“I even left out the parts where you and Noah died and came back to life, but for some reason she still seems to think I’m fucking with her. She was kind of huffy about it, actually. But she’s trustworthy. And smart. With her brains and my awesome power, we’ll be able to leave whenever we want.”
“Good news.”
“P.S., you were right about Noah. I am willing to acknowledge that now.”
“About what? About him being alive?”
“Yes, but also about him. Like, generally.”
“I’m not following . . .”
“When I met you, I thought he was going to use you.”
“This is a shock to no one, Jamie.”
“Can you shut up for a second so I can admit my wrongness?” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying. He could never use you. You own him. You should’ve seen the way he was looking at you while you were out.”
I smiled a little. “How?”
“Like you’re the ocean and he’s desperate to drown.”
His words wiped the smile off my face. Noah had drowned. With my help.
I shook my head as if to clear it. Jamie must’ve thought I was disagreeing with him because he went on.
“You don’t get what you do for him. You’re like his manic pixie dream girl or something.” Jamie thought for a second. “Actually, more like his psychotic demon nightmare thing, but whatever. You get my point.”
I refused to acknowledge it.
“Speaking of demon nightmare things,” he segued gracefully, “you dying and coming back to life? That was a neat trick. How’d you manage that?”
“Jude said it’s because I manifested finally, or something. That I healed myself.”
“Huh. And Noah?”
I stayed quiet.
“He looked pretty dead when you were sitting there rocking back and forth, holding his seemingly lifeless body, I have to say.”
“Do you? Have to say?”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not being entirely truthful, Mara?”
“You’re imagining things. You’re under a lot of stress.”
He looked like he was about to hit me, when someone knocked on the door. Rochelle peeked inside and motioned for us to follow her out into the hallway.
“You owe me, Cousin,” she said to Jamie as we passed Detective Howard and some nurses.
“You love me and you know it.”
“You’re lucky I do.”
We passed Noah’s closed door on our way to the elevator. The cops were still there, still guarding him. I recognized one of them; he’d been at the factory. The one distracted by Jamie shouting from the computer.
Jamie stopped walking. “You okay?” Jamie asked the officer. I stopped to listen.
“Yeah,” the cop said slowly. “Why?”
Jamie motioned to his own nose. “You have . . . something.”
The cop’s eyebrows drew together and he sniffed, then rubbed his nose. His fingers came away red. They left a bloody smear above his lip.
He nodded at Jamie. “Thanks.”
We resumed our exit. When we neared the elevator, though, something caught my eye.
A scalpel rested on a little cart outside a patient room. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me.
No one was.
I slipped it into my back pocket and followed Jamie and Rochelle into the elevator. The officer was dabbing a bloody tissue to his nose when the doors closed.
68
NOAH
MARA IS WAITING FOR US when Jamie springs Daniel and me that night. She stands beneath a streetlight on an empty sidewalk, looking very gorgeous in a very bad way.
“Subway?” Jamie suggests.
Daniel sticks his hand up in the air. “Cab. Definitely.”
A minute later one pulls up to the curb. The cabbie turns around once we’re in. “Where are we going?”
Mara grins at me. “Wherever we want.”
Almost as soon as Jamie unlocks the front door to his aunt’s house, he ducks into the bathroom, and Daniel passes out on the couch in the parlor.
I look around. “Nice place,” I say as Mara leads me farther in.
“Upstairs or downstairs?” she asks.
“Bed,” I answer. Her smile widens as she leads me up the steps. I follow her into a bedroom and we collapse together in each other’s arms.
I wake up the next afternoon. Mara is beside me, dead, her limbs tangled in the sheets.
No. Not dead. Sleeping.
But the panic stays with me. I extract my arm from beneath her as guilt rises in my throat. It’s so thick I could choke.
There’s a bathroom in here, thank God, and I escape into it and bolt the door behind me. I look at my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, at my empty eyes, my blank face. Then they disappear and I see other things. The pale blue veins in Mara’s arm before I stuck the needle in it. Her closed eyelids, unnaturally still.
I want to cut myself into pieces no one can reassemble. Instead I take off my shirt, knowing, fearing what I’ll see.
There are stitches in my chest, as expected, and the wound is almost completely healed, as I’d feared.
I steal scissors from the medicine cabinet and cut the stitches out, wondering without much curiosity at all if I’ll have a scar. Hope so.
“Knock, knock.” Daniel’s voice, muffled, accompanied by tapping on the door. I step out of the bathroom as he says, “Everyone decent?”
Mara opens her eyes blearily, looking up at me from the bed. Her hair is a wild, tangled mess. I want to fill my hands with it.
“Who is it?” she asks.
“Your brother,” I say.
She’s up in an instant and launches herself out of bed, stubbing her toe in the process, swearing creatively as a result. She flings the door open and attacks him with a hug. Daniel staggers back, but his arms wrap around her just as tightly.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice muffled. “So sorry.”
He backs up and holds her shoulders. “It’s not your fault.”
She’ll never believe you, I almost say. But this is not my moment.
Daniel looks at me anyway, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “Noah. Thank you.”
The words make me sick.
“For saving me and my sister.”
Except I didn’t save him, or his sister. If it weren’t for me, Daniel would never have been in danger. His father never would have moved their family to Florida. Mara never would have been at the asylum. Jude never would have hurt her—she’d never have met him. Everything that happened to them was because my father made it happen. I think about the times I promised to keep her and her family safe, when all the while she was in danger because of me. Just thinking about it makes me want to swallow a bullet.
I can’t say any of this to Daniel, obviously, for fear of sounding like a little bitch.
“So this is where the party is,” Jamie says as he sweeps into the room. “Guess what?”
Mara raises an eyebrow.
“We’ve got mail.”
He tosses something at me, and I catch it, wincing slightly. My full name is on the cream-colored envelope, otherwise unmarked. Jamie hands one to Mara, too.
“From?” she asks.
“Lukumi. Lenaurd. Whoever that dude is. There’s one for Stella, too, but . . .” He holds up his hands as if to say, What can you do?
“How do you know they’re from him?” Daniel asks.
Jamie holds up a larger manila envelope in his other hand. “It was addressed to ‘The Temporary Residents of 313 West End Avenue.’ That’s us,” he adds superfluously.
Mara pouts. “You opened it without me?”
“I thought you might be having sex.”
“You would have heard it.”
Their banter is intimate in a way. I’m not jealous, exactly, but I feel like a stranger, watching them play together. Left out. Cue violins.
“Who knows, you could’ve been at it for hours,”
Jamie continues. “I wasn’t going to wait.”
All right, enough. “Please refrain from being a tool,” I say. “What’s in them?”
“I dunno.” Jamie shrugs. “I was supposed to wait to read mine till you had yours. Now you have them.” Jamie rips his open with a dramatic flourish. Mara begins to open hers.
Daniel frowns. “I feel so left out.”
“Count your blessings,” Mara says to him, with unusual seriousness.
“You can have mine, if you like,” I offer. Mara looks at me queerly. “What? I don’t care what it says.”
Her eyes narrow. “Can I read it, then?”
I hand it over. She opens it carefully and begins to read, but stops almost immediately. I can’t tell if she’s afraid or angry or upset; her expression is flat. Blank.
Christ. She looks like me.
She holds the letter out. “It’s for you.”
“Yes, I’m aware. I’m trying, vainly it seems, to communicate that I don’t want it.”
“Take it,” she says softly. “Please.”
Bloody hell. I feel Daniel’s eyes bounce back and forth between us.
“I’m . . . going to go make something to eat,” he says, backing slowly out of the room. “Come down if you’re hungry?”
Jamie waves at him without looking up. Mara says yes.
I finally, reluctantly take the letter from her. I owe her at least that.
There’s another envelope inside it, addressed to no one. Sealed. I unfold the note and begin to read.
Noah,
Enclosed is a letter from your mother. I managed to find it before your father did. She left it in an old jewelry box she never used, along with her necklace, which you now wear. If you take it off, I will know of your decision.
A.L.
I want to be strong enough not to read it, but I’m not. Of course I’m not.
Noah, my son,
I’m practically crying already. Jesus.
Most parents, when asked why they want to have children, say that they want to raise a child to be happy. To be healthy. To be wanted. To be loved.
That is not why I had you. I want more for you than that.
I want you to topple dictatorships. To end world hunger. To save the whales. To make sure that your great-grandchildren will know what gorillas look like, not because they have seen them behind a moat, playing with dog toys in a zoo, but because they have tracked them in the mountains of Uganda with sweat bees in their eyes and leeches in their socks. You will see children with bellies fat with worms instead of food. You will sit down to meals, only to find that endangered animals are on the menu. Happiness will elude you, and there will be no rest—you will have to fight every day because there is so much injustice and horror to fight against.
But if you don’t fight, you will grow lazy and discontent under the guise of wanting peace. You will acquire money to acquire toys, but the biggest ones will never be big enough. You will fill your mind with trash because the truth is too ugly to look at. And maybe, if you were another child, someone else’s child, maybe that would be all right. But you aren’t. You are mine. You are strong enough and smart enough and you are destined for greatness. You can change the world. So I leave you with these words:
Do not find peace. Find passion. Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for. If it is your children, then fight not just for your own but for orphans who have no one else. If it is for medicine, then do not just seek out a cure for cancer but search for a cure for AIDS as well. Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Speak for them. Scream for them. Live and die for them. Your life will not always be a happy one, but it will have meaning.
I love you. I believe in you. More than you will ever, ever know.
P.S. when you find someone to fight with, give her or him this.
69
I WATCHED NOAH WALK OUT of the room as he read his letters. I didn’t stop him. He deserved privacy. I owed him that.
I opened my letter instead. As I began to read, I pictured the professor in his office, my mind filling in details from memories that weren’t mine.
Mara,
When I first caught sight of you in Miami, I did not know who you were. I was expecting someone Gifted to walk into the botanica that day, but you? You were quite a surprise.
You have been wondering who I am and what I want from you, but you should have been wondering who you are. I had hoped you would discover yourself on your own; knowledge acquired on your own means that you are responsible for it, no one else. What you know determines what you do and I cannot afford to change you. It has taken me centuries to learn it, but I have no power to change anything.
You do, though, and you have. Your will has cleansed the world of some people it is better off without, and others who have harmed no one, not even you. I will not patronize you by absolving you of responsibility—we are responsible for everything we do and do not do. But I will say that you belong to a legacy of others who have faced similar challenges.
Euhemerus wrote that the gods of ancient myths were simply people with greater abilities than most, deified by those around them. Then came Jung, and we, the Gifted, became archetypes. Normal men became gods. Plain women, monsters. We are none of those things. We are simply people, blessed and cursed.
Our abilities could not be explained by science. But these abilities weren’t without a cost. We harm ourselves. Ignore wisdom. Throw ourselves into danger. Attempt and commit suicide. We have no greater enemies than ourselves. For most of our history we did not know what was wrong with us, or right—why some of us manifested painfully, others without consequence, why some were ignorant of their origins while others relived moments we had never personally experienced. I have spent more than one lifetime trying to answer these questions and many others, and I am not sure whether my answers have done more harm than good. Without my work the boy you call Jude would never have been polluted. But the boy you love, Noah, would also never have been born.
I believe that every person has a responsibility to leave the world a better place than he found it. My particular Gift allows me to draft a vision for that better world—but my curse is that I lack the tools to build it. I have tried and failed to alter the course of history myself, and have learned that my Gift is useless on its own. And so I have found others to help me, your grandmother among them.
Noah was destined for greatness, until you were born. I had hoped that the manner of his birth would prevent the cycle from perpetuating—the eternal conflict between Hero and Shadow, the curses attendant to Tricksters, Mothers, Wise Women and Men. I had hoped that with my knowledge, I could end our madness. You are never too old to be susceptible to pride. The universe demands balance, and three months after Noah was conceived, you were conceived as well.
Noah’s Gift is that he could live forever and help others to as well, but his curse is that he only wants to die. You, Mara, are Gifted with the ability to protect those you love, but only in a way that hurts them and others. You can reward with life, but you must punish to do it.
It has been said that there must be a villain for every hero, a demon for every angel, a monster for every god. Despite what we are, I do not believe this. I have seen the villainous act heroic, and men called heroes act villainous. The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.
Do you know why it is that, even today, women are counseled to scream “fire” instead of “rape”? Because the fundamental truth about humanity is that most people would rather look away.
Whatever your faults—and you have many, Mara, challenges no one else will ever face—you have never looked away. When evil smiles at you, you smile back.
The pendant your grandmother left you represents two symbols of justice—the feather and the sword. Those of us who choose
to make a difference in the world have adopted it as a way to recognize one another. Your grandmother wore it. Noah’s mother wore it. Whatever you decide will not be the end for you but a new beginning. I encourage you to think carefully; you need not decide today. But do know that it is an irrevocable choice, and it can lead to a lonely life.
Whatever you choose, as time passes, you will grow in strength and conviction, and apart from you, Noah will as well. My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.
So even though I already know what your choice will be, I cannot help but implore you one last time. You will love Noah Shaw to ruins, unless you let him go. Whether it is fate or chance, coincidence or destiny, I have seen his death a thousand ways in a thousand dreams over a thousand nights, and the only one who can prevent it is you.
Should you choose to wear your grandmother’s pendant, I will know of your decision. But no matter what, we will see each other again.
A.L.
I looked up as soon as I’d finished reading. Jamie was staring at me.
“What did yours say?”
My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.
“Stuff,” I said slowly. “About me. Yours?”
“Me too. Stuff.” He paused. “Do you believe him?”
Without you, he can.
“I don’t know,” I lied. My mind was crowded with words I hadn’t written, thoughts I didn’t think, memories I’d never experienced, and I couldn’t untangle them yet. “Do you?”
“I want to,” Jamie said. And then he bowed his head and clasped his necklace around his neck before I could say another word. He half-smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “The freaks shall inherit the earth.”
70
I WAITED EXACTLY ONE HOUR before hunting Noah down. I wanted to give him space, but I also wanted to tell him about what I’d read. What I remembered. I wanted to ask him what he thought we should do.
I knew what I thought I should do, but I needed to work up the nerve to do it.