19
OUR PREJUDICES
SHE’S DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I remember. Her once-soft shape is filed down to edges, the spray of freckles across her olive skin more livid. She does not look well.
“Hi,” Jamie says.
Stella’s mouth is sewn shut. She’s staring at Mara—something flares between them. I know a bit about the parting of the ways between Jamie, Mara, and Stella, but the atmosphere seems nastier than it should be, considering Mara’s the reason Stella made it out of Horizons alive in the first place.
Leo returns, so it’s us seven in the foyer, crowded in amongst old rucksacks and umbrellas. Leo bears a dusty bottle of wine and glasses.
“Stella,” he says with an easy smile. “Allow me to introduce you to—”
“We’ve met,” I say.
“Briefly,” she adds through her pinched mouth.
Jamie puts his hand on his heart. “You wound me.” He says to Leo, “We go way back.”
“Way back,” Mara speaks, for the first time in what feels like hours.
Goose slips sideways between us, back into the parlour. I follow, nicking a glass and the wine bottle from Leo’s hand. Because this afternoon has just gotten far, far more interesting.
“From Florida?” Leo asks.
None of us has mentioned Florida.
Daniel’s begun to sweat—his gaze bounces between Mara and Stella and Leo.
Jamie attempts a rescue. “Yep!” He follows Goose and me into the parlour. The rest trickle over as well. I settle onto the sofa, stretching out comfortably though my nerves are snapping with electricity. What the fuck is Stella doing here? How long has she been here?
Leo sits on the leather chaise, pats the seat next to him, “C’mere,” he says to Stella, who’s so tense she’s more like a wood carving than a person. She obeys, though.
I hold the bottle up, casting a reflexive glance at the label. Ever the snob. “Shall I pour?”
“What doesn’t Goose know?” Mara asks Stella. She doesn’t speak though, not till Leo places a hand on her thigh. How very familiar of him.
“He’s an amplifier,” Stella says.
Goose’s face is all-smile. “Are you all taking the piss?” Raises his eyebrows at me. “Is some American hazing ritual about to begin?”
“Those are the words coming out of your mouth,” Stella says to him evenly. “But in your head, you’re thinking, The fuck is going on here? Why are we bothering with these people, and Noah, you wanker, you’ve really gone mental.”
The smile on Goose’s face vanishes, draining all colour with it, because Stella has just narrated his inner monologue.
Goose is here because of me, in Brooklyn because of me, in America because of me. This is my problem to solve, now. No one else’s.
“Since you directly—or, indirectly, as it were—addressed me in your thoughts, I’ll try to explain,” I say to him.
“Oh, I cannot wait for this,” Jamie says.
Goose’s face is wiped blank, pretending at neutral. But I know him. He’s more than unsettled, but would die before admitting it. And nothing I’m about to say is going to make it better—only worse.
“Simply put,” I say, unable to help the curve at the corner of my mouth as I do, “Superheroes are real, and . . . we’re some of them.”
A raucous laugh explodes from Mara’s throat. “Superheroes?”
Jamie slow-claps. “Five stars.”
Stella turns to Goose. “I can hear people’s thoughts,” she says. “And Jamie can persuade anyone to do what he wants.”
Jamie crosses his arms. “I feel like I’ve just been outed.”
“You have been,” Mara says.
Stella ignores them. “Noah can heal, himself and others.”
Goose and Leo turn to Mara and Daniel.
“Daniel isn’t Gifted,” Stella says.
Leo’s gaze lands on Mara like a fly before darting back to Stella. “And her?”
Stella looks even paler than when we first sat down. She’s quiet, but her dark eyes are narrowed and blazing. She looks just as angry as Mara did upon seeing her, but it’s mixed with something else—what, I can’t tell.
“Noah?” Goose asks.
I ignore him, turn on Leo instead. “What is it, precisely, that you can do?”
“My Gift,” Leo says, “my business.”
Jamie slaps both of his knees. “Or! I could make you tell us. Since Stella didn’t show us the same courtesy.”
Which is when I realise that Stella’s reading our thoughts. Now. She shouldn’t be able to, not like this. None of us—myself excepted—have been able to use our abilities on each other before, not for more than a few seconds, at least.
In answer, Stella tips her head in Goose’s direction. “He’s why our Gifts are working on each other. It’s him. He’s doing it.”
Goose shakes his head once. “I don’t know what she’s on about.”
“How old are you?” Daniel asks him.
All eyes on Goose. “Eighteen.”
“Have you noticed anything . . . different in the past couple of years? Any changes?”
“You mean, hair in places there hadn’t been before, spots . . . ? The teachers covered most of that in year six.”
“Ever get sick?” Jamie asks.
“Ill, you mean? Of course, who hasn’t?”
“No, like, seriously sick.”
“Mono at the end of upper fifth.”
“Freshman year,” I explain to everyone. Could Goose have manifested without knowing it? “How bad was it?”
“Wretched. They thought it might be meningitis for a while, the kind you don’t heal from.”
I watch Daniel file that away. He can come at Goose later, he knows, but Leo—could be a now-or-never situation. I want to ask about the suicide, but Daniel knows why I’m here. He’ll either kick the ball my way or he won’t, but I trust him on this. He can see the forest for the trees like no one else. Especially not me. Or Mara.
Daniel turns to Leo next. “How did you know about your Gift?” Using his lexicon, asking questions we need answered and acting familiar so he’ll feel familiar. Fair play to you, Daniel.
Leo glances at Stella, and she nods. Cozy pair, those two. “You can make people do what you want them to do,” he says to Jamie. “I can make people see what I want them to see.”
The address. Fucking finally.
“Why were you there on the platform that night?” he asks me, skipping ahead. He wants to get right at it too.
“We’d just had dinner,” Daniel answers instead, to Leo’s annoyance. “And we were getting the train together.”
“That’s it?”
Daniel shrugs. “That’s it.”
Leo looks to Stella for confirmation. “He’s telling the truth.”
“But you,” I say to him. “You were there. And unlike us, you were watching the girl who killed herself.”
“We—” He catches himself. “We knew you’d be there.”
“How?” Jamie takes a turn at the interrogation. Poorly, as he answers his own question: “Stella?”
“She heard your thoughts,” Leo says.
“From how far away?” Daniel asks, cutting in. “Where were you?”
She hesitates. “I don’t—”
“Your friend—Goose, is it?” Leo asks.
“As much as you’ll get, it is.”
“He’s turning out to be quite useful.”
Goosey turns to me. “And here I thought you invited me to the States to eat, drink, and be merry.”
“For tomorrow we die?” Mara asks. A deeply uncomfortable silence ensues.
Daniel’s the one to pick things back up. “But Gifts don’t work on each other without an . . .” He looks to Stella.
“Amplifier.”
Wonder where she got that from. Wonder if she and this lot have been studying up.
“So where were you?” Daniel asks Stella again, but turns to Mara before she can answer. “Did you see her that night?”
“No,” she says quietly. “And I would’ve remembered.”
“We had a fight,” Leo answers for Stella—it’s as though she’s iced over, frozen. “She was already above ground when it happened.” He turns to Jamie. “But you wanted to know if we’d ever been sick before, right?”
“Right . . .” Jamie says.
“It was just nightmares at first,” Leo says, centring the attention back on himself. “Then hallucinations.”
I’m not sure if Mara’s pulse kicks up or if I’m imagining it.
“I was hospitalised—my fevers were out of control. But a lot of the time the doctors and nurses would treat me . . . differently. Like they were seeing things around me. Sometimes they wouldn’t open the door to my room. I thought maybe they were seeing the same hallucinations I was, then wondered if I could make them see different ones. Project different images onto reality. Turns out, I can.”
“When did this happen?” Daniel asks.
“Seventeen.”
“Same as us,” I offer.
“And the rest of you?” Leo turns to each of us. “How did you figure it out?”
Jamie shrugs. “Basically, the same. I’m a year younger than you guys, so, still working my shit out. But I’d say something to someone, I’d get sick, then they’d do it.”
“And what about you, Mara?” asks Leo. Fuck. “What is it that you do?”
The air condenses in the room, thickening with silence. Stella says nothing. Something happened—something bigger than I’d thought. Stella’s eyes skim right off Mara and land on the floor.
The tension’s like having something growing in your chest, ready to claw its way out. And yet Mara seems the most relaxed of all of us.
“If I wish someone dead, my wish will come true.”
Goose exhales, a smile appearing on his lips. “Wish I could do that.”
“No,” Mara says. “You don’t.”
My poor friend has no idea how to unpack that. “So, just to be clear,” he says, struggling, “you’re basically saying you can kill any one of us, anytime you want?”
Mara doesn’t answer. Her face is stone smooth.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Stella says. “That’s what she’s thinking.”
Mara’s smile gleams like the edge of a razor. “Guilty.”