The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(40)

When you love someone, you’re saying you trust them. You’re handing them your heart and trusting them to protect it. To keep it safe.

Keeping a secret is like throwing that heart into the air and playing catch with it by yourself. But what you’re really playing with is someone else’s love, someone else’s happiness. I’ve always wondered how people do it. I’m the farthest thing from unfailingly honest—in fact, I’m an extraordinary liar—but it’s strange how different things seem when it’s your own heart that’s being tossed casually into the air. It’s a dangerous game.

When I was a child, I read everything I found, anywhere I found it. The only thing that felt beautiful about my life was the way books let me escape it. I felt surrounded by nothing, and the boredom was thick enough to choke on. When you can choose to do anything, how do you choose? Why?

All my life I’ve heard the phrase Do what makes you happy tossed around—not at me, God knows. But generally, as a principle. But when nothing makes you happy, what do you do then?

This is the essential truth about me: Mara makes me happy. The problem of Mara makes me happy. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s true. I shouldn’t think it, but I do. She’s this endlessly complex, chaotic person, but there’s a method to her madness, and I want to know it.

Can you ever really know another person? I thought I could. I thought I knew her, but now . . .

People who think they know me imagine me in control. When they see Mara and me together, when they think of us together, they see me as the lion tamer, and Mara the lioness. One crack of my whip, or a whisper, or a magic word, I’ll tame her like all the rest.

I don’t want to, is the thing.

But now, knowing what I don’t know, I want to cage her. But I want to be in that cage with her, no whip, no magic, and lock the door behind us, lock the world out. And then:

I want her to split me open, to dig her fingers in and pry open my ribs, lick my heart and my blood and my bones. Pick open my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to be devoured by her. And she wants to devour me just as badly. It’s in every look, every movement, every smile.

But her world is different now, and I don’t know how, because I missed it. My father took that from me, from us, and I didn’t feel that missingness most of the time, but I feel it now. Mara works hard not to show it. She and Jamie or Daniel or all three will exchange a look, and I’ll feel a kick of surprise in my chest. They were part of something that I hadn’t been, forged something together that I was left out of. Excluded from. When I ask Mara about it, she skirts around it, says it doesn’t matter.

But she’s a liar too. It does.





24


HAVING DISCOVERED FIRE

CURRENT MOOD: DAVID FOSTER WALLACE meets Amy Winehouse.

Mara was sleeping when I got home from meeting with Stella. I could’ve woken her, confronted her that night, and we could’ve fought about the secrets she’s kept and the lies she’s told.

But then, I would have to confess too.

Careful not to wake her, I climbed into bed beside her, but couldn’t close my eyes. When she woke up the next morning, I acted like nothing was different. Though everything was.

How could I have it out with Mara when I’ve been the one avoiding the truth—whatever that is—this whole time? And whatever is or isn’t happening now, with the suicides, I’m certain, positive, that Mara isn’t to blame.

So I’ve defaulted to doing what I do best: nothing. Jamie’s been gaming, and Goose has been going out. Mara’s started drawing again. She’s been writing and drawing. I have no music in me.

Daniel’s rather aggravated by the state of my affairs when he shows up at the loft days later. “We need to talk,” he says. He’s caught Jamie and me mid–Duck Hunt, shooting at the projector with an orange gun lifted out of the ’80s and dropped into our flat. It makes an annoying-yet-satisfying plastic click.

“What about?” I ask as a pixelated bird falls to the pixelated grass. It’s incredibly satisfying—I’ve become rather addicted.

“Your inheritance.”

That turns even Jamie’s head. Mara’s in the shower, and Goose has decided to brave the Gowanus Whole Foods to procure provisions for a grand dinner party that exactly no one has asked him to throw.

“I want to explore the archives,” Daniel says.

“I’m having the building demolished and turned into a community garden,” I say without turning away from the game. “Next topic.”

“Then you’re either an idiot or selfish.”

“That’s a rather strong and unnuanced position,” I say evenly, and aim the gun at the screen.

“Because it’s that important. Can you put down the gun, please?”

“If I must,” I say, laying it on my lap.

“Look, everything David Shaw did and had other people do is in there. All the research and tests and results—”

“Precisely,” I say. “And you managed to break in and start going through it. How long until someone else does? Maybe someone else already has. We’re obviously not the only Carriers in this city.”

But Daniel’s not keen on letting this go. “So what? Maybe there’s something in there that would help create a cure—”