The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

WE CLOSE DOWN THE BAR and form a quivering circle on the street. The scale ranges from tipsy (Jamie and Sophie) to piss drunk (Mara and Daniel). Goose is solid, having inherited his tolerance from a long purebred line of alcoholics. I’m a blaze of energy standing between him and Mara, listening to the rumble of the subway beneath us and the footsteps/heartbeats/chatter of (mostly) students far more pissed than we. The moon hangs in the faded blue sky, and I feel a hundred times awake.

“Cab?” Jamie asks us. I realise then I’ve no idea where he’s been staying.

“Train,” Sophie says. “I’m in Lincoln Center.”

Daniel shakes his head. “Come back to Palladium with me? I’d feel better if you didn’t go home alone.”

“Some of us have to get up early.” Do I detect a sliver of resentment beneath that formerly cheery soprano?

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“We’ll all go with you,” Mara says. I can tell she doesn’t want to let Daniel go quite yet. She looks to me for agreement, and I give it. After a fashion.

“We’ll come for the ride, though Sophie volunteers as tribute to hold your hair when you vomit,” I say to Daniel, and he’s not so wasted that he can’t glare. “We can all take the F.”

A sceptical, slow stare from Mara. “How do you know?”

“While you were sleeping I memorised the MTA transit map.”

“Really?”

“No,” I pull her into my waist. “But you get carsick, so, I’m calling it. Goose?”

“Whatever, mate. This is your town.”

Jamie snorts. “I can take the F too, so. I’ll make sure you . . . toffs . . . don’t get lost.”

“A-plus use of ‘toffs,’ ” Goose says brightly.

“Wait,” Mara draws out the word. “Where are you staying?”

“Aunt’s.” Jamie’s voice is clipped. A shiver ripples through Mara, and something closes off behind Daniel’s eyes. I don’t miss the exchange that passes between them—but it’s hardly the time to ask.

We walk to the F, noisily (Goose), quietly (Daniel), nervously (Sophie), pensively (Jamie). Mara’s melting into dead weight in my arms.

“How much did you drink?”

She holds up three fingers.

“Did you eat?”

“Mmmhmm.” Lying.

“We’re going to have to work on her,” Goose says, tipping his chin toward Mara. “Unless you prefer them unconscious now?”

“Were you always such an incredible cunt?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“How did I miss that?”

“You didn’t.”

Jamie cuts in. “If I’d had to guess, between the two of you, I personally would’ve thought Noah would be the one with a predilection for geese. He does love animals.”

“Mm, no,” Goose says. “That’s the Welsh. And sheep.”

“An ugly stereotype,” I say.

“Did you know,” Mara says to Jamie, “that Wales is a whole different country?”

Jamie looks me in the eye. “She is very drunk.”

“They have their own language! It’s crazy!”

“Never,” Daniel says slowly. “Mix. Alcohol. And. Jet. Lag.”

Mara pats her brother’s shoulder. “Thank you, Gandalf.”

“I prefer Giles! We’ve been over this. Tolkien is problematic.”

“Maybe. Who cares? I love him anyway.”

“That’s the title of your Lifetime movie,” Jamie says, “I Love Him Anyway: The Mara Dyer Story,” and even I start laughing, because it’s fucking brilliant.

Mara manages to give him the finger and descend the stairs to the subway simultaneously. I’m quite proud.

We’re swallowed by heat beneath the city, as well as about a dozen New Yorkers milling about on the platform, still clinging to the edges of the night. Mara leans against me, Jamie flirts rather bizarrely with Goose, and Sophie and Daniel settle into a quiet but relaxed silence as I observe what the East Village at two a.m. has to offer; a birdlike girl with wide-set eyes, headphones far too large for her blond head, standing at the very end of the platform. A woman in a black suit, typing furiously on her laptop in one of the bench seats. There’s a somewhat round student in bright blue jeans and a gold cardigan with another boy—bearded, curly haired—tugging at his jeans and pulling him in close for a kiss. Farther down, a guy our age looks down the tunnel. He’s not tall, but holds himself as though he wants to be. He’s thin but soft-looking, somehow, and quite pale. He stares at the tunnel, waiting for the train like everyone else, I think—until I catch him watching me. His eyes are a startling, unclouded blue. I hold his gaze until it slides past me, into shadow.

Each person is thinking a thousand thoughts I’ll never know, living lives I can only pretend to invent, and then wonder what, if anything, they see and think when they look at me—at us, my eyes flickering toward Mara’s for less than a second. Are we the students we’re pretending to be, exhausted from drinking too much and laughing too loud and dancing too hard tonight? Or aimless gap-year wanderers, on our way to the next adventure? Are Mara and I girlfriend/boyfriend? Not husband/wife, surely?

The air belowground is dead and feverish, until it isn’t. At first I think, astonishingly, that I might’ve had too much to drink—the world seems to tilt, and darken, and a rush of noise fills my skull.

Then, strands of blond hair whip in front of my eyes, lash at my skin, and I know it’s happening again.

I feel someone else’s fear, someone else’s shame, the searing light of the oncoming train on her retinas, and the ground gives way to air as she jumps. She screams before she dies.

Dark, sharp pain condenses, a collapsing star. I see her last view before her eyes shutter forever. The stinging light, dingy metal—hear the screech and horn and sparks on tracks coming on so fast I can’t breathe.

And this time, again, I know her thoughts, as I knew Sam’s. The last ones. The feeling, hearing, seeing isn’t new—that’s always been there, all along, part of my (dis?)ability. But this. I’m cut down by the words in her head: furious unstoppable terror pain shame and—

I’m back inside myself, my mind belongs to me again, but it rings with her agony. Jamie’s voice has risen above the rest—time’s passed, because there are police, clearing everyone out. My thoughts are divided; part of me notices Sophie weeping, Daniel getting sick, Goose stunned, and Mara, beside me, her voice mist-smooth through it all. The rest of me is with Beth—

Beth. That’s her name.

Was her name.

“Noah.” Mara’s voice reaches me from the filth of the tunnel, from the freeze-frames of metal and rust and excruciating light, and I manage to stand and look up. Which is when I realise I hadn’t been standing—I’d been slumped against a pillar. My eyes skim past Mara, she’s blurred and shivering, as is everyone else. Or no, not everyone. That boy—the amphibious-looking one, is somehow in focus. He’s staring right back at me.

I open my mouth, and my jaw aches. Mara’s soft fingers are on my rough cheeks, bringing my face to look at hers. Her skin her eyes her curls her lips form my name but they don’t quite form her. It’s as though she’s hyper-pixelated, almost.

“I saw—”

“Shh. I know.”

“I felt her—”

“I know.”

She begins to come back into focus. “Mara—”

“Don’t talk. You’re hurt—your head hit the concrete—”

“I’m fine.” I’m not.

“Can you walk?”

Can I? “Of course.” I reach up to clasp her forearm and see . . . writing. On my own arm.

Letters, numbers. My bones are ringing with echoes of Beth’s last . . . everything . . . and my own senses are completely overwhelmed. I blink, hard. The writing is still there. It takes a bit to realise that what I’m seeing is an address.

Jamie, Mara, and I are last to ascend the stairs as the police attend to the mess of what was once a girl, once a person, once like us. I move by focusing on the heartbeats around me—Jamie, fast. Mara, hard.

Two more. A look across the tracks again. The boy is gone.

I look down at my arm again. The address is still there.