Free The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan Page B

Everything is too fast: Catcher’s bite, Cira’s sentence with the Recruiters and now this. Everything I’ve ever known has shifted underneath me and I don’t know how to stand straight anymore. “You should have told me!” I shout at her. “I had a right to know!”
    “I thought it was best. I thought …” She swallows. “I thought that I’d lost everything else in the world and that somehow God was giving me something to hold on to. I thought … I thought He was giving me another chance to love.”
    “You were being selfish!” I yell, the words raw against my sob-seared throat. “I didn’t belong to you. I was someone else’s daughter.”
    “You would have died,” she pleads, holding her hand toward me. “I saved you.”
    I push my fists against my head, wanting to yell and scream and shout. I know she’s right. I know that if I’d been left on that path something terrible would have happened. Icould have been bitten and infected; I could have starved. But that doesn’t matter to me now. What matters is that she never told me any of this before this moment. That she probably wouldn’t have told me.
    What matters is that she’s been lying to me my entire life. Everything I’ve ever known and thought about myself is wrong—fake. And I don’t know what I can trust right now, which makes me feel like I’ve been cast adrift. Shoved away from shore to battle the waves on my own.
    I don’t know how to make her understand. “How can you tell me to let it all go? As if the past doesn’t matter?” I point at her, my finger shaking. “You want to just forget about what came before, but it doesn’t work that way. I can’t forget the people I loved and who loved me. Maybe you’re fine with taking what you need and forgetting about the rest. With leaving the people you love out in the Forest to die. But that’s not me. That’s not what life is about.” I’m left panting.
    My mother’s cheeks are crimson against the white of her face, as if I’ve slapped her.
    I swallow. I’ve pushed too hard. Gone too far. Lost control and let myself fall into my emotions.
    I shove my fingers through my hair, pulling against my scalp. I don’t know how to make her realize how fundamentally this information changes everything about me and the way I’ve always known myself. I’ve always been Mary’s daughter. And I can’t stop thinking about who I am around Catcher—how he made me feel like I’m somehow important.
    She’s taken this away from me. The hope that I can be more like her. The idea that something of her is in me.
    The fact that I belong to her.
    I step back with my hands up, as if I can push the air and she’ll be gone. “I’m not sure I can ever forgive you,” I tell her.
    “Gabrielle,” she says, her voice low and even, her eyes narrowing slightly.
    “No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not who I am. I’m not even sure that’s who I want to be anymore.”
    “I’m sorry,” she says. “I love you.”
    She waits for me to tell her I love her as well. She waits for me to forgive her. But all I can do is turn and run away down the beach. I’ve never hated my mother before and the feeling is like a pit of black nothingness collapsing me from the inside.
    I keep going until I see the hulk of the Barrier looming in front of me. Lights bob along in the dark, the Militiamen on guard. My shoulders rise and fall as I stare at the wall and catch my breath. This is what it comes down to.
    This is where it all began. If I hadn’t crossed it I’d never have kissed Catcher. I wouldn’t have known that he felt about me the same way I did about him. He never would have gotten bitten. I never would have talked to my mother about love and she’d have never told me the truth.
    I wonder if she would have ever told me if not by accident.
    I don’t want to face this. I don’t want to handle this. It’s too much and I need for it all to stop. I need to catch my breath and figure out what to