Chemistry (22 page)
Authors: Jodi Lamm
Tags: #Claude Frollo, #young adult, #Esmeralda, #The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, #high school, #Retelling, #Tragedy
Jack marches along the upper decks, his eyes darting around. He’s looking for Esmeralda. The team is taking advantage of my chaos. They mean to find her and end the threat she poses to them. Maybe it seems unreasonable to you, but this is how they operate. This is how they’ve always operated. No one and nothing gets in their way. Their reputations, their positions in the upper-class world are a matter of life and death to them. They will do whatever it takes to stay in the good graces of their blessed parents and team captain.
I don’t even bother to hide my face this time. My life, if it can even be called a life at this point, will never go back to what it was. Whatever avalanche is rumbling toward me, I welcome it. Bury me, please.
“Jack,” I call out to him.
He stops and tries to look casual. “It’s crazy in there,” he says, as though I’ll actually believe he’s left the ballroom in order to escape the chaos.
“Here.” I hold out my keycard, and he takes it.
“What’s this for?” He turns it over in his hands, examining the room number on the back.
“She’s on the balcony,” I say. “She’s acting drunk and reckless. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she fell overboard and drowned.”
And that’s all it takes. Jack’s sadistic smile tells me he’s gotten my message loud and clear. “René!” He jogs away from me, pocketing his treasure. “Tristan! We’ve got her!”
It’s done. Jack is gone, and the fire recedes. I’m left in the silent wake of the entire ordeal.
I turn my face to the sky and breathe in deeply. Somehow, I’m happier. No one can hurt me more than I’ve already hurt myself. I win. My tears don’t even bother me as they roll down my neck into the collar of my costume. It’s as though the weight I’ve born my entire life, the duty I thought I owed the world, has rolled off my shoulders and into the sea. It’s an almost lonely feeling, losing that side of my persona, but a persona is all it ever was. And deep down, I think I’m glad to see it go.
So this is what it feels like to become your own shadow.
I walk to the side of the ship, where I know Esmeralda is right below me, waiting to die. The sea is dark and beautiful—the sky, equally so. How have I missed it all this time? I lean over the rail to watch the finale I orchestrated. Even if I wanted to stop this ride, I doubt my screams of protest would have any effect. It’s like I’m sitting in the future, watching the past. What is happening now has already happened.
Esmeralda looks like a bird when I first see her—a little white bird flying alongside the ship in the night. I stare down at her as she crawls over the side of the balcony, slips, catches herself, and hugs the railing. She climbs down until her hands are on the last rung and stays there. She’s trying to hide. I feel an awkward twinge of hope that she might actually outsmart them, that she might survive. But then I remember I was the author of her situation. I have no right to hope.
The wind whips Esmeralda’s tunic around her. I hear voices coming from her balcony. “Where is she?” they say. And to my simultaneous horror and relief, I hear Tristan shout, “There!” He laughs. “Hanging off the railing.”
You might think it’s my baser nature that wants Esmeralda to die, and my civilized self that hopes she doesn’t. It’s just the opposite. Something in me, some deep-down, instinctive part of me wants to see her survive, to protect her and hold her no matter how hard she hits. I want to fight for her, but my rational mind has convinced me that this is the only path, the only way we will see an end to this, Esmeralda and me.
“She’s making it so easy,” René’s voice says. “Maybe she wants to die. It would be a crime not to give it to her.”
Esmeralda tries desperately to outmaneuver her tormentors when they reach for her, but it’s impossible, in the end. There’s only one of her and three of them. I watch them climb over the side of the balcony to get to her. They’re stupid, but they’ll take her easily. I know they will. I lean over the railing to see more.
Jack has climbed over the balcony and positioned himself above Esmeralda. I think he’s standing on her shoulders, adding his weight to hers. He’s so sadistic, so unbelievably cruel. Her hand slips. They laugh. And I have to remind myself that this was her decision. This was what she chose over me.
I lean so far over the rail that my feet lift off the deck. I want to see the moment she lets go. Don’t misunderstand. I take no pleasure in this. I’m dying inside. I’m torn and bleeding and screaming for it all to stop. But I know I owe it to Esmeralda to keep my eyes on her, no matter how much it hurts. If I turn my face from her now, if I’m not strong enough to watch her die, how can I claim to have ever loved her?
Esmeralda doesn’t make a sound. I hear the jeers of her executioners, but nothing from the angel herself. Even now, she overwhelms me with her otherworldly beauty and strength—the little bird that refuses to let go or cry out. But then Jack pulls himself up and drops heavily onto her shoulders.
He is too much. And she falls.
I can barely see the splash her body makes when it hits the water. She’s just a napkin, someone’s fluttering refuse tossed into the waves. In a matter of seconds, she’s gone. I had expected to see her struggle a little longer, but the ship moved past her so quickly, it’s like she was never there. Like she never existed at all. Except…
After Esmeralda’s killers have cleared the balcony, I pull from my pocket the proof of her existence: those little golden shoes that came from her mother, the charm that reminded her to hope. I hold it over the railing and watch it dangle. It catches the light like a tiny flame on the end of a string. This little flame is all that’s left of her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I drop it overboard. As it falls, I hear the voice of the priest—the real priest—telling me how God will not burden us with more hardship than we can handle. If that’s true, then I’ve experienced just as much suffering as I was built for, and this result is all part of the divine plan. I am an instrument of God, and my entire life has been the setup for one drawn-out, divine joke. I laugh at that, because laughing is all there is left for me to do.
Then a pair of powerful arms encircles me from behind, lifts me over the railing, and drops me.
I scramble and catch hold of the bottom rung. My stomach turns, and my heart pounds. I could throw up, but I don’t dare. Instead, I push against the side of the ship with my feet. The surface is slick with condensation. My feet slip.
The more I struggle, the more I sweat. The more exhausted I become, the weaker my grip on the rail. I can’t keep this up much longer. Not only that, but I can feel another wave of unwanted euphoria coming.
And I know I’m going to die.
Valentine stands over me and stares out across the sea. I imagine he’s been watching me for some time, wondering what held my interest so intensely that I didn’t even notice him there. I imagine he watched me throw Esmeralda’s pendant overboard. I imagine he understands everything, and I cringe because I know I’m right. There’s no hiding from him now. No begging for mercy either.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “But I know you’re not Claude Frollo. I think you must have killed him.” His voice is laced with despair. I’ve never heard him sound so broken. “Phoebus is getting help. But someone should go to her now.”
Phoebus isn’t getting help. Phoebus is one of those who wanted her dead. But Valentine doesn’t know that, and I have no way of telling him.
“We’ll both go,” he says. “You first.” He stares down at me, and I see the fire in his eyes, the brute anger and determination. “Go!” He lifts my fingers with the toe of his shoe, and I am forced to let go.
I fall. Like she did. Like I’ve been doing since the very beginning.
I take two breaths while the world blows past my ears and whips my habit around my legs. Then I hit. It doesn’t feel like water. It feels like a sheet of plywood. And I am sinking. I climb the sea, pulling myself up and hoping the “up” I believe in is not an illusion. The pressure to breathe overwhelms me, and my lungs are about to take in water when I finally find the surface. But my relief is only temporary.
The ship has already passed. I can see it in the distance, floating merrily away like a cloud in the sky. I’m left in the cold, murky blackness, waiting to die—waiting to be freed from the prison of my own fear.
In my mind’s eye, I see Valentine frantically swimming. His powerful arms rake the waves and propel him forward at an incredible pace. Maybe he’ll even find her. Maybe he’ll wrap his great arms around her and wait for the help that won’t arrive. But Valentine will never have her the way I have her. Esmeralda and I are bound together forever. We destroyed each other. And nothing can bind two people together as powerfully as mutual destruction.
She is mine.
She is mine.
The sea must be painfully cold and my body is probably bruised from the fall, but I don’t feel any of it. My last moments will be filled with a drug-induced bliss and the knowledge that every single event in my life happened in order to bring me here: to this pinprick of time in this expansive, overwhelming place.
I float on my back and stare up at the stars. Esmeralda is right beside me, even though I can’t see her. She’s in this same body of water, floating on her back and staring up at the sky; I believe that. And I think she notices the stars, too—how bright they are and how tiny. I’d like to tell her about their enormity, how many of our earths one of them could consume, and how they are the creators of almost everything. Each of those massive, indiscriminate balls of energy is the closest we’ll ever get to seeing a god.
If I could pray to the stars, I would ask that Valentine is content with the choices he’s made and that he knows he did right by me, that this was a mercy kill. I would ask that Peter goes on to do great things and lives up to the potential I always saw in him. I would even dare to ask something for myself. I would ask that in her final moments, Esmeralda thinks kindly on me, that she knows I had no choice but to love her. And I would want her to know that, even though it destroyed us both, I would never change the way I feel about her.
I would never take it back.
BOOK FIVE: EPILOGUE
February 15, 2012
My Dear Victor,
I have long hoped I would one day have the pleasure of contacting you regarding one of my students. Our close, personal history has prevented me from doing so with confidence until now. Forgive my informal and over-zealous letter, but I have never witnessed a young person with the drive, focus, and creative brilliance of my student, Claude Frollo.
His situation is rare, although not unique. He is a recently emancipated youth, having spent much of his life in a group home after both his parents passed away. He currently lives and works in a local church near the school. He has been held back one year overall, but will graduate with top marks this June. I tell you these things not to garner sympathy, but to let you see the intense dedication this young man possesses. He is determined to thrive in the face of adversity, and I have no doubt, with an uncompromising education and the proper guidance, he will succeed beyond his wildest dreams.
Claude has received excellent marks in all sciences and mathematics (his work in Advanced Chemistry is particularly impressive), and he has done so while actively tutoring two other students. His commitment to the scholastic improvement of both students has seen undeniable results, in particular with a special needs student, who I doubt would have thrived without private tutoring.
More than the sheer drive Claude possesses, his independent thinking is something to behold. When I questioned him about how he would apply himself in a university setting and whether he might be interested in medical research, his answer surprised me. Medicine is mostly guesswork, he said. He puts no faith in it, as it is. I then asked what he would put faith in, and he told me, without hesitation, that he would put faith in the science of chemistry. This answer so intrigued me that I requested he elaborate. He explained his belief that once biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics overtook the medical practice, medicine would no longer be a mixture of art and science. All the guesswork and consequential misdiagnoses and maltreatments would vanish, and in their place would be precision, assurance, and medical advancements we can only dream of today.
In this answer, I saw a mind uninhibited by perceived limitations. While he may be yet naive and his ambition overwhelming, I believe passion and determination like his has been behind all our major scientific discoveries in decades past. He will achieve great things; I have no qualms about promising you that. And as your old friend, I thought you might want to be part of what this young man accomplishes. He will, doubtless, be a welcome addition to your biochemistry department, and under your tutelage I will rest easy, knowing this future great mind is in the best possible hands.
Yours,
Marie Hugo
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