Dear Edward(39)

“You won’t be twenty-one for eight years, and the money isn’t even real yet. There’s another period of red tape that needs to be gone through. We just wanted you to know, in case someone mentioned it at the NTSB hearing.” John spreads low-fat butter across a piece of toast. “Not that I expect anyone to do so, but we didn’t want you to be caught unawares.”

“I don’t want it,” Edward says.

“I hear you,” Lacey says. “Do you need any help packing for D.C.?”

Shay keeps him company while he packs, though he half-regrets her presence. She wants to discuss the upcoming hearing, and he does not. He decided he wanted to go, months earlier, but he doesn’t want to think about it. Go, not think, some Neanderthal voice in his head repeats, whenever he starts to absorb her words.

“It’s going to be like the courtroom scene in the movie,” she says. “Where the identity of the murderer is revealed.”

“Not exactly.” Edward has all of his brother’s Tshirts laid out on the couch. He chooses two and stuffs them in the bag.

“They’re going to explain why the plane crashed, right? They have the black box, so they know everything that happened.”

I was on the plane, he thinks. And this is the first moment that he allows himself to place himself there, in the seat, beside his brother. It’s only a flash of a thought, a fraction of a second, but it lays out the frame of the plane around him: the sky, the wing, the other passengers.

“God, I wish I could come,” she says. “You know that all those relatives will be there. Gary might be there too. Your scar is going to go crazy.” She clasps her hands. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you see some sign of your powers. You’ll be near the pieces of the plane and finding out the truth. It’s like you’re visiting the mothership.”

Dr. Mike, in their session that week, had said, “You look checked out, Edward. You do know that you don’t have to go to Washington, right?”

Edward had answered with language he knew Dr. Mike would understand: “I want to go.” Even though want was not the right word. All Edward knew for sure was that he’d said he would go, and so he would go.

“Pay close attention,” Shay says. “Take notes, if you can. I need to know everything so I can help you.”

Edward nods.

“No one there can hurt you,” Shay says. “No one can hurt you ever again. You already lost everything, right?”

This startles something deep inside Edward. He tries the words in his mouth. “No one can ever hurt me?”

“That’s right,” Shay says.

She claps him on the back right before he and John leave, like a colonel sending a soldier into battle. Lacey follows them out to the car, and when John goes inside for a minute, she gives Edward a tight hug.

“Wish me luck. I have a job interview today.” Lacey smiles, but the rest of her face is anxious. “I have to do something with my days at some point, right? We all have to.”

“Good luck,” he says.

“I need to feel brave, so I’m wearing your mom’s blouse. I want to get stronger, Edward. For me and for you.”

Edward hadn’t noticed, but now he sees that Lacey’s wearing a shirt with tiny roses on it, which his mom had worn to work at least once a week. The familiarity of the garment makes it difficult for him to swallow for a moment, and he experiences a flash of anger—that’s not yours, that’s my mom’s! But the anger dissolves almost immediately. He’s wearing his brother’s clothes, so how can he say it’s wrong for Lacey to wear her sister’s? Also, the idea that wearing the shirt gives Lacey some of his mom’s bravery is interesting. It makes Edward wonder what wearing Jordan’s clothes gives him. He hadn’t thought of it that way; the red sneakers, the parka, the pajamas, were simply a way of keeping his brother close by. Right now he’s wearing Jordan’s blue-striped sweater, and Lacey is wearing his mom’s blouse. When Lacey pulls him in for a final hug, he thinks, Who are we? He steps away from the hug and the tangle of Jane, Jordan, Jane, Jordan and almost throws himself into the car.

The ride is four hours long and consists of gray highway after gray highway.

John glances at his watch when they pass Princeton and says, “Your aunt is in her interview right now. We should think good thoughts.”

Edward shifts beneath his seatbelt, looking for a more comfortable position. “You want her to have a job?”

“I want her to be happy. And you’re doing better, right? So, she doesn’t have a reason to be home all the time.”

Edward thinks, I’m doing better? The question feels unanswerable, and he has a memory of his father marking up one of his writing assignments and saying: You have to qualify your terms. What does better mean? Better than what?

The trees are stripped of leaves; the sky is colorless. There are a series of warnings that they’re about to leave New Jersey and then a sign that they’re in Delaware. John gives Edward the choice of which Broadway soundtrack to listen to. Edward stares at the list of options, trying to figure out which one might be the least cheesy and awful. “Rent?”

“Excellent decision,” John says, and they listen to impoverished young artists belt out their feelings for the rest of the drive.

They share a hotel room that night, where Edward lies in the dark and listens to his uncle snore. His body had ached during the car ride, as if gravity weighed more than it usually did. He’d hoped the sensation would stop when the car stopped, and for a while it did, but in the darkness it’s returned. Edward wriggles beneath the papery sheets. The sensation reminds him of when he left the hospital and his body hurt in a new way, because it turned out the hospital had been an exoskeleton and without it he was vulnerable. He presses his hands against his forehead, trying to match the pressure with pressure. He’s in a hotel bed, in a strange darkness, listening to a twitchy heater mixed with his uncle’s wheezes. Edward feels unmoored, like he might be anywhere in space, anywhere in time, and anywhere is terrifying. When he manages to fall asleep, his body ejects him back into consciousness, into panic: Where am I?