Edema Rue

“I did it because it scared me. That’s not what you expected, is it? Are you…right. You don’t talk. I talk. I tell my story, or whatever. I’m supposed to find closure so that I can’t come back after you kill me. Don’t look at me like that—of course I know. I’m not stupid. Just brave.

“They always say there’s a fine line, but I think that means they don’t understand. I make choices that get me hurt, and now they’ll get me killed. I know a whole lot of people who would call that stupid. But I’ve got a friend or two who get it. Because here’s the thing. I say, if you never do anything that scares you, you’re a whole lot dumber than I’ve ever been. Because that’s how you get brave. When I was younger, I had this obsession with cliff jumping. There were lots of lakes around my old place, deep and cold and clear. I’d climb the biggest rock I dared and jump.

“But cliff jumping wasn’t nearly as fun alone. So I’d beg and beg my friends to come. I learned pretty quick how to tell which ones were brave and which ones weren’t. A lot of people said, ‘I can’t’. Do you hear that? Are you brave, Executioner? Nevermind. This isn’t about you. People told me they couldn’t. One time I got so fed up with it I said, ‘well, gee, I didn’t know you had a condition. I’ll let you be, now.’

“The girl, her name was Ashlyn, blinked, all confused. ‘I don’t have a condition,’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

“I got really dramatic then, dropped my jaw and everything. ‘You don’t? Well then why can’t you come?’

“That made her mad. ‘I’m scared, okay? I’m not brave like you.’

“I don’t know if I talked to Ashlyn again after that. Because she didn’t get it. Being brave isn’t about not being scared. It’s about doing things that scare you until they don’t. It’s more about discipline than anything else. When I started cliff jumping, I wasn’t going high at all. Ten feet, maybe twenty. Then I looked at a higher cliff and thought, sure, I can do that. Then a higher one. The friends who came with me, they were scared too. Some of them never jumped from higher than thirty feet. But they were brave, because they looked down, and they were scared, and they jumped anyway.

“It wasn’t like it didn’t scare me. That’s probably most of the reason I did it. There’s a moment when you’re in the air. There is no ground beneath your feet, only the view, and the knowledge that you’re about to fall. Time pauses. You wonder if you’re going to live or to die. You know it’ll hurt, know how easily death will take you if you land at the wrong angle, and then you hit, and as soon as you can breathe you’re laughing, laughing because it tried to kill you and failed, laughing because the fear is gone and the water is cold and you have to do it again.

“They called us adrenaline junkies. Me and Greyson, mostly, because he was the one who got it more than anyone else. Maybe that’s what we were. For a couple of years, we lived for the rush. We chased it. We jumped off cliffs and threw Molotovs in abandoned buildings, waiting until the sirens were deafening before we ran. We raced cars on the freeway at a hundred miles an hour and disappeared for days without telling anyone we’d left. I loved him like I’ve never loved another person. My family hated it. Grey didn’t have anyone to notice.

“We all knew it would go too far someday. We’d get arrested, or we’d die, or only one of us would die and the other would wither. It got to him sometimes. Looking back, I guess I should’ve been compassionate. But I wasn’t a soft person then, and I’m not a soft person now. I’d tease him. ‘Why so blue, Grey?’ I’d laugh, and he’d kiss me, and my pretty little world fell back into place. 

“‘Why so blue, Grey?’

“That was about the time your people found us. They offered a job that sounded like play, and we needed the money. So we went on your missions, brought you prisoners and patients until we couldn’t tell the difference. And then there was the boy. Poet said to take care, that he was important, that his safety would change the worlds. Grey was on a roof, making sure no one surprised me, and I went in to find him. I was so scared of getting it wrong. I couldn’t mess this up. Then I realized what I was thinking. I was afraid, and my fear had become a map rather than a mountain. 

“‘I killed the boy. He tried to kill me first, and that would have been my excuse, but he was so weak, and your people knew I was better than that. And now I’m here. I killed him because I was scared to do it. I hope that’s enough closure, because I’m pretty darn scared of death, and it’s about time I experienced it. If you see Grey, tell him…no. Don’t tell him anything. He’s brave, and he’ll understand.”

im not a witch I promise