The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(60)

I followed her out onto the balcony. The sea spread before me. It rumpled darkly against the coast. The sun was drowning on the water. I heard the muted calls of gulls. And nowhere could I see the wall.

I had never seen the sea.

I had never not seen the wall.

“Do you like it?” Sid asked.

“I don’t think I believed the sea was real,” I said. “I mean, I accepted that it was there even though I couldn’t see it. But it’s only now that I do see it that I realize that I didn’t really know what it was. My belief was half pretend. But I didn’t know, before now, that I was pretending.”

She nodded. “I think I understand, though it’s hard. The sea is one of my earliest memories. I grew up escaping to the harbor every chance I could get. The sailors would drag me home to my parents.” She peered at me through the rosy light. She lifted her hand to stroke my hair.

I flinched in surprise.

“Just a petal,” she said, pulling a white one from my hair. It curled like a thin shell in her fingers.

“Oh.” I tried to ignore my stuttering heart. “Thank you.”

Her nonchalance changed to amusement. “Well, yes, and you should thank me, for accomplishing such an arduous and unpleasant task as removing a stray petal from your hair.”

“No,” I said. “Thank you for everything. For this.”

“I am a gift from the gods, but I confess that I didn’t create the sea.”

“Don’t do that.”

The light was dimming. Her eyes were shadows. “Do what?”

“Praise yourself.”

She drew back a little. “Do you think me arrogant?”

“No,” I said, though I had thought it, up until that very moment. “You sound like you’re bragging, but really you’re just making fun of yourself.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

I said, “Why would you do that?”

“Maybe,” she said slowly, “so that you won’t make fun of me first.”

“I would never.”

“Then I won’t do that,” she said, “if it bothers you.” She rubbed the petal between her finger and thumb. “Take this room. It has the best view. I’ll be in the one next door.”

“This is your room.”

She looked at me.

“It smells like you,” I said.

She winced. “Maybe I don’t clean all that well. Since we’ve decided I’m to be more honest and not lay claim to skills and attributes I don’t have. Do you want the other room? It might be less, ah, fragrant. It’s unused, though maybe”—she cringed again—“a little dusty.”

“I want this one.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask why.

She nodded. “There’s a spare key to the house on the nightstand, so you can come and go as you please.” She must have seen my surprise. “Did you think I would keep you prisoner here? You’ve had enough of living in a box.”

She moved to leave the room, then paused, her hand on the door. “Don’t thank me yet, Nirrim. I expect you to uphold your end of the bargain. Tomorrow night I plan for us to do a little investigative work at a party. That night will be as late as dawn, so get your rest.”

I waited long after the door had shut to do what I wanted, which was to slip into the bed. I drew the sheet up over me, the fabric so fine it felt like air. The salty breeze pushed against the curtains. It was cool at night, this high up in the city.

I pressed my face against the pillow. It smelled like Sid.

She had taken the petal with her when she left the room. I had seen it, thin and white, between her fingers.



* * *



I couldn’t fall asleep. I imagined Sid sleeping in this bed, which was softer than I knew beds could be. The bed felt like sleep itself, the best kind of sleep: plush and buoyant. But my body was fully awake. It was pretending to be under Sid’s body. It was pretending to be that white petal between her fingers. It was as if my mind had nothing to do with this imagining, as if it weren’t my brain conjuring images of her mouth on mine, or remembering the exact shape of her hands. It was my skin and my needy bones. It was my heart going too hard.

Think of something else.

Think of something that is not like her.

Something reliable. Safe.

I thought of the wall.

But the pillow smelled like her. The sheets smelled like her.

Thinking about the wall wasn’t enough to soothe me. I needed to see.

I put on my sandals and took the key, and left the dark house.



* * *



The city was lively, windows blazing in every room of the enormous houses. People spilled, laughing, into shadowy gardens. In the agora, men and women shouted and ruined their finery in the fountains, drinking from crystal glasses they smashed on the glass tiles, whose colored light surged dizzyingly in the night. I kept to the shadows. I retraced my steps back toward the wall, following the map in my mind.

I would just look at the wall. Place my palm against it for a moment. It would steady me.

But that was not what I did, because I saw the fortune-telling tree first.

The missing patch of bark where I had torn away my fortune was already painted gold. I touched the slick, gilded surface. I touched the papery bark. I thought about my fortune, which was only what I had already known. You will lose her. And yet I hadn’t fully known, until I saw those faint amber words, written as though with the sappy blood of the tree, how much I hoped they would never come true.