The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(41)

“Isn’t that what Kells was trying to do?” I look at Jamie. “A little help, here?”

“Hard pass,” Jamie says, turning back to the game.

Daniel leans his palms on the kitchen counter. “If there’s a chance it’ll help us find out how to keep whatever’s happening to the others from happening to you guys, we can’t afford to ignore it.” I notice the shadows under his eyes, the strain around his mouth.

“You’re worried about Mara,” I say.

“Aren’t you?” His voice is almost accusatory. Almost.

More than you know, friend. “Of course,” I say. “But I don’t think the shit my father did to her—to all of you and Jesus fuck knows whomever else—is going to help.”

“So what’s your plan?” Daniel turns up his hands. “Do you have one?”

“Plans are so formal,” I say dismissively. “And they tend to go to hell where your sister’s involved.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t have one.”

“I’ve heard from Stella,” I say, surprising myself. And Jamie, who leans closer to the TV to hide the fact that we now officially have his attention.

“My plan is that we should meet up with her and Leo and find out more about the others who lived with them. Work backward from there.”

Daniel pauses for a moment. “Okay. While you’re doing that, why don’t you let me work from the files that might be on them?”

It’s not that Daniel doesn’t have a point. My father tortured, or paid others to torture, people to find out why I am the way I am—I’m sure he learned quite a lot about those of us who carry the gene that makes us “gifted.” But if we use what he learned from that torture, that justifies it. Everything he did—to Mara, to Daniel, even—I won’t. I won’t do it. There has to be another way.

He blows out a sigh. “I don’t get it, Noah. I don’t get why you’d want to get rid of stuff that could help us. Help my sister.”

“There’s no cure,” I say, and Daniel freezes. “I know you want there to be one, but there isn’t.”

“We don’t know that for sure. We hardly know anything. You’re wasting a huge opportunity, and it’s stupid, and I know you’re not stupid, so what is it? What are you afraid we’ll find in there?”

Nerve struck. Never let it show. “Daniel,” I say reasonably. “You’re a vegetarian, yes?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

I look down at his feet. “Do you wear leather shoes?”

“No.”

“Is it because you don’t like the taste of meat? You don’t think leather shoes are comfortable?”

He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “One, we could end world hunger with the feed used to keep breeding animals for food. And two, the idea of contributing to an animal’s suffering just so I can have a cheeseburger makes me sick.”

“I feel the same way about my father’s research. I don’t want to use the product of so much suffering just so we can maybe, possibly, use the product of that suffering to achieve something else.”

“Your metaphor doesn’t work,” Daniel says, crossing his arms. “But let’s run with it anyway. I’d use medicine tested on animals if Mara was sick and I thought there was even a ten percent chance it would heal her.” He leans back. “What would you do?”

“I’d heal her myself.”

“And what if you were normal, Noah?”

There. There it is, in his voice.

“What if you were just a normal person and Mara was sick, dying, and you couldn’t heal her yourself but thought there might something out there, some way that you could?”

I get it, then. It’s not just curiosity. Daniel is normal, but instead of the blessing that that is, he feels cursed. He feels helpless. Helpless and scared.

He looks to Jamie for backup, which, after Stella’s revelations, I’m more certain than ever he won’t get. Jamie was there, after all. And he’s here, now, anyway.

Footsteps on the stairs, bare and uniquely Mara’s. The three of us look up; her hair’s wet and she’s wearing an old faded T-shirt, once orange, now the colour of peach sherbet. Her toes, nails painted black, always, are visible through the glass. Her eyes meet mine, and everything else fades to dullness.

“I’ll think about it,” I say to Daniel, hoping that’ll end the conversation. And that he and Jamie will miraculously leave.

“Think about what?” Mara cocks her head, a wolf catching a scent.

“I want Noah to grant me access to the archives,” Daniel says.

“Wait, he won’t?” Mara turns on me, unfairly tempting as she stands there in mismatched, damp clothes, her hair still wet. “Why not?”

Hope dies. “There’s more paper, more files, more everything than we could sort through in a year,” I say, resigning myself to the fact that this conversation is still happening. “So how will it even help us?”

“Because there’s a system, and I figured it out,” Daniel says, his voice tinted with gotcha, not pride. “Jamie and Mara and Stella—they looked where I told them to look.”