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Back The Things We Don't See Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. PART ONE: Who is She if Not Everyone Else’s?
  4. CHAPTER 1
  5. CHAPTER 2
  6. CHAPTER 3
  7. CHAPTER 4
  8. CHAPTER 5
  9. CHAPTER 6
  10. CHAPTER 7
  11. CHAPTER 8
  12. PART TWO: Take the Bullet Out
  13. CHAPTER 9
  14. CHAPTER 10
  15. CHAPTER 11
  16. CHAPTER 12
  17. CHAPTER 13
  18. CHAPTER 14
  19. CHAPTER 15
  20. CHAPTER 16
  21. CHAPTER 17
  22. CHAPTER 18
  23. CHAPTER 19
  24. CHAPTER 20
  25. CHAPTER 21
  26. CHAPTER 22
  27. CHAPTER 23
  28. CHAPTER 24
  29. CHAPTER 25
  30. CHAPTER 26
  31. CHAPTER 27
  32. CHAPTER 28
  33. PART THREE: Orion Waves
  34. CHAPTER 29
  35. CHAPTER 30
  36. CHAPTER 31
  37. CHAPTER 32
  38. CHAPTER 33
  39. CHAPTER 34
  40. CHAPTER 35
  41. CHAPTER 36
  42. CHAPTER 37
  43. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  44. AUTHOR INTERVIEW
  45. COPYRIGHT

She shrugs. ‘I don’t even know you.’

I almost laugh. What a bizarre thing to say.

Peyton riffles through her dresser drawer and emerges with a deck of cards. ‘You know how to play Egyptian Rat Screw?’

‘What did you call me?’

We play until the early hours. It takes a few rounds for me to get the hang of it, but then I end up winning a couple hands, even though it’s one of those fast, flailing sorts of card game I’m not usually good at. I like playing with her. I’m so close to her that I can smell her gum. Cinnamon. At one point we both go to slap the deck and I’m there first but she smacks down on my hand so hard, the sound absolutely piercing, that I see stars, the back of my head practically neon pink, and Peyton laughs so much that she topples over.

‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ she screams through tears.

I roll over, laughing too, curling my arm into my chest. ‘I need … medical attention …’

‘Sorry, let me see, let me see,’ she says, and holds my wrist firmly and smacks it again.

She lets me whack her hand in retaliation and it hurts me more than it hurts her, and that makes us crack up again.

‘So she does smile,’ Peyton finally says.

I like her.

Though I’m still thinking about my failures and my lies and if the latter are something I actually want to stop doing or just feel like I should stop doing. The worry fades quickly. Do I like Peyton? I don’t know. Peyton is fine. She won’t get in my way. Sunbeam down a well.

I wonder if that is something that comes with age – a desire for self-betterment, to change the parts of myself that are largely undesirable. For now, I’m enjoying them. Not enjoying, maybe. I understand them. They get me what I want.

A stem without thorns is lesser. A stem without thorns gets eaten.

Though I worry, as the night blackens, as Peyton hops from bed to bed like a maniac, as I keel over with laughter, curled in the knotted cradle of the dark even while all this joy sprawls around me: I worry that I’m only thorns, and nothing else.

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

TUESDAY 1 JUNE

I turn between waking and sleep. Waking and sleep until each is the other and I can’t tell the difference. Darkness, half-darkness, spinning …

She traverses the brush in the light of the moon

How does this all end, speak to her soon –

Celeste.