The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(17)

The air belowground is dead and feverish, until it isn’t. At first I think, astonishingly, that I might’ve had too much to drink—the world seems to tilt, and darken, and a rush of noise fills my skull.

Then, strands of blond hair whip in front of my eyes, lash at my skin, and I know it’s happening again.

I feel someone else’s fear, someone else’s shame, the searing light of the oncoming train on her retinas, and the ground gives way to air as she jumps. She screams before she dies.

Dark, sharp pain condenses, a collapsing star. I see her last view before her eyes shutter forever. The stinging light, dingy metal—hear the screech and horn and sparks on tracks coming on so fast I can’t breathe.

And this time, again, I know her thoughts, as I knew Sam’s. The last ones. The feeling, hearing, seeing isn’t new—that’s always been there, all along, part of my (dis?)ability. But this. I’m cut down by the words in her head: furious unstoppable terror pain shame and—

I’m back inside myself, my mind belongs to me again, but it rings with her agony. Jamie’s voice has risen above the rest—time’s passed, because there are police, clearing everyone out. My thoughts are divided; part of me notices Sophie weeping, Daniel getting sick, Goose stunned, and Mara, beside me, her voice mist-smooth through it all. The rest of me is with Beth—

Beth. That’s her name.

Was her name.

“Noah.” Mara’s voice reaches me from the filth of the tunnel, from the freeze-frames of metal and rust and excruciating light, and I manage to stand and look up. Which is when I realise I hadn’t been standing—I’d been slumped against a pillar. My eyes skim past Mara, she’s blurred and shivering, as is everyone else. Or no, not everyone. That boy—the amphibious-looking one, is somehow in focus. He’s staring right back at me.

I open my mouth, and my jaw aches. Mara’s soft fingers are on my rough cheeks, bringing my face to look at hers. Her skin her eyes her curls her lips form my name but they don’t quite form her. It’s as though she’s hyper-pixelated, almost.

“I saw—”

“Shh. I know.”

“I felt her—”

“I know.”

She begins to come back into focus. “Mara—”

“Don’t talk. You’re hurt—your head hit the concrete—”

“I’m fine.” I’m not.

“Can you walk?”

Can I? “Of course.” I reach up to clasp her forearm and see . . . writing. On my own arm.

Letters, numbers. My bones are ringing with echoes of Beth’s last . . . everything . . . and my own senses are completely overwhelmed. I blink, hard. The writing is still there. It takes a bit to realise that what I’m seeing is an address.

Jamie, Mara, and I are last to ascend the stairs as the police attend to the mess of what was once a girl, once a person, once like us. I move by focusing on the heartbeats around me—Jamie, fast. Mara, hard.

Two more. A look across the tracks again. The boy is gone.

I look down at my arm again. The address is still there.





12


A FACT OF THE IMAGINATION

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE. IT’S WHAT we’re supposed to want, or do. Carpe diem, that shit.

Thing is, I don’t have one. Beth, however, did.



I hear her voice in my mind, feel her last memories written in her script, somehow, in the grey folds of my brain. Beth’s Top Five Greatest Hits:

One: Her ninth birthday party, a gulf of a pool, a juicy sun, girls cracking open with laughs, her father’s warm face.

Two: Eleven years old. Piano recital, fingers skimming ivory, notes perfect, gorgeous, the feel of heart-bursting pride.

Three: First concert. Her mother, the cool-cool kind, all real, all love. Stevie Nicks provides the score.

Four: First kiss, first love. I’ll say nothing more—that belongs to Beth. Only her.

And five: Discovering her Gift. The thought is there, but her Gift itself is vague, gauzy—I can see the brand of the piano she played at her recital, the closed-up hole in her father’s ear where a stud used to be, but I can’t get at her ability. Each time I try, another detail from just before her death reveals itself; the white scuffing on the tan leather strap of her tote bag. The edge of a tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her sleeve. A slight smear of blood on her first knuckle.

All I’m truly left with, really, is this: the absolute certainty that she didn’t want to kill herself. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to jump.

But she did.



Those suicides weren’t the first I’ve witnessed. I’ve thought about my own, to the point where as a child the Peter Pan quote “To die will be an awfully big adventure,” felt like a taunt. But there had been others, other Carriers, other Gifted. A Swedish girl who slit her wrists in the bath. A boy in America who left the car running in his parents’ garage. There had been only the two, and they were like and not like me—they did want to die, and they could die. I felt what they felt, but also an urge not just to help them, but to join them. Sometimes, particularly when this was all new, it felt like I was joining them. Like connections were forming, new nerves were firing, drop cloths were being pulled from dusty furniture.

Confession: What I understand that They—most everyone, really—don’t, is that suicide isn’t an act of selfishness. Sometimes the hurt/pain/shame/loss is so much, so constant, and with no guarantee that it’ll ever dissolve, sometimes the cost/benefit analysis of life/death truly feels like it’ll only ever work out in in favour of death. I never knew the names of the boy and girl who killed themselves before, but I felt what they felt as they died. It was like—imagine the best moments of your life. Then try to subtract them. Subtract every ounce of joy you’ve ever experienced. Erase every happy memory you’ve ever had.