The person with the secret is changed by it—she smiles, but the corners of her mouth don’t quite reach the height they used to. The corners of her eyes don’t crinkle as deeply. The look in her eyes when she tells you she loves you—there’s something behind it. You don’t know what it is—what has she done?
Mara is many things, but a cliché isn’t one of them. If she does have a secret—and she does, I know that now, after that night with Stella, see it in everything she does—her secret isn’t a person. It’s a thing. A thing I can’t know, because it would change us.
What Mara doesn’t know is, it already has.
You can’t keep a secret from the person you love and expect it not to change him, too. She doesn’t trust me with something, which makes me distrust her, and that makes our hands miss each other when we pass something over the table. It makes my mouth just miss hers when I lean to kiss her lips and end up with cheek instead.
When you love someone, you’re saying you trust them. You’re handing them your heart and trusting them to protect it. To keep it safe.
Keeping a secret is like throwing that heart into the air and playing catch with it by yourself. But what you’re really playing with is someone else’s love, someone else’s happiness. I’ve always wondered how people do it. I’m the farthest thing from unfailingly honest—in fact, I’m an extraordinary liar—but it’s strange how different things seem when it’s your own heart that’s being tossed casually into the air. It’s a dangerous game.
When I was a child, I read everything I found, anywhere I found it. The only thing that felt beautiful about my life was the way books let me escape it. I felt surrounded by nothing, and the boredom was thick enough to choke on. When you can choose to do anything, how do you choose? Why?
All my life I’ve heard the phrase Do what makes you happy tossed around—not at me, God knows. But generally, as a principle. But when nothing makes you happy, what do you do then?
This is the essential truth about me: Mara makes me happy. The problem of Mara makes me happy. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s true. I shouldn’t think it, but I do. She’s this endlessly complex, chaotic person, but there’s a method to her madness, and I want to know it.
Can you ever really know another person? I thought I could. I thought I knew her, but now . . .
People who think they know me imagine me in control. When they see Mara and me together, when they think of us together, they see me as the lion tamer, and Mara the lioness. One crack of my whip, or a whisper, or a magic word, I’ll tame her like all the rest.
I don’t want to, is the thing.
But now, knowing what I don’t know, I want to cage her. But I want to be in that cage with her, no whip, no magic, and lock the door behind us, lock the world out. And then:
I want her to split me open, to dig her fingers in and pry open my ribs, lick my heart and my blood and my bones. Pick open my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to be devoured by her. And she wants to devour me just as badly. It’s in every look, every movement, every smile.
But her world is different now, and I don’t know how, because I missed it. My father took that from me, from us, and I didn’t feel that missingness most of the time, but I feel it now. Mara works hard not to show it. She and Jamie or Daniel or all three will exchange a look, and I’ll feel a kick of surprise in my chest. They were part of something that I hadn’t been, forged something together that I was left out of. Excluded from. When I ask Mara about it, she skirts around it, says it doesn’t matter.
But she’s a liar too. It does.
24
HAVING DISCOVERED FIRE
CURRENT MOOD: DAVID FOSTER WALLACE meets Amy Winehouse.
Mara was sleeping when I got home from meeting with Stella. I could’ve woken her, confronted her that night, and we could’ve fought about the secrets she’s kept and the lies she’s told.
But then, I would have to confess too.
Careful not to wake her, I climbed into bed beside her, but couldn’t close my eyes. When she woke up the next morning, I acted like nothing was different. Though everything was.
How could I have it out with Mara when I’ve been the one avoiding the truth—whatever that is—this whole time? And whatever is or isn’t happening now, with the suicides, I’m certain, positive, that Mara isn’t to blame.
So I’ve defaulted to doing what I do best: nothing. Jamie’s been gaming, and Goose has been going out. Mara’s started drawing again. She’s been writing and drawing. I have no music in me.
Daniel’s rather aggravated by the state of my affairs when he shows up at the loft days later. “We need to talk,” he says. He’s caught Jamie and me mid–Duck Hunt, shooting at the projector with an orange gun lifted out of the ’80s and dropped into our flat. It makes an annoying-yet-satisfying plastic click.
“What about?” I ask as a pixelated bird falls to the pixelated grass. It’s incredibly satisfying—I’ve become rather addicted.
“Your inheritance.”
That turns even Jamie’s head. Mara’s in the shower, and Goose has decided to brave the Gowanus Whole Foods to procure provisions for a grand dinner party that exactly no one has asked him to throw.
“I want to explore the archives,” Daniel says.
“I’m having the building demolished and turned into a community garden,” I say without turning away from the game. “Next topic.”
“Then you’re either an idiot or selfish.”
“That’s a rather strong and unnuanced position,” I say evenly, and aim the gun at the screen.
“Because it’s that important. Can you put down the gun, please?”
“If I must,” I say, laying it on my lap.
“Look, everything David Shaw did and had other people do is in there. All the research and tests and results—”
“Precisely,” I say. “And you managed to break in and start going through it. How long until someone else does? Maybe someone else already has. We’re obviously not the only Carriers in this city.”
But Daniel’s not keen on letting this go. “So what? Maybe there’s something in there that would help create a cure—”
“Isn’t that what Kells was trying to do?” I look at Jamie. “A little help, here?”
“Hard pass,” Jamie says, turning back to the game.
Daniel leans his palms on the kitchen counter. “If there’s a chance it’ll help us find out how to keep whatever’s happening to the others from happening to you guys, we can’t afford to ignore it.” I notice the shadows under his eyes, the strain around his mouth.
“You’re worried about Mara,” I say.
“Aren’t you?” His voice is almost accusatory. Almost.
More than you know, friend. “Of course,” I say. “But I don’t think the shit my father did to her—to all of you and Jesus fuck knows whomever else—is going to help.”
“So what’s your plan?” Daniel turns up his hands. “Do you have one?”
“Plans are so formal,” I say dismissively. “And they tend to go to hell where your sister’s involved.”
“You’re just saying that because you don’t have one.”
“I’ve heard from Stella,” I say, surprising myself. And Jamie, who leans closer to the TV to hide the fact that we now officially have his attention.
“My plan is that we should meet up with her and Leo and find out more about the others who lived with them. Work backward from there.”
Daniel pauses for a moment. “Okay. While you’re doing that, why don’t you let me work from the files that might be on them?”
It’s not that Daniel doesn’t have a point. My father tortured, or paid others to torture, people to find out why I am the way I am—I’m sure he learned quite a lot about those of us who carry the gene that makes us “gifted.” But if we use what he learned from that torture, that justifies it. Everything he did—to Mara, to Daniel, even—I won’t. I won’t do it. There has to be another way.
He blows out a sigh. “I don’t get it, Noah. I don’t get why you’d want to get rid of stuff that could help us. Help my sister.”
“There’s no cure,” I say, and Daniel freezes. “I know you want there to be one, but there isn’t.”