CXXIX
With the excuse of being tired, Eleven locks herself in her room for the rest of the day. In her diary, she writes just one line before she goes to sleep:
I've been told something about Henry—what do I do?
It would have been ideal if, upon waking up, the problem had vanished. That Angela would have decided to move to another school because of her father's transfer, as the official version claims, rather than whatever the truth was.
The truth whose claws grip her chest, reluctant to let her breathe in peace.
But it isn't like that.
So, taking advantage of the fact that it's Saturday, she takes a long hot shower before getting dressed and going downstairs for breakfast.
The fact that Henry has gone out for a run—his morning habit—is a temporary respite.
She sits on the grass in the courtyard and watches the sky for a long time. Her hands pluck absent-mindedly at the grass.
She doesn't know how much time has passed when she hears muffled footsteps behind her.
"I thought you were still asleep," Henry comments as he plops down beside her. The smell of his shampoo (a floral scent that is almost as pleasant as his natural scent) floods her nostrils. "What are you doing here so early?"
What a good question, really.
"I was… thinking."
"About what?" he asks, resting his forearms on his knees; Eleven is aware that he's looking at her. "If I may ask."
She takes a deep breath. "About… you."
"About me?"
She clenches her jaw and turns to look at him. There is no suspicion in his gaze, only curiosity.
Like this, with his blond hair still wet and his blue eyes reflecting the clarity of the morning, he is, surely, what the great artists of the past evoked when they imagined what an angel would look like.
"Yes, about you," she repeats. "About you, and about whatever it is you've done to Angela."
Objectively speaking, Henry knew from the very beginning that there was a very real possibility that Eleven was going to find out about his actions.
That doesn't take away from the fact that I hate that she did it.
"I didn't kill her, if that's what you mean," he replies frankly.
Eleven closes her eyes tightly and frowns. "Henry, what did you do?"
If his instincts were to guide him, they are crying out for information. Yes, that's what he needs: information about how Eleven discovered this and how much she knows about it so he can play his cards right.
However, he doesn't want to take any chances: he doesn't want to concoct a lie that will end up making everything worse.
So he prefaces his words with the following: "I did it for you."
He waits for her to regain enough strength to look at him.
And he tells her everything.
Eleven listens quietly to his story: about how Angela showed interest in him, about how she asked him out.
"So… You were dating?"
The look of disgust that mars Henry's face would be laughable if she weren't listening to his account of how he manipulated and terrorized a young girl her age. Angela, yes, a horrible person, of course, but still…
"Do you believe me capable of doing something like that to you?" Henry asks. "Really, Eleven? Not to mention that she's a child, not to mention my non-existent interest in sentimentality… Do you really think I'd betray you like that?"
No. Of course not. She knew that already, didn't she? That Henry wouldn't betray her. But…
"Nothing happened between you, then," she says, and how she wishes it sounded like an affirmation rather than a question.
Henry purses his lips. "She kissed me," he admits, and that's not so bad (barely a twinge in her chest, something manageable), until she hears the following: "I was going to kill her that night, but I concluded you wouldn't want that.
Eleven feels that the world has been knocked off its axis, that the fundamental truths of reality have been irrevocably altered.
"You were going… to kill her?"
"She was behaving like something similar to a fly buzzing around a spider," he explains, as if that clarified everything. "She handed me the perfect opportunity. But I chose not to… for you."
Eleven shakes her head. "No, don't say… it was for me."
"And yet it was," Henry retorts without a hint of mercy in his voice. "You know how I—"
"How you deal with rabid dogs, I know!" she mumbles, her fists clenched.
Henry looks more cautious. "I'd hate for this to become an issue between us," he murmurs circumspectly. "Will it?"
Eleven brings her hands to her head and sinks them into her auburn tresses. "Henry… Are you listening… to yourself? You said you were going to kill her, but you didn't because you thought of me? Not to mention you've always warned me about the dangers of exposing ourselves…"
"There are cases and cases," he replies, shrugging his shoulders. "I would have understood if you had taken the law into your own hands."
"Angela made me feel very bad," she agrees. "But my life was never in danger. She didn't deserve—"
Henry lets out a frustrated huff. "From my point of view, I've been more than rational: I've found a solution to a problem that ailed you, and I haven't spilled blood in the process… Eleven. Eleven, sit down."
But I am seated, is what she wishes to tell him: however, he is right—she has stood up and is looking at him from above while he has one hand resting on the grass, ready to get up and follow her.
Because she knows he won't let her go, not when he knows she's so… upset.
"I thought… I thought you were on my side." Every word costs her, but she must let them go, get them off her back, send them away, where they can't burden her anymore, where they can't poison her anymore.
Henry stands with the grace of a predator who has caught the scent of its prey: cautiously, so as not to frighten it away.
Quickly, so as not to let it escape.
"I must confess I am failing to understand what you mean: I'm not on your side? After having done this for you? After having avoided an outcome you would have detested?"
"STOP SAYING YOU DID IT FOR ME!"
Silence is knotted around both their necks like a noose.
Like silence before an execution, possibly.
And then, the storm.
"How dare you—?" he starts to say.
However, she covers her face with one hand while raising the other as a useless shield against him. Henry respects it and stops, although she can sense the rage boiling a few feet away.
"I… I get you're right," she forces herself to say. "I get it."
"Then you must understand—"
"But," she interrupts him, "why didn't you tell me?
Henry's voice doesn't falter as he answers with contempt: "Because you would have defended her. Despite everything, you would have defended her. You would have looked for some excuse, you would have begged me to forgive her…
"And yet the terms of my forgiveness are non-negotiable when the offense committed involves you."
Eleven swallows in a big breath and then exhales it loudly. "Yes. That's true." Henry, this time, remains silent, no doubt noting her fragile state of mind. "You're right about that too, of course.
"But I gotta ask… Is there something else, Henry?
When he doesn't answer, she pulls her hand away from her face and lowers the outstretched hand between them, daring at last to look up at him, mustering the strength to ignore the burning between her temples and swallow her tears.
"Something else?" he repeats, knitting his eyebrows together.
She nods and clears her throat before adding: "Something else you're keeping from me. Because I don't think… I don't think I can deal with another secret."
Henry lets out a snort. "Another secret, Eleven? Are you serious?"
She frowns. "What? It's how I feel, I can't help it—"
"I find these very haughty words coming from someone who's keeping things from me even now."
Eleven feels her heart drop to her feet at that. Does he know? Has he read her mind? No, he has promised her and, besides, she would have noticed… Yes, because even now she believes in him, he wouldn't have… But maybe it's obvious?
Maybe her feelings have been too obvious?
She doesn't know what he could say to fix this. However, she knows the worst thing she can do is keep quiet. "Henry, I… Ouch!"
Like a shackle, one of Henry's hands closes around her wrist.
"But it's okay, Eleven," he hisses. "No more secrets between the two of us, right?
She says nothing: although she feels her wrist being crushed between his fingers, she doesn't utter a whimper.
She says nothing as he pulls her toward the house, toward the stairs, toward the attic.
When Henry releases her to go to the curtain that has been hanging on one of the walls for some time now, she only massages the reddened area in silence.
"No more secrets," Henry repeats with a maniacal smile, a smile that is and is not him.
Eleven is not a believer. She has not been indoctrinated in any faith—busy as she was as a child praying to a flesh-and-blood god who did nothing but toy with her and her siblings—and she does not believe her heart has the strength to believe in anything but the pain and happiness she has experienced throughout her fifteen years.
No, bothering to think about such abstract beings as God and the devil is not for her, focused as she has always been on achieving a semblance of normalcy stable enough to live happily.
And yet, even she cannot remain unmoved by the landscape that spreads out before her like a Dantesque painting.
This… must be hell.