The Many Faces of Tully

“Well, you’ve held up your end of the bargain. I guess it’s my turn,” Jace says. I’m immediately transfixed, and I forget spilling my darkest secrets. I am going to learn his.

He takes a deep breath. “A few years ago. Like four or five I think now. I was dating this girl.”

“The girl on your laptop,” I interject.

“Yes. Veronica,” he says sadly. “We had been seeing each other for like two years I think. It was nice being with her, going out with her and stuff, because I was out of my hell hole.” I stare at him with wide eyes.

“Yes,” he says, arrogantly. “It is my own personal hell hole. I hate it there. I’m confined there. I’ve been confined there since I was eleven. Meeting Veronica was a real piece of luck. She gave me a reason to go out. She made me feel alive again. I went on a trip with her once, to Rhode Island, hence the reason I knew about the waffle sandwiches. Haven’t stopped eating them since.”

“I haven’t eaten them since.” The corners of my mouth twitch upwards. He gives me a small smile back.

“Anyways, it was going great with her. Then one night, we went out to a late movie. It was in the summer so we walked. We were walking back when it happened. A man tried to rob us. I tried to fight him off. He had a gun.”

My heart starts beating faster. I have a feeling I know what is going to happen. I’m already feeling sad for him.

“He was going to shoot me, but I wasn’t scared. I could heal from it. Veronica didn’t know that. She pushed me away. The bullet went straight in her heart. I might have been able to save her if I acted right away, but I didn’t. I was frozen. She died because I froze. I was so angry with myself and the man. I wanted to kill him. And I did.” His voice seethes with anger. He’s had this bottled up, just like me. The only difference is that I regret mine. I’m not sure if he regrets his.

“It was an accident though. I wanted to kill him, but I knew, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t. I started hitting him though. He needed to feel some of my pain. I grabbed his arm so he couldn’t run away. That’s when I noticed my hand was glowing red. I just stared at it, doing nothing. The man collapsed, and I didn’t understand. I hadn’t hit him in a while, and when I was, I wasn’t hitting him that hard.

“I dropped to the ground next to him and placed my other hand over his heart. My hand started glowing red immediately. His heart was barely beating, and it got weaker with each passing second. I was so angry at him, so murderously angry, that my power took health. It always gave health, always. My hands would always glow green, and they would always fix.

“The next few days, I pondered my powers. I never really had to think about it. They just did it by themselves. My body would heal itself immediately, but if I had to heal someone else, I would just do it. So I figure, since I was filled with hatred, so was my power. I was so angry, my power drained life. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know I could. I haven’t tried to do it since. I don’t want to be capable of that. Just like you. I want to be good. None of the guys know this, so please don’t tell them.”

He’s looking at me desperately, and I have a feeling that’s what I look like when I’m telling him about my powers. Desperate for him to understand, and not to judge. Desperate for him to like me, even though he knows what I’m capable of. Desperate to have one person in the world I could really be myself with.

I nod. I won’t tell them.

“You know that you are good Tully,” he says to me. His eyes are burning into mine. “Just because you have killed people doesn’t mean you’re bad. They were accidents, and you wear your shame on your sleeve. You keep pieces of them, so they can live on, with you. You keep their memory alive. You. Are. Good,” he says slowly and fiercely.

His words fill me up, and make me feel hopeful. Jace is always right. Maybe he is right about this too.

I stand up and walk around the table, and he stands up too. I wrap my arms around his waist and I hug him tightly and bury my face into his chest. He wraps his arms around me and puts his hand on my head and squeezes me back. I feel his cheek on the top of my head.

“Thank you,” I mumble into his shirt.

“It’s the truth,” he mumbles back.

“You’re good too you know?” I tell him.

“I’m trying to be,” he says.

We both laid it out on the table tonight. We stripped ourselves bare and showed our true colors. We showed each other the blackest parts of our hearts, and I think that somehow, doing that, made them lighter. It erased some of the black, some of the shame, and eased both of our pain. We did it together, and you can’t go back from doing something like that.

It is almost like we made a blood oath, but more serious. We made a shame oath. We each thought what we did was worse, and we fully accept the others. We each think we are the more terrible person, and think the other person is good.

The part that really gets me is that I believe him. I know he thinks I’m good, and I believe I can be. And I know he feels the same. We don’t tear each other down. We build each other up. This isn’t destructive. This is safe. I want safety so bad.

I pull away from him. I can’t get any closer, because I’m not safe. I may be good, but I’m not safe. I can, and I will destroy him if I get too close. We’re closer than ever now, and it scares me. I want to get closer, but I can’t. I won’t let that happen. I need distance. Distance is safe. Distance is hard.

I sigh but smile up at him. He smiles back at me. “Shall we go back to our hell hole?” I say to him. I didn’t mean to say 'our'. I can’t tie us together. Distance.

He smiles wider. “We shall.”