The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(73)

If we could get more time, though . . .

“Stella, don’t,” Sophie calls out, interrupting my thoughts. “We can fix this.”

“No, we can’t. Maybe they can,” Stella says, indicating Mara, me. “But we can’t. They’re the Originals. We’re just copies.”

Mara starts to say, “That doesn’t mean what you think—”

“You’re not helping,” I tell her.

“What’s she talking about?” Sophie asks me. “Originals, copies?”

“Just a little something I heard Felicity think before she died,” Stella says. She takes one hand off the fence, the muscles flexing in her arms, her core, as she wipes her hand on her shirt. Her muscles must be on fire. She’s stronger than she looks.

Or something’s making her stronger.

“Noah knows, I bet. Jamie, too.” She pauses. “And Mara, of course.”

I’m wary of latching on to anything she says for fear that she’s already so far gone I can’t trust it, but my conversation with Daniel surfaces regardless. He was the one to first bring up Stella’s type—“suspected original.” Stella just called herself a copy. What does she know now that she didn’t know before?

I wonder if Daniel’s caught it. There’s movement in the corner of my eye. It’s him, backing up.

“Stella,” I say, feeling every second as it’s lost, grasping for more. “You weren’t there when my father said the things he said.”

“I didn’t have to be there. It’s in your head. I can see it.”

“You can see his memory of it,” Mara says. “Memories are tainted. Unreliable. If you bothered to look at my memory, I bet it would be different.”

Stella smiles again, coy. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

I look reflexively at Mara. Her face reveals nothing, her expression almost as still as the paused officers’.

“That’s why I made the video,” Stella goes on. “So everyone can see who you are, what you do. Obviously, memories can’t be trusted. I mean, look where I am right now.”

“You don’t have to be here,” Mara says.

“No, I don’t have to be here. I could be in some basement with a gun in my mouth—it probably would’ve taken people a while to find me. A quieter death would’ve been a lot more convenient for you.”

Leo looks at me, his hands balled into fists. “Why aren’t you stopping her?”

“Stopping whom? Stella’s in control here. Aren’t you, Stella?”

She looks around, up at the frozen police, the paramedics. Then at each of us, landing on Mara, last.

“Am I?”

I follow her gaze—the bodies of everyone who isn’t Us shimmer and blink. And then—gone. It’s elegant, the way they’re wiped away. Replaced with blank space. The pieces don’t completely fit—the pavement shivers, miragelike, where they once stood.

“She’s in your head too,” Stella says to me, but it’s Leo I look at.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“I’m trying to make it so we focus on Stella, because I can’t hold the rest of them for long.”

I turn to Goose, who’s sheet-white, with Daniel next to him, speaking in a low voice. Mara takes a step toward Stella. “What am I saying to you, in your head?”

“You’re not saying anything. You’re just there, crouching like a tiger.” Stella laughs, which is especially disturbing, considering the fact that there’s nothing between her and a 135-foot drop. When she rights herself, she steadies her gaze on Sophie.

“You’re next, I think.” She blinks slowly. “I think you’re safe for a while, Leo. I’m glad.”

“I’m begging you,” he says to her. “Don’t do this.” I try and focus my energy on him, on listening to his heartbeat, to hear if he’s lying to all of us or telling the truth, but all I hear is a swarm of flies. I look back and see Sophie, but instead of her face, I see a skull.

“Stop,” I say to Leo through clenched teeth, but Stella thinks I’m talking to her. She’s about to say something back when Mara says—

“Let go, then.”

The words echo, then flatten, then become part of the swarm.

“Stella,” I say quickly, “this isn’t happening the way you think it is.” I turn back, looking for Daniel, for Jamie, for help, and the bridge behind me vanishes, rubbed into white space.

“You said you wanted a cure,” I hear Mara say. “You could be fighting for one. Instead, you’re giving up.”

“Fuck you,” Stella spits. “I’m not giving up, or letting go. I didn’t get to choose my own adventure, but I can choose my own ending.”

I don’t know if it’s a trick of my eyes, of Leo’s, or if what I’m seeing is real, but Stella doesn’t fall from the bridge, or jump.

She dives.





41


STRONG AND VALIANT NATURES

THE LAST CONSCIOUS THOUGHT THAT Stella has, that I can hear, is

Your move

It’s stunning, watching the river swallow her body. The closest person to her, proximity-wise, was Mara. But I was the one she was thinking about as her neck broke. A white sear of pain and then, nothing.