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

SHE’S ALIVE.” I’M STARING DOWN at the water, watching the boat, but it’s as though someone took an open palm to an unfinished oil painting and smeared it. I can’t tell if her body’s floated up, or if they’ve sent divers down for her, and my mind can’t reach simple facts I should know.

Leo steps beside me, looks down. “How—”

“I need to get to her.”

“Noah.” Sophie puts a light hand on my arm. “She’s gone.”

I don’t shake her off. She’s barely there, flickering in and out. I call out to Jamie, “Can you get us through?”

I have to shout it—it’s deafening up here, now that the illusion’s broke. The cars and trains and the city—we would barely’ve been able to hear ourselves speak.

“I’m trying!” Jamie calls back, just as Goose falls to the pavement.

Daniel’s voice tugs at me as he crouches over my friend. “Can you do anything?”

I try and let it all in, every sound I can usually hear; lungs expanding, blood rushing through arteries, hearts like metronomes, but instead it’s everything else; pistons firing in engines powering cars, a garbage bag being stepped on, glass breaking, the ticking of Leo’s watch.

I’m bent over Goose—I can see his chest move, but can’t hear him breathe. I tilt my head, my ear to his mouth, and still I can barely hear a shudder of a breath, even though I can see it. It feels like I’m backing into a corridor, the lights going out one by one. Someone’s calling my name, but I’m on the pavement, deaf, but not blind. A drop of blood wells up in Goose’s nostril, then drips down the side of his cheek. It drips to the ground. I can’t hear that, either. The air stirs his hair, the collar of his shirt.

Daniel’s mouth is moving, but no words are coming out. Goose blinks out of my field of vision even though I’m kneeling over him. When he blinks back in, his hand is on my shoulder and I’m the one on the pavement, on my back, shouting for everyone to shut the fuck up.

I watch two pigeons take flight between the suspension cables. The colour leaches out of the sky; the world is grey and white before I black out.