The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(36)

“Say my name.”

“Shall I come back later?”

“You can do whatever you want. It’s your house.”

“I had to do it. Goose wouldn’t’ve believed any other way—”

“Bullshit.”

I stay where I am. “It isn’t.”

I can’t hear her. Not her heartbeat, her pulse, nothing. The silence frosts the windows. All I can hear is the train trembling by on the Manhattan Bridge.

“You’re really going to leave?”

She doesn’t answer that, either.

It’s like approaching a dangerous animal—show no fear. I cross to the bed and run my finger along her bare instep, and she kicks out at me and swears. For a moment she lies there, half shadowed by the ash grey sky, turning darker by the second. She leans up on her elbows and twists, lip under teeth. If looks could kill, I would be dead already

“You said you’d never cut yourself again.”

“This wasn’t like that—”

“You promised.”

“Mara—”

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You’re lying now. To yourself.”

I sit next to her on the bed. “Do you want to see it?” She looks down at my hand, curled into a fist. “It’s not even bleeding anymore.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

Annoyed, frustrated. “Fine, that isn’t the whole point.” There she is, my Mara. “You weren’t just proving yourself to Goose. You were . . . hurting yourself. On purpose. A chef’s knife, a straight razor, your father’s hunting knife. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Or how you excuse it.”

I risk a finger, tracing it down the line of her shoulder to the inside of her wrist. She’s still quiet—all of her—but she doesn’t protest.

“You’re my preferred method of self harm.” She tries to hide a tiny smile. If I didn’t know her the way I do, I wouldn’t catch it.

But I do know her. And I do catch it.

“I know I am,” she says. “?‘You’ll love him to ruins,’ the professor said. ‘Unless you let him go.’?”

“Fuck’s sake, Mara. Really? I’m fine.”

“You’re not, and if you say that again, I really will kill you, and you’ll prove the professor right.” Her heart’s not in it though.

“All right,” I say. “I’m not.” Her body goes slack, and she curves back into the bed. “I’m—I don’t know what to do with all this. Sam. Beth. Goose explains why I’m seeing, feeling more—he magnifies everything we’ve got. Which, by the way, means I’m even more safe around him. You have even less reason to worry.”

Even as I say it, though, I realise the opposite must also be true. He must amplify her, too. I see the thought reflect in Mara’s eyes.

“You think he’s magnifying you, too.”

“All for one, one for all.”

I turn her face toward me. I open my fist. The cut is deep, still open, but not bleeding. “Look. No scar.”

There is, though, and Mara knows it. The scars you can’t see are the ones that hurt the most.





22


MAN’S CAPACITIES

AS SOON AS I’m alone, I text Stella to say that I’ll meet her tonight, and she almost instantly sends me a location. Jamie and Goose seem to have retreated to their rooms, and Daniel’s gone back to his dorm, which saves me the trouble of having to lie about where I’m going when I leave. I write Mara a short note in case she emerges, then take the train to the park Stella mentioned. There’s an old stone house at the entrance. Stella’s waiting for me outside the gate.

“Thanks for coming,” she says.

“Rather odd place to meet, isn’t it?”

A slight, shivery shrug. “It’s between your place and ours.”

“Meeting in the middle,” I say, looking about. “Obvious metaphor or just convenient?”

Her eyes crinkle at the corners.

“You’re not worried about walking through parks at night by yourself?”

She arcs an eyebrow. “This is Park Slope. And it’s basically a playground.”

“Playgrounds without children are even eerier.” A fall breeze rustles the trees, and a swing nearby creaks, making my point . . . until I see the dog that brushed it, squatting as his owner dutifully waits for him to finish his business.

“What did you tell Mara?” she asks, refocusing my attention. “About where you were going?”

“Nothing,” I say. “She went to bed.”

Stella’s forehead scrunches. “So early?”

“We had a . . . disagreement.”

“Trouble in paradise?” She examines me, and that’s when I notice her noticing my wrapped-up hand.

I take the opportunity to look, really look, at Stella for the first time. She is different from the girl I knew at Horizons, which might as well’ve been years ago. It’s not just that her hair’s lost its shine, or that her face has hardened, her curves whittled down. There’s something missing behind her eyes. Something lost.