Malorie(58)

“Of course you’re not. Let’s imagine for a moment that I’d been raised without the knowledge of the existence of whales. Would the sight of one, a leviathan rising from the deep, have been enough to drive me insane? If I were to encounter one, alone, out in a dinghy, the beast coming up beneath me, would that have been enough to have stolen my sanity?”

“I don’t—”

“I think it might’ve been. The fear alone, the moment of disbelief, reality forever cracked. But you see, Tom, I do know about whales. I was raised with the knowledge of them. We all were. So when the creatures came and people lost their minds, I reminded myself of this, I saw things this way. As if I’d always known them. And that’s all there was to it. I wouldn’t allow them to surprise me. I didn’t let them confuse me. You and your sister, you two were raised in a world where they exist. Doesn’t that make them fathomable?”

“Yeah.”

“More than that even, huh. As commonplace as trees. You ever hear how, in the old world, the older generations didn’t know what to make of new technology? And so they quit using it or didn’t ever start in the first place? It’s not that they were actually incapable of using a video camera. It’s that they chose not to. This,” Henry waves a hand, “all this is a choice. Your mother doesn’t have to live by the fold, as modern people have come to call it. And she certainly doesn’t need to force you to live by it at all. Can I see those glasses?”

The question comes suddenly, but Tom isn’t put off. Everything Henry says is making sense to him. The man is connecting with Tom on a level nobody ever has. Is this what Indian River is like?

“Here,” he says. He hands over the glasses. Henry examines them, flips them over, tries them on. When he looks at Tom, Tom smiles. But Henry doesn’t. His face is stone behind Tom’s invention.

Henry removes the glasses.

“Have you tried them yet? Have you really gone out with them, stared out the window, anything of that nature?”

Tom reddens. He’s embarrassed. Why hasn’t he tried them out?

Malorie.

“Well,” Henry says, “I have a surprise for you. But you cannot tell a soul!” He raises a finger.

“Promise,” Tom says.

Henry hands Tom his glasses back, gets up from the lower bunk, and steps to the wall. Where there was once a window is now a slate of black metal. Henry places his hands flat to the metal, looks to Tom, then shifts the plate so that a triangle of sunlight enters the cabin.

“Here’s your chance,” Henry says. “The big world, waiting for you to take a look.”

Tom hears a hundred warnings in Malorie’s voice. As if she were sitting inside his head.

I’m the only person you can trust. The house you were born in went mad. The school we thought was safe went mad. And wherever we go, if there are other people there, that place will go mad, too. Do you understand?

Yes, Mommy. (Always yes, always.) Because there are men and women out there who maybe once lived like we do but got sick of it and so they gave up. And there are men and women out there who never believed it in the first place. Do you understand?

Yes.

Good. Because those are the people who got lazy. Some after the creatures arrived. And some long before.

“Tom?” Henry says.

From where he sits Tom can’t see the window, can’t see outside. But he sees the light.

Malorie, in his head, louder:

There’s a way to go about what you’re trying to do. The man you were named after pushed back, too. But never without the fold. He never got lazy. Do you understand?

“Yes,” he says, actually, out loud.

Henry smiles. And opens a palm to the glass.

“Carpe diem, Tom.”

Tom feels like his whole life has led up to this moment. Here’s a man, an adult, not Malorie, whose philosophy rings true. Here’s a man who is able to articulate the things Tom has never been able to. Here’s a man giving him the chance to test not only his glasses, but his resolve, his spine, his perspective of what Malorie calls the new world but is the only one to Tom.

He puts the glasses on.

Malorie stands up in his head.

Maybe she shouldn’t have slapped him. But Tom’s glad she did. Glad because it was the slap he needed to leave the room, leave her side, to cut the apron strings, to set off alone. And maybe he was supposed to meet Henry. And maybe Henry was supposed to meet him. And maybe Tom was meant to walk up to this window, right now, and to look out, to see whatever it is Henry sees, to prove to himself that all these feelings, all these ideas, have come from a true place after all.

“What is it?” Henry asks. He’s looking at Tom. Tom sees him through his own glasses. Glasses that suddenly feel strange on his face. Like a mask. Like something silly that Olympia would roll her eyes at.

But Tom wants this moment. He wants to look out this window before Malorie comes to this room and drags him back into her way of life forever. If he doesn’t act now, right now, when will he?

Tom steps to the glass.

Henry steps out of the way.

Tom leans toward the window.

And he hears them outside.

A lot of them.

“What is it?” Henry asks.

Tom doesn’t know what to say. He wants to try his invention, but not when he knows…so many…outside…