The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(23)

She knelt by his side.

The closer she came, the more his fever cooled. He had never experienced the phenomenon before.

“You saved my brother and me,” Zoe said. “And I can handle a little peril.” She smiled faintly. “What’s your name? I don’t even know your name.”

“I do not have one,” he said.

“That’s messed up,” she said. “Okay, listen, whoever you are, we are not going to let you freeze to death out here. You helped Jonah and me when you didn’t have to, and you didn’t kill Stan when you could have—and that’s when I saw what you are capable of.”

“Zoe, I beseech you—”

“No. There will be no beseeching.”

Her voice was stern now. He feared he had angered her, but saw that she was struggling with many emotions.

“My family’s had a shit year,” she said, then stopped to gather herself.

“You need not speak if it brings you pain,” he said.

“No, I want to,” she said. She started again, speaking slowly, carefully: “We’ve had a shit year. There was nothing we could do about it, but there is something we can do about you. So we’re going to help you, no matter what you say—or how weirdly you say it.”

X searched her mind to see if her will was as strong as it seemed. He moved slowly, feeling his way into her thoughts, like he was parting branches. Almost immediately, she shivered and shot him a warning look.

“Stop it,” she said. “There will be no mind-melding—or whatever that is. You have to promise. Not with me or my family.”

“I give you my word,” he said. He added—he was not sure if he should—“And I have never been able to do it with anyone but you.”

This seemed to surprise her, and she smiled.

The awkwardness was lifting, dissipating like smoke.

“What will you call me?” he said.

“I’ll think of something,” she said.

The front door slammed in the distance—a dead sound with no echo. X turned to watch Jonah and his mother cross the drive. Jonah ran excitedly. He was carrying a round, red sled. He was holding it in front of him, like a shield.



Together, they pulled X to the house. With every bump and jolt, he arched his back in agony. Once inside, they maneuvered the sled through the kitchen, then the living room. Zoe and her mom tugged at the rope, while Jonah cleared the path and shouted frantic, sometimes contradictory, instructions.

At the bottom of the staircase, they managed to get X to his feet, like a team of workers lifting a statue. Zoe and her mother held his arms to steady him, and Jonah shoved as hard as he could from behind to prevent him from toppling backward. After five nerve-wracking minutes, they reached the landing. Jonah wanted X to sleep in his room with him, and when his mother hesitated, he began chanting, “Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!” In the end, it was decided that X would sleep in Jonah’s bed, even though it was small and shaped like a ladybug. The Bissells would all share the floor. The mother didn’t want her children alone with him.

Zoe helped X onto the bed, putting a palm against his chest to steady him. X closed his eyes to hide his surprise. His shirt had a rough V at the throat, and Zoe’s right forefinger had landed on the patch of bare skin. For the next few moments all he could feel—all he was aware of in the world—were the tiny movements of her hand as she inched her finger back onto cloth.

X was still dizzy and weak. The moment Zoe took her hand away he fell back onto the mattress with such a thud that the ladybug’s antennae twitched. Zoe unlaced his boots and put them under the bed. When she went to hang his overcoat in a closet, he shook his head no.

Zoe smiled.

“Security blanket?” she said.

X did not recognize the phrase, but he could tell there was kindness in it.

Zoe placed her palm on X’s chest again—avoiding his exposed skin so carefully that he felt her touch even more keenly than before—and said, with a strange kind of sweetness, “Good night, moon.”

As she turned away, he reached out to touch her arm. Had he not been in a fog and half out of his senses, he’d never have had the nerve.

“Why endanger yourselves?” he said. “Why do all this for me?”

Zoe looked down at where his hand lightly gripped her. She gave him a smile, a trace of light in the darkness.

“There’s nothing good on TV,” she said.

Jonah fell asleep first and began battling someone or something in his dreams. Zoe’s mom tossed on the floor awhile—she gave a little yelp every time she rolled onto a toy that Jonah had left on the carpet—then slipped off as well, one arm draped lovingly over her son.

X lay quietly, unable to rest despite his exhaustion. He turned to face the window next to the bed. A frantic beetle was flitting back and forth between the panes of glass, trapped forever with the wide world in full view. X knew what it felt like to be that bug. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine escaping the Lowlands and living. Truly living. He pictured himself with Zoe in the summertime when the world wasn’t hardened by ice and swallowed in snow. When there was no Trembling. No fear.

He shook his head. The vision was ridiculous—and dangerous, besides. The longer he resisted returning to the Lowlands, the more he imperiled them all.