Unforgiven Read Online Free PDF Page B

was calling to me more loudly than ever. But at least it would relieve me of social obligations such as talking. If Owen had wanted to go for a walk, play a game with the others, or do anything else requiring some kind of interaction from me, I might have collapsed right there in front of him.
    No, that night, I didn’t need to exchange pleasantries. I needed… what? Peace. To figure out how to get into Tracy’s mind. Maddie’s face floated across my mind’s eye once more—that same lifeless Maddie who’d accompanied me to the war zone. A sob bubbled at the back of my throat, but it didn’t make it nearly as close to escaping, which I considered a win.
    After the movie, I went to bed with visions of Tracy, her battlefield, Maddie, and my old life swirling in my head, unable to find peace as they all warred for space and the haze threatened at the edges of my mind.
    The following day, I sat in front of Tracy’s fence, wondering what to do. Then a sudden thought occurred to me. Something Tracy had said about reality. What was it?
    Reality is a fluid concept in the world of the mind. It’s real because your mind believes it to be.
    I looked at her fence, knowing it wasn’t real. None of it was. The reality was that I was sitting in the training room in a particularly uncomfortable metal chair across from a hard-as-nails woman who was both trying to keep me out of her mind and secretly hoping I’d get in. I wasn’t on an old battlefield. It wasn’t a relic of death and destruction from long ago. It was Tracy’s made-up ruse to keep people at a distance, and it worked.
    “It’s not real,” I said aloud as I stretched out my hand toward the fence. Closing my hand over one of the barbs, I didn’t brace myself for the stabbing to come or the shock of electricity. It wasn’t real, and I finally knew it. The barb passed through my hand as if I were a ghost.
    I waited silently for Tracy’s response, thinking she’d notice I discovered her weakness. Surprisingly, she said nothing, so I stood up and took a step toward her fence. One more and I’d be right in the middle of it, or it would be right in the middle of me. It was an odd feeling to have a barbed wire fence go straight through the center of your body. My body screamed that there should be some kind of sensation, but I forced my mind to remain calm.
    It’s not real, I repeated to myself. Slowly, in no more than four steps, I walked straight through the fence that had kept me at bay for weeks. When I reached the other side, I turned to look back to look at the battlefield I’d finally crossed. I wanted to dance, to celebrate my victory, but I didn’t. Tracy hadn’t seemed to notice my breach, and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself yet. I wanted to see just how far I could go. I pushed on.
    Approaching the trenches slowly, I peered down into them. Owen had said he never made it past the trenches, but he hadn’t told me why. It made me leery. A yellow fog hung inside, obstructing the view to the bottom. Mustard gas? I wondered.
    Squatting down at the edge of the trench, I debated what to do. It was too wide to just jump over. I’d have to climb through it, which meant breathing in whatever that yellow fog was. It would get on my skin, in my eyes, and in my lungs. I imagined it burning holes in my clothes, leaving me coughing and clawing at my eyes. Just the thought was enough to make me want to turn around. It’s either real or it isn’t, I told myself as I hopped down into the abyss.
    The instinct to cough was overwhelming. To squelch it, I took a deep breath and swallowed, reminding myself that the gas was a creation of Tracy’s mind. When I took in a deep breath, it was the air in the training room that was entering my lungs, not the yellow fog that surrounded my subconscious self.
    Turned out the trench wasn’t that deep, just tall enough to cover my head. If I stood on my tiptoes, I could barely see over the edge of it. I walked to the