Be in the Real (36 page)

The words spilled out before he could rein them back in. In a way it felt good to finally say exactly what he had been thinking every moment since the night that Kaila had died two weeks before.

Pauline swallowed a few times before she spoke.

“If anyone can take the blame for her dying it’s me. She saved me and…”
 

She broke off. Fresh tears trickled down her ashen cheeks then unexpectedly, Pauline straightened her spine and drew herself to her full height.

“But I’m not going to waste another minute feeling guilty because Kaila sacrificed her life for me.”

 
She locked on Derrick.

“And you need to let this go too. She didn’t die because of you she
lived
because of you. If you had never taken her out of there, she wouldn’t have had the chance to see the world. And gauging by what she looked like on the outside, she lived and loved every second that she was free.”

Derrick shook his head. He wanted to believe that Pauline was right, that he had somehow given Kaila something true, but it felt wrong to minimize that he had encouraged her to leave Wildwind on absolutely false pretenses. He had never predicted a death in his life, and all the stories that he had told Kaila had been just that, stories. It hadn’t taken long for him to glean that Kaila was mystified by predictions of the future and everything that went with it. In truth the only prediction that had rung true had been that Kaila needed to save Pauline, and no one was more sorry than Derrick was, that it had worked out that way.

“You can’t waste another moment pining and wishing for something different, it’s just a fucked up excuse for people to stay in the same rut they have always been in. You know what Kaila taught me Derrick?”

He brought his gaze to hers. His head was muddled with remembrance.

“What?”

“That it’s okay to be happy, that no matter what shit is going on around us, we don’t have to sink into it. We can still laugh, at the very least smile because it’s in those solitary moments, that we find the light that will eventually lead us out of the darkness. Kaila lived every emotion, every experience fully. When she got mad she could rip a man apart with her bare hands, and when she laughed it was with every bit of her heart and soul. We could learn a lot from the way she lived her life. How she embraced every moment. She wasn’t lost in the past and how it had looked, it was all about the now. She had this kind of wonder about her that made her want to discover what it all meant and how she factored into it. We could do a lot worse than to follow her lead.”

“Sounds like you’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

Derrick shook his head. He so wanted to run with this notion, buy into Pauline’s theory, but it seemed too easy and also disrespectful to Kaila’s memory, given what he had done.

“I only told you part of the truth about how truly calculated I had been. I guess I was quiet because I was ashamed, but now I need to come clean, tell you everything.”

He shifted his stance then drew in a huge breath before he spoke again.

“It was all about the club, the fucking club was my life. It allowed me to believe that breaking her out so Franco and so many others could pick her brain, or at least Trillian’s brain, was absolutely fine. Everyone on the outside, including me wanted to get something from her, to understand the meaning of everything she wrote. Because everyone figured that somehow Kaila…Trillian knew things that we just didn’t. I have to admit that reading her posts was like a drug for me. I could never get enough, ever. Obsession is a master inventor. I mean I jumped off a fucking bridge so I could get admitted. I planned every detail, planted symbols that I knew she would be drawn to after you told me that she was intrigued by symbols. As soon as I knew you guys were tight I used you too Pauline, so I could get to Kaila. By all rights you should never speak to me again…”

“Wow, you really had this all figured out,” Pauline said. An expression of incredulity spread across her face. “That’s seriously fucked Derrick.”

Pauline tapped her temple then released a long sigh before skewering Derrick with a stare.

“So you’re saying that you had no feelings for Kaila at all, that she was an means to an end so you could meet Trillian?”

Derrick shook his head slowly; shame clouded every one of his features.

“Yeah, definitely at first. But then later when she ended up getting sent to the other side of Wildwind because I’d stolen her computer, so I could see if there were more of her Musings that she hadn’t published yet, I started to see that she was a real person not a robot spewing out the secrets to life.”

He raked a shaky hand through his hair.
 

“There were times after that, when I wanted to abandon the whole idea because she mattered more to me than I wanted her to.”

Pauline locked on him in a way that made him feel as if he needed to elaborate on what he had just said.

“Not in a romantic way, that wasn’t it at all, it was more like I wanted to protect her and…I did a fine job of doing that...if only I had taken her back when I had planned, admitted the truth, told her everything…”
 

Pauline was silent for a few moments before she found the words to respond.

“If I’m being honest I used you too Derrick, because you know you’re cute enough but you’re not really my type,” Pauline said.
 

She gazed out across the stone markers that said that the dead lived there, before bringing her focus back to Derrick.

“I’ll admit that what you did was supremely shitty, mean even, but I saw the way she looked at you, at the world really and…I can only describe it as her being free, really free. And you saw her seizures, the tumor must have been growing rapidly. You took her out when she was well enough to go. Who knows what would have happened later on.”

“If I had known about how sick she was it definitely would have stopped me from breaking her out. I thought she was having seizures because her meds needed to be adjusted…even so I was selfish, she was clearly unstable. Being obsessed isn’t an excuse, but I have to admit it can make you do things that you never would have expected you could.”

Pauline linked her fingers with Derrick, squeezing his hand in hers.

“I think everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, there’s no other explanation. We can try to go back in time, beat ourselves up over and again, but it won’t change anything. But if we spin it in another way and remember Kaila the way she was that last day, it might make it a little easier to cope with.”

Derrick pressed his lips together in a way that said he wasn’t convinced.

“Derrick, Kaila died believing in miracles and magic and her ability to predict the future. I’m sure there are a lot of people in the world that would love to be able to believe, truly believe in what Kaila embraced unquestioningly. She lived, really lived, and though every part of me wants to feel like you, be filled with regret and downplay the effect of her being outside Wildwind. It’s just plain wrong.”

 
Tears flooded Pauline’s eyes once again. She smiled despite them.

“She knew so much more than we did Derrick…be in the real…that’s what she said.”

A puff of wind blew Pauline’s hair away from her cheek, revealing the scar that Kaila had always been so fixated on.

Derrick’s fingers grazed the star-shaped scar before Pauline could put her hair back in place. She instinctively moved her face out of his touch.

“Kaila believed that this scar meant something…”

Pauline nodded.

“Yeah, it does mean something, that I was stupid enough to try to blow my head off…”

Derrick let his arm drop back to his side.

“For her it was something more than that, like a cryptic message that she needed to figure out.”

“Maybe it wasn’t for her to figure out, but for me to understand that I have so much to be grateful for.”

Pauline shifted, leaning her weight to her left side, off the foot that still bothered her a little.

“I’m a lesbian. So what if I like girls, so what if my parents want to make me into something I’m not, make me heterosexual…none of that shit matters because I have a chance to be better than they are, and most definitely better than I’ve been. I’ve pissed most of my life away pitying myself and my lot in life, but based on the rest of the world I’m doing just fine.”

Pauline took a few steps forward then paused. She glanced back at Derrick who remained frozen in place.

“You know she killed her parents?”

Derrick nodded.

“But what you didn’t know was that they were completely fucked up people.”

“What do you mean?”

Derrick leaned in a little closer to Pauline.

She dabbed her eyes with a tissue a few times before she continued.

“They had her locked up like a caged animal for most of the time that she was with them. I read the files, and to be honest I kind of wished I hadn’t because…”

She trailed off, gazing at the crowds that were still moving away from the graveyard.

“They were real pieces of work, scientists who had adopted Kaila from an orphanage somewhere in Russia. They never loved her, or at least that’s how it reads. It was so fucked up, they did deprivation, locked her in the dark, they took away food and made her stay up for hours at a time and so much more…she was no better than a lab rat to them. When I was in the office I read the report on her brain tumor and I don’t know much medical lingo but it didn’t sound good. After I found out about it I couldn’t understand why she had a tumor in the first place because to me she was too young to be that sick. I might be off base but I figure it was something that her parents and their
experiments
caused…”
 

A shudder ran through Pauline. She turned to face Derrick again.

“Wildwind was actually a step up for Kaila, as fucked up as that may sound. The only good thing her so-called parents did for her was to leave her enough money, so she could be taken care of for the rest of her life.”

“I never knew that about her and her parents, thanks for telling me. It doesn’t exactly change anything but at least it makes me understand her more, if that even matters.”

“It matters, because you’ll never be the same again and neither will I. I’m not going to stand here and tell you I’m all peachy, but I
will
say that I’m not going to allow Kaila’s sacrifice to go to waste. Her life meant something, and me getting my shit together and eventually my life on track means that she lived, and she’ll go on living in everything I do.”

Derrick’s breath came out in a rush.
 

“That’s profound.”

“Not profound, true. Now lets go out and start living.”

Derrick shrugged, then threaded his fingers with Pauline’s once again. It was odd but Derrick somehow knew the remnants of Kaila would always link them together.

Pauline and Derrick moved in unison, across the last few feet of the cemetery. The dewy grass squished beneath their shoes and reminded Derrick of the rainstorm that Kaila had reveled in. He knew he would always remember her that way, hair tousled, rain splattering her face and so much happiness because of the real world that surrounded her.

“Let’s start living in the real like Kaila wanted us to,” Derrick said.
 

Pauline smiled her crooked grin and just at that very moment the wind blew her hair away from her scar one more time. And to Derrick it felt like a sign from Kaila that said that she was doing just fine.
                                                                         

∞Infinity- two circles linked into one, with no beginning and no end.∞

DEDICATION

“When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.”~Wayne Dyer

This work of fiction is dedicated to Jebidiah, for without him this story would not exist. And for Carrie, good-bye old friend. And thanks to Keane for providing me with the most amazing and inspirational music I have ever known.

Everybody’s Changing~Keane

Somewhere Only We Know~Keane

The beauty of your words fills my heart to overflowing.
 

∞ Denise ∞