I wonder what he would say if I told him the truth.
“It’s just sad. People suck, you know?” I say, but I need to get out of this conversation. “So, what now?”
He looks down the street in every direction. “Show me why I should want to be part of this world.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be much of a tour guide. I don’t really want to be part of this world,” I say with a laugh.
“You may skip the worst parts,” he says.
Fine. If the Lyric Walker tour will take my mind off Angela and her family, then it’s worth the effort. I take him to my elementary school, where I kissed my first boy. I show him where the best slice of pizza can still be found and buy him one. He finds it spicy and peculiar, so I warn him that if he can’t acquire a taste for pizza, he will never make it in the human world. I walk him past the movie theater and try to explain what happens inside it. He asks about sideshows, what a “freak” is, and if there really is a “Wolf Girl.” The questions continue: What is the purpose of a roller coaster? What are sneakers made of? Do hot dogs contain stray dogs? Everything is a mystery to him. It’s like being with a six-year-old. He wants to understand how the jeeps work that the soldiers use and how the helicopters stay in the sky.
“Someone knows,” I tell him, “just not me.” It’s an answer I have to give him over and over again until I’m embarrassed with myself. My ignorance of the world around me makes me feel foolish. I am surrounded by stuff I use every single day, and I don’t have the faintest clue how any of it works. Streetlights, cars, bicycles, microwaves, the Internet—he wants to understand them all. I must look like the dumbest human on the planet.
He’s interested in photographs. He points at the ancient ads for movies and TV shows we see on walls and bus stops. He is especially fascinated by pictures of people.
“How is this made?” he asks.
I cringe. “I don’t know, but I can do it for you.” I snap a picture of him with my phone and show him the results. He stares at it with growing wonder.
“You captured me.”
“It’s called taking a picture. You can do it too.” I hand him my phone and adjust his hand so his finger is on the button. Once he’s set, I lean in close.
“What are you doing?” he says, slightly startled.
“We’re going to take a picture of us,” I say. “It’s called a selfie. It’s what people who are in love with themselves do to keep themselves busy. You can’t really be an American teenager if you aren’t willing to take one of these a couple dozen times a day. Smile.”
“Why?”
He takes the picture. It’s a bit out of frame but not bad. He didn’t smile. In fact, he looks constipated, but it’s a nice pic. We look like we’re real friends. He stares at it for a long time as I watch a sadness come over him.
“Fathom?”
“For this I would be human,” he says.
“It’s just a phone,” I say. “They’re obsolete after a year and they make you buy a new one.”
“With this I could capture the faces of people I love,” he says, then gives it a shake. “It will not disappear?”
“No, it’s digital. It’s forever unless you erase it.”
“Forever,” he whispers. “My mother—”
He stares at our picture while my heart crumbles under the weight of his tragedy. His mother is gone, and it dawns on me that he doesn’t have a single picture. What would I do if my mother died? If I could not look at her face every single day?
“You are blessed, Lyric.”
“I know,” I whisper, and for the first time in three years, I really feel it.
Eventually the heat gets the best of me, so I drag him under a long-forgotten scaffolding by the old Shore Hotel. We sit on a stoop and I read to him. Today it’s Curious George; Amos & Boris; Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel; and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! And he listens, like a little boy listens. We sit close and he leans in, watching my finger move from word to word. The closer he gets, the more I squirm inside. Possibility is an aching addiction, and it won’t let me be.
What if?
Shut up, wild thing.
You deny yourself too much.
For good reason! Everything I want is dangerous. Every decision I make is a wrong one. Even these stupid feelings are just a self-destruct button in disguise. I cannot have this boy.
The heart wants what the heart—
Screw you. I’m going to stop this right now. “How long have you been with Arcade?” I ask.
He sits up, startled to hear her name. “When I was five years old, her father and mine declared us selfsame.”
“Selfsame?”
“Meant for each other.”
“Oh, and they knew this how?”
“Royal tradition is for fathers to join their children into a promised future based on matching qualities,” he says.
“So your father picked your . . . ?”