Jessica Martinez - The Vow

She’s right. Sam probably doesn’t even know the numbers, but maybe that doesn’t matter. It’s our only legal option, now that our perfect marriage solution is irreparably screwed up. “We’re committing a felony, Annie. Why didn’t I know that? This is a fraudulent marriage. We’re felons.”

“No, we aren’t,” Annie says. “And we’re not getting the marriage annulled.”

“What, you seriously want to tell your parents? Everyone we know? Move into Wisper Pines and start senior year as the married couple?”

“No.” She swallows and folds her arms. I can see she’s pinching the skin on the undersides of her arms again, probably hard enough to leave bruises. “But I will.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Instantly, Annie’s eyes are ablaze. I’m an idiot. I just poured gasoline and threw a match at all her nervous energy and now it’s exploding into unadulterated fury. I have the distinct impression that this is what a gazelle feels like, staring into the eyes of a pouncing lioness. Incisors gleaming. Claws drawn. This is my last breath.

“Don’t you dare say that to me,” she spits. “I know what I’m doing. I can do this.”

I put both palms to my forehead. I’ve got to think. Two questions. It comes down to just two. 1. Do I want to do this? But this isn’t even a real question. In the last three days of dark moments, even in the darkest of them, I didn’t consider following them all to Jordan. Even when I felt so guilty about abandoning Sarina that my skin hurt, or when I was too depressed from thinking about the next year without any of them to do anything but stare into Satan’s Cat’s eyes—even then. Of course I want to do this.

And 2. Can I let Annie do this? What’s ridiculous is that she will. She really will. I can see it in her eyes, the fire that’s anger and desperation and survival burning together.

But this doesn’t have to be her decision. I could just get on a plane and leave. Except she’ll hate me if I do that, and I don’t know if that’s more terrifying than what she’ll give up if I stay.

“Your parents will flip out,” I say.

“I don’t care.”

“But your dad might actually kill me.”

“Unlikely. He’ll probably just hit you really hard.”

“You’ll be living at Wisper Pines. What about your mural?”

She flinches, and I think maybe I’ve flipped the switch that’ll reverse this hurtling shuttle, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. But then she says, “You honestly think I care more about paint and walls than you?”

I lean back in my chair, feeling like a wind has slammed me backward and stare at the dartboard. And I smile. I shouldn’t. I’m selfish. But I’m happy. What else can I do?

Annie

It’s the only thing to do. There’s not even a choice to make, not that I can see. He was there for me—the only one there for me—after the world was still reeling from Lena. I won’t send him away to be a foreigner again, not to Jordan, not to anywhere.

I look at him. He nicked his jaw shaving, and he’s giving me that crooked squint and half smile, the one that always makes me think he’s reading my mind.

We’re making this real.

Sam knocks and comes back in. There’s something about her. I like her. I hope it’s not just because Mo hates her. It’s obvious he does, but he sometimes hates people for hardly any reason.

“So?” she asks, tucking strawberry-blond waves of hair behind her ears.

I wait for Mo, but they’re both looking to me, like my answer is the one that counts. “Yes,” I say.

Sam cocks her head to the side, eyes coaxing me to say something else. I wish I could. I don’t know if I imagine the miniscule shake of her head or if she actually does it. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, file the forms.”

She blinks long. Long. Like a prayer-blink. “You’re sure.” Her fingers are cupped over the edge of the table, like she’s fighting the urge to reach across and cover my hand with hers.

I wonder if Lena would have gone to law school. She was smart. She was on the debate team, so maybe.

“We’re sure.”

“Okay, then.” She turns to Mo. “I’m assuming you want me to file for work authorization and advance parole so you can visit your family at some point? Both of those take a while to be approved, by the way. You can’t get a job or leave the country until they are.”

“How long?” he asks.

“I don’t know. A few months?”

A slow smile spreads over Mo’s face. “So I can’t work this summer.”

“No.”

“Awesome.”

* * *

Our drive home is quiet. Mo leans his seat back and stares at the dimpled leather roof. I drive between the lines but float my eyes to the clouds, watching them gather and clump and drift apart again. There’s too much to say, so we don’t say any of it.

But the truth of it is spreading through me like a droplet of dye in water. First it bloomed like a single firework in my chest, and now it’s melting into the in-between, dissolving.

I should be terrified, but staring into freedom is the strangest feeling. Not what I expected. I’m going to hurt them. But I can’t believe how little I care, considering that’s all I’ve done for the last seven years—care about not hurting them. Except now I’m marching toward that, the hurting them, and that means I’m marching toward the after too, and I don’t know what to feel about the after.

“Don’t you have work?” Mo asks, and I realize I’ve turned off the highway one exit early, like I’m going home.

Home.

Instead of work.

Work.

Reed.

Reed.

“Because if you’re not going to work, we should figure out a few things. Like who gets the bed, assuming real doesn’t mean real. And how we’re going to get your stuff out of your house without your dad killing me with his bare hands.”

Reed.

“Are you not talking to me because you’re contemplating how real real is? Because we both know it’s not going to be that kind of real. I’ll sleep on the couch till divorce do us part. I mean, right? Right? Yeah. I think the bigger issue is whether or not we’ll make it to the hospital in time after your dad rips off my arms and legs one by one. If you could be in charge of collecting the limbs and putting them in buckets of ice while we wait for the ambulance, that would be great.”

Reed.

“I bet limb reattachment recovery sucks, but the Harvard admissions board will be impressed. I could write an essay about perseverance in my journey from bloody stump of a torso to a reattached-limb-scholar. Annie, snap out of it. Are you in shock? You’re freaking me out. Pull over.”

Shock. I must be in shock, but I don’t pull over. My hands are glue white, frozen to the wheel, and not even remotely familiar. Someone else’s hands. And my mind is sprinting through my morning, looking for another ending, the path I missed that would have led me somewhere else, but there isn’t one. Mo and I are going to tell the world we’re married and pretend it’s real, and this has to happen because I want it to happen, but when did I forget Reed? I haven’t been able to think about anything but Reed since the night he first kissed me.

“Annie, your parents are going to be okay. It’s not like they’re going to stop loving you.”

Mo’s voice is on the outside, swimming around me but not touching my thoughts. I can hear Reed, though. What was it he said the other night on his couch? His voice was low and warm, and he was close enough to my ear for it to vibrate through me. I don’t want you and Mo to be anything different than what you are.

And now I have to tell him that we are different than what we are. Just words circling around on themselves, lying about a lie. But he won’t know that. I can’t imagine how I’ll say it to him. I’ll have to memorize something beforehand because right now all the wrong words are clumping themselves together in my brain. I’m a liar. A married liar. A married liar and a felon, and I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me, but we can’t see each other anymore. And if federal agents ever stop by to question you, please tell them I’m happily married, and don’t mention anything I may have said to you about never in a million years being able to love Mo like that or about us kissing.

And he’ll say something back, but I can’t imagine that either. I don’t know him well enough to even guess. I’ll never get to know him well enough to guess.

“It won’t take much to convince them,” Mo is saying. “They’ve been anticipating this for years. Now I just need to trick you into converting to Islam and force you to wear a burqa and strap a suicide bomb to your chest, and all their worst nightmares can come true at the same time.”

I’m too drained to tell him to stop being such an idiot. He knows they aren’t that racist.

“So, you’re going to work?” he asks.

I’ve pulled into the Wisper Pines parking lot and I’m staring up at the rows of redbrick boxes. Reed is at work. “No. I’ll call in sick.”

Mo gets out but stands with the door open, his hands on the roof. “We need a timeline.”

“What?”

“An order. Who gets told when, what gets done first.”

I shrug. Chronology seems pointless. If a nuclear bomb is exploding, what does it matter who knows first?

“I mean we need to get your stuff into my apartment before we tell your parents. But we need to tell your parents before anyone else finds out, so the cashier at CVS isn’t the one to break it to your mom. Are you going to start talking again anytime soon? You’re kind of scaring me.”