The Becoming of Noah Shaw

  “The tattoo? Pen and Ink—”

  “No. The idea for it.”

  He shrugs like it’s nothing. “They’re symbols of justice—the feather and the sword.”

  All roads lead to him. My blood is electric, and there’s an acrid taste in my mouth. “Who told you about it?” I ask Leo.

  “Why?”

  I round my hands into fists to keep myself still, even. In control. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  “Look, most of us here? We don’t really have what you’d call a happy home life, okay? Some of us don’t have homes at all. Or families. Some have one dead parent, one abusive one. Others come from places, backgrounds, where they’re shunned for who they are—not in the Gifted sense, but in every other sense. For being gay. For being Latina or black or Asian. For liking the wrong music, the wrong clothes, for being depressed, for being anxious, or angry, or scared. For being who we are. Anyone who walks through those doors knows that they’re not going to be persecuted or harassed or told they’re broken. They come here because they want what we want—to use the Gifts we have to make the world a better place.”

  Familiar words, those.

  “And most of us tattoo ourselves as a reminder to use our Gifts for good.”

  More familiar by the second.

  “And it’s become kind of a symbol of who we are—a family. This house?” He gestures to the room. “This is our home now. And I’m the only one left in it.”

  I can’t get a read on him—my sodding brain is split between here and now and this afternoon and before, but Mara, dear girl, takes over for me.

  “Who designed it?” Mara asks him. “The tattoo?”

  “I don’t know,” Leo says.

  “How do you not know?” Jamie asks, which shocks me a bit, honestly.

  “Because I wasn’t the first person to have it. Isaac—one of our friends—was. He told me what it meant to him, and that meant something to me.”

  “And where is Isaac now?” I ask.

  A half shrug from Leo. “He’s a bit older, graduated from high school a couple of years ago. I think he’s travelling in Asia, now? India maybe? I don’t know—does it matter?”

  To me it does. Because the feather, the sword—the design might be different, but the symbol—that’s the professor’s.

  And this is what he does. He wrote to Mara:

  My particular Gift allows me to draft a vision for that better world—but my curse is that I lack the tools to build it.

  My Gift is useless on its own. And so I have found others to help me.

  Uses others to help him, more like. Finds them and uses them, the way he found Mara, me, my parents, Jamie and Stella and now Leo. And every second I devote to thinking about him helps him, gives him what he wants.

  So I scrape one of the folding chairs in the opposite direction, toward the map, and give Leo one command.

  “Talk.”

  There are over thirty Carriers who have crossed paths with Leo in person, he says, twenty he was able to get to New York, at a point. Some came because they wanted to get rid of their abilities, others because they wanted to strengthen them. Leo was the second sort. Stella, of course, belonged to the first. Mostly, they reported the same stories: Their lives started to go tits up as early as sixteen, for some, which, Jamie notes, given that not everyone develops at the same rate, makes sense (“Fuck puberty.”). By seventeen, many, if not all, were diagnosed with some sort of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual mental disorder. Which, as I know quite personally, means fuck all. But Leo and his friends—Stella and Felix and Felicity, at least—they began to catalogue them. Names, birthdays, hometowns, abilities.

  Some could manipulate dreams, induce sleep, wipe memories. Others could cloak the abilities of others (different from cancelling them out, apparently), and something Leo said made it seem like they knew someone who could predict events.

  “We all wondered why this was happening to us,” Leo says. “But no one we came across had any idea how they got their Gift.” No memories of having been experimented on, though many had been in treatment for their particular diagnoses or involuntarily or voluntarily committed at various points.

  So, wanting answers and finding none, they took to the Internet. As one does.

  Leo walks over to a different table, stacked haphazardly with file folders, pictures, medical charts. “Here’s some of what we found that we thought might . . . mean something. I don’t know.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “It seems ridiculous now, but what were we supposed to do? We didn’t even know where to start.”

  Jamie’s eyes narrow. “Well, wait. You actually said you started by trying to strengthen your Gifts, right?”

  Leo catches himself. “Some of us.”

  “Like you.”

  He nods once.

  Daniel walks over to the pile. “So who collected this?”

  “We all did. You know Stella,” he says to Jamie. “She didn’t want to be able to do . . . what she could do.”

  “Yeah, the cure thing was her idea.” Jamie moves over to the table. “She’s the one who—whoa.”

  “What?” I’m at his side immediately, but I don’t—

  “These are from Horizons,” Mara says, looking between our shoulders. Then, to Leo: “Stella gave you these?”

  I watch him mentally edit, which for me, confirms it: Stella took the files from the archives. Files that anyone who’s ever been here could’ve looked at, copied, to be used on us or against us. Either way.

  And now she’s missing.

  “Can we copy this stuff?” Daniel seems to be the only one with the presence of mind to deal with the clusterfuck this presents. Leo reluctantly assents, and everyone’s got their mobiles out, snapping away at files, the map, all of it. Before we leave Leo’s, someone promises to be in touch about the little archives party—not me. I’m thinking about arson, explosions, flooding—burying it all forever.

  “So!” Mara says, closing the door of the flat behind us. “Stella stole from us.”

  Jamie, on his way to the kitchen, says, “Technically, she stole from Noah.” He reaches up, grabs a glass from the cabinet. “Technically, we all did when we brought the Kells crap to my aunt’s house—”

  Now I’m barely clinging on. “You what?”

  “We couldn’t exactly go back there every day and use the place like a library,” Jamie says.

  I’m wordless, iced over, frozen with the knowledge that this toxic, radioactive mess has already been leaching out into the world.

  “It shouldn’t exist,” I say. “None of it should.”

  “But it does,” Daniel interrupts. “And Leo might be right—there could be something in here that we didn’t catch before.”

  “You’ve seen it all before, no?”

  “We weren’t asking the same questions then,” he says as Mara hands over her mobile. I follow, as does Jamie, and Daniel begins to scroll through each of our pictures, quick as anything. In just over a minute, he freezes, and my phone in his hand seems to grow in density, weighing him down like a stone. His lips part, eyes glaze over in shock, so much that his heartbeat becomes arrhythmic.

  “What?” I ask, switching over to his other side, worried he might faint, and also desperate to know what’s got him so unnerved.

  “Daniel,” Mara says, and her voice brings him out of it, prompts a swallow. His eyes meet hers, still dazed, unfocused. “What?”

  “Sophie,” he says, handing the phone to me without looking at it.

  “Your girlfriend?” Jamie asks, checking my face, Mara’s, for confirmation. “What about her?”

  Daniel takes the phone back from me, swipes the screen to zoom in. Holds it up. “This is her handwriting.” He turns to Mara. “On your file.”

  30

  FALSE SKIN

  OH MY GOD,” SOPHIE SAYS, her eyes widening as she takes in the flat. “This is your apartment?” she asks. “It’s incredible.”

  It was decided that Goose’s l
ittle dinner party would be the setting for Sophie’s interrogation. Daniel was under strict orders to act perfectly normal, as if his girlfriend of the past year hadn’t been hiding the fact that she’s an X-Teen. Mara was under strict orders not to kill her, accidentally or otherwise.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking her trench. “Getting bad out there?” The English and weather; there’s nothing we excel at discussing more.

  The rain dribbles along the clock faces and the darkening sky, and the smells of braising lamb, searing scallops, and roasting vegetables ripen the air. When I bring out the wines, I begin to wish this actually is only a dinner party.

  “No vegetarians round the table, I trust?” Goose asks.

  Jamie tips his head at me. “Shaw only eats pussy—”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Daniel’s a vegetarian,” Sophie says, and looks at him. “I’ve been thinking about it too, actually.”

  “How’s Juilliard?” Mara cuts her off. Awkward pause ensues.

  “Um, hard?” She blushes. “I mean, it’s incredible just getting in, but now I’m practicing with students who are so much more talented.”

  Elbows on the table, Mara leans forward and says, “You have to be super gifted to be admitted in the first place, though, don’t you?”

  Bloody hell.

  A slow nod from Sophie as she continues to feign ignorance, and acts appropriately thrown by Mara’s targeted passive-aggression. Which won’t remain passive for much longer. “I’ve never had to work so hard at anything in my life.”

  “You’re being modest,” Daniel says, his arm around her, giving her an awkward squeeze.

  This is going to be savage.

  “What about you?” Sophie asks Mara, elbows off the table, hands in her lap. “You guys are—” Her face blanks for a second. “You’re at . . . NYU?”

  Mara bends over like a snapped branch, and I hear the slight crunch of paper in her fist. For half a second I think about stopping her, letting the charade go on, dodging the scrunch until we’ve settled in a bit more. But then . . . it’s Mara. She’s going to do what she does.

  She slides a printout of the smoking gun across the table to Sophie. Sophie doesn’t look at it—she looks to Daniel with a nervous smile. “What’s this?”

  “How long have you known?” Mara’s voice slices the air.

  “Known . . . what?” She still hasn’t looked at the printout. Good show. Perhaps all of us have underestimated Sophie Hall.

  “Known that you were Gifted?” Mara asks her, and Daniel turns away to try and hide how fucking miserable he’s been since he found out.

  “Well,” Sophie says politely, and turns to me. “I’ve been playing since I was four . . . .”

  Mara bends down once again, then slides another sheet of paper toward Sophie. And another. All printouts of pictures of Horizons files with Sophie’s handwritten notes, among others’, all over them.

  She finally sheds her smile and looks around at us. “What are these?”

  Daniel, sitting next to her, lifts one up. “Your handwriting. On my sister’s file from Horizons.”

  But Sophie’s expression is placid, impressively innocent.

  Daniel turns to her. “What the fuck?” he says.

  Jaws drop. I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard Daniel say the word “fuck” before.

  There’s a pause before Sophie folds in on herself, like a limp puppet.

  “How long have you known?” He presses, barely containing himself.

  When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes, wet streaks running down her face. “I knew when I was sixteen.”

  “How?” Daniel asks.

  “I have . . . a sense about people. It’s like—it’s like I can see these connections, invisible strings, almost, that aren’t there, with points of light attached to them—and they look—they look like they’re tied to me. I get this weird feeling, almost like butterflies in my fingertips, when I meet someone who’s . . .”

  “Gifted,” Jamie intercedes.

  She swallows and nods.

  Daniel rubs his hands over his mouth. “You knew the first time I introduced you to my sister that she was different.” His voice wavers but it isn’t weak.

  Sophie swallows hard now, forcing back tears. “When she came to school. The first day. I felt it.”

  “Before we even met,” Daniel says flatly.

  A tiny nod.

  “Well,” Daniel says, trying for angry but the ache of sadness throbs in his voice. “So that’s why you asked me out.”

  This is going rather off course . . . . I try to catch Mara’s gaze, but her eyes cut Sophie to pieces.

  Sophie looks genuinely horrified. “No. Daniel, no.”

  His breath is rattling in his chest. “You find other Carriers—Leo explained it to us already. That’s what you do. So you found Mara, and then figured out that the best way to get to her was to go through me.”

  She shakes her head fiercely. “It wasn’t like that—”

  “It was exactly like that!” His face is transparent with betrayal and anger. “You knew about Jude. You knew he was alive and torturing Mara—you could sense him. And you just let me go on thinking she was sick? That she just needed help, when she was actually being tortured.”

  “You’re the one who told Leo we were here,” Mara cuts in. “You’re the one who found us. Leo’s been lying for you this whole time.”

  “I wanted to tell you before that,” Sophie pleads. “I hated lying.”

  “Then why did you?” Daniel looks as though he might be sick. The food sits curdling, puddling on the table. “You’ve been lying to me for as long as I’ve known you.”

  “But not as long as you’ve known Leo,” Mara says, her head tilting at an angle. “Right?”

  Sophie sniffles, nods. “I met him at a Juilliard audition. He’s a cellist.”

  “Nobody cares,” Jamie adds.

  “Were you telling him everything that was going on with us?” Daniel says—it’s hard to know whether he means “us” in the couple sense or the group sense. Sophie’s shaking her head vehemently, pleading with him, but if I were him, I don’t know whether I could trust her again. Steady heartbeat notwithstanding.

  “We just stayed in touch when he left Florida,” she says, which visibly perks Jamie up. Was he from there? Just visiting? Or recruiting, as it were? “Last year, while we were all at Croyden,” Sophie goes on, visibly trying to compose herself. “He was telling me about stuff that was going on in New York—people he was meeting, wondering if I could sense them from long distances or if it had to be in person. He told me how he and a bunch of others were practicing, trying to exercise our Gifts . . . they’re a muscle, he explained, and training makes them stronger.”

  “Did you tell him we were coming?” I ask. “To New York?”

  “Yes.” She looks down, her blond lashes grazing her cheeks.

  Goose leans in. “What, you sensed us when we landed at JFK?”

  “No,” she says, rather impatiently. “Daniel told me you were coming. Or that Mara was coming, anyway. With you.” She turns her aqua blue eyes on me.

  Splendid. I’m keen to move on, myself. “You were at the subway with us when the girl died.” I can hear everyone hold a breath. “You knew she was Gifted—Goose was there, he’d have been amplifying your ability. You knew she was going to die.”

  Her lips part, but no sound comes out.

  “Her name was Beth,” I say to her just as she begins shaking her head. “You could’ve saved her life.”

  “We didn’t know what she was going to do—Stella wasn’t with us that night—”

  “That’s not how we heard it.”

  “They didn’t want to out me, okay? But it’s true, Stella can hear thoughts when she knows what to listen for, but she didn’t know what to listen for, and anyway she wasn’t there! She and Leo lied to protect me. But even if she had been there, this hasn’t happened enough for any of us to even know what to expect beyond th
e obvious.”

  “Which is?”

  Her voice tightens with frustration. “For me, I just knew—it’s like, imagine all of us walking around with a candle. And then the light snuffs out. It just started . . . happening. People going missing. So we started tracking it.”

  “The map?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “You created it?”

  “Yes . . . and no. It’s not like I can just sense people all over the world. But being around you”—she turns to Goose—“it changes things.”

  As it does for us all, it seems. My thoughts slide to Goose and Mara, but I mentally run like fuck from that. “How’d you put that map together?” I ask.

  “The normal way, mostly. People came and went from the brownstone—but pretty much whoever came to the safe house would stay when they got there. Everyone told us where they were from, what they could do—we started piecing together whatever we could.”

  “But you were in Florida,” Mara says at the same time. “At school.”

  “Around the time I met Leo, he formed a sort of chat client, so we could all stay in touch. I started talking to Stella a lot. She helped me.”

  Daniel’s eyes meet Sophie’s for the first time. “All those times you said you had a concert last year, out of state. You were actually coming here, to meet up with Leo and whomever, weren’t you?”

  She sucks in her lower lip ever so slightly. I can see the moment when she hovers between lying and telling the truth. She decides to tell the truth. “That’s what I told my parents, so they’d keep paying for me to visit last year.”

  This is shit. I’m so sorry for him, but nothing I can do at present. “Fine. Now that you have that map, and know what you know, can you sense us, still, even when we’re not right in front of you?”

  She nods.

  “From how far away?”

  A slight shrug. “I don’t honestly know. Goose—that’s not your real name, is it?”

  “Yes. I’m the fourth generation Goose in my family,” he says with a marvellous straight face.

  Sophie blinks, but goes gamely on. “Well, you amplify—everybody. Everything. Do you have to focus on it or—”

  “This isn’t about him,” Mara says. “It’s about you.”