Читать книгу The Happiness Machine - Katie Williams - Страница 15

I can now conclude with reasonable certainty that Saffron Jones committed the perfect crime. She built a machine of revenge and set it to run, concocting a series of unsavory tasks, eliciting the help of Josiah Halu to carry them out, giving herself an amnesiac dose of zom. She did this to assuage the guilt she felt over bullying Astrid Lowenstein during the Scapegoat Game. Because of the effects of the drug and the promise of secrecy she exacted from Josiah, Saff doesn’t remember that she was not just victim but also culprit. Cruelest are the punishments we visit upon ourselves.

I MEET UP WITH SAFF, ready to tell her that I’ve done it. I’ve solved her mystery. Even if I don’t know how I’m going to tell her the truth, even if I don’t know how she’ll react when I do. We drive to Golden Gate Park again, to that same road behind the flower conservatory where we met to figure things out right at the beginning. Six days and a thousand years ago. The whole way there, I’m thinking about how I should say it, what the best words would be. I’m thinking that if she cries I’ll go ahead and pat her arm. Or hug her? But before I can say anything, Saff cuts the engine, looks at me level, and says, “You know, don’t you?”

“It was you,” I say, all my careful words gone from my head. “You did it to yourself.”

I see her take the news. I see it change the smallest things about her face. She doesn’t cry, even though her eyes are big like she might. She breathes in shakily through her nose, then out again.

“Okay,” she finally says in a small voice. “Okay. I remember now. I mean, I remember enough.”

“Do you want me to tell you the rest?”

“Don’t.”

She turns and looks out through the windshield. I watch her profile for a second, but I hate people staring at me, so I turn and look where she’s looking, which is up. I remember how you can see the spires of the conservatory through the treetops. I search for them there among the green.

We’re quiet for a minute, just looking. Then Saff says, “I thought maybe it was the Apricity that told you to stop eating.”

“What?” I say. “No.”

So many people have asked me why I refused to eat, my parents, my doctors, my therapists, my nurses, Josiah, and that’s just naming the headliners. But Saff doesn’t ask me why. I mean, she does, but she asks it in a way that I can understand.

“Motive?” she says.

I glance over at her, and she’s looking straight back at me.

“Come on: motive?” she repeats.

And I do something all the Apricities in the world could never have predicted. I go ahead and answer her.

“It felt strong. Denying myself something I needed to feel strong. Not giving in when I was hungry felt strong.”

“Okay.” She nods. “Yeah, okay. I get that.”

But somehow I’m still explaining. Because suddenly there’s more. “I think it’s that I wanted to be what’s essential. I wanted to be, like, pure.”

“Shit, Rhett.” She smiles, her eyes big and bright and sad. “Me too.”

And I want to tell her that her smile is what’s essential, that her smile is what’s pure. But I could never say something like that out loud.

So I do what I can. I lick my thumb, reach for her face, and rub the eyebrow pencil away. There are little hairs in an arc, just starting to grow back. Then I do something more. I lean over and kiss her, there above her eye, where her eyebrow used to be.

Means: I am brave.

Motive: I want to kiss her.

Opportunity: She bends her head forward to meet my lips.