“Well?” I asked finally, doing the best I could to keep my voice steady. “Were you actually going to help me?”

“What do you think?” he said, his eyes a challenge.

“I think you’re scared of the AM,” I said and he didn’t blink. “I think you’re scared of Mark.”

He flinched at that and I kept going.

“And I think that there are a lot of things we don’t understand about being Atypical and that you and I are looking for some of the same answers—”

“You still think there’s a way for the AM—the AM,” he spat, “to help your dad?”

“You weren’t lying about the immunity,” I told him. “I know you weren’t. Or about them experimenting on you, so if you think that they have all the pieces to help your friend Blaze, to help my dad then—”

“I lied, Rose! There’s no Blaze, no research about kinetic suppressants,” he yelled. “I needed another way into the AM so I manipulated you—”

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t have your ability anymore, that’s real—”

“You think I need to use my ability to manipulate you?” He laughed. “You’re a sad, desperate girl who lives inside of dreams and would do anything to save her dad—you were the easiest mark in the world.”

That knocked me back. I was completely speechless, tears forming at the corners of my eyes as I watched Damien pour himself more bourbon. They were all so right. He is the selfish, manipulative asshole they all said he was.

“So there’s…” I said finally, my voice wobbling around the tears in my throat.

“Look,” Damien started gently, a complete one-eighty from twenty seconds ago, “if there really was a cure for those things, I’m sure the AM would tell you. They’d want to shout it from the rooftops.

“And I’m…” He sighed. “I’m sorry about your dad. That—it sucks—”

“Screw you, Damien,” I snapped. Without giving him another look, I turned around and wrenched his front door open, slamming it shut behind me.

So that’s it then. What a wasted month it’s been. I never should have gone back to the AM, never should have supported them, never should have trusted anyone connected to it. And now I’ve burned two whole weeks thinking that … well, it doesn’t matter now.

There’s nothing I can do to fix any of this.

February 4th, 2017

Dear Mark,