“Stella,” I say, feeling every second as it’s lost, grasping for more. “You weren’t there when my father said the things he said.”
“I didn’t have to be there. It’s in your head. I can see it.”
“You can see his memory of it,” Mara says. “Memories are tainted. Unreliable. If you bothered to look at my memory, I bet it would be different.”
Stella smiles again, coy. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
I look reflexively at Mara. Her face reveals nothing, her expression almost as still as the paused officers’.
“That’s why I made the video,” Stella goes on. “So everyone can see who you are, what you do. Obviously, memories can’t be trusted. I mean, look where I am right now.”
“You don’t have to be here,” Mara says.
“No, I don’t have to be here. I could be in some basement with a gun in my mouth—it probably would’ve taken people a while to find me. A quieter death would’ve been a lot more convenient for you.”
Leo looks at me, his hands balled into fists. “Why aren’t you stopping her?”
“Stopping whom? Stella’s in control here. Aren’t you, Stella?”
She looks around, up at the frozen police, the paramedics. Then at each of us, landing on Mara, last.
“Am I?”
I follow her gaze—the bodies of everyone who isn’t Us shimmer and blink. And then—gone. It’s elegant, the way they’re wiped away. Replaced with blank space. The pieces don’t completely fit—the pavement shivers, miragelike, where they once stood.
“She’s in your head too,” Stella says to me, but it’s Leo I look at.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I’m trying to make it so we focus on Stella, because I can’t hold the rest of them for long.”
I turn to Goose, who’s sheet-white, with Daniel next to him, speaking in a low voice. Mara takes a step toward Stella. “What am I saying to you, in your head?”
“You’re not saying anything. You’re just there, crouching like a tiger.” Stella laughs, which is especially disturbing, considering the fact that there’s nothing between her and a 135-foot drop. When she rights herself, she steadies her gaze on Sophie.
“You’re next, I think.” She blinks slowly. “I think you’re safe for a while, Leo. I’m glad.”
“I’m begging you,” he says to her. “Don’t do this.” I try and focus my energy on him, on listening to his heartbeat, to hear if he’s lying to all of us or telling the truth, but all I hear is a swarm of flies. I look back and see Sophie, but instead of her face, I see a skull.
“Stop,” I say to Leo through clenched teeth, but Stella thinks I’m talking to her. She’s about to say something back when Mara says—
“Let go, then.”
The words echo, then flatten, then become part of the swarm.
“Stella,” I say quickly, “this isn’t happening the way you think it is.” I turn back, looking for Daniel, for Jamie, for help, and the bridge behind me vanishes, rubbed into white space.
“You said you wanted a cure,” I hear Mara say. “You could be fighting for one. Instead, you’re giving up.”
“Fuck you,” Stella spits. “I’m not giving up, or letting go. I didn’t get to choose my own adventure, but I can choose my own ending.”
I don’t know if it’s a trick of my eyes, of Leo’s, or if what I’m seeing is real, but Stella doesn’t fall from the bridge, or jump.
She dives.
41
STRONG AND VALIANT NATURES
THE LAST CONSCIOUS THOUGHT THAT Stella has, that I can hear, is Your move
It’s stunning, watching the river swallow her body. The closest person to her, proximity-wise, was Mara. But I was the one she was thinking about as her neck broke. A white sear of pain and then, nothing.
I hadn’t noticed that dawn had risen, that it was morning, until now. The police are back in motion, talking to us, coming toward us, and Jamie’s in gear, leading the way with Leo. The illusion’s broken, Daniel and Goose are by my side. Goose is leaning on to the rail, weakest of all of us. “Drained” would be a better word, I suppose. I twist back, looking for Mara, but the only person I see behind us is Sophie. She’s crying, silently.
“Have you seen Mara?” I ask her.
She looks up at me through dark blond lashes. “She left as soon as soon as Stella . . .”
“The cops are going to want to talk to all of us,” Daniel says. “There are cameras on the bridge, not to mention the helicopters—”
“Did any of them get audio, do you think?” I want to replay what just happened. Make sure my own memory is untainted.
“Who cares?” Leo turns, faces me. “Who the fuck cares?”
“We all should,” Daniel says, though not for the reason I expect. “Especially us, seeing as we’re eighteen.”
“And that’s relevant why?” Leo asks.
“Because it means we can be questioned without a guardian present,” Daniel says flatly. “Because we can be charged as adults.”
“Charged for what? She committed suicide,” Sophie says quietly. “No one’s going to be arrested for murder.”
“Even though one of us should be,” Leo says. He turns his assholic stare on me as Mara’s not here.
“Shut up,” I say as Jamie talks us past one of the cops, but I don’t say it out of anger. I stop at the railing, threading my fingers through the fence. A boat arcs through the river, its wake curving like a smile.
Beneath the cars, beneath the trains, beneath the voices and sounds of every living thing in New York—
Beneath the water, there’s a heartbeat.
42
HOWEVER MEAN
SHE’S ALIVE.” I’M STARING DOWN at the water, watching the boat, but it’s as though someone took an open palm to an unfinished oil painting and smeared it. I can’t tell if her body’s floated up, or if they’ve sent divers down for her, and my mind can’t reach simple facts I should know.
Leo steps beside me, looks down. “How—”
“I need to get to her.”
“Noah.” Sophie puts a light hand on my arm. “She’s gone.”
I don’t shake her off. She’s barely there, flickering in and out. I call out to Jamie, “Can you get us through?”
I have to shout it—it’s deafening up here, now that the illusion’s broke. The cars and trains and the city—we would barely’ve been able to hear ourselves speak.
“I’m trying!” Jamie calls back, just as Goose falls to the pavement.
Daniel’s voice tugs at me as he crouches over my friend. “Can you do anything?”
I try and let it all in, every sound I can usually hear; lungs expanding, blood rushing through arteries, hearts like metronomes, but instead it’s everything else; pistons firing in engines powering cars, a garbage bag being stepped on, glass breaking, the ticking of Leo’s watch.
I’m bent over Goose—I can see his chest move, but can’t hear him breathe. I tilt my head, my ear to his mouth, and still I can barely hear a shudder of a breath, even though I can see it. It feels like I’m backing into a corridor, the lights going out one by one. Someone’s calling my name, but I’m on the pavement, deaf, but not blind. A drop of blood wells up in Goose’s nostril, then drips down the side of his cheek. It drips to the ground. I can’t hear that, either. The air stirs his hair, the collar of his shirt.
Daniel’s mouth is moving, but no words are coming out. Goose blinks out of my field of vision even though I’m kneeling over him. When he blinks back in, his hand is on my shoulder and I’m the one on the pavement, on my back, shouting for everyone to shut the fuck up.
I watch two pigeons take flight between the suspension cables. The colour leaches out of the sky; the world is grey and white before I black out.
43
PAINT THE VERY ATMOSPHERE
HER VOICE CURLS AROUND MY nerves.