The Tear Collector (24 page)

“I promise, Cass,” she says.

“Listen, if you break the promise, then you’ll learn how far we’re willing to go to protect our secret.”

She nods, accepting the threat, but says, “There’s so much I want to know. So much that—”

“Trust me, it is better for you if you don’t know too much,” I say.

“Can you just tell me what happened in the nursing home? How did Scott end up alive and his grandmother dead?” she asks, but I don’t answer. “Just explain that part to me.”

“I can’t explain it,” I say. “Like most things in life, truth rests between faith and facts.”

“Can I ask one last question?” she says. “You owe me that much. What are you really?”

I pause, then say, “We call ourselves the Family. We’re like an emotional succubus or what you’d call an energy vampire,” I say, trying to explain the unexplainable. “But we’re not monsters. We don’t have superpowers all the time, but we can, when filled with tears, act with great strength and energy. Mostly, we’re like every other species on this planet that has adapted to survive. Despite what you saw from Alexei, most of us are not
evil, and we do our best to live among humans without directly causing pain, both to avoid detection and because it is wrong.”

“But for you to survive, humans must suffer,” she says.

“Humans already suffer. We just soak up that energy. If we didn’t serve a purpose on this earth,” I remind her, “we wouldn’t survive.”

“I wish I could write about all this. Don’t you think this could be a book?” She looks at her notebook, then back at me. “Cass, if I could write about all of this, then how do you think such a book should start?”

I take a sip from my water bottle, smile at Samantha, and then say, “Are you crying?”

NEWS REPORT #6

Illinois State Police have issued an AMBER Alert for thirteen-year-old Barry Wilson. Wilson, a seventh-grade student at North Chicago Middle School, was last seen on April 17. Witnesses place him in the playground of the school where he was playing baseball with friends. After a disagreement during the game, Wilson left the playground alone. One witness said he was crying. Law enforcement officials are on the lookout for a black Ford van seen in the area earlier in the day.

CHAPTER 19
MONDAY, APRIL 20

How was my spring break?” I say, repeating Mr. Abraham’s question to me. We’re sitting near the edge of the pool. It’s after school, and I’m waiting for Scott to come pick me up. He missed school today, and I missed him. Like a detective piecing together the clues to a crime, this new feeling of missing Scott is another sign that Maggie is wrong: love isn’t just an illusion; it’s my new reality.

“All right, I guess,” I say, my feet dangling in the water, just like my answer barely touches the truth. How was my spring break? Busy, I guess. In a few days, I helped save one life, but in doing so, took another. I saw a person I love tortured and I was almost raped. I learned secrets about my family, while revealing my deepest secret to a person that I don’t even know I can totally trust. It wasn’t a break; it was a rip in the fabric of my life. “What did you do, Mr. A?”

“Nothing exciting,” he says, and I try not to laugh almost
as hard as I try to listen, but my mind is drifting. He catches me and asks, “Are you listening?”

“I always listen,” I mutter, mainly to myself.

“That’s what makes you such a good peer counselor,” he says.

I swallow the smile that comes with a compliment, then mumble, “I need to quit.”

“What? Peer counseling?”

“It’s too hard to listen to people’s problems,” I answer. In the past, I soaked up people’s pain and tears like a sponge, but I know, deep inside of me, that I can’t do it anymore. Like an alcoholic avoiding bars and parties, I need to avoid opportunities to get my grief fix. If the first step was realizing I have a choice, then the second, I assume, is deciding to live without tears. I need to wean myself off tears for when I convince Siobhan to reveal the third and final step into humanity.

“You’re so good at it, and we need you. Many students are still in pain over Robyn,” he says. I think not about school, but Robyn’s family. I must see them all, not for me, but for them.

“I know,” I say, then fall deep into thought. Mr. Abraham’s still talking, but I’ve diverted my attention and my eyes to the pool.

“Maybe
you
need to talk to someone,” Mr. Abraham says with a nervous chuckle.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem distracted,” he says.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask, as if each word weighs a hundred pounds.

“Of course, Cassandra,” he answers.

“How do you know what to do?” I’m back to staring at the pool.

He laughs first, but then smiles. His expression is familiar to me not from life, but from TV and movies. It’s that concerned and caring look a daughter hopes to see in their father’s eyes.

“Sorry, that was a stupid question,” I say.

“There are no stupid questions,” he says. “Just questions that are badly phrased. What did you mean, Cassandra, when you asked that question? Do about what?”

“I mean, how do you make an important decision?” But even as he looks within himself for an answer, I realize my question itself is the answer. All my life, my family has lived like animals: we survive as a pack. Like a wild creature cares only about finding prey and nourishment, so, too, does my family only act out of animal instinct. We don’t really decide anything, for making a decision is a human activity.

When Mr. A can tell I’m paying attention again, he starts. “What I’m about to say isn’t very helpful, but
you just know
. For all we talk in science about evidence, trial and error, and all the rigors of the scientific method, sometimes you just know. You don’t listen to your head or your heart. There’s something in between that must hold the answer. Don’t listen to science;
instead, listen to the silence. And in that silence, answers and inspiration always emerge.”

“Like a message from God?”

He shrugs, then says, “No, Cassandra, more like a message from your true self.”

I get dressed and wait for Scott by the front door of the school. I don’t know about listening to the silence; instead, I decide to listen to Siobhan. She always says she won’t talk to me, then she always does. When compassion isn’t just an act, it is much harder to turn off, I suppose. I reach out to her new humanity on my cell phone.

“Hello, Siobhan, it’s Cassandra. How are you—?”

“I heard.”

“Heard?”

“You’re not the only cousin I talk to,” she says, sounding a little impatient. “Like I’ve told you before, you need to leave me out of this. I’ve left the family. That’s all in the past.”

“What did you hear?” I ask, pretending that I didn’t hear her little speech.

“About you rejecting Alexei,” she says. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you, cousin, so you do know,” she says. The
impatient tone in her voice returns. “Simon won’t stand for this, nor will Veronica. Alexei will be back. You don’t have a choice.”

“But I do,” I say. “You told me I had a choice. I believed you. I’ve made my choice.”

She pauses, then sighs. “This is serious. You can’t undo it. This is forever.”

“I know,” I say, thinking how Maggie said something similar. “But, do you regret it?”

“To be honest, sometimes yes,” she says. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but, yes, I wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. Your family is forever, but human love doesn’t always work out that way. I want you to understand this choice is a matter of life and death.”

“Life and death?”

“If you leave, then who will collect tears for Veronica? You’ll be breaking the chain.”

“They’ll survive somehow,” I say. “Your family managed, didn’t they?”

She pauses. “Yes, everyone pulled together, but it is so much more than just that. You’re killing off your old self to gain a human life.”

“But how?”

“How do you think it happens?” Siobhan asks. “To become human, you must …,” she continues. “Cass, you have to know what comes next.”

“To become human, I must … I must take a human life.”

“You drain all the human energy into your body,” she says. “And then you are transformed.”

“Are you saying that you killed—,” I start, but it is a question I don’t want to ask, one that I know she doesn’t want to answer, and one that shows me whatever I thought the stakes were, they just got a great deal higher.

“Listen, Cassandra, I can’t tell you what to do,” she says, words racing out of her. “I’m telling you the risks, you already know the rewards. And I’m telling you the heavy, heavy cost.”

“Who was it? Who did you kill?” I ask, but I’m left listening only to the silence.

“Siobhan?” She doesn’t answer; she just hangs up.

I wanted to know how she did it, but now I wish I didn’t. I knew it couldn’t be as easy as just falling in love. I saved Scott’s life, but to be like him and with him, I need to take away someone else’s life. I don’t know if I’m that strong. I’m not sure who is that weak.

“Does it still hurt?” I ask after pulling away from Scott’s kiss. I climb into his car.

“A little,” he says, then smiles. “But it makes it better. I’ll need a daily dose of your kisses.”

“Can we make a stop at Becca’s on the way?” I ask. Scott and I are going out tonight to look at prom dresses. We’re meeting Samantha at the store; she’ll be going with her theater pal, Michael—a last minute fix-up, another high school relationship of convenience and coincidence.

“Anything for you,” he says as we drive off toward the mall. “How was school today?”

“Interesting,” I respond, smiling like I do all the time now, it seems. Smiling at Scott and at the Beatles music he has playing for me. But mostly smiling at how far short the word “interesting” falls when used to describe my life since the day in early March when I first saw Robyn crying in her car.

“I’ll be back at school tomorrow, but you might want to skip,” Scott says.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s not going to be pretty. I might be getting the crap beat out of me,” Scott says, then actually laughs. “I mean my mouth is already broken, so I figure now seems as good a time as any to get my ass kicked. When you’re already in pain, I say pile it on.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Who is going to kick your ass?”

“Probably Craig,” he says.

“Why? What did you do?”

“It’s what I’m going to do,” he says with pride. “I’m going to tell his girlfriend Brittney off. If he’s a man, he’ll stand up for her. Not that she deserves it or will appreciate it.”

“Why would you do that?” I hope he can hear the worry in my voice.

“I thought about the rumors, the lies she spread about you and Robyn,” Scott says. “I know the Christian thing to do is forgive her, but I just can’t. Her sins are unforgivable, at least by
me. But it’s not just the rumors. It’s more than that. In fact, it is everything about her.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. That’s the last lie that I’ll ever tell him, I promise myself.

“Everything I can’t stand in a person is embodied in Brittney,” he continues. “I know it is wrong to be so judgmental, but Brittney’s shallowness, her lack of caring about others. It’s all so wrong.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” I start, and then I stoke the fires, telling Scott about Brittney spreading rumors and using people like Kelsey to do her dirty work. I remind him Brittney had Kelsey lie to him about me cheating on him with Craig. I tell him about her fake tears when Robyn died and her threat to me when I wouldn’t take down Robyn’s Facebook profile. I tell him about Brittney’s role in Robyn’s death. Maybe Robyn killed herself, but if she did, she didn’t just jump—she was pushed, with Brittney’s fingerprints all over her back. Just like my knife is in Brittney’s back now.

“I think about her, your friend Becca, and wonder if maybe Samantha was right,” he says.

“What do you mean, Scott?”

“Maybe there isn’t a God. How could a just God let someone like my grandma or Robyn die, while people like Brittney don’t just live, they seem to thrive.”

As I watch Scott’s face tighten, I realize I’ve gone too far, probably because it’s a path that I’m so used to taking. “That
was wrong. Don’t say anything to her,” I whisper. The old me was trained to stir up drama and trauma—and I still can’t resist those impulses. Every day will be a struggle against my nature.

“No, it’s like that night of our first date in the restaurant. You gotta stand up to people like this,” Scott says. “If you get hit, you just turn the other cheek, but you don’t turn a blind eye to bad behavior.”

“Bullies like Brittney, they’re not that strong,” I say. “Deep down, I know she’s weak.”

“Yet another reason you don’t let the Brittneys of the world win without fighting back.”

“This is why I love you,” I say. The words roll off my tongue easily now. It was much harder to say to Cody when I didn’t mean it. That drained my energy, but saying “I love you” to Scott brings me more. My family finds energy in tears; humanity finds it in love. I wrap my arms around Scott as the sound of “Across the Universe” fades out. I let the silence surround me. There’s no sound now except the beating of two hearts in perfect time.