SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

39: I'm Finn

Ella 39

This is the room where Eli died.

I can be sure of it, because this is the girl Maze. I think. From the snippets that I know about Eli's death, it must be here. After all, he drank every liquid in the Meddy cupboard that he could get his hands on. He ruined their supplies for his death. How selfish of him. How cruel he was to them all to do that in front of his friends.

Though he could never have known that I would be here, or that I would even find him again, here I am. It hurts like nothing else. His loss is mine. It weighs down on my back, which has already been stunted by WICKED's experimentation. I have no idea how old I am, and my best guest would not accurately reflect my age.

My hands scratch the back of my neck.

I imagine Eli against the wall. He looked young like me, with delicate blonde hair. His neck was too long for his body. His jaw too tight and square for someone as young as us. He would've looked the same as since I last saw him; a month isn't enough time to age.

Would he have looked as scared? Would he have looked as upset with me?

My fingers trace along the walls. Perhaps, in his dying breathes, he left me something on the wall. A scratch or a notch, or some sign that he cared about me.

There is nothing. He had always liked me more than I had liked him. He loved in me in a way that I wasn't capable of loving him back. Not just because he was a man, but because I could never love as selflessly as he did. He had gone along with the plan, helped worked out the details, did the majority of the planning, for me.

For Sonya and me.

Now, I can't even give him the honour of treating her right, but for good reason.

It wasn't our plan that killed him. Not even WICKED. We were capable of tricking them. In fact, I had kept my name for years after they believed they tricked it out of me.

Logically, I know that's not the case. After all, we were named together, after romantic authors and renaissance artists. Their plan, all along, was to break me until I created a scheme. They raised us in a specific way, to force our actions, to get the reaction that they wanted. All of us were tricked.

However, that doesn't change the fact that Leo told them, which doesn't change the fact that we had to run, which means that Eli and I had to shoot ourselves in the heads too quickly, and consequently we didn't forget everything like we had planned.

And that's why Eli died. It wasn't me. Not WICKED. Not Beth who chased him into this room where he killed himself. But Leo.

When I'm done tracing, when I'm sure he left me nothing but his name to keep safe, I scratch the back of my neck. It's too rough. I've got to cut it out, and this time Leo isn't here to stop me.

"Tell me your real name," I offer. "That will help."

He shakes his head. It's so small. We are so small that his neck barely peaks over the table in front of us. "I can't. They will hurt me. They hurt another boy. He told me about it."

"We just have to play pretend then," I tell him. "With them, we can be Eli and Emily. Alone, we can tell each other our real names."

He seems to agree, but he still can't touch his food.

Finally, Eli looks up at me. His lips barely part. "I'm Finn."