Page 53 of Sparktopia
I shake my head. “No, Clara. I’m not getting out. I’m staying right here. And I don’t care if we spend our last day together spitting insults and hating one another, I’m stayingright here.”
She wants to cry. Her face is bright red and her eyes are glassy and bloodshot. She wants to fall into my arms and sob. And beg for me to save her. And hope that there is some way to stop our dreams from dying before we ever even had a chance. She wants to cry because this is it. This is all we get. This one stupid day. And it’s not enough. Especially when we had ten years and all we did was piss them away, thinking we always had tomorrow.
Well, we were wrong. We made all the wrong choices, we prioritized all the wrong things, and the realization that this day is happening right now because of the choiceswemade is a bitter pill to swallow.
After several seconds of silence and staring, Clara lets out a breath. “If you love me, you have a very funny way of showing it.” And then the tears once again start falling down her cheeks. She doesn’t sob, though. Up until yesterday, Clara Birch was never a woman who felt sorry for herself. She was always acutely aware of her privilege. She was, perhaps, the most poised, proper and polite of them all. A perfect Spark Maiden. Not one black mark against her good name in all those ten years she was on display.
It’s just… a lot. The last couple of days have been an absolute nightmare.
And I’m admittedly not handling it well either.
It’s my job to keep her steady. It’s my job to keep her safe. And I’ve failed on both accounts. My erratic behavior, my anger, the rough sex—it’s done nothing but pile onto the realization that everything she thought was true is not.
I exhale and bow my head. “I’m sorry. I’m making everything worse here. I’ve said all the wrong things, I’ve behaved out of character, and I’m just…” I look up at her again. Her face is all crumpled up with sadness now. Not fear, though I’m sure she’s still very much afraid of what’s coming, just sadness. “I’m just…a huge disappointment and I’m sorry, Clara.” I shrug. “That’s all I can say.”
I have an urge to walk out now. To be alone so I can grieve my dead father and wallow in my own self-pity about having to send the woman I love into the arms of a sadistic god. But that’s not me. I’m not a man who walks out.
So I don’t. I walk over to her instead, expecting her to push me away, because that’s what I deserve, to be honest. But she doesn’t recoil. She lets me wrap my arms around her and then she sinks into my chest and just lets me hold her as she cries.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I’m crying, and sad, and depressed, and hopeless—I know I feel all these things. But there’s a blankness inside me as well. An emptiness. A void begging me to push reality away and concentrate on the dream holding me in his arms instead.
Before I was a Spark Maiden, I was a Little Sister. Before I was a Little Sister, I was a Pledge.
I feel like there has never been a time in my life when the god didn’t own me.
My pledge time was only six years because my Extraction happened on my eighteenth year. Some Little Sisters are older, but none are younger than eighteen. If you miss—even by a day—you can’t be in that Extraction group. And the upper cutoff is twenty-four. So, there are many girls in Tau City who by chance of birth never even have the opportunity to pledge their lives to the god in the tower.
Twelve-year-old me would’ve been devastated had that been my case. I was sure—very, very sure—that I was meant to be a Spark Maiden.
Looking back, sixteen years on, I wish it had been the case. I wish I’d chosen another path. One where, yes, I was poor. Sent back down-city to live in squalor after my father died when I was a teenager. Perhaps Finn would’ve forgotten about me. It would’ve been a risk.
But it’s equally possible that he wouldn’t. That he would still choose me. That he would lift me up. That we would not have wasted the past ten years. That we would be married with children by now. Our own home, our own family.
And I feel like such a fool for chasing this stupid dream of independence. Because it was selfish. It was… desire. Lust. For more power and status. For nicer quarters and better clothes.
For coin.
It is a heartbreakingly sober realization that the whole reason I am in this predicament right now is because ofcoin.
I never wanted to go into the tower, but I wanted everything that came with being a Maiden. All the fame, and riches, and comforts.
So it’s all my fault that I am here, on the precipice of death, lamenting the scope of all my bad decisions.
I’m crying about it, yes. Because there is sadness inside me.
But more so, there is shame. And anger. At myself, of course, but at Finn too. And Aldo. Why didn’t he stop me? If Aldo loved me like a daughter married to his only child, why did he not stop me? Why didn’t he take me aside and force me to believe that I am enough for Finn just the way I was?
Perhaps it was not his place? I guess I can understand that.
But then, wouldn’t it have been Finn’s place? As the man claiming to love me? Shouldn’t he have taken me aside and forced me to believe in his absolute, undying love? Forced me to believe that I was enough for him just the way I was?
This idea that I have been wronged lights a fury inside me. Because the truth of it all is staring me in the face.
I am going to die tonight.
My perfectly imagined future was nothing but a dream.
