Read Online The Smaller Evil by Stephanie Kuehn - Free Book Online

walkable.”
    Arman was confused. “Well, why aren’t we using that?”
    â€œWhy do you think?”
    â€œBecause it’s scarier this way?”
    â€œBecause always taking the easy route means forgetting there could be others. Maybe better ones. You can’t know unless you try.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Pride, it turned out, was a fleeting emotion.
    This was the reality Arman faced as he stood perched atop a giant boulder on the very edge of Echo Rock. He hovered high above the clearing where the entire rest of the group—Beau included—stared up at him, and far beneath the soft moon that hung like a beacon in the velvety sky.
    Illuminating his failure.
    Whatever goodness he’d felt after helping Dale was gone. Long gone. And Arman understood what he was
supposed
to be doing, now that he was here and it was his turn. Now that the other climbers had left, already following the eastern trail back down to the clearing in one big group. They were the ones, as Arman had crawled, gasping, over the final precipice and unbuckled himself from his harness and helmet, who’d told him where to go and what to do.
    Only they hadn’t told him
how
.
    So he did nothing but stand there.
    He watched the wind rattle the trees below.
    He watched the needles fall from the branches.
    State your truth
, they’d told him
. State it loud.
And why was that so hard? Why would it be easier for him to run and hide or claw his skinor simply swan dive to his death rather than do what was being asked of him?
    His knees trembled, but he kept standing there. Right on the edge.
    But Arman also kept
thinking
. Of what he’d left behind. Of what he’d found in the short time he’d been here.
    Like the cook’s affection.
    Like Mari’s kindness.
    Like Beau’s blind faith in him.
    And he thought of the people below. Surely they already knew the truth about how pathetic he was. Standing up here for so long, it wasn’t something he could hide.
    So it doesn’t matter what you say
, he told himself
. Speak or don’t speak.
    No one’s listening anyway.
    That’s when Arman took a deep breath and leaned forward. He cupped his hands around his mouth and then he shouted out the words he didn’t want to admit, but which lived and breathed in the rawest parts of his being.
    A moment later, on the wide wings of the dark night wind, a hundred echoing voices from the clearing below rushed Arman’s truth right back at him.
    â€œ
I don’t belong here!
” they cried. “
I don’t think I can change!
”

DOING YOUR BEST.
    There’s an unfair assumption, you feel. That by design you don’t believe the things you say. That your every word, every deed, is meant as magic. As misdirection. From this follows the notion that what is calculating and deliberate must also be false. That if something is true, it must be obvious, and therefore easy.
    But the truth is never easy. Your own father taught you that, in his slick way, with his cool power of persuasion. “Never tell them what they want to hear,” he’d whisper. “Tell them what they’ll never know.”
    So what you know is this: The truth is something that can be knotted and dark and rooted so deeply that no one even remembers how it came to be. It can be utterly painful. It can be unspeakably cruel.
    It can also be very hard to swallow.
    That’s where you come in, all sweet talk and honeyed tones. You have the power to make the truth taste richer than the kindest lie. You don’t lure the innocent into darkness so much as you open their eyes to the vast night sky. That is your gift.
    The only lies are the ones you tell yourself.
    That you’re a good person.
    That you’re doing what’s best.

8
    AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT.
    Lots of it.
    Arman stared down from the edge of Echo Rock. He was awestruck not only by what he’d done, but what he saw. Nearly every