Chapter 12 (of 12) : The End of the Line
"Do you love me?"
It's an easy question to answer. Say yes or work out what to say to your friends when they ask why your girlfriend dumped you and why all her friends hate you now. It's not complicated, and it's even less so if you actually do love her. It's a big deal when you both say it for the first time, but Emma and I got over that hurdle really quickly, even if I tripped on my first at it.
Maybe we got over it too quickly. We talk about everything now -- well, almost everything -- but we never really talk about how this all happened, about how we got into this impossible relationship with each other that's made this summer so incredible. We fell into it and we haven't asked how and I guess we should have, because we've just been given an answer to the question we never asked.
How did this happen? It happened because there's a hereditary psychosis in the Wilderwoods that can cause an irresistible attraction to a sibling accompanied by irreversible personality changes to make the relationship work. Or it's a curse because we're all descended from an evil wizard and his demonically possessed sister. That was the other option.
It's the kind of explanation that will makes you question your relationship, especially when it's 3AM and you're both exhausted and strung out and are standing in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the reputedly haunted valley you've avoided entering your whole life. Thinking clearly would be a really good idea right now, but it's not an idea either of us are having.
Which isn't good, especially when Emma asks me her second question.
"Would you still love me if I wasn't your sister?"
Yeah, that's not such an easy one to answer. I guess it doesn't come up nearly as often.
* * * * *
So I stand there in the rain, looking at my sister. Strands of black hair hang over her amazing green eyes and her dark makeup is starting to run with the tears she's been holding back since she walked out of the upstairs library at Wilderwood Hall. The moonlight glints on the smooth leather of her biker jacket, made glossy by the rain. Of course I love her. How could I not?
"Yes," I say.
Only as soon as the word leaves my lips I know it was the wrong thing to say.
Emma response is somewhere between a laugh and a sob but comes out as a long, strangled groan as she lowers her head and reaches up to pull at the lapels of her jacket. "That's great," she says, "that's really great, because I only love you because you're my brother."
I stare at her.
"He was right," my sister continues in the same shaking, strangled voice, forcing every word out like they're clawing at her throat, trying to stay unsaid. "He was right. I only love you because you're my brother. I only need you because you're my brother. And I do need you, Jamie, more than anything in the world. Only..." her fingers clench in the soft black leather of her jacket, "you only love me because of this. What I am not who I am."
I don't say anything.
Emma pulls her jacket off with awkward, uncoordinated movements, fighting her way out of it. She stands there with it clenched in white knuckled hands, breathing hard, tears running down her cheeks freely now.
"I can't be what you want me to be," she says. "I won't."
With a sudden shove she pushes her biker jacket into my hands and turns away violently, walking away from me across the bridge, the sound of her boots clearly audible over the background drumming of the rain. In only moments she's lost from view in the darkness.
I feel the cool, smooth leather of her jacket against my fingers, but my hands don't work and it slides out of my grip and falls at my feet. I look down at it pooled there, staring at the glossy folds and the metal studs glinting in the moonlight, and I hardly know what it is I'm looking at.
Someone once told me (it was probably Trent, repeating something he'd seen in one of Trowley's videos) that we only use 10% of our brains, and the other 90% just sits there waiting for us to evolve to a higher state of being or something. Whatever. I don't know if it's true but right now I feel like I'm running on 1%.
Why'd she do that? I think, looking down at Emma's jacket. That's her favorite jacket. She loves that jacket. It was the one she was wearing the day she came home from college. The one she had on the first night when this all began.
"I thought you liked this jacket?" she'd said.
I look at the way the rain forms little pools in the folds of the bundled up jacket, listening to the sound each drop makes as it hits the leather. Even then, that first night, Emma was defining herself by what I liked...
I reach down without really thinking about it and pick my sister's biker jacket up. It's heavier than it looks, but then again there's enough metal studs on the shoulders that it's probably bullet proof, and it is wet. The rain's only getting heavier. It's getting darker as well, as the moon disappears behind thick black clouds.
The first crash of thunder that shakes me out of this stupor. It's incredibly loud, rolling over the forest like a shockwave, and accompanied by a flash of lightning that throws sudden, startling shadows from the trees over the road.
It's weird but now that I'm thinking coherently again it's not about any of what Emma just said to me. Oh, that's there in the back of my mind, dragging up every moment of self doubt I've had every time I've asked myself what she sees in me, but all I'm thinking at the moment is that my sister -- in the most heightened emotional state I've ever seen her if not in the middle of an actual breakdown -- is walking along a bridge that spans the Wilderwood, the most unsettling place either of us have ever known. In the middle of the night. In a thunderstorm.
I start running along the bridge after Emma, calling her name even though it's drowned out by the booms of the thunder echoing between the sides of the valley below us so that the rumble in the air barely fades between one crash and the next. For one awful minute as I run images come into my head of my sister falling into the darkness below and the only reason I can't say it's the worst moment of my life is that I feel like I've had several of those tonight already.
She's there, about halfway along the bridge, standing looking out at the valley below. The trees down there are old, so very old, and twisted into strange shapes, and each flash of lightning throws them into eye achingly sharp contrast against the night sky. The trees become nightmarish shadows and their upper branches claw upward like the fingers of dead things that won't die. Emma stands there, staring out, her hands clutching the guard rail that runs along the side of the bridge.
