slide to my jaw and tilt me up.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“The news is saying that you and the two other survivors are building a case against the Compass Room because it malfunctioned.”

“And you believe us?” When he nods, I say, “The rest of the universe thinks we conspired to escape.”

His lips are dangerously close to mine. I know he wants to kiss me. I spent five years learning the language of his eyes.

“I regret ever doubting you. I know you, Evalyn. I know you better than anyone alive. I made the mistake of listening to the opinions of people who have no idea who you are. I could have fought harder for you during your trial. I should have.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t screw up. But I won’t do it again, not this time. I’m standing by your side until this is all over. I promise you.” He leans in to kiss me.

“Wait,” I gasp, stepping back.

He frowns in confusion.

I can’t be with someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to see a person—no matter how guilty they are—get shredded before his eyes. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to have so much blood on his hands that he will never be able to wipe away.

And he may say now that leaving me was a mistake, but he still did it. The months ahead will be harder than those that have passed. I don’t think he’s prepared to love me unconditionally like he wants to.

There’s no way of explaining this, let alone explaining that I’ve developed feelings for a murderer whom I’ve known for all of a month.

So I say, “I need a lot of time to find the girl I used to be. I need to start over.”

He nods. There is nothing in that statement he can argue.

I’m not lying to him.

But I’m not telling the truth either.

Two Months Later

Washington, DC

When Casey has healed enough to leave home, we’re allowed our debrief.

In a DC conference room, Valerie, Casey, and I sit at one end of the lengthy polished table. At the other end stands Gemma Branam—creator of the Compass Room herself.

She isn’t what I’m expecting. She must be in her sixties, with gray hair to her shoulders and a kind, heart-shaped face.

Two of her underlings sit on either side of her. They all wear business suits.

In the center of the table, hovering feet above the polished oak, is one of the spheres from the Compass Room, called a Bot. Bots are the things that made illusions tangible. They also killed most of us. The Bots hid in many places—underground, in tree canopies, within boulder crevices. The closest Bot to a candidate was activated when that candidate saw his or her trigger object, sparking memories of the crime. The brain activity would determine what kind of illusion a Bot would create.

“Evalyn, please hold out your arm, wrist up,” Gemma says. “I promise it won’t hurt.”

As much as I want to defy her, I’m too curious. When I hold out my arm the Bot floats downward, flashing a red light onto my skin. I feel the trickle of warm liquid.

“Blood,” says Gemma.

Hair tickles my skin, followed by a soft weight. I think of cradling Meghan back in the cave.

“The Bots can project a thousand different senses, and kill in a thousand different ways. Sometimes a simple laser beam does the trick, other times, we need to use more radioactivity to make someone explode.”

She says it so lightly. My stomach twists.

Many kinds of Bots were used in the CR. The mechanical vines and nooses were considered Bots, as well as the tentacle that dragged me beneath the surface of the lake. “Bots also helped us on more complicated illusions when we needed to move you. Couldn’t let you get comfortable for too long.”

Out of nowhere, a wave of water splashes across the table. All three of us jump in our seats, startled.

They flooded the basin. They flooded it to get us out of the cottage, but the water wasn’t even real. Casey and I exchange glances. He’s pale.

“How?” I say. “I still can’t believe that some experiences weren’t real. My pants were wet for hours after the basin was flooded.”

Casey’s father’s blood was caked onto my hands, but I don’t say that out loud.

“Your Bot often communicated with the chip in your brain to make you believe that you saw and felt things that weren’t really there.”

The idea of this communication makes me feel all too powerless, even now. Valerie sneers. I think she feels the same.

“If illusions that tested us were triggered by objects, what about illusions that forced us to move around? What were they triggered by?”

Gemma smirks, and I wish there were a way for me to wipe it off of her face. “Don’t think that you were alone the entire time. We were watching you, and specific illusions were my engineers attempting to either physically direct you somewhere or stimulate you emotionally for a more accurate chip reading.”

“You were watching us?” Valerie hisses. “When the Compass Room began to malfunction, you did nothing to stop it!”

“Oh, Miss Crane, don’t pretend that you know how this technology works,” Gemma chastises. “The CR system is far more complicated than you will ever, in your wildest dreams, be able to comprehend. The three of you jeopardized your lives and killed a fourth because of your refusal to listen to directions and your pathetic, destructive plan to escape.”

“Three people died because of your malfunction!” Valerie stands, her eyes lit in fury. I kick her beneath the table. The truth is, we aren’t supposed to give away that we thought Gordon’s and Tanner’s deaths were the fault of Compass Room engineers. Our lawyers don’t have enough damning evidence yet, and they don’t want Gemma to have a heads-up that they were planning on looking into those deaths.

My lawyer had found a patent involving dissolving metal that could be manipulated by nanotechnology. The description of its capabilities fit what we saw in the Compass Room perfectly. But we are still waiting for the paper trail to reveal itself, letting us know that this in fact is the technology used in the Compass Room.

If that is the case, than the warning alarm in the midst of the turquoise sky was because that technology had begun to fail when Gordon was able to cut me with a knife a few hours prior, and the engineers were trying to fix it before a candidate attempted to murder someone on top of the other malfunctions. At the very least, our lawyers can argue that we should have been removed from the Compass Room at that moment instead of after everyone had already been slaughtered by mistakes.

But Gemma isn’t fazed by Valerie’s assumption. In fact, she adds more fuel to our fire by admitting Valerie is right. “But two of those deaths were already deemed necessary, and the malfunction didn’t affect the outcome of Tanner’s or Gordon’s survival. Miss Glaser, on the other hand”—she points her finger at Valerie—“was entirely your fault.”

“How dare you.”

A thought comes to me. “Four deaths.”

Gemma raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You act like the malfunction began when Casey and I made the Bot glitch.” I shake my head. “But you’re wrong. And you know you’re wrong too, if what you said is true. That engineers were watching us.”

Gemma frowns and shakes her head. “Miss Ibarra, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

So this is how the game is going to be played.

“Stella wasn’t supposed to die. I don’t think Blaise was supposed to either, but since I wasn’t with him, I can’t be sure. But I was with Stella. I saw the green light flash. The Bot burned her alive without a correlating illusion. The only thing she did was beg her boyfriend to believe her. I saw it happen.”

Gemma blinks and her lips twist into a conventional smile. “I’m afraid you are mistaken. Stella was supposed to die. It’s within our records.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, Evalyn. You are simply not willing to see the truth.” Her voice is soft and musical, making me hate her even more.

“How will you prove it?” It’s the first time Casey has spoken. He’s much calmer than either Valerie or me, but I blame that on the meds. He’s still in a lot of pain from his surgeries. “How will you prove that what you’re saying is true?”

Gemma forces another grin. She clasps her hands in front of her. “Well, because of this horrible debacle caused by the three of you, the Compass Room will be, for the first time, brought into the courtroom and dissected.”

“As it should be,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Then you will see everything, Miss Ibarra. Everything you thought to believe true and everything that actually holds truth. Everyone in that courtroom will see the data containing the dangerous spike your levels made when you killed Gordon in cold blood. They’ll see that it wasn’t just an act of self-defense.” Her shoulders relax. “And then you’ll be sentenced to death.”

Casey finds my hand and squeezes it hard. I think it’s to give me courage, but I no longer need it. Rage feeds by body, my soul. There is no more room for fear.

“And mark my words, I will drag you straight to hell with me.”

Valerie’s dangerous voice follows mine. “Count me in for that party.”

One Month Later

Washington, DC

Inside the limo, Valerie and I sit on either side of Casey.

We slow in front of the courtroom. I can hear the relentless crowd already.

Our elaborate argument is constructed upon our experiences. Three deviants. We will fight using the knowledge that the Compass Room was malfunctioning from the start, and that some deaths were the fault of a terrible, broken system.

If our plan works, then we may be able to stop the use of Compass Rooms for good.

I want to bring justice to Stella and Jace, but this fight runs deeper than the two of them. I’ve had months to think about every single inmate executed in my Compass Room. Each time my mind wandered back to the mechanics, I was left convinced that no one deserves to die by the hand of it.

Not even Gordon.

A human mind isn’t simple enough to be damned by a machine. And I will prove it. Somehow.

This trial won’t be like my last. I won’t go down without a fight.

Valerie’s the first to slide out when the car stops. She’s dressed in slacks and a jacketed blouse, unbuttoned so the bright color of her chest piece peeks through. With her aviators on, she looks a bit relentless.

Casey wears a suit that fits him perfectly. His sage tie brings out the green in his eyes. He’s gracious about taking the help Valerie offers him when getting out of the car. It’s going to take some time for him to get used to his permanently injured body.

I wear a gray blouse, a black pencil skirt, and pumps. My hair is tied in a loose knot and my big sunglasses hide any expression.

The three of us somehow fit together perfectly. When I stand upright on the sidewalk, I link my arm through Casey’s.

You’d think that after months of downtime, the protestors would have dwindled. But there must be at least two hundred people behind the gate in front of the courthouse. The scene is almost exactly like the one I witnessed leaving the train station four months ago. Neon signs wave back and forth through the air.

rebuke the cr

survivors are still criminals

1 peter 4:17

Photos of my victims are plastered on poster boards. People still want me to pay. But I was expecting this.

“Are you ready to start over?” Valerie asks, and we walk up the steps of the courthouse. Screams of haters and believers are a wall of noise as we move together, interlinked. Some of them want political justice. Some want a revolution. Others want the world to believe that God will rightly judge us when we die.

I don’t know what all of them think when they see us holding each other. But I know how strong it makes me feel.

Out of the chaos, I decipher one particular shout. “Daphne!” someone screams.

Somehow, with all of the police, the one person who breached the gate is a little girl. She must be Todd’s age, wearing a purple sundress and running to me with a daisy in her hand. Her mother screams her name as the police fail to notice her.

“Daphne! Get back here!”

I squat when she reaches me. She smiles, bites her lip, and hands me the daisy. Its roots are still dangling and dirt-covered—she must have picked it from a federal garden. She runs away, back to her mother, who seems relieved that I didn’t murder her daughter. She holds a Bible verse sign in her hands. I don’t know which verse it is, so I’m not sure if she has compassion for me or thinks that I should burn in the fiery depths of hell.

I stand, twirling the vibrant pink daisy between my fingers before snapping off the bottom of the stem. Casey and Valerie surround me.

“Put this in my hair,” I tell Valerie.

“Here? Now?”

I nod. She purses her lips but doesn’t question me, taking the flower. I turn around and stare at the crowd as her fingers work through my bun.

The front row witnessed the entire exchange between me and the girl. They’re evaluating what I’ve done with the flower. Over a year of the world evaluating every one of my actions. Two weeks where not even my brainwaves were safe from scrutiny. My time on the stage has only begun. There’s no going back. There’s no starting over.

There’s only continuing.

Valerie finishes.

“Looks beautiful,” Casey says.

I take his arm, and we climb to the doors of the courthouse.