— — -
I chocked back a miserable groan at that, sitting up straighter and grasping at the armrests so tightly my fingers ached. I wouldn't would I?
I shook my head to clear away that thought. Focus. Whatever I was going to do, I needed this story straight.
— —
Taylor followed the girl into a fast food place and I went around to the other side of the building to slip in through a second door. This might not have been who I was looking for, but I still might learn more about Taylor's tastes and how to make her happy. It had been hard to work up the nerve to even do this, so I didn't want it to be a total waste!
That was either the best or worst decision of my life.
Sitting in the back of the lobby, crouched down into a booth as stealthily as I was able, I watched them place orders and head to... opposite sides of the room? I frowned at that. I was sure Taylor was about to make a move on the girl, but she just settled into a booth far away and stared at her, sipping at a milkshake. I glanced back and forth between them, the girl eating some fries while bobbing her head along to music from some headphones and Taylor staring a hole into the back of her head. It was a strange scene and I didn't put it together until Taylor smiled, that wide, face-splitting, wonderful smile, and the girl turned around to look at Taylor. She grinned herself, picked up her food and hurried over to join Taylor, nearly throwing herself into the seat and loudly introducing herself as Aisha.
Within a few minutes they were laughing, tangled up in half a hug while they ate, and I was pretty sure some hands were under clothes. They were being subtle, but I was staring intently.
That had been fast. Taylor was appealing, I well knew. Not... pretty pretty but attractive enough, and beyond appearance, Taylor just had a sort of presence. A warmth and strength that Taylor radiated which were easy to miss but impossible to ignore once it did have your attention. I was confident Taylor could have any girl she wanted if she worked at it.
But that had been fast. Too fast. Strangers didn't go from hello to tousled groping and giggles in a few minutes. Even the hello itself had been strange. Taylor had caught Aisha's eye and she had started going over to talk to Taylor. No wave, no invitation, no eyelash fluttering. Taylor just made eye contact and the smiled triumphantly as the girl came over.
Wait no, thats not what happened. It struck me in that moment. Taylor smiled first. That grin had appeared while Taylor was still staring at the back of the girls head. Taylor's smiles were rare things. They didn't come easy or often and I had worked to have enjoyed as many as I had. Yet right in front of my eyes, Taylor had just smiled out of the blue before anything had happened. Right after that a girl Taylor had been after turned and threw herself at Taylor without so much as a backward glace. It was... was... It was unnatural.
The word was like a bolt of lightning in my head. That was unnatural, but wasn't that just how my relationship with Taylor had started? I caught her staring at me in class that day as I was suddenly twisting in my chair and pulling at my clothes to present myself to her like it was the most natural thing in the world, feeling a pleased warmth flow through me as her eyes roamed and liked what they saw. It still felt natural, in my memory. Only seeing how strange it looked from the outside let me realize that it probably shouldn't. Even then, though, even with it staring me in the face like that, I might have still have waved it off with some excuse, but Taylor had smiled first. Taylor had known what was coming before it happened.
Master.
— —
That was the last thing I remembered clearly. The thought, the realization, broke me and there was nothing but a blurry sense of running away in between bolting from the restaurant and being in front of my computer not-really-looking at the PRT page for what to do if you think you've been effected by a master. The only thing it really said was that you call them and report it right away.
And I should, I thought. Masters that can bend people like this are dangerous and terrifying. I was a bit of a cape geek, but even if I hadn't been, Heartbreaker is one of the names that everyone knows. One of the real monsters. If I was in thrall to someone like that then getting help right now may well be the only hope I had. I still couldn't will my hand to grasp my cell phone and start dialing. When I tried a flood of tangled emotions and memories washed through me.
Gentle praises whenever I did something for her and her easy forgiveness whenever it didn't quite work out.
Being wrapped up in warm tender arms as Taylor hugged away the stress of dealing with Mother
Sharing lunches I had worked to make with my own two hands every day, lunches that got better ever day as I learned Taylor's likes.
Seeing Taylor faintly blushing and smiling hungrily at me for stating the simple truth that the clothes I had bought to wear for her were for her
Listening to a rushed, awkward, and incredibly passionate declaration that Taylor does take this is a serious relationship
Sharing a jacket that pressed me so tight against Taylor's bare chest that It felt like I was sinking into her while she whispered into my ear that I was hers
Waking up in a tangle of limbs to the sight of a softly smiling face framed by beautiful black curls and knowing I was exactly where I belonged.
I was left with a warm glow in my chest, an electric tingle between my legs, and an awful twisting in my gut at the chance those feelings weren't even real. It was like being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. I let out a miserable groan, collapsing forward to rest my head against the cool wood of the table as tears blurred my vision. Turning Taylor in? Never seeing her again? Knowing she was in prison because of me? Or even in the birdcage because of me?
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run to Taylor and beg her to tell me if it was all a misunderstanding. I wanted to believe it was all a misunderstanding.
…Couldn't it all be a misunderstanding?
I sat up, running my arm across my bloodshot eyes to wipe away the tears and forcing myself to take deep slow breaths to stop more from coming. I was lying to myself, I knew even as I did it, but I could check at least.
I pushed myself up to trembling feet and turned away from the computer and phone, and stumbled to my bed. I been keep a diary for years now, and I whispered grabbed the most recent one from the drawer in my nightstand and knelt to slide the box with the old ones from beneath the bed. I pulled them out one by one and arranged them by year on top of the comforter before letting myself fall forward onto the bed to lie amongst them, the most recent still in my shaking hands.
I was going to study myself, study my past, as if it were a stranger's. If Taylor really was a cape and I really had been turned into someone I wasn't, then I should see that, right? First, I was going to skim through older diaries, looking for the entries about the other crushes and relationships I had had. I would compare them to what I had written about my relationship with Taylor. If they way I wrote about her fit in, that would be a sign. I shivered at an icy dread crawling up my sine. If there was a big change in what I felt and admired, that would be a sign too.
After that, I was going to read everything I had ever written about Taylor, even from before our relationship, looking for some hint before that first day that she was special to me. Some longing I had somehow, impossibly, forgotten that might explain why I had been so quick to bare myself to her. It would take hours, probably until well after midnight. I would have to read nearly every entry since high school had started to be sure I didn't miss anything, but it didn't matter in the end. I needed to know. Missing a bit of sleep just didn't compare.
— — -
Hours later I was in the chair at my desk again, head in my hands, crying freely. I wasn't choking them back anymore, or trying to do anything else. Just letting them flow until my hands and face were soaked until tears were dripping onto all the papers on my desk, until my head pounded an my eyes ached. I didn't care. What else was there left to do?
— —
My diary entries about dating Taylor had looked a lot like something the person who wrote all the other entries might write. They went a lot further than what I had written about anyone else, but then I had gotten into a much more serious relationship with Taylor than with anyone else. There were stories of things we did together that I wanted to remember, notes about things she liked and how she liked me to act, fantasies about what our lives together might be like in 20 years, fantasies about things we could hopefully do sooner than that, little doodles of her or us, a few times where I had idly tried signing my name as Madison Hebert. The same mix of sweet, practical, and just a little bit embarrassingly childish that I saw in older crushes and relationships, only more so. It would have been an incredible relief if it hadn't been for one sole difference between Taylor and everyone else.
They were all boys. Everyone I had ever had a crush on, everyone I had ever considered dating, everyone I had ever gone on a date with. What was supposed to have been a skim had turned into two hours of searching once I really noticed it, and had started searching desperately for a counter example. An example I knew I wasn't going to find. The girl who had written these diaries was apparently completely straight with a singular glaring exception. In my mind, it was a horrible confirmation.
That's when things got bad.
Reading about the start of high school was a little bit nostalgic at first. Winslow was bit of a dump, but the first days in a new school had still been a bit exciting. Starting new subjects, meeting Emma and Sophia for the first time, enjoying the teachers treating us just a little bit more like adults. Reading my excited accounts from back then brought a strained little smile to my face despite how worried I was for the present. Right up until Taylor started showed up in the entries for the first time.
It was like getting punched, again and again and again. I had known, when I started reading, that this was going to be in here, but I hadn't known. I hadn't thought about it, hadn't wanted to think about it, beyond the most cursory footnote. I bullied Taylor, I stopped, we got together, and I was really really sorry for it. Those words didn't cover it. Didn't even begin to, really. Hadn't been meant to. They were a way to bury what I was now being forced to see as I read every line.
The thought of the relentless petty meanness which unfolded itself page after page after page happening to anyone twisted me up inside. The thought of it happening to Taylor, sweet, kind, clever, considerate, shy, awkward, lovely, wonderful Taylor, the girl who had held me tight and called me hers and led me into her bed? The though of it happening to her at my hands? It didn't matter what I suspected her of now, I doubt there's anything that could matter enough to measure up to what I felt at that.
I abruptly stopped feeling vaguely like I wanted to throw up and started running for the bathroom with my hand clasped over my mouth. Out of my room, down the hall, left turn, then a right, and I was emptying my stomach into the sink as quietly as I could, praying that no one would wake up. I couldn't bear to be seen, couldn't possibly explain. It seemed to take forever to finally stop, to finally leave me clenching my jaw tight to hold back coughs that would surely give me away. I listened then, for the tell tale sound of a door creaking open, or footsteps, but no one came.
I turned on the sink just long enough to wash what was left down the drain and groped about blindly until my hand closed on one of the wash cloths hanging over the sink. I didn't dare look up to find it and risk seeing myself in the mirror. Instead, I just tugged it down, wiped the snot and bile off my face, tossed it into the dirty bin, and trudged back to my room to collapse into my desk chair without ever looking up.
There was something really wrong with Emma. My diaries had made that clear. What I have been able to shrug off with “again, today? Well, alright” each day looked much much more like a crazed obsession when looked at all together and all at once.
What was equally clear was that I was far far worse. I don't know what Emma's issue was, but she clearly had it. Something drove her to do what she did and she got something out of it. Me? I hadn't ever cared. Bullying Taylor was something my friends did, so I did it. My price for being in the clique, like it was some kind of fucked up chore I needed to do. A year and more of my life story written out day by day and nearly every entry had some footnote about being mean on purpose, and it was always just that. A footnote. Never scrawled with malicious good humor, never scratched into the paper with the shame it damn well deserved, never even the focus of entry at all. Just something dutifully written down because doing it had filled some of my time that day.
Emma led us on a bullying campaign more than a year long because she was nuts. I had done just as much damage as her because I was bored.
I laid my head down in my hands and wept.
— —
Sitting curled up in my chair, staring sightlessly at the phone sitting on the table with eyes that had been cried dry, shivering in the chill caused by being soaked, I knew I had a call to make. Taylor was a Master. There was evidence and there was, I shuddered, more than enough motive for anyone to come seeking revenge. Why did that phone call still feel like some impossibly awful thing?
I had bullied Taylor.
She had gotten powers.
She had come back to school and proceeded to use those powers on me.
She had used them... had used them to... to...
...to date me? And then she had... helped me get my grades up? Accepted every apology I offered, indulged my wants, let me indulge hers, worked to make sure our first time together was as good as possible despite the awkwardness, comforted my insecurities, won over Dad, went out of her way to avoid making waves with Mother, been nice to my brother, spent time with me nearly every day, and just generally been the best damn girlfriend anyone could ever ask for?
