Hmm.
“Swayed gently,” he said. “A great rustling. Tunnels in bedclothes, an unwrapping of parcels. Her face grew flushed—”
So did mine.
“Half asleep, she crept up close to the pillow and whispered in his ear, damp from—”
“That is not The Velveteen Rabbit,” I said, my voice hoarse from disuse.
“Welcome back,” Noah said.
There was nothing to say but the truth. “That was awful.”
Noah responded by defiling Dr. Seuss. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, became an instructional rhyme on fellatio.
Fortunately, Joseph walked into my room just as Noah recited his next title. The New Adventures of Curious George.
“Can I listen?” my brother asked.
“Sure,” Noah said.
Filthy visions of the Man in the Yellow Hat and his monkey desecrated my mind.
“No,” I said, my face muffled by my pillow.
“Don’t pay attention to her, Joseph.”
“No,” I said louder, still facing my wall.
“Come sit next to me,” Noah said to my brother.
I sat up in bed and shot Noah a scathing look. “You can’t read that to him.”
A smile transformed Noah’s face. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because. It’s disgusting.”
He turned to Joseph and winked. “Another day, then.”
Joseph left the room, but he was smiling as he went.
“So,” Noah said carefully. I was sitting up, cross-legged and tangled in my sheets.
“So,” I said back.
“Would you like to hear about Curious George’s new adventures?”
I shook my head.
“Are you sure?” Noah asked. “He’s been such a naughty monkey.”
“Pass.”
Then Noah gave me a look that broke my heart. “What happened, Mara?” he asked in a low, quiet voice.
It was nighttime, and maybe it was because I was tired, or because I’d started talking. Or because it was the first time he ever asked me, or because Noah looked so heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful sitting on the floor beside my bed, haloed by the light of my lamp, that I told him.
I told him everything, from the beginning. I left nothing out. Noah sat stone still, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Jesus Christ,” he said when I was finished.
He didn’t believe me. I looked away.
“I thought I was mad,” Noah said to himself.
I snapped my eyes to his. “What? What did you say?”
Noah stared at my wall. “I saw you—well, your hands, anyway—and heard your voice. I thought I was going mad. And then you showed up. Unbelievable.”
“Noah,” I said. His expression was remote. I reached out and turned his head to me. “What are you talking about?”
“Just your hands,” he said, taking my hands in his and turning them over, flexing my fingers as he inspected them. “You were pressing them against something but it was dark. Your head ached. I could see your fingernails; they were black. Your ears were ringing but I heard your voice.”
His sentences knotted together in a way that didn’t fit. “I don’t understand.”
“Before you moved here, Mara. I heard your voice before you moved here.”
The memory of Noah’s face that first day of school arranged itself into an unthinkable shape. He looked at me like he knew me because—because somehow, he did. Any words I could have spoken next vanished from my tongue, from my brain. I could not make sense of what I was hearing.
“You weren’t the first one I saw. Heard. There were two others before, but I never met them.”
“Others,” I whispered.
“Other people I saw. In my mind.”
His words sunk like a stone in the air around us.
“I was driving the first time, at night,” he said in a rush. “I saw myself hit someone; but it was on a completely different road, and it wasn’t my car. But I headed straight for her. She was our age, I think. Pinned behind the steering column. She didn’t die for hours,” Noah said, his voice hollow. “I saw everything she went through, heard everything she heard, and felt everything she felt, but was somehow still on my road. I thought it was a hallucination, you know? Like at night when you’re driving sometimes, and you imagine going over the shoulder, or hitting another car. But it was real,” Noah said, and his voice was haunted.
“The second one was very ill. He was our age as well. I dreamed one night that I was preparing food for him, then fed him, but the hands weren’t mine. He had some sort of infection and his neck hurt so badly. He was so sore. He cried.”
Noah’s face was drawn and pale. He leaned his head into his hand and rubbed it, then ran his fingers back through his hair, making it stand on end. Then he looked up at me. “And then in December, I heard you.”
The blood drained from my face.