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I thought it was normal, the way you treated me. For so long.
I know you didn't mean to. You never asked to be the Chosen One. You never knew what you were doing.
But I got used to being paraded around. Wondering why my chest felt so empty when I was with you. The stone weighing down my feet until I could've been the witch in the well.
I was never much more than your golden girl. The proof of your destiny. And the saddest thing is, Simon, neither of us wanted it. We accumulated compliments like dust and we used them as evidence that this was right, it had to be, when I think we both knew it was wrong. That I sacrificed so much of my youth for you in dark lairs, your damsel in distress, and most days you didn't even look at me.
You can't blame me for wanting Baz. He gave me crumbs that I eagerly scooped up like a child on the floor, tugging fruitlessly at the leg of his trousers. And oh, the cool little smiles he gave me, just intermittent enough to keep me there. Just indulgent enough let me imagine that he could want me more than you did.
Your love reduced me, Simon. It took and took until I was starving. I became one of those girls men so often condemn—the ones who make fools of themselves by denying every good thing about who they are so that a boy can reaffirm them.
But you don't know that feeling until it's sitting hollow in your gut, until whatever magic that keeps other people confident was sucked out of me and the only place I could go for approval was you or Baz.
You, always busy with power, humming absentmindedly with your fingers laced through mine; and Baz, fuming distantly and putting on a show of his ow It makes such a pretty picture. You wanted so badly for it all to be perfect.
That's why I couldn't leave you for so long.
Look what you did to me. And you didn't even know.
The two of you fought over me for so long. I kept thinking, maybe this is what love is supposed to feel like. Maybe I should be honored that I could be your prize, coveted by the villain with his dark desiring eyes. Even before I knew it was you he wanted, I always felt a kind of crawling beneath my skin. I was a possession to both of you. The manifestation of your enmity.
And everyone told me I was supposed to be glad for it. Thankful.
I tried for so long, Simon. I pretended for you. I relished your rage at Baz's attention, though I later learned that it was only half on my behalf. (I know they didn't intend for that word to make me feel diminished, but it always, always has.)
I see it all in pale greens and golds, painstakingly touching up my face so I could win moments of your time. I wanted both of you, in a way, but neither of you was ever mine.
And sometimes when all this keeps me awake, I wonder what would've happen if I got the thing I always craved when I was a girl—normalcy. Summer flings with pretty Pip Stainton, laughing with Penny undimmed by rumors of vampires and Humdrum attacks. But it's so good now. I'm living and I know what love is—I know it should never include languishing and a heart squeezed dry like empty lemon peels.
I'm glad we met, that our hands touched in Watford. I like the brief moments where we existed apart from the world and outside of my parents' shadow. And it aches so much because I know how much you cared. I was a misfit puzzle piece and you just kept jamming me into the place of your prophecy and all I could think for so many years was that maybe I wasn't normal.
Maybe I didn't belong anywhere.
Every forgotten birthday, every misplaced word was added to my pile of evidence. And it took me so long to unlearn it.
I want back all those wasted years. All the desperation for the both of us, nights spent rubbing our hands together for a spark when there was never any kindling to start with. Acting how I thought I should act when there was a little girl inside me kicking and screaming.
What should I have done? If I hadn't been the conduit between you and Baz, could I have discovered myself long before now, skipped all those years sleepily counting out dance steps?
I'll never tell you any of this. We're safe and sound and steady now, but I still can't let it go. I can't get the stains out. I can't stop wondering how we could've hurt each other so deeply without even knowing it.
How we could have pretended, for so long, that it was all okay.
That this is how it should've been.