Riding the Edge by Elise Faber

Author:Elise Faber [Faber, Elise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946140838
Publisher: Elise Faber

Seventeen

Southern Italy

Unknown hrs local time

Dan

“What?” she whispered.

“It’s all bullshit,” I said. “Yes, your childhood was fucked up. But no, you’re not a product of that. Once you understood, you fought.” I covered her hand with mine. “You told me that yourself. You told me that you spent too many days in this cell. You told me that you got out and now you put your life on the line for innocent people every day. You do good.”

“No, I want to pretend I’m good. But that’s the bullshit.”

“Ava—”

“Go back to the fucking wall. It was a mistake telling you any of this.”

“Ava—”

“Cut the emotional horseshit, and let’s focus on getting out of here alive.”

“I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“What?”

Irritated by her obstinance, I made my way over to the wall, digging my fingers into the dirt and succeeding in wiggling the rock. “This is all very convenient. Your horrible past means that you don’t have to get close to anyone, that you can keep us all at a distance.” I yanked harder. “You’re too scared of getting close, too scared you might hurt someone. Except . . . that’s life. People hurt other people. Not usually on purpose, but I don’t think a lot of what you did was on purpose—”

“I just told you that I—”

“You were a sixteen-year-old girl who was in an untenable situation, who was raised by an unbelievably manipulative and violent father to do horrible things. That was the unforgivable part. He did that to you.” I forced myself to pause, to moderate my tone. “What is admirable is that you realized what was going on and that you found some good even amongst all this darkness.”

She scoffed. “That’s all a pat story. But it doesn’t absolve me of my part in all I did.”

“No,” I said. “But I think what’s more pat is you using this fear and the walls to keep people out because you’re afraid they may hurt you. Because as much as you want to pretend it’s you protecting the world from your evilness, it’s really about you protecting yourself from anyone who might get close enough to betray you.”

I heard her inhale sharply.

“That’s not—” She broke off, fell silent.

I let her think as I continued working on the wall, feeling very much like Sisyphus and his proverbial rock, only instead of rolling it up a hill, I was trying to pull it loose from ten years of dirt and grime.

“I might have gotten out,” she whispered after an interminable silence. “But I didn’t come out whole. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make right what I did.”

“You can’t change what happened.”

“What? You going to advise me to put my past behind me and move forward?”

“Yes.”

“And have you forgotten Syria?”

“No,” I said. “And I won’t ever forget it, but that’s not the obstacle that’s preventing me from moving forward. Rather, it’s the building block for my blueprint of how to move forward.” I shook my head. “I will regret how

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