Page 132 of Lovely Darkness

“You should really go into motivational speaking,” RK deadpans.

I know he’s being sarcastic, or whatever, but that’s actually not a bad idea. I think I could motivate the hell out of people. I have never met a fear I wasn’t able to conquer. I’m not ready to be a normal person yet. I quite like the wild life out here in the mountains of Wyoming. But I have a lot of years ahead of me, so… never say never.

Though I do miss Maggie. And I think about her a lot. But I am not a mother. Not a good one, anyway. And Sasha already takes care of all of us, like we’re all her children. So it wasn’t hard to say yes when Maggie asked me if she could go live at Sasha’s house and be a different kind of girl.

She deserves a different kind of life.

I’m not sure I really understand what happened to us those two days Merc and Sasha were at Old Home. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Sasha about it yet. But I know one thing—I wasn’t off killing people when I was missing for those four years. I was with her.

I was with Sasha Cherlin.

Wild, right?

And Donovan was too. Some of the time, at least.

He was here in Wyoming with that woman he loves. Ana something. But I was off picking up girls before Nick Tate—or, ironically, Nathan—could find them and kill them.

She told me this on the plane ride out of Louisiana. Some of it, at least. She got my memory started and then I have been filling in the blanks ever since.

Learning that Donovan and I weren’t some evil team of supervillains was cathartic. It felt like a second chance. I mean, I’m not any kind of hero, or anything like that, but I’m not the total shitbag I thought I was, either.

In fact, I’m not really sure who I am. I don’t have any kind of clue of who I want to be, either. But that’s why I’m here, Sasha said. To come to terms with the past and find a new future.

Tomorrow, once we get off this mountain, we’re going to the resort that Sasha owns with that Ana lady. And there are almost a hundred girls there just like me. It’s a safe place for us, Sasha said. A place where we won’t have to be who we were.

At night, when we’re out here in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming, we sit around the fire and talk things through. Donovan’s part in all that is the most interesting because he’s so complicated. Sasha convinced him on the way out here that Carter is real, but he doesn’t live inside his head. He really does have an older brother and Sasha insists he has never done any kind of animal experiments and didn’t have anything to do with those rats in Pearl Springs.

I try to reconcile my memories on that island all those years ago. Nathan too. Because we saw what we saw. Donovan turning into someone else. And he did, I guess. He even gave him a name.

But there are so many lies to pick through to find what’s real.

“Truth,” Sasha told us when we got out of the helicopter and met RK at the bottom of a canyon three months ago. “Truth is the cure,” she said.

And I believe her.

We all believe her.

So each night we go looking for that truth and some nights we even find it.

“Donovan!” I say his name, but I’m not yelling it. Because he’s pulling himself over the top of the last ridge. “See,” I say, with my smug, know-it-all attitude. And I direct this right at RK. “I told you I was motivating him.”

Donovan collapses down into the dirt. He’s breathing hard as RK helps get his harness off. But he’s smiling too. “I did it.” His eyes find mine. “We did it.”

And we did.

Donovan doesn’t know this yet, but he has a huge surprise coming his way tomorrow when we graduate out of Challenge camp. That Ana lady? Turns out she’s like… his girlfriend, or whatever. She died a week before I turned up in McKay’s driveway last spring. But she didn’t really die. It was a way to jolt Donovan into some kind of change.

And it worked, I guess. Because all that other shit happened.

I came home, and Adam came home, and McKay came home, and Nathan came home, and Maggie came home.

And then… and now… yeah. It’s a trip.

I wasn’t supposed to tell Donovan that Ana was alive and waiting for him, and I didn’t. Not just because it would ruin his surprise but also because he needed to do this challenge alone.

We all did.

We needed to face the world, and ourselves, and our fears—even those of us who have no fears—and just accept life for what it is.