The Night Country

15

I pulled out Persuasion and read the letter again. Then the second letter, the one that proved it. How had he done it? That mattered less than that he’d done it at all. Wherever Finch was, he was thinking of me. Missing me. My eyes were wet, my lips felt nervy under my touch. The air tasted heady and my whole life looked different under the spotlight of knowing this one incredible thing: he was reaching out for me.

I’d thumbed over the brief story of me and Ellery Finch so many times it was falling to pieces. The boy I’d used without telling myself I was using him. The boy who’d betrayed me, saved me, then abandoned me to this world, alone.

Not alone. I’d come home to Ella. He’d gone on, following the thread he’d tugged when he learned about the Hinterland, that led him on a journey to other places. That boy has other worlds to explore, I’d been told. We’re not always born to the right one.

I’d asked myself the question a thousand times, and I asked it again now: Who was Ellery Finch? I hadn’t paid enough attention when he was right beside me. The possibility that I might get another chance to find out glowed in me, electric.

I rolled onto my back and pulled up his sleeping Instagram. Mostly it was shots of street art and squares of sunlit water, pretentious quotes written on dirty windows and pictures of his friends, good-looking people with shining faces who made me feel jealous years too late. But there were a few of just him: lying in the curves of a snow angel, drinking beer on the ferry. Backlit on a rooftop, sun setting behind him.

Something else was keeping me up, filling me with a fine white fire, pushing away thoughts of silent attackers and blood in bathtubs and the death wish that followed my best friend around like her shadow.

Magic. That letter, written by a lost boy and delivered here by unseen hands, it was magic. There were other worlds out there, I’d almost forgotten that. And all enchantment hadn’t died with the Hinterland. I had a feeling I hadn’t had in a very long time: of possibility. Of the world, the worlds, as a vast place, where the cost of magic wasn’t always so horribly high. Where it could take the shape of something simple and beautiful. Like a perfect paper flower.

I sat up in bed and called Sophia. She picked up on the third ring, and said nothing.

“You left me,” I said. “On the fire escape.”

More silence.

“It wasn’t me. You know that, right?”

The connection was bad, her voice sounded far away. “I know you,” she said.

I didn’t know what that meant, or whether it was meant to be comforting. I guess I didn’t care. “We need to talk. Meet me at the diner in half an hour.”

It would’ve been a whole thing getting out if Ella was still awake. But she’d crashed on the couch, her feet slung up over the back and our old afghan thrown over her legs. I wanted to kiss her forehead, take the crack-spined copy of Tender Morsels off her chest. But if I tried that she’d pop out of sleep like a jack-in-the-box.

So I just watched her. Watched the dark mass itself over her head like the gathered detritus of her dreams. There was a time when I could’ve guessed at their contents, but that time had passed. I’d been holding myself back, letting her grow strange to me.

And tonight, I’d done something worse: I’d come home to her. Even after what happened on the subway, even after seeing Genevieve dead in the dark, I’d traced my steps back to Brooklyn. Not knowing who was watching me, whether they’d try one more time to hurt me, whether I was leading death to her door.

The annihilating anger that made me reckless in Red Hook, that saved my life on the train, was folded away. What I felt now was clinical and bright, more promise than threat.

I wasn’t going to be a victim anymore. A monster, either. I was going to find the creature who’d turned me into both, in that subway car in the dark.