Read Pretty Dead for Free Online Page B

I had less and less appetite for his contraband now, though I wasn’t sure why.)
    “Stop acting like this is funny! You are fucked-up.”
    “So are you.”
    “That’s right. I want you to fuck me up even more.”
    “That’s not an escape. You can never escape this planet that way.”
    “But it won’t matter anymore what happens.Nothing will matter.”
    Suddenly I wanted to hold him in my arms, comfort him like a child. I wanted to share my secret. It had been hard to hide it for so long.
    Instead, I pushed him away with my words. “Just admit it. You want the power, don’t you? What you think is power. It’s not. And it’s not true that things stop mattering. That’s the piece you don’t hear about. You still care. You still want. You’re still lonely. More lonely. And you still weep, or you would weep if you could—you wish you could weep for some relief—when you live long enough to see the planet you once wanted to escape from burning like a patch of grass under a magnifying glass in the sun.”
    I thought for a moment that he would drop to his knees and beg me. There were tears in his eyes. They weren’t hollow anymore. He had come to life, realizing there was one thing left he still wanted now that Emily was gone.
    But it wasn’t an option.
    “I’m sorry, Jared,” I said, as softly as I could. “I want to help you, but I can’t do that to you. I mean, I wouldn’t. If I were one.”
    I wasn’t really lying. I was no longer sure if I was a V word or if it was possible for me to change him at all. Perhaps the story of Mariette and Camille was not just a fairy tale.
    Before I could say anything more, Jared turned and fled from my house into the smoky night.

Need
    J ared came back to see me the next evening, hunched in my doorway with that black hair hiding his green eyes. My heart surged in my chest, but I feigned calm. Once again, I let him in.
    “What do you want? I told you…”
    “I came for something else.”
    “Why should I talk to you? You made some terrible accusations.”
    “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
    I hesitated for a moment. “Accepted.”
    “I want her back,” he said, and my heart sank likethe stones Charles and I used to toss into the lake when we were so very young.
    I beckoned him to follow me into the kitchen. I poured him wine, this time without asking, and he took the large glass. I sliced fresh tuna into thin strips with the sharp blade of my kitchen knife. I laid the fish out on a plate with ginger and wasabi. Then we went into the garden and sat by the pool where I first swam with Emily. I imagined her stepping out of the water, naked and laughing, so pretty, so in love with Jared Pierce.
    He didn’t eat with me, but he drank his wine, and I filled a second glass for him. In the distance we could see the fires flaring along the horizon like a second sunset, like the devil’s barbecue.
    “Are you coming back to school?” he asked me.
    “I don’t think so. I’m sick of it, anyway.”
    “Why did you go at all?”
    “It was a lark. I wanted to see what it was like for all of you.”
    “That’s how I feel,” he said. “I want to understand you. How it works. What you are.”
    “Why?”
    “Since Emily…I started thinking about death. And how to escape it. If there had been a way for her to escape it. You have the answer.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I see that you do. I see it in you. But I want to understand it better.” He paused, and I saw his mouth twitch with concentration. “I want to paint you.”
    And then he had me.
    I wanted to be seen the way he had seen Emily in those portraits he did of her. Not as a body but as a soul. Jared could do that. But maybe only with someone he loved. Maybe I would only look like the monster I was inside.
    We sat in silence for a while. It was as if this subject he had broached had frightened both of us but also linked us somehow, like some kind of oath sealed in blood. After the sun set, we went into the