Brittany’s face went red.
She started yelling at me.
く
I tilted my head.
I looked past her at Mark.
He was stomping towards us.
His face was like thunder.
45
He grabbed Brittany’s arm and slapped her hard.
Her face instantly swelled up.
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her
mouth.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
She looked at Mark, wounded and pathetic.
“Mark, how could you?”
[
<
8:10
She started to sob, like some delicate flower.
But Mark didn’t even flinch,
His eyes were cold.
He told her to get lost.
Brittany, all wronged and weepy, stumbled off.
As soon as she was gone, Mark pulled out a
tissue.
He knelt down, all concerned, and gently wiped
the coffee off my face.
“Babe, don’t listen to her.”
“She’s crazy.”
“I don’t have anything to do with her. She’s
making things up.”
<
I stared into his eyes.
They were deep and dark, like pools you could
fall into.
I couldn’t see a flicker of guilt.
My eyes stung.
I stroked his face.
“Mark, tell me who she is.”
Mark’s lips trembled.
His eyes got watery.
He wouldn’t tell me.
I kept pushing, until my face was flushed and I
couldn’t breathe.
That’s when he panicked.
“I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. Amy.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Hit me, yell at me, do whatever you want.”
“Just don’t cry. You can’t cry.”
He still remembered I couldn’t cry.
I gave a bitter laugh.
My heart was a tangled mess.
Mark freaked out.
He ran every red light on the way to the
emergency room.
He was yelling for the doctors.
<
I saw the fear in his eyes.
It reminded me of something.
I was five years old when I was kidnapped.
The guy held a knife to my throat.
He demanded ransom money from my dad.
I was terrified.
I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t catch my breath.
After I was rescued, I couldn’t talk for a while.
Mark came to see me every day.
He was so gentle with me.
He told me jokes.
<
I ignored him, but he didn’t care.
One time, he got into a fight at school.
The other kid was a fat bully.
He pinned Mark down, almost suffocating him.
I got so worked up, I called for the teacher.
That’s when I started talking again.
Mark was happier than I was.
He kept picking fights with that bully.
He wanted me to keep talking.
Later, I found out that Mark got into that fight
because the bully had called me “dumb.”
Mark wouldn’t let anyone mess with me.
He said not even calling me dumb was okay.
Eventually, my mutism went away.
But I still couldn’t cry.
If I did, I couldn’t breathe.
It could even kill me.
After that, Mark treated me even more carefully.
He said he would only make me laugh.
He’d never make me cry.
And now, here I was, being rushed into the ER
because of him.
When I woke up, Mark was begging for
forgiveness.
<
When I woke up, Mark was begging for
forgiveness.
He was crying.
He said he messed up.
He was walking on eggshells, scared I’d leave
him.
