CHAPTER 15

What about fear? I had forgotten about it after that night, one year ago. I had seen it into Shane’s eyes, all across her trembling body as she was aiming that gun to Sanders’ head. I had seen it, as clear as the sun, mixed with confusion and shock. She was bowled over. That look into her eyes seemed to say that she thought I was dead. I wasn’t. I had had a code blue that day. My heart stopped cooperating with the rest of my body for a while. Shane was there, alone, seeing me slipping away.

Right in that moment, that fear she had had became an uncontrollable panic. She had been on the edge for weeks, and that blue code had been the ultimate crack.

Shane and I never really talked, in details, about her motivation in finding and trying to punish Sanders. But I can see her drive. She was angry, she was completely outraged about losing our son and a part of our life – my memories. She was scared about that fragment of bullet stuck into my head. It could have shifted, turning me into a body without a soul or even killing me. The impotence she was feeling was her worst enemy: she knew she couldn’t do anything to turn back time and she decided to turn the wrong things right in her own way. To get even.

”Ho sbagliato per sbagliare
Non perché lo dite voi
E non mi pento proprio
Sono in riserva ormai
Io ci credo in quel che voglio
E forse voglio farmi male
Ma non mi riconosco
In quello che conviene…”
“I did wrong because I did want to do wrong
And not because you told me to
I don’t repent at all
I’m on the verge now
I believe in what I want
And maybe I want to get hurt
But I don’t recognize myself
In what is convenient or conventional

That night in the shed, stopping her, I know I banished her fear and mine. The gun she was aiming to Sanders fell into Dante’s safe hand, and Shane came to me, hugged me, and buried her face into the crook of my neck. She was there again. She was no more victim of that torture, she wasn’t risking anymore to slip into madness without even noticing it.