Triple Crown

[Sonmi-451]

Again, you'll just have to find out... xD
More added.

“Lizzie, is there anything you want out of the Champions’ Center?” Max asks me, as we both stare up at the huge white building looming in front of us. It’s been a week since that conversation about my sanity with Lars, and I’ve gotten five new scars on each of my wrists since then. In fact, the only good thing that’s really come out of this week is that I got my possessions back that Max stole from me when he kidnapped me, like my backpack and car keys and phone. He also gave me Luke’s possessions, which I took with a good deal of pain and nostalgia; I’m planning to take them back to Luke’s parents, now that the barrier El Nieve had set up between the dimensions has fallen. It seems like three thousand years ago, not three weeks ago, that that bomb hit and ruined my life.
Max and I are here, in front of the Champions’ Center, because I decided I want to burn it down myself and truly destroy the Triple Crown in El Tiempo. After all, Rush is dead – after I killed King, the soldiers accompanying her started firing, and one of them shot Rush and killed him – the members of the Triple Crown committee were killed later in the siege on El Nieve, and the arena was dismantled and eventually set on fire by a mass of revolting people of the Sections even before the rebellion officially took the battle to El Nieve, so the Champions’ Center is the only thing left of the Triple Crown. It’s very fitting that me, Lizzie Lightning, the spark that burned down El Nieve’s hold over the Sections, will be the one to literally burn down the last remnants of El Nieve’s tyranny and cruelty.
I am about to say no, that I just want to see this horrible building and all of the horrible memories I have inside of it burn, when I realize that there is something I want out of there, and I turn to Max and tell him, “Yeah, there is.” Then, without waiting for him to say anything else, I enter the building, and jump into the elevator to ride up to the eighth floor, each little ding as the elevator goes up another floor echoing around in my head.
I sigh as soon as I step out of the elevator, all of the memories – good and bad, although most are bad – I have of this place flooding in: Jackson showing up and Luke with ‘betrayed’ stamped across his forehead; Abby and I teasing each other over breakfast and me flipping out at Nick when he told me that I didn’t have to gather my own dishes, that that was what Abby was for; me saving Jackson from death one night and Luke from death the next; me not getting to say goodbye to Jackson before being whisked away for Team Survival.
“There’s so much pain in this place,” I can’t help but murmur as I look around at the pure white walls and tile and carpet and furniture and drapes, because it’s true; the whole place just looks desolate, abandoned, depressed almost, if it’s possible for a location to have feelings.
I stare around for a few long moments before finally remembering why I came here in the first place, shaking my head slightly, and pushing myself down the hallway to walk towards my room. I have laid a hand on the doorknob and am just about to enter when I freeze, because I don’t know if I can actually face what’s waiting for me in there. Will I lose it, and be in so much pain that I burn myself up with the building and lose the thing I came here for?
No, I can’t do that; I owe it to myself and to my memories of Luke not to, so, after taking a deep breath and telling myself that I will behave, that I will not lose it, I open the door silently and enter my room.

[loyal]

[I would burn the champions center to the ground. Or destroy it in some other way. Or paint it some color so it really stands out- like red- and then explode it. Then, I'd say "Humph." and walk away in slow motion. c:

More??]

[Sonmi-451]

Well, you'll just have to see what Lizzie does... xD
More added.

I cross the room silently to stand at the foot of my bed and gaze at the painting covering the opposite wall with more than a bit of warmth at the memories it brings back – about how everything Luke and I had wasn’t false, that I truly did love him some, that, in the end, I actually wanted the always he promised me – and also more than a bit of pain at the fact that he’s dead, and that the girl who painted it is dead too.
Sighing deeply and telling myself not to cry, I take my phone out of my pocket with shaking fingers – it’s an iPhone 4, and I love it with a burning passion – to pull up the camera, take a few steps back so that I can get all of the painting in the picture, move the little focus box onto the always at the bottom of the painting, and finally snap the picture. I double-check it to see that I captured a perfect image of the painting, and then immediately make that picture my wallpaper, so I will see what could have been my always every time I pull out my phone.
I slip my phone back into my pocket, tears beginning to leak out of the corners of my eyes now as I stare at the painting for a few moments longer.
Finally I tell myself that, if I keep Max waiting for too long, he might light up the building with me in it, and I tear my gaze away from the painting with some difficulty to exit my room, shutting the door behind me with a definitive click. I then get in the elevator again to ride down in it numbly, each ding echoing with a formal finality in my mind this time.
“You got what you wanted?” Max asks me when I leave the building to walk out into the bright sunlight where he’s standing, and I nod my head yes.
“Let’s light it up then,” he says, and tosses me a can of gasoline and a blowtorch. When I look at him skeptically – I mean, I know gasoline can really help things burn, but I don’t think we can actually burn the whole building down with what we have – he questions, “You can control fire, right?”
I nod my head yes, and he says, “Then this is all we need to burn this place to the ground.” I’m surprised by the hardness of his words, and I look over at him to see the anger blazing in his already-flaming eyes. I had never really thought that Max had much of a grudge against the Triple Crown committee, but, now that I see it, it makes perfect sense. After all, they did ruin his life and then make him in charge of sending four kids off to slaughter every year; I think I’d hate whoever did that to me too.
“Do the honor and light it up Lizzie,” Max urges me, and I open the can of gasoline to splash some on the white wall closest to me and then flick open the lighter and throw it onto the newly-poured gasoline, where it immediately starts a flame that licks up the side of the building and scorches the white paint right off of the steel frame.
I can’t help but feel savage pleasure as I watch the whiteness of El Nieve, that color that has tortured me everywhere I’ve gone in this dimension, get turned into black ash by the fire that I symbolically and literally started. El Nieve’s finally getting what it deserves: its destruction, and the destruction of everything it stood for.
When the flames start to run out of paint to burn and diminish after a few moments, I splash more gasoline onto them, causing them to flare up ten feet up the side of the building, and then walk around the building slowly, splashing gas as I go and channeling the fire to make it follow me too. Deciding that there isn’t quite enough flame yet – and running out of gasoline to toss the empty can aside – I conjure up more fire, so that there is now a complete ring burning around the bottom of the building. It makes the building almost look like the top of a torch that hasn’t quite gotten eaten by the fire yet.
I feel the infusion of power into the air that can only mean someone else channeling the elements and turn to find Max summoning even more flames than I did, the ones he’s summoning working their way up the side of the building and into the open window on the second floor. I stare over at him in almost awe, as I had no idea Max was such an accomplished fire channeler. I don’t have nearly the skill with fire to do that, and I probably don’t even have the natural ability to control flames like that. Of course, I can smoke Max any day in a hurricane-starting competition, because I doubt that he could even start one.
Max seems to notice my gaze, as he turns to me, a savage grin across his face and the reflection of the flames dancing in his already-fiery eyes, and tells me, “Come on Lizzie, you’re going to let yourself get beat by your old instructor? That’s not a very good example of the student overcoming the teacher.” He gives me a smirk, and shoots another burst of energy into the fire with an outward-thrusting hand motion.
The heat from the blaze is so high now that it feels my nose is about to burn off and I find myself taking a step back – being burned alive once was bad enough; I really don’t need two layers of hideous scars – but the heat doesn’t seem to be affecting Max at all. In fact, if anything, he seems to be almost rejuvenated by the towering flames. Maybe he’s like me: he can pull energy from fire the way I can pull energy from storms and lightning.
“You’re much better with fire than I am. I might as well just let you have this one,” I reply, taking another step backward as a spark jumps out and burns the skin of my cheek.
Max nods his head in understanding, and looks like he’s actually going to take me up on my offer and burn the whole building down himself, when he remembers that I originally asked to be the one to burn the building down. He then takes a step back himself, relinquishing his hold on the flames, causing them to sputter, fall and eventually partially die off, to tell me, “No. You wanted to burn it down, so, if you don’t want to burn it down anymore, you should at least be the one to destroy it.”
“Alright,” I say, looking up at the building. “The only question is: how else am I going to destroy it? I mean, you can’t control any other elements, setting a hurricane would be too destructive and might even suck us up in it, and destroying this is basically a two-person job… Wait,” I murmur, staring up at the structure and realizing that it’s almost all metal, and that metal’s an excellent conductor of electricity.
“I can use lightning to destroy the building,” I say aloud, turning to Max to have him nod his head in understanding and approval.
“I’d say that’d be the most symbolic thing of all,” Max tells me with a smile, and walks away from the building to motion for me to go.
When I see that he’s far enough away that he probably won’t get hurt by it – unless some part of the building falls on him – I close my eyes and focus all of my energy on summoning a storm, and, with a tingling in my fingertips, feel the wind immediately pick up and open my eyes to see that the sky above is pure black and stormy, a perfect representation of nature’s destructive power and the power I could have over the world if I abused it.
Behind me, I hear Max gasp in surprise, and I can’t help but smile. Seeing a storm summoned in person is always much more striking than just watching it on camera.
However, my happiness doesn’t last very long, as a wave of anger against the Triple Crown committee and El Nieve for ruining my life and indirectly taking Luke’s washes over me and I focus with all of my might on pulling a lightning bolt out of the sky, the largest and most powerful one I can manage. As I stare up at the churning clouds, I see the tip of a lightning bolt flicker out of the sky, but doesn’t come anywhere near touching the ground. I must not be putting enough power into the storm then.
Closing my eyes and clearing everything out my mind except my anger and my want to destroy the building in front of me, I put all of my energy into summoning the lightning boltt, and, just as my knees buckle underneath me and I collapse to the ground from total exhaustion, I hear the definitive crackle of lightning and open my eyes in time to see a lightning bolt jump out – the sheer electricity and power of the lightning I summoned was strong enough that I probably would have been electrocuted where I was kneeling if I weren’t immune to lightning – hit the building and, in a half-second, turn the building into nothing more than a pile of ash.
The lightning leaps back up into the clouds as soon as it hits, and, with nothing to sustain it, the storm breaks up and dissipates in the matter of a few seconds.

[Sonmi-451]

I don't know if anyone's reading this anymore, and I don't really care if anyone is, because I need to finish this for my sake. As Yann Martel says, "It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go," and I would like to finally conclude Triple Crown, so here it is, in this post and the next, the last twenty-five pages of the literary journey that forged me into the writer I am today.

I just kneel there, staring at the ground and trying to fight through the layers of exhaustion covering my brain to remember why on earth I did this when someone behind me exclaims quietly, accompanying their words with a whistle, “Wow.”
I turn my head slightly to see Max walking up next to me, his eyes on the pile of ash that used to be the Champions’ Center. He stops so that he’s parallel to me, and turns to me and asks, “How did you summon that much sheer power without burning yourself up?”
“I…” I begin, taking his offered hand and getting to my feet slowly. I then turn my gaze onto the ashes in front of me and finish, “I don’t know.”
“I guess I know not to get on your bad side now, or I’ll look like that building,” Max tells me teasingly, but his eyes tell a completely different story: he’s scared of me now.
“Don’t remind me of that, Max,” I say with a sigh, and turn away from him and the remnants of the building to look out at the rest of the city. Everywhere Triple Crown insignia is being destroyed, with posters of Rush and Triple Crown committee and past champions that decided it was in their best interests to fight for the Triple Crown trampled underfoot and posters with my face all over them being plastered all over the city too; I guess the people of the Sections don’t hate me enough for killing King as to not appreciate what I did for them.
It’s downright scary to think that, if I lost it for a moment, this whole city could be like that building: history. If I let my anger get the best of me, and I started one huge wind burst or one lightning strike or one hurricane that I couldn’t control, I could level the entire city and kill everyone in it.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like being immortal, because I’m kind of forced into playing God by the power I have. I’m truly afraid of losing it, and destroying everything around me, because I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself then. I’m afraid of myself, to be perfectly honest, because I’m afraid I might not be able to control the power inside of me, and I might end up killing someone I love one of these days. I suppose I already did, with Abby and Marshall and Luke, but I didn’t really kill them with my bare hands; I just let them down, and failed to protect them like I said I would.
Max comes up next to me and looks out across the city with me, the buildings reflected in his fiery eyes in such a way that it looks like they’re all on fire. “You’re the hero around here, Lizzie,” he says quietly, as he gestures to the posters covering almost every open inch of building, with pictures of me ‘valiantly fighting for my freedom and the freedom of the Sections’ in Hand-to-Hand, One-Person and Team Survival.
“I don’t want to be the hero, Max,” I murmur quietly as I look out at the city – and those downright horrible posters – with him.
“Why not?” he asks me, his tone surprised, and I look over to find him looking down at me curiously.
“Because heroes always end up dying young or dying villains,” I reply softly, my gaze being drawn back onto the white city that has found something else to worship: me.
“I suppose you have a point there,” Max agrees, and our conversation lapses into silence, neither one of us knowing what to say and me not particularly wanting to talk.
“We should probably get back to the hospital. Jackson’s bound to be worried sick by now,” Max says after a few moments pass in silence, and I tear my gaze away from the city sprawling out in front of me to look over at him and nod my head in agreement.
“Knowing him, he’s probably recruiting a search-and-rescue team to come find us,” I joke to go along with Max’s comment, and we both smile weakly, even though it isn’t very funny at all. I mean, Jackson would go searching for us himself – he definitely wouldn’t trust our safety to soldiers that he doesn’t know – and Jackson might actually have a reason to search for us, if I decide to try to commit suicide again – it’s been a fairly regular thing these last few days, although my wrists have always healed too quickly for me to bleed out before someone finds me – and freeze Max so that he can’t call for help to save me.
Max reads these thoughts in my mind – I don’t bother hiding my thoughts anymore, as the only people that are going to read them are Jackson and Max, and I trust both of them with my life – and turns to me to meet my gaze and question, “Lizzie, why do you think that you need to die to be happy?”
“Because Luke is dead, and he was my happiness up until now,” I answer quietly, meeting Max’s gaze calmly. He can question me about my suicidal tendencies all he wants, but he’s probably never going to get the answers he’s looking for. “My heart died with Luke too, and what’s the point in living if you’re not whole, if living is just excruciatingly painful for you?” I meet his gaze almost challengingly, daring him to come up with a reason as to why I should still have a will to live.
Max, however, doesn’t lose his cool with this answer of mine and begins, “Lizzie, I know what it’s like to want to kill yourself,” to have my snort of derision cut him off before he has a chance to say anything else. He doesn’t know what I’m going through, and he and I both know that, so why would he say something so incredibly stupid like that? All he’s going to accomplish there is pissing me off!
“Does this help prove anything?” Max questions me, upon hearing my snort of derision, to hold out his hand and show me the web of criss-crossing scars covering it that I somehow had never noticed up until now.
“It looks almost like your hand has been sown together,” I murmur in amazement as I stare at the scars with morbid curiosity. “Wait,” I start, tearing my gaze away from Max’s hand to look up at him and meet his hard gaze.
The arena he was in for Team Survival was cold, even colder than the one for Team Survival this time around, and I remember Max went off the grid for a few days during that Team Survival. I guess I know where he went now: trying to kill himself by getting frostbite and freezing to death but the Triple Crown committee not letting him.
“I know exactly what it’s like to want to kill yourself, Lizzie,” Max repeats, dropping his hand now that he’s proven his point and searching my gaze with his own. “It gets better though, it always does,” he tells me reassuringly, and I can’t help but shake my head in denial. Even though Max survived a Triple Crown and has had more than his fair share of heartache over the years and even has tried to kill himself before, he really doesn’t know what I’m going through because what I went through is so much different than what he’s gone through.
“Why does everyone keep on telling me that?” I exclaim in exasperation, throwing my hands up in the air. “Max, how can it get better if there’s nothing left for time to heal?” I ask him, my gaze locked on his as I almost dare him to reply with a response that I’ll actually accept. As if I would actually accept any response he gave me here, even if it was technically right and logical and answered the question completely.
“There is always something left, Lizzie,” Max tells me, refusing to back down or retreat at all. “The day you completely lose your ability to feel is the day you lose your humanity, and the day you become a model citizen of El Nieve. You have not hit that point yet, Lizzie,” Max ends firmly, his eyes locked on mine almost fiercely.
“Maybe it would almost be better if I was a model citizen of El Nieve, because then I wouldn’t be able to feel the pain of Luke dying,” I murmur quietly, turning away from Max, to have him sigh in exasperation. Clearly this is not the result he was looking for, although I don’t know why he thought he could ever sway me in the first place.
“Lizzie, being able to feel, even if what you feel is pain, is always better than feeling nothing at all,” Max tells me emphatically, stepping in front of me so that he can meet my gaze again. “Emotions are what make us alive, and, if you lose your emotions, then you become something less than alive, something that doesn’t deserve to take in some of the earth’s oxygen. Feelings are holy and perfect and always unadulterated, even if they are pain and sadness and despair, and feelings can always change too, so I can guarantee you that you won’t be feeling sad forever Lizzie. Keep your feelings around. You might be surprised at how good they can become if you do.”
“Max,” I begin, my tone becoming imploring and almost begging now, “why should I keep feeling if all I feel is unbearable sadness and pain? Isn’t it just better to be numb, and at least not be hurting all the time?”
“No, it’s not,” Max immediately shoots back, with such passion to his tone that I’m almost shocked. He then takes a deep breath, and continues, “Emotions are what make you human – pardon the expression – and, if you lose your humanity, your ability to feel, then you really do become the people you just destroyed.”
Max then gestures out the sprawling, desolate white city in front of us, and I bow my head in defeat. I definitely don’t want to be an El Nievan in the fact that I’m numb, but maybe they had the right idea. Maybe numbness is the best policy, because, while you can’t feel happiness or joy, you can’t feel pain either, and not feeling pain sounds pretty good right now.
I sigh deeply, knowing that Max isn’t going to give up his side of the argument any time soon and that I’m not either, and mutter under my breath as I turn away from the city, “It would have been so much easier if I died up there in Alaska.”

“We’re going home, Lizzie!” an estatic Jackson tells me, and he wraps his arms around me to give me a bone-crushing hug.
I can’t breathe – and I don’t particularly want to be hugged either – so I push on him hard enough until he realizes that I’m protesting being held like this and he lets go of me, at which time I tell him, for explanation, “You were suffocating me.”
“Oh, sorry Lizzie,” Jackson apologizes shortly, his apology sounding very-halfhearted, to immediately repeat, his eyes locked on mine with such joy that I haven’t seen in him in what seems like forever, “We’re going home! You’ll get to see your family, and I’ll get to see Kodiak again, and everything will be back to normal!” I instantly stiffen at the ‘back to normal’ comment – I mean, back to normal implies that no one who doesn’t belong in this dimension is going home – and Jackson amends, “Well, not back normal, but at least still existing.”
I nod my head in approval at that because, while I might not want to have everything existing because I don’t really want to live, Jackson obviously does – and any other sane person would too – and it’s just easier to smile and nod than actually make an objection.
Jackson notices that I haven’t reacted to this news at all and asks me, “Aren’t you excited? You get to see your parents and your brothers and everyone you missed when you were in here.”
I get mental pictures of my brothers and my parents and try to prod some sort of emotional response out out of myself to be met with… numbness. Now that the full reality of Luke being gone has set it, I truly have become numb, moving and talking and eating and basically just living as little as possible, and, when I do move, it’s generally in an attempt to kill myself with something.
“How am I going to tell Luke’s parents what happened to Luke?” I murmur quietly, meeting Jackson’s gaze almost desperately for the first time throughout this whole conversation. Finally I voiced the question that’s been eating away at me for the last week, or ever since Max gave me Luke’s belongings, so now it can eat at both Jackson and I. Oh well. Misery does love company after all; I wonder if I, in my misery, will love it too.
“You’re going to have to tell them the truth: everything that happened in this dimension, as well as the truth about us, and what we are,” Jackson replies, and I nod my head in understanding. The only problem with that plan is whether or not I can find the bravery to walk up to their doorstep and tell them that their son is dead because of me.
Jackson seems to realize exactly what I’m going through, as he cups my chin in his hand, tilts my gaze up towards his and tells me sincerely, “It will be hard, Lizzie, but I know you, and I know you’re tough enough to do it. Look at it this way: you owe it to Luke to let his parents know what happened.” Jackson’s eyes are locked on mine, his intense golden irises searching my own and reminding me how kind of beautiful he really is, and I nod my head again, this time in agreement. Jackson’s words have inspired and almost impowered me, and now I think that maybe I’m ready to go home, and own up to what happened to Luke
“Good,” Jackson replies, his gaze still glued on mine as a small smile creeps its way across his face. Without warning, he bends down and kisses me gently on the forehead, and then pulls back to wrap his arm around my shoulders, look down at me and ask, “Are you ready to go now?”
I nod my head in confirmation – I’ve already said my goodbyes to Max and Lars, and there’s not anyone else who’s alive in this dimension that I like well enough to want to say goodbye to – as I take a deep breath to brace myself for what I’m about to tell Luke’s parents. Just like Jackson said, this isn’t going to be easy on them or me, but I owe it to them to tell them about what happened and tell them about their son’s heroism, and let them know that their son helped save a whole country. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair of me to not them how Luke died, considering that he is their son.
Jackson opens a gateway in the air with a sweep of his hand, and, as the hole grows wider, I stare out at the snowy – even though it should be the end of August, and therefore not very snowy – very-Elizabeth-looking street in front of us with almost awe. It’s amazing to think that I’m finally going back, after all that’s happened here and all the scars I’ve collected and all the people I’ve killed, to lead a fake normal human life again. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know if I can pull the whole normal-human trick off any more, with my huge mood swings and general depression and lack of want to do anything.
However, I can’t help but feel my heart lighten some at the prospect of going home, to the dimension that I actually like and belong in and that hasn’t scarred for the rest of eternity, and getting to see my family and friends, and getting to just value life, and maybe even return to some sense of normalcy, even if that normalcy is frequent suicide attempts and constant depression. I want to go back to the place where I belong, the place that I actually want to be, and, despite the fact that the county is full of people who believe the opposite of what I believe, and, despite the fact that you can’t walk down the halls of the high school without hearing some derogatory joke about President Obama, that place is Elizabeth, Colorado, 80107.
“I’ve missed Mom and Dad and Timmy and even Gwillan and Gruffen,” I murmur, and Jackson nods his head, a small, almost sad smile at the fact that he has no one to miss in our dimension crosses his face.
“Let’s go see them then, shall we?” Jackson questions, and I nod my head in agreement, slipping my hand into his proffered one and walking hand and hand, with everything to document my time as a martyr and a revolutionist and a liberator of a country on my back in a cloth gym bag, back home.

I stand on the doorstep of Luke’s house, my hands balled into fists and my stomach clenched in knots. I chose to come here first, as opposed to going home right away, because I know that I have to tell them, that I just have to, and that I might lose all will to do it if I went home first. However, the task is proving a lot more daunting than I originally thought it was, because I have no idea what or how to tell them what happened. I mean, it’s not like I can just say, “Oh, hey, I’m kind of not human and your son kind of died in a different dimension because of me. Sorry about that, and I hope you have a good day!” Even I don’t lack the people skills to know that saying something like that would completely idiotic.
However, I can’t think of anything else to say. After all, what do I tell whoever answers the door? “Your son is dead, I’m here to tell you why?” No, that’s even worse than my original idea of what not to say!
“This would be so much easier if they could just read my mind and I wouldn’t have to say anything to them,” I mutter under my breath, shaking my head as I lean against the doorframe, eying the doorbell almost fearfully. As soon as I ring it, I have to come clean for everything I did and caused, and I’m not sure I really want to do that right now, even though I know I owe it to Luke’s parents to them why their son isn’t here today.
“Or if they could just watch a video?” an amused voice says to my left, and I whip around in shock to find Kuro standing there, leaning on the side of the house, with a malicious smile that’s even more amused than usual on his face and what appears to be a DVD in his hand.
My eyes shoot open wide in shock as I realize what must be on that DVD, and I snarl, my eyes locked on his, “You didn’t.”
“Oh, but I did,” Kuro replies, to immediately add, “I thought you’d be grateful. After all, I just removed the talking part of your presentation.”
“You son of a bitch,” I whisper harshly, staring him down with as much loathing as I can muster into my gaze.
“Lizzie, that’s not the way to talk to someone who just did you a favor,” Kuro tells me reprovingly, and immediately my mouth gets sealed shut.
I frantically try to open my mouth, with no results expect straining my jaw, so I settle for making the meanest face I can muster at Kuro, which happens to make him laugh.
“Even to the end, you insist on fighting me,” he murmurs after he becomes intelligible, shaking his head, and looks up to meet my gaze again. “Perhaps I was wrong about you, Lizzie. Maybe you’re not betraying your nature by being human, but betraying your nature by being animal.”
He then sets the DVD down on the table on the porch and turns and leaves in a cloud of black smoke, and my mouth sealant disappears with him to leave me standing there, flexing my jaw a couple times.
“He sure likes to make my life hard, doesn’t he?” I mutter underneath my breath, but I can’t help but walk over and pick up the DVD to examine it. It’s a standard disk alright, the kind that’s compatible in any computer or DVD player, and the words “Triple Crown” are written across the top in neat, straight handwriting – not the handwriting I’d expect Kuro to have at all.
Huffing some, I hold onto the disk in my left hand, thinking that it’s my backup plan if I find I can’t talk and that it will keep my hand from completely twitching and freaking Luke’s parents out, and cross back over to the door to ring the doorbell and wait for someone to answer.

“My God,” one of Luke’s parents, his mom by the feminine quality to her voice, exclaims. I immediately decided, upon trying to talk to them, that I couldn’t, and just put the disk in and sat them down to have them watch. Ever since then, all I’ve heard from them is exclamations of amazement and horror and shock. I can imagine that this is probably incredibly scary for them, seeing their son kill or be killed and transcend to an almost animal way of life.
Suddenly I notice something odd out of the corner of my eye – the calendar hanging from their entrance hall still is on May, not August. Maybe they’ve just been so torn up about Luke being gone for more than three months without an explanation that they forgot to change the calendar.
I look up at the screen to see we’re at the part where I started a hurricane in the middle of the night at the career camp, and suddenly both of Luke’s parents’ eyes are on me. I pause the film by solidifying air and making that air press the button so I don’t have to move from where I am – I’ve been doing the same thing with the fast-forward buttons the whole time we’ve been watching, since there is a lot of film and we don’t have time to watch it all; I also don’t really want to watch it all – and I walk forward to the front of the room, in front of the TV screen, to turn and face them and search their faces. As is to be expected, there is amazement and shock in them, and also some fear. Damn it, I was hoping to have them not fear me till a little farther into the film.
After a few long moments of almost unbearably awkward and tense silence, Luke’s dad finally opens his mouth and asks me in a whisper, “Did you... did you cause that storm?”
“Yeah,” I answer simply, pursing my lips in what is supposed to be a smile but probably just looks like a grimace.
“How?” Luke’s mom immediately questions, and I turn my gaze onto her to meet her eyes for half a second before answering.
“Lightning isn’t just a name,” I reply, and her eyes pop open wide in surprise, and she opens her mouth to speak again, only to be cut off by her husband.
“Are your parents... like you then?” he asks, and his tone is almost fearful. He greatly respects my parents, so I guess he’d hate to find out that they’re freaks like me.
Unfortunately, I’m going to have to burst his bubble, so I nod my head yes wordlessly, and add, “My whole family is like this.”
“Oh,” they both exclaim faintly, and I can’t help but smile slightly. I then turn around, manually push the play button, and, getting fed up with watching Team Survival footage, I fast-forward to the footage that made me come here, the moments leading up to and the actual bombing of the square, to silently walk back to the back of the room and watch the film myself.
On the film, Luke says to me, as he gives me a genuine smile, “Well, at least if we die, we get to die together. That’s all I could ever want,” to which I reply, with a smile of my own, “And that’s all I could ever want.”
I find that I have to turn away from the screen, and I sigh. The rest of the film hasn’t hurt this bad, because I know that I didn’t ever mean what I said to him as much as I did at this point. What hurts the most is the fact that, when I actually wanted the always he promised me, that promise got broken by death. I guess that means that I almost have a reason or a justification for being bitter and suicidal.
I then hear the part where we both say, “Always,” to each other, and I sigh again to find that I’m fighting back tears now. I hadn’t realized watching the tape would be this painful; I guess it was naive of me to think that watching it wouldn’t be painful.
The sounds of fighting on-screen interrupts my thoughts, and I look up to see myself slashing through groups of Protectors and basically clearing half of the square of white bodies in less than five minutes. It’s almost scary how good I was at killing people.
I then see the bomb begin to fall out of the sky from the helicopter – the helicopter that King herself was in – and everything goes white and then red for a moment – I guess Kuro’s special camera of mental torture is even bomb-proof – before the air clears and you can see the bodies lying about. Max gets up, after a moment longer of staying down to make sure there isn’t going to be a second bomb, and runs over towards me to pick me up and carry me out of the square, the whole time looking anxiously over his shoulder to make sure that we’re not going to get blasted again.
“And that’s why I’m here,” I murmur quietly, using the solidified air to press the pause button and having both of Luke’s parents turn back to me with looks of horror on their faces.
“Luke is...?” his mom begins, not able to finish, and I nod my head wordlessly in bitter confirmation to have her begin to sob.
“Trust me, you’re not the only one who wishes that wasn’t the case,” I murmur quietly, my eyes locked on his dads’. “I loved your son with all of my heart and soul, and I cry over him every day. I miss him so much, so much that sometimes I don’t know if I can keep on breathing with the knowledge that he’s never coming back, that he’ll never be at my side again to lie to me and tell me that everything’s alright, that I’m perfect, that we get to have an always. I hate myself, for causing his death by getting him caught up in the rebellion, because it wasn’t his battle and, if it weren’t for me, he would have never been in that square when the bomb hit-”
“If it weren’t for you, he would have died before then,” Luke’s mom interrupts, meeting my gaze almost fiercely with her own tear-stained one. “Even though Luke is... gone, I still think you did the right thing. You did everything you could to save him, and we don’t begrudge you for not being able to save him. We just have a couple questions,” his mom ends, and turns to look over her shoulder at her husband, who nods his head in grave conformation. I can see tears threatening to spill out of his eyes, and I avert my gaze respectfully back onto his mother, who doesn’t seem to care that I’m watching her break down.
“Why was Luke taken from here in the first place?” his mom questions, her eyes locked on mine, and I shrug and shake my head.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “Max told me he was ordered to take Luke by the Triple Crown committee, and the only thing I can figure is that they knew Luke loved me and wanted to make the Triple Crown even more interesting.”
“They would do that, just to make it more interesting?” his mom exclaims in amazement and horror, and she begins to cry again when I nod my head yes. I guess, even after watching the video, she doesn’t understand the true level of the Triple Crown committee’s brutality. However, I can’t really blame for that; after all, it is kind of hard to truly understand how inhuman they are unless you actually directly feel the brunt of their inhumanity.
“The Triple Crown committee doesn’t have standards, or a moral compass, or even a sense of what would hurt people and what wouldn’t,” I elaborate quietly and bitterly. “They only care about making things more fun to watch, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“But they would even tear apart people like that, just for the sake of entertainment?” his mom questions, and I nod my head sadly. I really wish that wasn’t true, that the Triple Crown committee actually did have some sort of standards, but unfortunately they’re about as far from human as you can get.
“I don’t think the Triple Crown committee truly understands the value of human life, or the value of morals,” I add quietly, and she turns to bury her head in her husband’s shoulder and cry. I meet his gaze for a moment to see tears in his eyes again, and I look away respectfully, feeling like an intruder upon their sadness. That’s almost ironic, considering I’m the one who brought them this sadness.
After a few moments of just standing there awkwardly, feeling so out of place that I don’t know what to do with myself, I turn away from them to place the bundle of Luke’s belongings that I had been holding under my arm this whole time on their kitchen countertop, cross to their front door and lay a hand on the doorknob, intending to leave and finally go home, when Luke’s dad’s voice stops me.
“Lizzie,” he begins, his tone unbearably sad, and I whip around to find him standing next to the kitchen counter with Luke’s jacket in his hands, and I meet his watery blue gaze again. “Thank you for bringing Luke home,” he tells me quietly, and I nod my head wordlessly to look him in the eye for a moment longer before turning and leaving without another word.

“Lizzie, what are you doing home from school so early?” my mom asks me as I walk through the door of my house, and I look up at her in confusion – I’ve been gone for three months; shouldn’t she be asking about where I’ve been for the last three months – when suddenly I realize what must have happened, which I’ve experienced a few times before with going to other dimensions. Me being dragged through a gateway into El Tiempo and then coming back from El Tiempo using a gateway must have disrupted the space-time continuum so much that time in this dimension essentially stopped while Jackson and Luke and I were in El Tiempo, which means that not a second has passed from the moment I was first kidnapped from here three months ago. It also means that Jackson’s and my bodies have lost all aging they gained in El Tiempo, so Jackson is still seventeen and Luke would still be sixteen.
At that moment, my hand begins twitching, which immediately draws my mother’s sharp, calculating gaze. In a half-second, she’s read my mind and figured out everything that happened to me, and she walks towards me to embrace me in a warm, gentle, wordless hug, exactly the kind that I need.
“Oh, Lizzie,” my mom murmurs in my ear gently as she holds me. “What a tough way to be introduced to love.”
Her words surprise me – after all, I thought she would have said something about me saving a country before bringing up the topic of my heartbreak – and I pull back to look her in the eye and have her give me a sad smile.
“I know what it feels like, to think the love of your life is dead,” she tells me as she guides me to have me sit down on the couch with her sitting next to me, and I nod my head in understanding. She told me this story that day in seventh grade when I told her I had my first boyfriend, and I haven’t forgotten it ever since.
She was abducted by Kuro, and held in a cave underground for almost six hundred years, the whole time believing that my dad was destroyed by Kuro because Kuro had inserted that thought into her mind just to torture my parents. This is actually the reason that the Roman Empire fell, and that the Dark Ages started – my dad was too busy frantically looking for her to combat Kuro enough to stop Kuro from mostly taking over humanity, and, even when my dad did find her, it still took almost four hundred years for my parents put together to counter all of the evil Kuro had brought into the world and take Europe out of the Dark Ages. I guess that means that she really does know what I’m feeling and going through, even if my personal depression and knowledge that Luke is dead isn’t going to cause a history-changing period of nondevelopment where evil rules the world for almost a thousand years.
“When you were in the cave, did it ever get better, or at least less painful?” I ask her, meeting her gaze, and she shakes her head no with more than bit of sadness covering her beautiful, ancient golden eyes that I was so lucky to inherit.
“The idea that your father was dead never became easier to swallow, no” she answers simply, and I nod my head in understanding.
“I guess that’s what I’m looking forward to then: forever – or at least until I die – of sadness,” I murmur, staring down at the carpet and absentmindedly petting Ike when he comes up and shoves his huge head in my lap.
My mom, thank God and her experience in the matter, doesn’t say anything to contradict me like everyone else likes to do, and merely looks at me sadly for a few moments before asking me gently, “Is there anything we can do for you, Lizzie?”
Suddenly I remember that my iPhone, with the picture of the painting Abby did of Luke and I, is in my right pocket, and I nod my head to tell her, “Paint, in lots of colors, and final exams to do at home so I don’t have to go back to school until August.”
She immediately nods her head yes and tells me, “Of course.” She then rises to her feet and crosses the room to the kitchen to pick up the home phone and call into the school saying that I won’t be returning for the rest of the school year – there’s only a week left, so it’s really not that big of a deal – and that she’ll be over to pick up my remaining work, mainly final exams that have to be taken for me to pass the class, soon.
She then, once everything has been arranged with the school, wraps an arm around my shoulders and guides me out to the huge garage, in which my Corvette – that didn’t function today, making me walk to school – her GTO, my dad’s GMC Sierra, and the family’s 1965 GTO are sitting, just waiting for someone to drive them. As my eyes pass over them, and I think about how much I’ve missed driving, my hand begins to twitch, and I instinctively forcefully close it when I notice this.
However, the cars aren’t our main attention. Our main attention is the paint, stacked in towers that reach halfway up the far wall of the garage – we keep so much paint around in case one color begins to bore us or we just decide that the house needs a different look, because, when you’re forever not-changing, change is something you always seek after.
“What colors would you like?” my mom asks me as she gestures to the hundreds of gallons of paint, and I shrug as I look them up in down, taking in their names and colors with a mental snapshot. Aquamarine – turquoise blue – oceania – stormy blue – electric – bright yellow, so many at once that my mind almost feels overloaded by my memory capacity.
“All of them,” I answer after a few moments, because I know that’s the only way I’ll be able to actually get the colors Abby used and come anywhere close to replicating that infamous painting of Luke and I.
“Alright.” My mom doesn’t sound surprised at all; if anything, she sounds knowingly amused, like she wouldn’t expect me to say anything else. “Help me carry them then,” my mom bids me, and I nod my head to step forward and pick up as many as I can in my arms. My mom and I both then create a wind current strong enough to pick up and carry the paint, and it floats behind us into the house like a little parade of colors.
It feels like my arms are about to collapse from exhaustion by the time we reach my room and set everything down in there, which worries me greatly. I wasn’t this weak before I left; I mean, I was benching three hundred before I left! What happened to me?
“Starving yourself isn’t going to help your strength at all, Lizzie,” my mom tells me quietly, and I turn in surprise to find her watching me with a sad smile on her face and I realize that she must have read my thoughts and, coupled with her observations of my slimness and depression, come to that conclusion before I even knew what was happening. As I shake my head in amazement, I think to myself, being careful to seal up my thoughts this time, “She really doesn’t miss a thing.”
“You’re not used to having someone read your thoughts, are you?” she asks me sympathetically, and I shake my head.
“It was actually kind of nice, having the privacy of my own mind for once,” I murmur quietly in reply, and a sad half-smile breaks out across her face again. “That was about the only nice thing about that place though,” I add quietly, and she nods her head in understanding.
“The different dimensions you go sometimes aren’t the greatest places to be,” my mom says quietly, and I nod my head in agreement. Even though I’ve traveled to dozens of different dimensions and would like to consider myself relatively skilled in doing so, I know I’ve got nothing on my mom. I mean, she has more than two thousand years of experience on me, and all she did before she met my dad was travel back and forth between dimensions and try to save people, which means that she has extra experience in interdimensional travel.
“Well, I probably should go pick up your final exams and clean out your locker,” she says after a half-second of silence, and I nod my head in agreement. I don’t have to tell her my combo, as she’s already searched my mind and found it, and is on her way out of my room before I can say anything.
I hear her make her way down the hallway, humming something subconsciously – you can’t be around my family without one of us humming something without knowing it – under her breath that sounds vaguely like a funeral march and, as her footsteps echo off the tile of the kitchen floor, she opens a drawer. I then hear the unmistakable sound of a lock being put in place, and I sigh.
“I was hoping to go at least an hour without her putting locks on the knives,” I mutter underneath my breath, and shake my head to turn back to the gallons of paint stacked along my wall, fetch paintbrushes from the garage and begin recreating a masterpiece.

“There,” I say, and take a step backward to look at what I just painted. I just spent eight hours straight, without food or water or rest or stoppages of any kind, locked in my room painting, but now I can see that all of my trouble was definitely worth it, because I’ve perfectly replicated the ‘always’ painting Abby did, down to every last brushstroke.
As I look upon the painting, a mix of pride and happiness and unbearable sadness runs through me, and my eyes drift over Luke’s eyes – so beautiful and blue and loving – and then onto my eyes – so happy and sincere – before finally falling to settle on the ‘always’ inscribed beneath this happy scene.
“It’s perfect,” I murmur, and I’m not talking about the painting. The love Luke and I had truly was perfect – even if our relationship and situation certainly weren’t – because he loved me with a burning passion and I grew to love him with a burning passion, and that knowledge almost makes Luke’s death harder to bear. The possibility of what Luke and I could have had if he survived – the thought that that always he promised me might actually could have happened – has haunted me ever since he died and kept me awake thinking and trying my hardest not to cry. I miss him so badly, so badly that I can barely breathe sometimes, and I only manage to keep breathing by telling myself that it’s only a matter of time before there’s not someone around to save me from myself and I succeed in killing myself, that it’s only a matter of time and circumstance before I get to see him again.
Unfortunately, no one that I had talked to up until my mom had truly understood what I was feeling, because none of them have such an intimate relationship with someone as to know what it’s like to truly not live without that person. I guess Jackson came the closest to understanding, excluding my mom from this of course, because he seemed to be able to comprehend the relationship Luke and I had developed by surviving all of the horrors of the Triple Crown together, but even Jackson can’t understand how truly broken I am now, and that there’s no possibility for me to be fixed.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about Jackson and I. Some tiny part of me still loves and needs him, and I know that, if I send him away, I will be left with no one, which would be even more painful for me than my life is now. However, the vast majority of my heart died with Luke, so I know that I can’t love Jackson as much as he deserves, or as much as he loves me now. And that’s the most bitterly ironic part: when I loved him with most of my heart, he was hung up on Alexa, and now that I’m hung up on a dead boy, Jackson loves me more than he ever did before. It almost seems like his and my whole relationship is just made of bitter ironies that haunt and hurt us even worse than we hurt each other.
It might almost have been easier, to just stay behind in El Tiempo and never come home and die in the dimension that ruined me and let Jackson go on and live his life in this dimension without me weighing him down, but, of course, Jackson wouldn’t let that happen; something about him loving me too much to let me stay in El Tiempo and kill myself alone. I guess the only good thing that came out of Jackson making me come back – besides getting to see my parents one last time – was that I got to choose who to lead the newly re-founded United States of America (the Sections decided to become the US again after me telling them stories about the democratic system of government, despite my best efforts to tell them that a dictatorship might almost be a more effective way of running a country). Of course, I chose Max, because I know him to be a competent and trustworthy leader and friend, and the people of the Sections supported me in this choice; Max, with playing a crucial part in making me the spark and with his own personal rebellion against El Nieve when he was a Triple Crown champion, has a lot of fans everywhere you go.
In fact, it seems like the only person that has more fans than he does is.. oh, right, me. It’s almost sad, the way the Sections choose to almost worship me now; it’s like they’ve gone from cowering under El Nieve to cowering behind me and my political and physical power – almost everyone in the Sections saw my stunt with the hurricane in Team Survival and then the demolition of the Champions’ Center afterwards, because Max insisted that that be filmed – neither one of which is particularly good or the mark of a good, confident, self-governing nation filled with confident people.
But I guess the Sections have never been confident in themselves or their power; after all, we could have succeeded in the rebellion much sooner against El Nieve if One and Two had thrown their full support behind the uprising, and most people in the Sections never even realized how much power they really had until I came along and showed them exactly how powerful they were. Of course, as soon as they realized this power, an ambitious leader – by the name of Caroline King – came along, manipulated everybody and used her power to kill off a thousand rebel soldiers… including Luke.
Suddenly I feel something wet trickling down my cheek, and I raise my hand in surprise to find that I’m crying over losing Luke. It then occurs to me that I haven’t really allowed myself to cry over him passing, and that now is as good a time as any, so I flop onto my bed and bury my head in my pillow, tears and sobs that can never truly express the grief I feel racking my weak, worn-out body and mind.

[Sonmi-451]

May
Re-Education (Through Labor) – Rise Against
Survivor Guilt – Rise Against
Entertainment – Rise Against
13 Suicide Attempts









































“So what did you want to talk to me about, Lizzie?” Kodiak asks me as he meets my gaze over the top of his cup.
We’re sitting in Starbucks, sipping lattes and peoplewatching. I called Kodiak up three hours ago, telling him that I needed to talk to him about something, and he, being the amazing gentleman he is, immediately drove up from Colorado Springs and met me here.
I hold up my left hand – I had kept the scar hidden up until now – and Kodiak audibly gasps in surprise.
“What happened?” he asks me concernedly, his eyes locked on mine.
“Do you have any idea how painful it is to be burned alive? Well, I know exactly how painful it is to be burned alive,” I tell him, to open my mind for a second and let him absorb all of my memories of the Triple Crown.
After a few moments, I cut him off, and he exclaims, his eyes widening in amazement and horror, “Oh my God! I’m so sorry Lizzie,” he adds sincerely, and I can’t help but smile slightly. It figures that he would apologize for it; he just is that kind of boy.
“So that’s why you invited me up here, to talk about it?” Kodiak asks, and I nod my head in confirmation.
A moment of silence passes in between us before I murmur bitterly, my eyes locked on the top of my cup, “I was Lizzie Lightning, the spark, consumed by my own flame.” I then look up at Kodiak to meet his gaze and add quietly, “Who knew being burned alive would hurt this badly?”
When Kodiak doesn’t say anything after a few moments – undoubtedly he has no idea what to say; I mean, it’s not every day a close friend of yours wants to talk about an interdimensional, incredibly scarring trip they took – I say, not able to keep the self-loathing out of my voice now, “Luke kept me whole and sane and myself for the four most trying months of my life, and how do I repay him? By burning him with me.”
A few more seconds pass in silence without Kodiak saying anything, and I begin, looking up at him to meet his gaze, “But do you know what hurt the most?” Kodiak shakes his head no almost warily – I suppose I can’t really blame him for his wariness, considering what I’ve said so far – and I finish, “The realization that my promised always wasn’t going to happen.”
After a half-second more of quiet, I add bitterly, “But I guess this is just what I get for falling in love with a mortal.”
I sigh deeply, and look up to find Kodiak watching me with sad, sympathetic golden eyes. He gives me a smile, and I look back down at my coffee, the fingers of my left hand beginning to tap spastically on the side of the paper cup.
“You know,” I begin after a long silence, “there’s something Beatty says, in Fahrenheit 451: you don’t face your problems, you burn them.” I look back up again to meet Kodiak’s gaze and finish, “I wonder what that makes me.”
I adjust my hand ever so slightly, and Kodiak’s eyes follow this motion to rest on the thin scars and scabbing cuts on my wrist. Without saying anything, he reaches over and takes my hand to trace the scars and cuts gently with his thumb, then looks up at me to ask, “Why are you trying to kill yourself?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt like this anymore,” I answer, to have Kodiak immediately respond.
“And killing yourself is the only way to stop the pain?” Kodiak shoots back, his eyes locked fiercely on mine, but I don’t bend to his will. I’ve gone through too much and had too many people attempt to bully me for Kodiak to succeed now.
“Kodiak, I will do whatever it takes to find an end,” I reply evenly, staring him down and keeping my calm. “If that end ends me, so be it.”
I then rise to my feet and turn towards the door, giving Kodiak one last look over my shoulder before leaving.










































June
Tip the Scales – Rise Against
Blood-Red, White and Blue – Rise Against
Under the Knife – Rise Against
Injection – Rise Against
Careful – Paramore
Drones – Rise Against
27 Suicide Attempts





































“Thank you,” I tell Jackson with a smile as he hands me a huge bowl of popcorn. We’re watching the Cabin in the Woods – both of us find horror movies like this to be downright funny, with all of the real horrors we’ve both experienced – and generally just having a nice time in each other’s company. In fact, this is the sixth huge bowl of popcorn we’ve blown through; I’m afraid we’ll completely kill Jackson’s stash of popcorn by the end of the movie.
“Of course,” he replies, giving me a smile of his own as he settles down next to me again and wraps his arm around me comfortingly. I lean my head on his shoulder and sigh as we watch one teenager get eaten by a werewolf-like thing that Jackson and I both agree looks pretty fun to shapeshift into and run around as.
Jackson’s and my relationship has been... interesting ever since we came back from El Tiempo. I, of course, have been so torn up over Luke being gone that I’ve tried to kill myself every day and am probably only alive right now because Jackson found me before I was able to bleed out after cutting my wrists last night. In fact, Jackson’s saved me many times since we came back, much to my family’s happiness and my chagrin.
The only days that I haven’t tried to kill myself so far have been ones that I’ve spent with Jackson, because he makes me happier, and tricks some part of me into thinking that it’s worth it to keep on living, that I can’t die because he needs me alive to have a reason to live. He’s basically been my crutch, the person who’s kept me up and fighting and alive, and I don’t know what I’d do without him, besides finally succeed in killing myself.
However, Jackson doesn’t really want to be my crutch; he wants to be my boyfriend, my soulmate, my love – my replacement Luke, basically. Unfortunately for him, that’s not really possible – after all, Luke was my always, and the only person who will ever be my always – but I haven’t had the heart or the energy to tell Jackson that because I don’t want to alienate him and be left all alone in my misery. In fact, just for the sake of not being alone and keeping him around, I’ve agreed to kind of be his girlfriend, this semi-date that we’re on being my birthday present to him. It’s the first date that I’ve allowed myself to go on with him – I didn’t think I could handle the pain up until now – and it’s been going pretty well so far.
Jackson, like always, is the personification of chivalry, and insists on doing everything so that I don’t have to move or, in his words, ‘waste any of my precious energy on doing things he could do instead.’ He made us dinner, an amazing shrimp scampi – he happens to be an amazing cook, along with everything else that he can do – and then we – well, more like I – opted to watch a movie, Cabin in the Woods in particular.
It’s probably one of the best dates I’ve ever been on, just because it’s so personal and private and we get to spend the most time together, but, despite that, it just doesn’t feel right. Some part of me seems to think that I’m betraying Luke’s memory by doing this with Jackson, even though I know that Luke would want me to be happy with another person rather than drowning in misery over him, and that part isn’t going to be ignored for much longer.
Sighing deeply, I press the pause button on the DVD player without moving by using a column of solidified air, which causes Jackson to turn and look at me with a curious, almost wary look on his face.
I reach out, set the popcorn bowl on the coffee table, and whisper, my eyes on the frozen TV screen, “Jackson, I miss him.”
“I know,” Jackson replies quietly, to reach over, hold me and give me a gentle kiss on the forehead when I break down and begin to sob.


July

Ignorance – Paramore
Dead! – My Chemical Romance
Cancer – My Chemical Romance
One Foot – Fun.
Calling All Skeletons – Alkaline Trio
The Approaching Curve – Rise Against
24 Suicide Attempts





































Sunlight floods my eyes, and I feel someone stir next to me. For one moment, for one glorious moment, I am filled with the idea that the person next to me is Luke, that everything is going to be all right, that the scars covering my mind, body and soul don’t matter anymore. Then I inhale, and Jackson’s sharp scent, tinged with the pain and hatred he always feels, invades my nostrils and burns away any fantasies I had.
This is the fourth night in a row I’ve spent at Jackson’s apartment – actually at the order of my parents, if you can believe that – because I stay mostly sane and mostly non-suicidal when I’m around Jackson. My heart hurts a little bit less, because I know that I’m not alone, that Jackson won’t and can’t leave me like Luke did, and I even think about trying to regain my life and find some purpose for living around him.
Unfortunately, being with him like this feels like a lie, because I know I don’t and won’t ever be able to feel the way about him that he does about me. However, I also can’t bring myself to tell him this, and truly cut myself off from everyone, because being incredibly lonely is much worse than faking a relationship.
“Good morning,” he murmurs quietly as he gently kisses the back of my neck. When I don’t respond, because I’m so filled with a desire for Luke that I can’t even breathe, Jackson sits up and looks down at me concernedly as he asks, “You thought I was Luke, huh?”
“Yeah,” I whsiper in reply, my throat being blocked off by my bleeding heart.
A few moments go by in silence, neither one of us knowing what to do or say, until Jackson breaks the quiet by gently rolling me over so that I’m facing him and telling me sincerely, “I may not be Luke, but, so help me God, I will do everything I can to help you and make this less painful on you if you’ll just give me a chance. You have to let me in for that to happen though, because I can’t help you if you always shut me out.”
“Jackson,” I begin quietly, my voice cracking as I’m overwhelmed with pain and sadness, “I can’t, not after Luke. He’s the only person I ever truly loved and let close to me, and now he’s dead.” I almost spit the last word, because it’s my fault that he’s dead, but manage to keep the anger and self-loathing I feel at bay and continue, “I won’t do that again, especially not to you.”
“Lizzie, I’m not as breakable as Luke was,” Jackson reminds me gently. “I can take whatever happens and survive it all too.” He pauses for a moment before finishing, “And I would too, for you.”
“Jackson,” I start, swallowing with difficulty, “I don’t need or want you. I need Luke, and you’ll never be him.”
“Lizzie, you loved me before you loved Luke, remember?” Jackson’s tone is desperate and pleading now. “You could learn to love me again.”
“No, Jackson, I can’t!” I exclaim, hesitating for a moment to give myself time to organize my thoughts. “Luke changed me so much, so much that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love another person the way I loved him. Besides,” I add, “there’s always that word of advice about what to do when you fall in love with two people.”
“Lizzie, if everyone followed that, the world would be a much different place,” Jackson tells me urgently, but I brush right past him.
“And I’m not going to make that same mistake,” I respond, rising to my feet agilely and crossing the room to stand by the door.
I place a hand on the doorknob and am just about to leave when Jackson calls out to me, “Lizzie, please!” I turn around to meet his gaze and have him tell me, “I know I’m not Luke – I know I’m not anywhere close to being Luke, in fact – but just give me a chance, and let me show you that I can make you happy, even if I’m not him.”
“Jackson, I could give you all the chances in the world, and it wouldn’t make a difference,” I reply. “I don’t need or want your fire of hatred and anger, Jackson. If I wanted more fire, I’d be the spark and burn myself again.” I pause for half a second before adding, “In fact, I don’t know how I could have ever thought I wanted you, when you’re so not right for me.” I turn back around to face the door and stare at the textured wood for a moment before turning around one last time and telling Jackson sincerely, “I’m sorry.”
I then exit without another word, and it’s at that moment that I truly fall out of love with and let go of Jackson Lucas Carter.






































“Sam, I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing,” I murmur as I sit on his couch, looking at the TV but not really seeing it. I then turn my gaze back onto him to marvel slightly at the beauty of his bi-colored brown eyes.
Sampson Marshall Turgon is twenty-four and six-six, two-twenty, with close-cropped orange hair the color of a burning flame and a gorgeous face and incredibly muscular body that had wooed millions of women across the world when he was voted the Sexiest Man Alive in 2011. He’s brilliant, too; he has a human IQ of 242 – one point lower than mine, but I’m pretty sure my test was a fluke, because there’s no way in hell I’m smarter than he is – and can do about anything, from playing football – he played college ball at ASU for a year before leaving for Africa to help with an orphanage he was sponsoring – to playing an instrument – if it exists, he can probably play it – to acing college – he only actually physically attended college for a year, and ended up receiving his Ph.D. in philosophy from ASU a year later after completing his studies online while in Africa – to writing – his work is some of the most brilliant I’ve ever read. He also happens to be immortal, a shapeshifter whose real form is an orange-and-white border collie and fire incarnate in a living form, as well as a close friend of mine and one of the few people I somehow haven’t alienated in the last two months.
“What do you mean?” he asks me, a concerned expression on his face and his arm around my shoulder in a comforting gesture. Everything about Sam – his chiseled good looks, his white smile, his fluffy orange hair that I used to love to run my hands through, his joking and protective and loving nature – is so familiar to me that it almost feels like I’m looking at myself as I watch him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing alive, Sam,” I say, my tone becoming bitter and full of self-loathing. “Everyone else from the Triple Crown – Luke and Abby and Marshall and Marcus and Adelaide and McKenzie and all of the other champions – everyone else who should be alive, basically, isn’t, and yet I am. There must have been something I could have done to change that, some way of sacrificing myself to save them, something that I didn’t do that could have-”
“Stop it, Lizzie,” Sam tells me firmly as he places finger over my lips. “Beating yourself up like this, saying that you could have done more when you very nearly gave your life for those people, isn’t going to do you any good. It’s not going to bring them back, and it’s not going to make you happier.” Sam’s tone is gentle but insistent, his eyes searching mine as he wills me to heed his words. “Please, if not for your sake then for mine, try to go just five minutes without hating yourself and without thinking about the Triple Crown, alright?” Sam takes my hands in his, his gaze still on mine, and I find myself nodding my head even as I know that what he’s asking is impossible, because that would mean I would have to forget Luke for five minutes when I can’t keep him out of my head for more than five seconds.
“Good,” Sam murmurs, not letting go of my hands, and leans forward to kiss me gently on the forehead. His lips are soft and warm against my skin, and the arms that wrap around me soon afterward are gentle but incredibly strong, just like the body they hold me against.
I lift my head off of his shoulder for a second to look up at him, and, as I take in all of his handsomeness so up-close, I can’t help but murmur, “You know, you’re kind of gorgeous.”
His face crinkles into a smile at that, and he tells me quietly in response, “You know, you’re kind of gorgeous too.” He then leans in and kisses me on the forehead again, but the gesture is cut short when he pulls back and emits a gasp of surprise and wonder as he stares down at me, his eyes tracing my face with an incredible intensity that I had never seen before.
“What?” I immediately ask him, meeting his gaze quizzically and worriedly, to find something else that I had never seen before: red-hot desire smoldering at the back of his eyes.
“I just gave myself to you, Lizzie,” Sam whispers, and my mouth falls open in a silent ‘oh’ of amazement. The moment in which you give yourself to someone is generally the first moment you see them, and it’s basically love at first sight, except far more powerful and definitely not just romantic in nature. As explained to me by my father, who gave himself to my mother the first moment he saw her, the moment in which you give yourself to someone is the moment when you realize it’s not gravity holding you to the earth, it’s them, when you devote your entire existence to them and know, in your heart of hearts, that you will go anywhere and do anything and be anything – best friend, brother, sister, father, mother, lover – for them, when they become it, the only person who will ever exist, for you. You can’t control when it happens or who’s the recipient of it, and, before Luke, I had never heard of it happening to anyone except immortals because we’re the only ones emotionally powerful enough to develop such incredibly strong attachments.
White-hot anger floods my veins – how dare Sam give himself to me, when it will just make everything so much harder on both of us! – and I snarl at Sam, “You did what?!”
“I… I gave myself to you,” Sam repeats, looking more than a bit alarmed and perturbed, and I can’t help but shake my head bitterly and angrily as I drop my gaze to my lap.
“You idiot,” I mutter, and look back up at Sam to punch him squarely on the jaw, feeling a few of my fingers crack in the process but knowing that it was worth it because I felt his jaw crack too.
I then rise to my feet and storm out of the room, completely and utterly furious with Sam. I sure as hell don’t want or need another broken boy, but unfortunately it looks like I just got another one, and I hate Sam for it.
























August
Brighter – Paramore
Roadside – Rise Against
I Caught Myself – Paramore
The Good Left Undone – Rise Against
Fences – Paramore
Always – Switchfoot
29 Suicide Attempts






































“How was your summer, Lizzie?” a voice calls out to me, and I look up from my phone to find a friend of mine, Meghan McManners, walking up to me. I don’t really want to talk to her – to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really want to go back to school to begin with, but my mom forced me; something about the socialization being good for me – but I force the best fake smile I can muster onto my face – and it’s probably pretty convincing, considering I won a whole country over on those fake smiles – and wait for her to sit down at my table.
“Pretty good,” I answer, nodding my head. Besides the eighty-something suicide attempts, it was a pretty good summer. “Went to the Olympics, won a couple gold medals, set a few world records – you know, pretty normal summer.” I give her a smile, and she nods her head, a grin crossing her face now too.
“Yeah, I saw you on TV. It’s amazing how fast you are,” she tells me, and I nod my head in recognition. A half-second passes by in silence before Meghan asks me, “So did you do anything else?”
“Well,” I begin, thinking that I might as well tell someone the basic synopsis of what happened to me, “I got burned alive, watched the boy I loved get blown up and tried to kill myself eighty-something times.” A bitter half-smile crosses my face as I stare down at the table and I say, looking back up at Meghan to find a look of sheer horror on her face, “I guess the rest of my summer didn’t go so well.”
No one else comes up and talks to me after that.

I stare down at the gleaming blade in my hands, admiring the sharpness of the steel and the way the metal shines in the light. It’s fitting that such a beautiful thing will be the object of my demise.
This is it; no one will be around to save me before I bleed out if I cut my wrists now. My parents have gone out for the day and, for some reason, decided that the therapy they had sent me had cured me of my depression enough to leave me at home. Of course, they still left the lock on the knife drawer, but that was almost too easy to break.
I can finally end it all, and stop this heart from aching so terribly, and maybe even see Luke in the afterlife. I can finally reach the end I’ve been hunting after for so long, and let death save me from my pain. Finally, after such a long and painful wait, I can free myself from this life and the scars it has given me.
I have raised the blade to my wrists and am about to press the metal in and begin my end – I can see it on my tombstone now: Lizzie Lightning, 2/13/95-10/10/12, died of a broken heart – when the doorbell rings. I’m incredibly tempted not to answer it – after all, I can’t really kill myself in privacy like I want to if there’s someone else around – but something tells me that I should answer it, so, with a sigh, I set the blade down on the coffee table, rise to my feet and walk to the front door to open it up and almost have my jaw hit the ground in shock.

“Luke,” I whisper, throwing myself at him and locking my arms around his neck before I even realize what I’m doing. I inhale deeply, and the clean, fresh scent of his cologne fills my nose and intoxicates me. After a few seconds of just holding onto him with all of my might and him holding onto me just as tightly, it occurs to me that this shouldn’t be happening, that he’s dead, and I pull back to stare up at him and meet his gaze.
As soon as I do so, I know that it’s him, because those are his incredibly beautiful, impossible-to-imitate ice-blue eyes staring down at me with so much warmth and love in them that I can’t help but wonder how on earth I didn’t have the patience to wait for him.
“Dear Cassius,” I murmur, my gaze glued to his, “I think our stars have finally changed.” I then lean up to kiss him passionately, my arms locking around his neck as I try to convey all of the emotions I’ve felt over the last five months about him in one embrace.
I fail miserably, of course, even though I end up kissing him for at least ten seconds, but that doesn’t matter. Now that he’s back, I have all the time in the world to tell him exactly how I feel, and no reason to lie about it anymore either.
“How are you alive?” I ask him in a whisper when I pull back to meet his gaze again. As I stare into his eyes, I realize with a start how my memories do their ice-blue depths no justice in capturing their beauty. Of course, my memories don’t do any justice in capturing the love and kindness pouring out of them either.
Luke has opened his mouth and is about to respond when suddenly we both feel something moving against our legs, and look down to find our hands – my left and his right – twitching together.
Immediately, without having to communicate, we both raise our twitching hands to about shoulder level to intertwine our fingers and stop our hands from twitching. Luke then finally answers, “It turns out that machine gun Max gave me put out a small force field strong enough to keep me alive. He then had Lars patch me up enough that I wouldn’t die before coming back to this dimension and gave me to completely heal to a doctor friend of his in Denver the day you came back.”
“Oh,” I exclaim quietly, my mouth dropping open in surprise. Even though Max’s decision to not tell me that Luke survived caused me much heartache, I know it was the right one because, if I thought that Luke was going to live and he didn’t, I would be even more depressed than I was a minute ago, and I can’t find it in my heart to be angry at Max in the slighest, especially not when so many more important and better emotions, like happiness and jubilation, should be and are filling me.
A small smile crosses Luke’s face at my amazement, and I just stare up at him and he just stares down at me, both of us drinking in the other’s presence, for a few long, blissful moments.
After a while, Luke seems to come to his senses, and breaks the peaceful silence that’s draped us for the last few seconds by beginning, “Lizzie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you since I first laid eyes on you four years ago.” After pausing for a half-second to make sure that I’m following, he questions, his eyes locked on mine, “Do you honestly and truly love me?”
Without thinking, without second-guessing myself, without allowing my mind to get in the way and screw things up, just answering from my gut and my heart what I know to be true, I immediately answer, “Always.”

The Gambler – Fun.

And they lived happily ever after…

[Sonmi-451]

Today happens to be the one-year anniversary of when I first started writing Triple Crown, so I also have a small short story to commemorate this date.

“It’s been a year, Luke,” I murmur as I roll over onto my back and stare up at the ceiling in wonder. “It’s been a whole year since the Triple Crown.”
“That’s hard to believe,” he responds quietly, rolling over as well and gazing over at me. “Sometimes it seems like it’s been centuries, and other times it feels like we’ve never left the arena.”
“We never really did leave the arena, Luke, and we never really will,” I whisper as I trace the texture of the ceiling with my eyes. “But it has faded, and it has gotten better, and the nightmares have gotten less vivid, and the heartache has gotten less piercing. We will never forget it though, no matter how long we live.”
“So do you still want to go to El Tiempo and see how much they’ve rebuilt?” Luke questions as he sits up and stares down at me, the ice-blue eyes that have as many shadows hiding behind them as mine regarding me with a love that surpasses death itself.
“We have to, Luke. We have to make sure that we weren’t just destroyers, that we left something behind to rebuild from,” I tell him, and he nods his head in agreement.
A moment later, a small smile crosses his face and he bends down to kiss me gently on the lips. “Well, I think we need to take a shower and get ready then,” he says, and he entwines his right hand with my left to lead me into the bathroom.

I let the gateway close behind Luke and me, and immediately I feel the memories washing over me. I created the gateway to five yards in front of what used to be the front doors of the Champions’ Center, and flashbacks of me with Luke and Jackson and Abby and Max almost overcome me as I grit my teeth and ball my hands into fists to prevent myself from being completely submerged in the past. Luke grips my shoulder hard, and the pressure of his hand gives me a focus point that helps to keep me in the present so that I’m able to regain control of my mind within a moment.
After glancing back to see that no one on the fairly crowded street lined with stores – which wasn’t there a year ago – is paying any particular attention to us, I look over at Luke, meet his gaze, slide my hand into his, and then walk, with my head held high and the other martyr who saved this place right next to me, into the large –fortunately gold – metallic building that sits on top of the Champions’ Center’s grave.

The entrance room/lobby of the building is spacious, well-decorated and yet made very somber by the ninety-nine years of dead Triple Crown champions staring down at you from the walls.
My heart catches when I find those dead in the ninety-ninth Triple Crown and see Abby and Marshall and Marcus gazing down at me almost accusatorily, as if their pictures being on the wall is my fault, and I can’t help but whisper to them, “I’m sorry,” because I know it really is my fault. Luke holds my hand tightly the whole time, not giving me the chance to slip back into the terrible past, and I’m very grateful for that.
Taking a deep breath and tearing my gaze away from the pictures, I turn to the center of the lobby and find myself, with my lightning bolt supersuit around my neck in its condensed form, a sword in my hand, and a fierce look on my face, cast in bronze ten feet tall. The inscription at the bottom of the statue reads, “For our martyr, our lightning, our spark. May we never forget her and the sacrifice she made for us,” and I stare at the thing in wonder for a long moment before looking over at Luke and finding an amused look on his face.
“Why are you surprised, Lizzie?” he asks me quietly, his gaze locking on mine. “This is no less than you deserve, after all.”
“Can I help you?” calls a voice from behind us, and we both whirl around to find the woman sitting behind the front desk, who had just noticed us, watching us inquisitively. However, all questioning falls away from her expression as she looks between me and the statue behind me and makes the connection. “Oh my God, it’s actually you. Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning,” the woman breathes, and I am quick to correct her, with a sidelong glance at Luke, “It’s Gates, actually. But yeah, that’s me.”
“And… and Lucas William Gates,” she murmurs in wonder when her eyes fall upon Luke, and he nods his head slightly yet respectfully in confirmation.
“Ma’am, we’re here to see Max,” I tell her, and immediately she responds, “Mr. Knight?”
I nod in confirmation and she adds, her eyes still huge and her voice still breathless, “He’s technically in a meeting on the sixth floor right now, but I have a feeling he’d make an exception for you.”
I can’t help but snort and mutter, “I have a feeling Max would find some way to put death on hold for us,” before telling the woman, “Thank you,” and starting up the stairs with Luke in tow.

When we reach the door of the conference room Max is in, I pause for a moment, not sure how to proceed. I glance over at Luke for help, but he simply shrugs his shoulders, seeming as unsure as I am. Finally I decide, because Max was never one for formalities, to enter without knocking first, and open the huge doors with ease by summoning a burst of wind to help me.
The room falls silent as soon as everyone recognizes us, and Max, who is sitting at the head of the table on the other side of the room from us, rises to his feet after a second of staring at us in pure shock and says weakly, with a terrible attempt at bravado, “Well, I never thought I’d see you back here anytime soon.”
“I never thought I’d – we’d,” I amend, looking over at Luke, “be back here anytime soon, but it is a rather important anniversary and we thought we should check in and make sure you have ruined the country yet.” I smirk at him, and then notice the nameplate resting in front of his seat. “Maximus Knight, President of the Reconstructed United States of America,” it reads, and I can’t help but smirk even more when I see it.
“President, eh? So it looks like rooks really can win chess games,” I tell him with an easy grin, comforted by bantering with him, and close the now-small gap in between us with a few more steps to give him a warm and welcome hug.
When I pull back, he gives me a grin of his own and replies, “This chess game was won all by the queen, I’m afraid.”
“Well, at least there are no more games to win, and none of us are pieces on a chessboard anymore,” I say seriously, and Max and Luke both nod their heads in agreement.
Max then turns to Luke with an almost fatherly smile on his face and greets, “Hello, Mr. Gates. Death seems to be treating you pretty well.”
“Fortunately, death isn’t treating me at all right now,” Luke responds with a glance over at me. “But I do feel much better now than I did when I left here.”
“I can imagine,” Max says with a smile, and turns back to me to ask, “So what were your intentions, coming here like this? Did you just want to stop by and say hi and make sure that everything wasn’t still shambles?”
Luke is about to answer yes, because that was our original plan, when I get an irrational but burning urge and cut him off to tell Max, “I want to address everyone in a speech, because I feel like I owe it to the people to let them know where I’ve been these three hundred and sixty-five days.” I look over at Luke for a moment to have him give me a nod of approval.
“Done,” a clean-cut middle-aged man in the seat right of Max’s immediately says, and I understand why when I see the nameplate that says, “Daniel Grisham, Chairman of the Board of Media Entrepreneurs.”
“Well, call up a camera crew and alert the news organizations,” Max orders, and immediately ten of the people around the table start fumbling for devices that look kind of like cell phones. To Luke and I, he says, “Let’s start heading down there,” and we follow him out of the conference room and down the stairs without further comment.
On the third floor it occurs to me that Max’s was the only face I recognized in that room, and I ask him, “Max, where’s Lars?”
“Running a hospital and medical lab on the Western coast and developing the greatest medical technology the world has ever seen,” Max responds, and I nod my head in understanding as a small, happy smile flits across my face. Good for Lars, that he was following his dream and finally doing what he really wanted to, instead of what he felt compelled to do, with his life. It seems that both of us have found ways to move on from the Triple Crown.

“You ready?” Max asks me, and I stare at the cameras in front of me and nod. News crews were just arriving as we exited the building, and it took them all less than a minute to get their cameras set up and prepare for filming the first words out of my mouth to be made public in more than a year.
The cameraman in front of me counts down, “Five, four, three, two, one,” and I grab Luke’s hand as the red light on the camera starts flashing, meaning that it’s recording.
“Hello, people of El Tiempo – sorry, but this place is always going to be El Tiempo to me. I think all of you know what today is: the one-year anniversary of the day I left after competing, with Luke here, in the ninety-ninth annual Triple Crown and bringing down the tyrannical government of El Nieve through my brash and rebellious actions. I saw the statue in the new government building, and I heard from Max that you renamed this city Lightning, after me, and I just want to let you all know that I am very honored and moved by these gestures.”
I pause for a moment before continuing, “I don’t really know why I returned here, after three hundred and sixty-five days of hating this dimension with a burning passion and never wanting to set foot here ever again. Originally I told myself that it was to see how the rebuilding process was coming along, to make sure that I hadn’t burned everything down permanently, but now I realize that maybe I came back to test my memory, and see how much I have forgotten. I haven’t forgotten very much, it seems.”
A second more of a delay, and I keep talking, “I read a book called Life of Pi once – I’ve read it lots of times, actually – and my favorite quote from that book is Chapter 22. ‘I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: ‘White, white! L-L-Love! My God!’ – and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, ‘Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the brain,’ and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.’ What I take that to mean, in the context of the rest of the book, is that God is the better story. God is the wildflower in the field of weeds, or the ray of sunlight in a thunderstorm, and God is always there. I think I kind of lost faith in God, during the Triple Crown, because it was hard to believe that there was someone up there who actually cared when I was watching children getting slaughtered by other children around me, but that was because I forgot to look for the better story. I forgot to see the wildflower in the jungle of One-Person Survival, or the sunlight in the blizzard of Team Survival, and that pessimism nearly killed me – it should have killed me – because all I could focus on was the bleakness of whatever fate I chose, and on the atrocities happening around me. I know now that I will never forget to see the better story ever again, because I truly believe in the better story now. After looking back upon the horrors of the Triple Crown, I can recall some good moments too: laughing with Abby, screwing around in the training gym with Marshall, marrying Luke, being around Jackson, teasing Max, talking with Mitchell. There was a better story if I chose to see it; I was just too blinded by the dry, yeastless factuality to do so. Never, never, will I succumb to the dry, yeastless factuality ever again, and neither should you. When there is a choice, and there is always a choice, choose the better story.”
“Thank you,” I end, my tongue and throat dry, and a moment of dead silence passes. Then, applause begins to break out from the camera crews, so that, within a second, the air is filled with sound of solemn and respectful clapping.
Max pulls me off to the side as the applause dies down and cameras get put away and he tells me with a smile, “Man, that was pretty good Lightning. Maybe you should be president of this country instead of me.”
“Don’t give anyone any ideas, Max,” I respond with a warning tone, shaking my head vehemently. “I have no intention of ever governing anyone, and you would do well to remember that.”
I hear a slight chuckle to my left and look over to find Luke, who was silent throughout the whole affair, laughing quietly as he watches me.
“What?” I ask him curiously, not being able to stop a smile from crossing my own face.
“Your vehemence, that’s all,” he replies, his grin fading into a warm smile, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders to tell me sincerely, “That was wonderful, Lizzie. Now, what do you say we go home?”
I nod my head and agree, “Yeah, we should go,” and then turn to Max to say to him, “Well, it was nice visiting. I hope you won’t miss us too terribly, because God knows I won’t miss this place at all.”
Max chuckles and replies, “Hey, you should still come back next year. After all, I’d certainly like to hear another speech, and God knows the news crews need more to do.”
“We’ll think about it, Max,” I tell him, as I glance over at Luke. “But I’m not making any promises.”
“It was nice seeing you, Lizzie,” Max murmurs as he steps forward to give me a farewell hug, and I swear I see tears in his eyes when he pulls back.
“It was nice seeing you too, Max,” I echo with a nod, and, after Luke nods as well, I create a gateway to home. I entwine the fingers of my left hand with the fingers of his right, as I always do so that our scars, the physical proof of our always, line up, and then step through the gateway hand-in-hand with Luke, exceedingly happy to see that the price of martyrdom I paid wasn’t wasted.