Dear Edward(24)

John makes a loud gasping sound and dives for it.

Something about the exaggerated noise is funny to Edward. It tickles him, and he laughs.

John stops moving, on his hands and knees, on the floor.

Edward freezes too. The laugh fizzles, doused by the cold water of guilt, shame, and confusion. He pushes the plate away. He reaches inside his brain for the sheet and pulls it back up, tight.

John is still on the floor; he shifts to a seated position. He says, “I use the iPad for work, mostly.”

“Oh.”

“Edward,” John says. “Laughing is okay. It’s good, even. You have to go back to doing all the normal human things.”

Edward’s body is sore. He almost tells John about what the therapist said, that he’s a different kind of human. He’s not a boy. He’s a bundle of cells and two eyeballs and a busted-up leg.

“I gained a pound,” he says, and is surprised by the note of triumph in his voice.

There is an evening routine too. Edward shows up in Shay’s room around nine and spends the first hour sitting in the chair by the window. At ten, they take turns brushing teeth in the bathroom, and then he unrolls a navy sleeping bag in the middle of her floor. By ten-fifteen, Shay has turned off the light.

“How was camp?” He’s in the armchair, his bad leg stretched board-straight in front of him.

“Stupid. You’re so lucky you don’t have to go.”

“I can’t go. I’m not exactly up to running bases.”

She looks up from the notepad in her lap. “Even if you were a thousand percent healthy, they’d let you do whatever you wanted. If you asked my mother for her car keys right now, she’d probably give them to you.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“Do you want to try and see?”

He tries to imagine approaching Besa with this request. He shakes his head.

Shay looks disappointed. “Well, my point is that normal kid rules don’t apply to you. Which you should be grateful for, because most kid rules are completely bogus and all about the grown-ups feeling like they have power over us. My camp counselor won’t even let me read during lunch. She says it’s because reading is antisocial, but I think it’s because she’s actually Joseph Goebbels.”

“Who’s that?”

“Nazi. Burned books.” Shay returns her attention to the notepad and writes a few lines.

Edward watches her write in this notepad every night. He suspects she’s taking notes on him and his potential magical powers, but he’s scared to ask if he’s right. He studies his damaged leg and waits for the scribbles to stop. He asked her about camp because he knows that’s the kind of thing people ask each other. How was your day? How are you feeling? But he sounded stupid asking, and she sounded annoyed answering, and he can feel this other weird conversation running underneath, in a language he can’t quite grasp. It’s something about magic, their age, her lack of friends, the curve of their emotions, the crash of the plane, and whatever she’s writing down.

When the scribbling stops, she says, “I see all your skeptical looks.”

He tries to look innocent. “What?”

“There’s no point to them. The reality is that I’m capable of seeing things that grown-ups can’t. Which means I’ll be able to see what’s inside you before anyone else does.”

The air in the room compresses, as if the electricity of the secret conversation and the real one have aligned for a moment.

The real Edward—not the one who’s always trying to deliver the “correct” line of dialogue—says, “You’re going to be disappointed when I turn out to be a normal kid.”

“It’s too late for that,” she says. “You’ll never be a normal kid.”

This sounds true, and he feels a ping of relief.

“I’m not normal either,” she says, as if answering a question he hadn’t asked.

“Great,” he says, and the wave of enthusiasm in his voice makes him blush.

She returns to the notebook, and Edward is aware that he’s breathing easier. His chest has loosened. When the clock reads ten, he gathers his crutches and hitches to the bathroom.

They are in their bed and sleeping bag, respectively, when Shay says, “I wonder how long they’re going to let you sleep here. I heard a lady in the grocery store asking my mom about it. It makes the grown-ups uncomfortable because we’re not quite teenagers and not quite kids. They might try to end it soon. They’re going to want everyone to go back to behaving”—she makes air quotes with her fingers—“in an acceptable way.”

Edward stares at her. “How do people in town know where I’m sleeping?”

“Gossip. Osmosis. Who knows?” She must notice the look on his face then, because she says, “Oh, don’t worry. You can keep sleeping here for as long as you like. I’ll fight them off. I’m good at that. I can be deeply annoying.”

An oversized envelope arrives in the mail. It’s at least two inches thick. Lacey carries it to the sofa in the living room and sinks down beside Edward on the couch. She peels off the outside of the envelope, and the paper falls heavily to the floor. She pulls out a large blue binder.

“What’s that?” Edward asks, at the same time processing the title on the front: Personal Effects of Flight #2977 Passengers.