“It’s better now,” he says. “Turn out the light.”
I reach for the lamp switch and he flops back on the bed, belly up. He folds his hands behind his head so his elbows flare out like wings. My eyes adjust to the soft gray light diffusing in the window, leftover starlight and moonlight. It mutes all the colors so his gray shirt is the same hue as his cheeks.
He closes one eye, and then the other. I lean near again, trying to tell if his pupils have dilated the same amount, but it’s too dark to be sure. Then I notice he’s watching me closely, with a slight smile.
“Your eyes are fine,” I say quickly.
“Don’t move. You have a kind of halo.”
I hold still, watching him, and then he lifts a hand to my hair. He tugs a strand, lightly straightening it out to its full length before he lets go and chooses another. A shiver lifts along my neck.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” he says.
“I guess I wanted to see if anything we had was real.”
“What do you think?”
I shrug. “It’s only been a few hours.”
His smile widens. I set my hand on his shirt, and his warmth seeps though the cotton to my fingers. I could try to hash out with him the reasons why we broke up, but that’s not what I want to do.
“You used to think I was completely delusional,” I say. “Why do you even like me?”
“I suppose it’s the gap in your teeth.”
“I mean it, Linus,” I say. “What is it about me? Only me?”
He shifts slightly. He touches a finger to my chest, above my heart, an inch from my port. It makes me self-conscious. Then he peers back up, and I can feel him searching into me.
“It’s this little hole you have here,” he says.
He doesn’t mean my port. I go still while the hollow, dark place inside me tests its edges. I’ve never told anybody about that lonely, reaching place. I study him, unsure.
“You have it, too?” I ask.
He nods, and then looks away. A painful, tiny crack opens inside me. I don’t want him feeling as alone as I do. The window rattles once with a gust of wind. I slip my hand into his.
He glances up at me again, intently. “I’m only going to kiss you. That’s all,” he says. “Okay?”
He’s still lying back on the pillow, all these gray-scale hues of skin and cotton, with black for his hair and the depths of his eyes. His lips are open a little in the middle. I can’t quite imagine how he’s going to move up to meet me, and then I realize he isn’t moving. I’m the one moving. I’m touching my mouth to the curving lines of his, because that’s how lightning happens, in the wrong direction, inescapably.
27
THEA
A TOUR OF FORGE
TREES DROPPED their spindly shadows on the hood of the truck as Tom and I drove up the familiar road of the Forge School. One state west, in Colorado, they still had snow, but here in Kansas, spring was early. The trees were fuzzy with buds, and the pasture was green with new grass. On my right, the observatory where I once fell with Burnham aimed its gray dome toward a blue sky, and the lookout tower cast its great lenses over the campus.
Tom and I had slept late at the motel and driven half the day to arrive at Forge by mid-afternoon. I’d checked in with Madeline enough to allay her fears that I was dead on the road somewhere and ask if I had any messages. I didn’t. I didn’t have any on my own phone, either, and by daylight, it was easier to resist calling Linus. What would I tell him, anyway? I couldn’t very well force myself into his life, even if I was visiting his proverbial back yard.
Now Tom and I pulled into the driveway behind the art building and parked before the giant wooden spools. One was still splattered with colorful paint. The other had been painted black and drilled with holes.
I’d had my first kiss by those spools, in the rain, in desperation. I had to wonder where Linus was at this moment.
“It all looks bigger than I guessed from TV,” Tom said, as he locked the car. “Where are the cameras?”
“They’re everywhere. Most of them are small buttons. They blend in.”
“Like that?” he asked, pointing to one on a metal railing.
“Yes.”
I almost told him not to point, which was taboo for students. Even though the cameras weren’t broadcasting me, everywhere I turned I instinctively felt a prickling along my neck.
“Relax,” Tom said, squeezing a hand into my shoulder. “No one’s going to recognize you. They can’t.”
“I know. It’s just weird to be back.”
“We’re simply taking a tour. No big deal.”
I shot him a smile. “Right. Thanks.”
We’d agreed to take a tour of the school and wing it from there. Tom knew that I hoped to learn more about Berg’s research, but he’d pointed out that any real discovery was unlikely, given that I would have no chance to get off stage in broad daylight. I felt, distinctly, that he was indulging me.
I also sensed that he’d withdrawn from me at some level. I couldn’t blame him. Each stop on our road trip was proving how little I resembled Althea. Then again, it was a relief for me to have someone from Althea’s life finally get an up-close look at where I’d come from.
A dozen people were gathered on the steps of the student union, mostly parents and their teenager sons and daughters. In snug yellow pants and a black coat, a big white guy with pale curls stood out from the crowd. A tall, young black woman with hoop earrings idly met my eye, and then gave me a nod. Several others surreptitiously checked out my figure. I felt like my belly was huge. I wasn’t recognizable as Rosie, but I was still conspicuous.
“You were here how long?” Tom asked quietly.
“Two months. A lifetime.”
I could feel a level of eagerness in the way the others fidgeted. Visitors to the campus didn’t merit any special attention, but they each stood a chance of being in the background of a Forge student’s feed. After the tour, visitors could order memento clips of the background footage compiled from various feeds, for a price.
I didn’t want anything to do with that, obviously.
My friend Janice came lightly down the steps of the student union and stopped before us, tucking her short hair back around her ear. I was stunned to realized she was our tour guide. She’d changed her hair from blonde to a burnished, golden-red color that made her eyes look almost purple, and she wore a white jacket with big black buttons over her black jeans and boots.
“Hi, everybody,” she said with a friendly wave. “Welcome to Forge. I’m Janice. I’m a sophomore acting student, and I’ll be your tour guide this afternoon. Before we begin, why don’t each of you perspective students tell me your name and your art? Go ahead.”
They started at the other end with the guy in the yellow pants, who turned out to be a singer. I scrambled to concoct what I was going to say, but when Janice came to me and Tom, she passed right on to the next young person. Startled, I glanced at Tom.
He leaned near to my ear. “I feel incredibly old and unartistic.”