“I don’t know,” I say. “If you don’t, why don’t you show me what you do have?”
He hesitates, for just long enough that my thumb starts edging toward the Call button, and then he shrugs and pulls the satchel around in front of him. I brace myself as he unclips the buckles and lifts the flap.
“One volume of poetry,” he says, retrieving the book he was reading at the courthouse. The title is written in what I think are Chinese characters. From his looks, I’d have guessed his background was Indian—or southern Italian, or even Hispanic, he’s hard to pin down—but then, you don’t need to be Chinese to read the language. He pops it back in.
“One bottle of orange juice. Wrapper from the sandwich I had for lunch. Pack of bubble gum. Pen. And this.”
The last thing he presents is a parcel of shimmery black fabric, about the size of a folded blanket. He grips it at the top, which has the arc of a garment bag, and shakes it out. The fabric spills down like an oil slick, the bottom puddling by his feet. Even in the dimming sunlight, I can see the blurred shapes of the street reflected on its surface.
“What is that?”
“Difficult to explain,” he says. “But I think we can agree it’s not a bomb?”
“Yeah.” I approach him, until I’m close enough to touch it. His hand tenses where he’s holding it, but he doesn’t stop me. The fabric feels silky under my fingers, and lighter than I expected, almost airy. I’m reflected on it now, a rippling silhouette.
My first thought, ridiculously, is that Angela would kill for Halloween tablecloths made out of this stuff. My second is that it’s not like any kind of fabric I’ve seen or touched before. Even staring at it, I can’t make out the slightest hint of a grain, the texture of the fibers. It’s smooth as sheet plastic. But plastic couldn’t move like this. Weird.
Then it occurs to me that, if the guy wanted to grab me, hurt me, he could do it right now. But he’s just standing, waiting. Even without looking at him directly, I get that sensation again, that he’s somehow more solid, more real, than the houses behind him, the sidewalk under our feet. The impact of his presence makes my breath catch.
It’s not attraction or alarm or any other emotion I can identify. I don’t have the warm, fluttery-stomach feeling that Daniel gives me, or the urge to run away. But it’s something. A sign that he knows how to counteract all the wrongness in my life?
When I drop my hand, he folds up the strange fabric and slips it into his satchel. He smiles as he offers his hand to me.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m Win. You said your name is Skylar?”
“Yeah,” I say. I accept his hand cautiously. He squeezes mine and lets it go.
“I saw a few coffee shops on the way here,” he says, motioning to his right, toward the street I walked along on my way to Ben’s house. “You pick the place, I’ll buy you something to eat, and we’ll talk?”
I waver. Mom and Dad will be expecting me for dinner soon, and Angela’s supposed to come over later on to work out the last details of our English presentation. Still, I have a little time.
There’s nothing he can to do to me in a public place, surrounded by other people, that he couldn’t have already done if he wanted to. He could be playing some bizarre game with me, but I’ll survive that. I might not survive passing up the chance to find out if he really does understand what’s wrong with me, and how to fix it. I was an inch away from losing it completely yesterday. I’d give anything to never face that fear again.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s talk.”
4.
Being willing to talk doesn’t mean I’m throwing caution to the wind. I keep my phone in my hand as we head toward Michlin Street. Win eases my nerves by leaving a comfortable distance between us. There’s a spring in his step, but he seems content to walk in silence. When we turn the corner, off the residential street and into the flow of evening shoppers and restaurant-goers, I return the phone to my bag. This neighborhood, an artsy strip just a little too far north to be considered downtown, is my home turf. Across the street, two couples are sitting on the brightly painted benches outside Pie Of Your Dreams, where the five of us—Angela, Bree, Lisa, Evan, and me—devoured an entire lemon meringue last weekend. Farther down the block stands the antique shop where I found my book of Roman history and Angela her Halloween candelabras. Win and I pass a chain coffee shop packed with college kids—pop tunes jangling through the doorway—and the hippy-chic vegetarian place Bree adores. A “Help Wanted” sign is hanging in the window. I’ll have to mention it to her.
Just beyond the thrift store where Angela buys most of her clothes, we reach an indie cafe with low armchairs and dark wood tables positioned by the front window. I’m not much of a coffee drinker—even a little caffeine gives me the jitters—but I’ve been in here a few times to grab a snack. Classic jazz is playing low in the background when we step inside. The rich scent of roasted coffee beans mingles with varnished wood and aged leather.
“Nice place,” Win says, pausing to take it in. He tilts his head. “What musician is that?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” I say. “The staff might know.”
He nods and ambles over to the short line by the order counter. As I follow him, a broad man in a pinstriped suit turns abruptly from the pickup area. His elbow bumps my arm, and the dark liquid from his cup sloshes on the front of his shirt.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he mutters. The younger man who’s with him snatches the cup from him so he can dab at the expanding brown splotch with a napkin. The paper sops up some but not all of the stain. “I don’t have time to go back for another shirt.”
“Sorry,” I offer, even though he’s the one who wasn’t looking where he was going. He glances at me, and rolls his eyes heavenward before turning to his assistant.
“It’ll make you seem more accessible to the audience,” the younger man suggests. “Happens to everyone.”
“Let’s just get this over with. The tie mostly covers it . . .”
Their voices fade as they hurry toward the door.
“Problem?” Win asks when I join him in line.
“Just some grouch who thinks he’s the center of the universe.”
“I know a few of those.” Win chuckles, and pulls a wallet out of his back pocket. “What’ll you have?”
Not coffee, if I’m going to keep a clear head. “A small hot chocolate. And a peanut butter cookie. But you don’t have to pay for me.”
“I think I owe you, after the way I startled you.”
“You don’t have to pay for me,” I say firmly. I don’t like the idea that he might think I owe him after. I still don’t even know who he is.
He accepts my declaration with a slight grimace, which vanishes as soon as the cashier asks for his order. We get our drinks and take a table in the corner, me scooting around back so I have a view across the shop all the way to the door. Win leans over his coffee and inhales the steam. A dreamy expression steals over his face. Then he raises the cup and takes a slow sip.
“I am never going to get tired of this stuff,” he says. “Amazing what you can get out of a plant.”
What do I know about this guy? He saves high school classes from bombs, he has the attention span of a guppy, and he moons over lattes.
“You wanted to talk,” I remind him. “About seeing weird things?” I’d like to get to the finding out whether he actually can help me part of the conversation as quickly as possible. Even without coffee in my system, my body’s humming with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
“Yes.” Win blinks out of his coffee reverie. “Sorry. Let me know if this sounds about right.” He taps his finger against the table as if pointing out the elements in a diagram. “Every now and then, you go somewhere, or you see something, and you feel it doesn’t make sense. It should have been different somehow. But there’s no obvious reason why, and no one else seems to notice.”
“Yeah,” I say, staring at him. The way he explained it—I might not have p
hrased it quite that way—but that’s exactly how it is. He grins, both with his mouth and those deep blue eyes. It’s hard to stop staring. “How did you know?”
“I’ve experienced something similar. When did it start? Can you describe how it happens for you?”
I’ve spent so long keeping this part of myself under wraps that my throat closes up. But he knows—he really knows—without my having said anything. How much else does he know about the wrongness? About how to make it stop?
The words spill out, faster than I intended. “I don’t know—the first time I remember it getting bad was when I was around six. All of a sudden, I just feel that something’s wrong. My whole body reacts, like a panic attack . . . Is that what it’s like for you too?”
“Pretty much,” Win says. “And they just happen whenever?”
“It seems like it. For a while, when I was little, I thought maybe I had some kind of sixth sense; that it was warning me. But there never is anything wrong. I had to learn how to calm myself down, or else my brain got totally derailed.”
But if what he says is true—if there was a bomb—maybe the feelings aren’t meaningless after all. Maybe I just didn’t understand. You can’t get much more wrong than being blown up.
“What calms you down?” Win asks, cocking his head.
It’s amazing, being able to talk to someone about all this. Someone who gets it, who doesn’t stare at me like I’m crazy. The urge to spill everything is overwhelming. I take a drink from my mug before I continue, to slow myself down. “Focusing on little details around me,” I say. “And numbers. Numbers are good—three, especially. I have this bracelet; I multiply by threes with the beads.”
“A bracelet.”
“It’s nothing magical.” I tug it out of my pocket, but my body balks just shy of offering it to him.
Win eyes it. “It’s too small for your wrist.”
“When I first started doing the multiplying, I had this one my brother gave me, when I was a lot smaller. The hemp starts to fray after a while, so I’ve been restringing the beads, but it seemed . . . right to keep it the same size.”
I run my finger over one of the beads. The dapples of blue and purple have been worn down by years of spinning, no longer as glossy as they were on that first bracelet. I remember how gleeful my five-year-old self was, knowing my big brother was making something just for me. Getting to pick out my favorite beads at the store, watching him weave the hemp strings. He never knew how much I was going to need it.
As with all my memories of Noam, the thought comes with a jab of guilt. An echo of another memory, the last one: his skinny form in the corner of my vision, waving from the doorway before disappearing forever.
My fingers have moved on to the third bead, the threes rattling out in my head, before I realize what I’m doing. Heat floods my cheeks. I didn’t mean to give a demonstration. I shove the bracelet back into my pocket.
Win doesn’t comment on my slip. “So there aren’t any patterns to when you get the feelings?” he asks.
I pause. That’s the sort of question my childhood therapist would have asked. “Not really. Except . . . I did start to notice, they mostly seem to come with things that are new, or somewhat recent. I’ve stopped going to current movies and picking up current books and even going to new places when I can avoid it. Somehow sticking to stuff that’s older seems to help. What about you?”
“Something like that,” Win says. “New things rather than old. That would fit. Have you gotten one of those feelings about anything recently? Other than the bomb, I mean?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “They’re not exactly fun—I try to forget them as soon as they’re over. But, this bomb—you said you were at the courthouse to make sure it didn’t go off—so there really was a bomb? How did you know? Did the feelings tell you somehow?”
“The bomb’s not important,” Win says with a flippant gesture. “I took care of it. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It could make a difference. Just think about it for a minute.”
The hint of impatience in his voice sets me abruptly on edge. He’s dodging my questions. I’ve told him so much, and other than his initial suggestions about what I’ve experienced, everything he’s said has been vague, if not a total evasion. How can some wrongness I noticed last week be more important than him stopping a building from exploding?
Maybe this was never about helping me. My stomach twists. Well, I don’t know what he wants, and I don’t see why I should have to figure it out if he’s staying clammed up.
I take a bite of my cookie. Around us, friendly chatter carries through the coffee shop. Five junior-high girls whisper over their whipped-cream-topped mugs. A couple of middle-aged men discuss a video playing on one of their laptops. A barista is wiping down the table across from ours, her long brown hair swaying with the movement of her arm.
Everything is fine. Safe. Normal.
“So?” Win says.
“I told you,” I say. “I don’t really keep track. And I’m not okay with you asking all the questions and not answering mine. Who are you?”
“I told you,” he says. “I’m Win.” As if that really tells me anything. As if I’m the one being difficult. He sighs, cupping his hands around his coffee mug. “What if I say I’m a . . . a special investigator into these sorts of phenomena?”
With that hesitation in the middle of his sentence, he sounds like he’s making up a story on the spot. “I’d say you’d have to do better than that. What phenomena? Do the feelings mean something? Where do they come from? You haven’t explained anything.”
“The problem with explaining it, well—”
His voice cuts off. His shoulders stiffen. Suddenly he’s pushing back his chair and reaching for my hand. “We have to go.”
Okay, this situation has gone right around the bend. “What?” I say. “I’m not—”
Then I lose track of my sentence, because beyond Win a new couple is walking into the cafe. At least, I think of them as a couple at first glance, because it’s a man and a woman and they’re about the same age: early thirties, I’d guess. But the second they step through the doorway, the woman pushes ahead with an air of authority. The man flanks her as they scan the interior of the shop. It’s difficult to look away from her, she’s so striking: tall and slim in her tan peacoat, with ice-pale skin and hair so blond it’s almost white but somehow doesn’t look bleached. But that’s not what makes me go rigid.
I’ve been sitting across from Win long enough that I’ve tuned out the strange presence he has. Seeing the newcomers, it’s like he’s snapped back into focus. Because this couple has it too. The edges of their bodies are so definite, their coloring so vivid, they make the rest of the people around them, even the wall behind them, look faded in comparison.
Win turns to look. A word escapes his lips that’s not part of any language I know, but it sounds distinctly like a curse. He jerks back around, grabbing my wrist.
“Come on. Now.”
At the same moment, the pale woman’s gaze meets mine across the room. A chill shoots through me. She makes a flicker of a gesture to her companion, her voice low but clear.
“That’s the one.”
5.
Win pulls at my arm, his back to the woman. Her gaze is still fixed on me. Her mouth curls into a sneer. She strides forward with predatory speed, and that’s when my body wakes up and decides it’s time to get out of there.
I slide off my chair. Win tugs me through the shop, his hand clamped around my wrist, his jaw tight. He’s so obviously scared, it makes me even more terrified. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life—I’d remember that icy stare. How can she know me?
What does she want with me?
“Hey!” one of the baristas shouts as Win pushes the rear “Staff Only” door open. I glance behind just long enough to see the pale woman loping after us, her hand moving to a thin shape at her hip. My
pulse skips and I scramble after Win. We rush through a narrow room packed with shelves of boxes and plastic-wrapped skids to the heavier door at the other end. Win shoves it and gives a huff of relief when it moves.
“Who—” I begin.
“Just come,” he snaps. “Fast!”
The door is squeaking open behind us. I stumble into the alley. Win doesn’t stop for a second. He swivels on his feet and drags me toward the street that’s visible beyond the backs of the neighboring buildings. I keep pace, my wrist aching in his grip. Part of me wants to pull my arm away and part of me is worried he’d break the bones before he let go.
“We should be able to lose them out there,” he says. Then the door we came out thumps again, and he lunges into a run.
I race after him, dodging the garbage spilling from an overflowing trash bin and splashing through a puddle. Footsteps are smacking the pavement behind us. Faster than ours. There’s a twanging sound, like an out-of-tune guitar. Win swears again, yanking me to the side as a sliver of light crackles into the bars of a fire escape, so close the sparks singe my cheek.
My breath stutters, but I don’t have time to wonder what the hell that was. The open space at the end of the alley is just a building-length away. I gulp air and lengthen my strides, my free arm pumping frantically. Win veers left and then right, and my foot skids on a crumpled plastic bag. There’s another twang.
Pain slices up my left elbow, forcing a yelp from my throat. My muscles spasm and my feet tangle under me. Win hauls me upright, out onto the busy sidewalk.
The pain vanishes as we weave through the evening shoppers. For an instant, I’m relieved. Then I realize I can’t feel my arm at all. It’s gone numb from hand to shoulder, so numb I have to look down to make sure it’s still there. When I try to move it, not a single fingertip wiggles. The arm might as well be hollow.
The shock sends a blur of tears into my eyes, but my feet keep running. Win bolts onto the road, and I follow. I don’t know what else to do.
Tires screech. Someone yells at us. My arm bumps limply against my side, like a dead thing. Nausea bubbles up inside me. I swallow it down, training my mind on the simple act of setting my feet flat on the ground, one after the other.