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

THE ADDRESS VANISHES THE MORNING after. If Mara’d seen it, she’d have mentioned it, but she doesn’t, and the moment when I should have is long past. Another confession: I don’t want to talk to her.

From the first, Mara was curious about my ability, as was I about hers. She wanted to experiment, to test each other, which is well and good if one experiments killing/healing nonsentient creatures, in theory if not in practice. (A badly executed excursion to the Miami Zoo comes to mind—I’d thought Mara’s belief about her ability was a manifestation of her survivor’s guilt. She proved me very, very wrong.)

But when she first understood what comes along with my particular affliction—seeing others like us when they’re in pain—her first thought, quite literally, was to hurt herself to see if I’d then have a vision of her, through her eyes, and feel what she felt.

She’d only pinched her arm then, but when I asked her why all those months ago—

“When you first told me you saw me, in December, in the asylum—you said you saw what I was seeing, through my eyes,” she had said. “And when Joseph was drugged, you saw him through someone else’s eyes—the person who drugged him, right?”

She was right. She was right because she caused the asylum to collapse, and my particular affliction only allows me to see what’s happening from the perspective of the one causing said pain and/or terror.

“But you didn’t have a—a vision just now, did you?” she’d asked. “So there’s some factor besides pain. Don’t you want to know what it is?”

I said yes. I lied.

It had been true, once, when it first started. I wanted to know more, why I could do what others couldn’t and couldn’t seem to do some of the things normal people could (ex: getting drunk on occasion would’ve been fun). I even thought I could help the people I’d been seeing—else why would I have the ability to see them? But I never managed it. I was either unable to find out who and where they were, or I found out just after they died.

So I stopped looking. Until Mara. She was the first person I’d ever met that I’d seen in that way, and at first I wanted to know why.

Now I do know why, and the price of that knowledge is too high.

I’ve felt Mara dying beneath my skin. I felt her terror when Jude, that mad dog belonging to my father’s mad scientist, forced her to slit her own wrists. Felt the steel bite into her skin, her dizziness from the loss of blood, felt her cheek hit the dock when she collapsed, while I was in another state playing private detective.

“You were trying to help,” she had said. “You were trying to find answers—”

But I didn’t need any answers. “I need you,” I told her then, and it’s even more true now.

She has a curious mind and I love her for it, but not enough to lose her to it. Not enough to risk her. I need to work this out on my own.

And so it is that I lead Mara, Daniel, Goose, and Jamie to One Main Street in Brooklyn, taking the long way along the waterfront beneath the two bridges. I assembled them all under the pretence of “Shit went down, let’s decompress,” with the actual goals of (a) moving out of the hotel; (b) moving the people I like in with me, and (c) doing it as quickly as possible with as many of them as possible, so no one’ll notice my absence when I unpack what I’ve had sent from Yorkshire.

It’s dusk when we meet, and the sun-dipped clouds in pinks and yellows render us as jewelled figures in an old painting. The lights are on in lower Manhattan, but not everywhere. A fairy city, it looks like. And then we’re here.

The five of us look up at the DUMBO clock tower, whereupon the doorman lets us in, shows us to the lift.

Four pairs of eyes on me.

“What are we doing here, exactly?” Jamie asks.

I put the key in the lift and press the Penthouse button. “Taking a tour,” I say.

“Of . . . ?”

“Of the clock tower.”

“Um, why?”

“Because.” The doors to the lift open up to a sleek white hall with double doors at the end of it. I key the lock and—

“Welcome home,” I say.

“Holy—” Jamie starts

“Shit,” Daniel finishes. Not a swearer, he.

Mara swoops in, taking in the four clock faces that invite the glittering, jagged skylines of New York inside. There’s so much new coming at her, at all of us—I’d seen only pictures, sent by Ms. Gao’s assistant, approved by me—that did not do this place justice.

A sheet of frosted glass falls away and every detail leaps at me, separate and vivid. The crackled cigar colour of the ancient tufted leather couches I’d had bought from some estate sale in Yorkshire. The amber Edison bulbs with brass fittings warming the cold steel and glass interior of the loft. And my library. My books line shelves reaching at least twenty feet in the air, with an old-timey rolling ladder on rails to reach them. The books were all I could think of when the assistant e-mailed to ask what I wanted the flat to look like. I had no idea what I liked aside from books and music. Every choice I’d made with my father’s money had been reactionary—the clothes I wore (an affront to him), the car I drove (teenage rebellion). So I told her I liked old things, things with history. Everything in the flat had come from somewhere else, had belonged to someone else, used and then sold or discarded, and now it belonged to me. Rather like using family money I hadn’t earned—I had the chance to create something new with it, to take something that was theirs and make it mine.

Ours. Mara is biting her lower lip in a smile. She gets it, she knows. The others don’t, not yet.

“What is this place?” Jamie asks.

“The flat I bought with my father’s blood money. Do you like it?”

“Blood money?” Goose asks. “Bit dramatic.”

Jamie breezes past me. “Is it?”

Mara’s cringing, and Daniel makes the cutoff gesture at his neck as his eyes flick to Goose.

I’ve spent so little time with anyone but us, it’s easy to forget what they don’t know. That will take getting used to. It was good to have Goose around though. Again, that feeling of taking something from my old life and weaving it into this new one. One I’m trying to want to stay in.

I’ll make Goose work. Somehow.

Daniel’s in one corner of the space, standing by the grand piano, skimming a hand over the keys, his body twisted to look out through the clock at the Manhattan Bridge. Goosey’s found the bar, copper and glass and well stocked. Jamie’s flopped onto a sofa, eyeing the projector and original Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles (assistant’s idea, must’ve been). Mara stands with me, gripping my hand.

“When did you do this?”

“Days ago?” Feels like weeks, years since my father’s funeral.

Jamie peeks over the couch, his face open, curious. “Heir to the Shaw estate?” The question perks up Daniel.

“Seems so.”

Each of them processes my answer differently. Daniel’s heartbeat intensifies when he moves over by the library, God love him.

Jamie’s mind . . . is a mystery. But he’s hanging on my words, turning them over. Calculating their meaning, for what purpose, I don’t know. The pendant he wears is nearly identical to the one Mara’s grandmother left her, the one my own mother left me. Half-sword, half-feather, cast in silver. It’s invisible beneath the collar of his T-shirt. But it’s there. Jamie got a letter from the professor as well and threw in his lot with the man—if he can even be called that, ancient as he claims to be—who serves no master but himself. I’ve no interest in being anyone’s tool. My own neck is bare. Mara’s, too.

“How many bedrooms?” Jamie asks.

“Six, I think.”

A hint of smugness. “Going to fill them with Dyer-Shaw babies?”

Mara’s already nodding as she twines our fingers together. “We’re thinking of a spring wedding—we’ll both be eighteen. Right, honey?”

“I don’t remember proposing.”

Mara takes my hand. “Noah Shaw, will you impregnate me immediately?”

Daniel’s shaking his head. “Ew.”

Jamie lifts a hand. “Seconded.”

Goose, from the kitchen. “Are they always like this?”

“The language of love,” I reply. “Actually,” I say to Jamie, “I bought the flat for all of us.”

Genuine shock from Daniel. Polite interest from Goose. Scepticism from Jamie.

“Catch?” he asks.

A shake of my head. “None. Truly.” Which is a bit of a lie, but. To Daniel and Goose, I say, “Goes for you as well. It’d be brilliant having everyone here.”

“The Never-ending Party,” Goose muses. “I’m into it.”

Jamie’s eyes follow him. “I could get into it . . .”

Daniel sighs. “Pass, but it’s really nice of you to offer.”

“Really?” There’s disappointment in Mara’s voice. “Are you sure?”

“NYU bribed me with housing I couldn’t refuse. Or I could, but, I’d like to be able to walk to class, since I actually plan to go to college this year.”

“Hey.” Mara’s offended, genuinely.

Her brother raises his hands. “You’re going next year. And everyone knows that your senior year of high school, which this is supposed to be, is pointless.”

“Exactly. We’re just skipping the classes we’d be skipping anyway,” Jamie says. “And eliminating the adult supervision.” Pointedly, to Mara: “I know how you love eliminating adult supervision.”

“Cheers, as Noah would say.”

Daniel ignores them. “You really deserve a break, Mara, after . . . everything. Seriously. It’s your moral obligation to have fun.”

“That’s me,” she says deliciously. “Moral.”

Goose glides out of the kitchen with glasses and a £700 bottle of Caol Ila. Well done.

“Shall we?”

“I shall,” I say, allowing him to pour. We all do, in point of fact.

Pride is not an emotion I’m much familiar with, but at that moment, I think I feel it. Watching my girl and my friends like this, knowing I’ve made this moment. Chose these people to fill it with: Goose, from my past; Jamie, my present; Daniel, the brother I wish I’d had. I feel a steady flickering of happiness, separate and apart from being with Mara. The world is shifting before my eyes into something else, fitting into outlines I want to remember for however long I’m supposed to live. We’re taking on the shape of something, newborn and primitive. There’s a lightness, strange and alien but welcome, as we drink and laugh. But beneath it, always, is a vein of . . . separateness. Daniel and Mara are family. Jamie and Mara are best friends, bound by an experience I was responsible for but not part of. And Goose, familiar though he is, is still farther removed from me than the rest of them.

Everyone’s toasting and laughing in the living room, and, as planned, I take my leave, heading up the steel-and-glass staircase leading to the second floor. I don’t want to turn on the lights, as I’m not quite sure what can be seen from downstairs and what can’t, so I wander blindly, not sure which room I’m looking for until I find it.

It’s chaotic in here, with unopened boxes piled up on the edge of a riveted metal desk. I step over and around trunks of different sizes and ages; some centuries old, probably. Everyone’s still talking downstairs, and loudly, so I close the door and turn on the light.

Not about to start with the boxes. They look like banker’s boxes and likely contain financials and other shite I’ve no interest in at the moment. And the trunks—I’m wary. I’ve already spent enough time in the company of my father’s ghost. I’d prefer someone else’s.

A small trunk stands out from the rest, edged in silver and gold with a host of names engraved on the front—all female, I can’t help but notice. I open it and discover what appear to be congratulatory letters from what appear to be former conquests of some former relative.

Amusing, but not helpful. I look for a different one, hoping one will stand out, and one does. I cross the room; it’s battered but modern, something one might see at a military supply shop. Doesn’t look like something my father would’ve ever used—doesn’t appear Shaw-ish at all, which draws me to it. I slide my fingers beneath the hinges to lift the lid, only to find that it’s locked. Always something.

Returning to the desk, I open the drawers, all empty but one. Inside is a thick padded envelope filled with keys of every shape and size and, again, age, but one stands out. I feel like I know what’s inside the trunk before the lock turns.

My mother’s things have been packed away here by hands unknown. I recognise some of the books—Singer, Kerouac, Bukowski, and sifting through them I find Le Petit Prince, of course. I wonder if the photograph of Little Me is still inside, so I open it, flip through pages until the book itself settles on one, as if the spine had been cracked there, as if the book had been splayed out for years. My mother’s highlighted lines:

“To me,” she said, “you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me . . . . But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.”

The words call Mara to mind. Downstairs, oblivious to where I am, what I’m looking for—I’m not quite sure I know myself. Connections, I suppose. Between Beth and Sam. Between them and me.

I halfheartedly open my mum’s other books. Pictures slide out of them, many of her and friends—rarely do I find one of her alone. There’s this rare, magnetic thing about her that transcends the two dimensions of the photograph and catches me under my breastbone. It’s nearly impossible to look away.

Most parents, when asked why they want to have children, say that they want to raise a child to be happy. To be healthy. To be wanted. To be loved.

That is not why I had you.

Those are the words she wrote me, from the letter the professor had and sent to me. They’re branded in my memory. Her handwriting, elegant and frantic script:

Do not find peace.

Find passion.

Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for.

Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

Speak for them.

Scream for them.

Live and die for them.

That was what she wanted for me. Not happiness. Not peace.

I shove her books back into the trunk, lock it, and pocket the key.

She certainly got her wish.