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.
I slow to a stop, a few feet away from her. "Sis, you okay?"
It's the most pointless question I'll ever ask in my life. Of course she isn't okay, but I have to say something, and she answers me. Kind of.
* * * * *
One thing I remember from when I used to skim through those romance novels my sister read is that the male characters would spend a lot of time standing around not saying anything. Brooding. I guess that's what I'm doing now, only I don't think any of them ever did it because they didn't have the slightest idea what to actually say. I don't, but even if I did I wouldn't interrupt as Emma starts talking. Putting into words all the things we've left unsaid all summer.
"I've been thinking about us for a long time, Jamie," she says softly, and despite the wind and the rain and the thunder and lightning I hear every word as clear as if there was no other sound at all. "When I was dating Greg Jackson in high school it didn't feel real to me. It felt like I was playing a part. Following someone else's script and being what other people wanted me to be. One of the Wilderwoods.
"So when I went upstate I wanted to get away from this place, from that feeling of having to live up to everyone's expectations of who I was. I didn't cheat on Greg, but I wasn't in love with him either and when he cheated on me honestly all I felt was relief. It gave me an excuse, didn't it? To change.
"God, Jamie, the first time I looked at myself in the mirror in Lauren's gear I felt like I was seeing who I really was. The leather felt so good on me, so smooth and tight, shiny and sexual. I knew you'd love it and I even said it out loud. Lauren heard me say it, and I told her I was joking. I told myself the same thing for a really long time. Even later when I fantasised about that it wasn't you that was fucking me. It was my brother, but it wasn't you.
"None of this is Lauren's fault. She likes to act like she's a bad influence but this was always in me. All of it. I just didn't know it. I didn't seek her out. We became roommates by accident really, because it's not like we were friends in high school, and it's not like she encouraged me either. She hated every boyfriend I had. I mean all of them. If she'd come back to Wilderwood at the same time as I did she'd have hated Luce too.
"She wasn't wrong. I went to some dark places and I found out things about myself I didn't think were in me. Kinks I didn't know I had. Maybe I didn't, right? I mean I really was a different person, and I really did go looking for bad relationships. Destructive, just like he said."
I don't have to ask who 'he' is.
"Every time it went wrong I wanted my brother. Then I told myself it was wrong and I went out and found someone to stop me thinking about that. To stop me thinking about anything. It was easy to do. I really was an eager, willing slave, and I was ready to sink into the fetish scene and lose myself in it because I didn't know who I was anymore.
"Lauren knew the scene way better than i did and she knew I was fresh meat. Easy pickings for a certain kind of Dom. She pulled me out of it, her and some of the people she knew. Only when I got home my nerve failed me totally. I couldn't tell you about any of this. I couldn't tell anyone. So I went looking for the wrong guy again, because I always did and Lauren wasn't here to talk me out of it.
"I didn't plan on this happening, Jamie. At least I don't think I did. I felt so guilty when it did, like I'd taken advantage of you. I've tried to explain it in other ways. I really have. We were always so close so why wouldn't we fall in love? You were my best friend for so long. If i could be more than that to you then why not? I wasn't playing, Jamie. I wanted to be yours.
"He was right. I'm really not who I used to be, but who I am now, that's what she wants. She wants you. Still. Because you're my brother."
Emma looks over at me finally, tears shining in her green eyes. With sudden, awkward movements she reaches up to the back of her neck and unbuckles her black leather collar and with a convulsive movement flicks it over the edge of the railing to let it fall down into the Wilderwood far below.
