The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(24)

Her voice flattens out. “He doesn’t want to use me as a weapon.”

“No, he wants you to leave me instead.”

“And we decided to ignore him.”

“We did,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean he decided to ignore us.” That thought tramples every other. “We’re talking about a man who literally manipulated and lied to generations of my family and yours in order to breed us. He said it was our decision, our choice to make, whether we wanted to help him achieve his vision for a better world. We said no. Jamie said yes.”

“Do you want to know what Jamie said after you went down on the platform?”

“I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me regardless.”

“After he helped me get you into a cab—you don’t remember that, do you? Leaning on Jamie because you could barely stand?”

I don’t remember it, and I’m glad of it. It’s shameful enough that it happened in the first place.

“He said he could kill whoever’s doing this to you.”

“No one’s doing anything to me.” And why was murder where his mind went, after a girl, a stranger, supposedly committed suicide?

“Really? So you’re fine, then?”

“I’m alive. Beth and Sam aren’t.”

“Oh, okay, cool.”

“Don’t patronise me—it’s unbecoming.” Mara looks like she wants to hit me. I hope she does. “What makes you think what’s happening to them has anything to do with me? You want to tell your brother and Jamie, fine. Tell them. But the boy who killed himself this morning, he wasn’t like Sam, or Beth. They didn’t want to die. He did.”

“How do you know?”

I can’t explain it, the difference between the suicides I’ve witnessed before. It’s the difference between a kicked wasp’s nest and a hanging beehive, between violence and free will. “He wanted to die, Mara. I wish he hadn’t taken his own life, but it’s done now, and I’m not going to violate his dignity by bringing a parade of strangers to his home, or wherever he is, to pick through his life.”

“So, it’s cool as long as it’s just you? By yourself? Fuck that. It’s all of us or none of us. Your choice.”

“I choose not to choose.”

“Then I choose all of us,” Mara says. She crosses over to her mobile, to text Daniel and Jamie, presumably. And I let her. Because I love her anyway.

“He wouldn’t love you if you weren’t what you are.”

Father’s words, haunting me still, wherever I go.





16


EVEN IN PARADISE

WE’RE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO talk about some shit,” Mara says to Daniel and Jamie, having collected and deposited them in the sun-white living room.

“What shit?”

“Ours.”

Jamie looks from me to Daniel to Mara. “I don’t have any shit.”

“You’re full of shit, actually,” Mara says brightly. “But this isn’t about you.” She pats Jamie on the head, and he pouts as he swats her hand.

“It’s about the girl,” I cut in, before they have another go at each other. “From the subway the other day.”

The air changes, restless and charged. “What about her?” Jamie asks.

“She was one of us,” Mara says. “Gifted.”

Jamie doesn’t seem surprised, but Daniel does. “How do you know?” he asks me. “The archives?”

That was not what I was expecting, and it must show, because he goes on, “There are names in there, files of other kids who were experimented on. Was she one of them?”

In the days since Sam’s death, I hadn’t even considered that possibility. Stupid. It was so obvious, I felt a bloody idiot for missing it.

“That’s not how he knows,” Mara says before I can stop her.

Daniel looks from her to me. “So that’s not what was in the envelope last night?”

Now I’m the one who’s lost. “What envelope?”

Mara’s mouth drops open. “I completely forgot.”

“What?” I ask as she rises from one of the sofas and picks up a plain envelope from a console table in the foyer. “The doorman gave me this to give to you last night, when I was walking everyone out.”

She hands it to me, but Jamie starts talking before I can open it.

“So, let’s recap,” he says, standing not so subtly between Mara and myself. “The girl who jumped in front of the F train—her name was Beth.”

I nod once.

“And she’s like you guys, a Carrier,” Daniel adds. He doesn’t wait for my assent before he asks, “But how did you find out?”

“It’s part of my ability.” I’m still and watchful as I speak, hating the sound of my own voice. “When someone like us is afraid or in pain or whatever, I can see it.”

“See it?”

“From inside them,” Mara says. “He can see what they see from their point of view.”

She’s not quite right—it’s only from their perspective when they’re the ones causing the harm, but I’m not about to correct her. Not here, in front of everyone.