Yup, another string of these two. The two stories really don’t work well as a whole, even though it seems they should – if Risa was lost early on and Connor had to be dealing with her loss while all the other stuff was going on, we would be able to alternate chapters normally. Instead we get first Connor’s storyline, then Risa’s takes over for a bit.

Well, time for that interview. This time, it’s at a morning talk show whose thing appears to be doing friendly puff pieces. Confirming my theory they killed all the reporters from the first batch, everyone’s amazed by this first look at Cam.

He’s asked gently about the controversy around him, and he says he doesn’t care because all that matters is that Risa likes him.

Then Holly and Jarvis go into some cute little banter about who wears the pants in various relationships.

That’s seriously the response. Apparently a boy saying he values a girl’s opinion is so shocking they start talking about how oh my god it’s like SHE’S the boy in the relationship.

We then see how Risa is honestly capable of saying basically whatever the fuck she wants and just isn’t because she’s a girl in proper skirts thank you very much.

“I would think when you were an AWOL you must have been very much against unwinding.”
“Well,” says Risa, “who wouldn’t be against it when you’re the one being unwound?”
“So exactly when did your feelings change?”
Risa takes a visibly deep breath, and Cam squeezes her hand again. “It isn’t so much that they changed . . . but I found myself having to accept a broader perspective. If it hadn’t been for unwinding, Cam wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be here together today. There’s always going to be suffering in the world, but unwinding takes suffering away from those of us”—she hesitates again—“those of us living meaningful lives.”
“So then,” Jarvis asks, “what would you say to kids out there who are AWOL?”
Risa looks down rather than at Jarvis when she speaks. “I would say if you’re running, then run—because you have every right to try to survive. But no matter what happens to you, know that your life has meaning.”
“Maybe even more meaning if they’re unwound?” prompts Jarvis.
“Maybe so.”

No one made her say the bit about meaning. She was perfectly capable of stopping at, “This benefited me so I did it.” We know no one’s on her case because she just gave a hearty thumbs-up to the idea of kids running away to escape being unwound while we know from the first book no one’s even allowed to talk about this stuff and just having a runaway kid in your general vicinity is enough to get arrested under suspicion you were being helpful.

Sure, even tepid condemnation sounds bad to us living in our world where this isn’t a thing, but this is a shithole dystopia where the government routinely censors every single mention of far less important things.

We then go to the next chapter, also Risa.

Risa holds Cam’s hand until they are backstage and out of view of the audience. Then she releases it in disgust. Not disgust at him, but at herself.
“What is it?” Cam asks. “I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!”

Risa is being bad, but she’s being bad solely because of her dumb girl emotions and not because what Cam is doing to her is wrong. He’s a perfect innocent baby and that he thinks this is her being mad at him just underlines how much Risa sucks.

Anyway she goes to a bathroom to be sad.

To have to defend unwinding—to have to say that the world is a better place because innocent kids are being unwound—shreds her inside. Her self-respect, her integrity are gone. Now, not only does she wish she hadn’t survived the explosion at Happy Jack, she wishes she had never been born at all. Why are you doing this, Risa?
It’s the voices of all the kids at the Graveyard. Why? It’s the voice of Connor, accusing her, and rightfully so.

Connor gets an arm handed to him for no reason. Risa does all this to try to save everyone else, and all she can think is that everyone else she’s saving rightfully accusing her of being a piece of shit.

She then refers to Roberta as a “she-devil” because clearly, gender is the important part here. I mean, if you just say someone’s a devil, who knows if you mean it negatively? Gotta be clear.

Then Risa emos about how she’s getting stockholmed and that makes her sad in how it further proves she’s terrible.

We then get this:

There is an urgent banging at the bathroom door.
“Risa,” Cam calls, “are you okay? Please come out, you’re scaring me.”
“Leave me alone!” Risa shouts.
He says nothing more, but when she finally leaves the bathroom five minutes later, he’s still standing there, waiting. He would probably have waited all day and all night. She wonders whether such unyielding resolve came from his parts, or if it’s something he’s developed on his own.

And this crystallizes for me a lot of my issue with romance stuff.

Why does Cam refuse to leave? Is it because he knows she’s upset and wants to help, or is it because he wants to be around her and it doesn’t matter if that’s making her unhappy?

You could argue, easily, that Cam’s mix of people has left him really empathetic even as he struggles to put any of that into words. You could argue that he’s just projecting his own uncomfortableness with being alone and assuming that’s what she wants too.

But the fact is, this is standard romance stuff, which is to simply not give a fuck about the fact the girl has rejected you and to keep inflicting yourself on her because it’s what you want. The knowledge that someone would have waited all day and all night at the only door out of the place you hid in is scary. It’s refusing her boundaries. Even the very details of this are threatening – it’s always “standing there”, as in, ready to ambush you while at the same time making a big production of how much your refusal is making him suffer.

Think I’m exaggerating? This plays out very differently when the attempt is about friendship – characters sit down to wait, back against the wall, listening in case the other person wants to talk. Think about it. Think about how many times you’ve seen that, and in what context. Think about in what context the characters just stand there, lurking. If the point is simply waiting and being there, it isn’t important than you be mobile and ready in case your target sprints out.

Because standard romance stuff is absolutely fine and not a sign our society is fucked up, this works – She suddenly finds herself bursting into tears and throwing herself into his arms, not even knowing why. She wants to tear him to bits, yet she desperately wants him to comfort her. She wants to destroy everything he represents, and yet she wants to cry on his shoulder because she has no other shoulder to cry on.

Although the book has explicitly said that she was manipulated into caring about him, it doesn’t seem to understand what that really means.

“Unfair,” he says. “They shouldn’t make you do these things if you’re not ready to do them.” And the fact that he, the subject of all this attention, understands her, empathizes with her, and is somehow on her side, confuses everything inside her even more.

I guess we should say that it’s impressive Risa’s holding herself together enough to be confused rather than just accepting it completely.

“It’s not always going to be like this,” Cam whispers to her. She wants to believe that, but right now she can only imagine it being worse.

How right you are, Risa! Here, watch it get worse: All this is only happening because Cam said he wanted it done to you so you’d be his girlfriend.

Now it’s time for Cam to try to sell the idea this is totally not his fault and he’s really just as much an innocent victim as anyone.

There are things that Roberta hasn’t told him. Her control over Risa is more than a mere matter of wills. It’s not as simple as gratitude for a new spine, because Risa isn’t grateful at all. It’s very clear that her spine is a burden she wishes she didn’t have to bear. Then why did she consent?

Yes, sweet innocent Linden Cam just realized that the girl insisting she didn’t want to be part of this horrorshow and didn’t give a flying fuck about a new spine might not be doing this out of gratitude for the spine. It was just so hard to work that one out! He tries asking Risa but she keeps saying she had to do it and can’t talk about it. Gee, what could that mean?

He wants to believe that he’s the reason why she’s doing all the things she’s doing

“I mean, sure, it was only after the spine that we started forcing her to interact with me and a few chapters back I totally admitted that I was trying to win her over because currently she hated the very idea of me, but…uh…time is an illusion!”

—all these things that clearly go against her grain.

Also, we see here that yes, love = doing things you don’t want because a boy wants you do.

But if there are any parts of him that are naive enough to believe that she’d do these interviews and ads for his sake, they are outnumbered by the parts of him that know better.

Presumably the parts that have a functioning understanding of how future events can’t be the cause of past ones.

Christ, Cam. At least Linden didn’t require rewriting actual reality to pretend he was innocent. You’re trying to say that you only just realized she wasn’t motivated the entire time by feelings that, at most, she only developed recently?

Anyway, Cam nobly decides to get to the bottom of this mystery he only just realized was a thing! And, showing his pretense is just excuses, he admits that yeah, It all comes down to the day she signed that consent form because yeah, it’s obvious that whatever happened there is what’s forcing her to act this way and not the fact you guys manipulated her into having feelings for you weeks later.

So he decides use the fact there’s surveillance cameras that are everywhere.

He finds the security guard he’s closest to being friends with and asks for the tape. When he’s told no because Roberta’s in charge and he needs to ask her first, Cam, and I have to emphasize that this is the guy he identified as the one he’s friendliest toward, immediately threatens to say he’ll tell Roberta the guy’s been stealing.

“Allow me,” Cam says. “You say, ‘You son of a bitch, you can’t do that,’ and I say ‘Yes, I can, and who do you think she’ll believe, me or you?’ ” Then Cam hands him a flash drive. “So just put the files on this, and everyone’s life will be easier.”

And this is totally okay for some reason. (Also, the very fact there’s surveillance cameras everywhere shows why this plan shouldn’t work, as does the fact that I really don’t think Roberta particularly believes Cam. She, quite rightly, treats him as a child, and children lie for petty reasons.)

We then go back to Risa’s chapter for what happened, and waste time on what was already obvious.

None of those AWOLs need be unwound. Please, Risa. Accept a new spine, and do all we ask of you. If you do, I will personally guarantee that all seven hundred nineteen of your friends will be unharmed. Help me, Risa, and you’ll save them.”

But Risa is still a piece of shit for accepting:

How many times has she imagined what it would be like to walk again? How many times has she relived that moment at Happy Jack Harvest Camp when the roof collapsed and crushed her back, and wondered what it would be like to have that moment erased?

Because you see, unlike Connorsue the magnificent, she actually lived with this, rather than waking up without ever even knowing she’d been injured to find it already fixed.

Anyway, Cam proceeds to stew.

Oh, not over what he did to Risa by demanding they make her his girlfriend. Over the fact one of the provisions was You will put aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and learn to be kind to him. Because it is always and forever about him, so much that he won’t let minor facts like “forcing her to love you was explicitly the plan and I told you as much repeatedly” get in the way of how his feefees are hurt she doesn’t love him enough.

“I know why you’re here,” he tells her. “I know all about your deal with Roberta, and your friends at the Graveyard.”
She hesitates for a moment, then begins to eat her sandwich. “You have your deal with her, I have mine,” she says in a peanut-butter-muffled voice. She tries to walk away, but Cam grabs her. She quickly pulls out of his grasp and pushes him against the wall. “I’ve come to accept it!” she yells at him. “So you might as well too!”
“So was it all just pretend? Was being nice to the freak just a performance to save your friends?”

Oh my goodness what will Risa’s answer be! Because that’s what we care about here, right? That’s definitely the important part, whether or not the girl forced to do things or get hundreds of people killed was just being such a selfish bitch as to pretend to like you.

What do you say, Risa?

“Yes!” snaps Risa.

OH MY GOD HOW DARE YOU RISA. HOW DARE YOU PLAY WITH THIS BOY’S FEELINGS JUST BECAUSE HE ORDERED YOU KIDNAPPED TO BE HIS GIRLFRIEND. YOU WHORE.

You’d better say something about how utterly wrong you were to do so IMMEDIATELY.

“At first.”

Sorry, Risa, not good enough! Cam, explain.

“And now?”
“Do you really think so little of yourself? Do you really think I’m that good of an actress?”
“Then prove it!” he demands. “Prove that you feel anything but contempt for me!”

Risa still has enough spirit to say fuck this and leave.

The bitch. Because now Cam’s sad and steals a pass card and gets on a motorcycle and drives too fast and crashes.

He gets to his feet and feels a sharp pain in his knee. His back feels shredded; blood from beneath his hairline clouds his eyes.
…
“Cam!” [Roberta] wails. “What did you do? What did you do? My God! You need medical attention!

That’s right Risa if you don’t do what boys say they’ll go hurt themselves and it’ll be all your fault.

All. Your. Fault.

Let this be a lesson to everyone!

Risa, have you learned your lesson?

“Open up, Cam, it’s Risa.”
She’s the second-to-last person he wants to see right now, but the fact that she came surprises him. The least he can do is open the door.
She stands at his threshold with a first aid kit in her hand. “It’s really stupid to bleed out just because you’re pissed off.”
“I’m not ‘bleeding out.’ ”
“But you are bleeding. Can I at least take care of the worst of it?

Very good, Risa. See, he’s hurt and that means you have to crush down any feelings you have and cater to him. And the next time you foolishly think you can have feelings of your own in response to his, remember this happening and just crush them down in advance! Then everyone can be happy.

Cam hammers home his victory with repeated apologies for how he got hurt, forcing her to reassure him about how it’s okay he was sad and upset at her.

“Stop apologizing for everything,” she tells him. “Save it for your more important screwups.”
Now they lie side by side on his bed, his aching back stinging even more pressed against the blanket. She could get up, but she doesn’t. Instead she rolls slightly toward him and brushes her fingers across a scrape on his chest, checking to see if it needs a bandage, then determining it doesn’t. “You’re quite the freak, Camus Comprix. How I got used to that is a mystery to me. I did, though.”

There. Risa’s properly abased herself for having feelings at Cam. She’s being good again! And she’s reminding us how being good will not at all save you. (She also repeats that regardless of how he came to be what matters is that he exists now, so girls, remember, rape is no excuse for abortions!) Then she kisses him.

“Don’t read too much into this, Cam,” she tells him. “I can’t be what you want.”
“There are lots of things I want,” he points out. “Who says I have to have all of them?”
“Because you’re Roberta’s spoiled little boy. You always get whatever your rewound heart desires.”
Cam sits up so he can look at her. “So unspoil me. Teach me to be patient. Teach me that there are some things worth waiting for.”

The girl who is literally there just because he said it was a thing he wanted says that he gets whatever he wants, and he responds by demanding a new thing from her while simultaneously rejecting the idea that there could ever be an actual “no” involved. But hey, he’ll be nice about it. He’ll be “patient” and “wait” in return for it being “worth waiting for”. So sure, turn him down for now but you’d damn well better put out at the end of this, Risa!

Risa makes a valiant effort to return to what she was trying to get across, that concept of no meaning actually no:

“And some things you might never have?”
He thinks about his answer, then says, “If that’s what you have to teach me, then that’s what I’ll have to learn—but what I want most is something I think I can have.”
“What might that be?”
He takes her hand and holds it. “This moment, right now, in a thousand different ways. If I can have that, then the rest won’t matter as much.”

And Cam reiterates that haha yeah right, he is absolutely going to get what he wants and she’s going to give it to him.

I mean, sure wouldn’t want him to crash another motorcycle, or order all her friends killed, right Risa?