At hearing Bellanger’s name, I went still for a moment, my pleasantly loopy state bottoming out. Every time I remembered Bellanger I felt this particular disorientation, a dread and anger I didn’t know what to do with. Lily-Anne. The tenth Girl, lost to us. The way he’d interrupted my mother’s plans to reawaken that lost ability of self-conception. I wondered if it had been worth it, in my mother’s eyes. Worth it to invite him. Worth it to get the nine of us out of the bargain.
“Did I say the wrong thing?” Tom asked.
“It’s fine.” I automatically produced a smile. So maybe Bellanger had kept secrets: my mother had kept secrets too. I truly was an orphan now. I didn’t recognize either of my parents anymore. “Another drink.”
* * *
Three drinks. Four. Maybe more than that because I would steal some of Tom’s beer, no longer cold because of how long he’d been nursing it, the warmth bringing out the bitterness. The world was a quicksilver spin, everything tilted.
The music throbbed, swift and erratic. I had to come over to the other side of the booth to be heard: I was yelling right into Tom’s ear. I half considered flirting with him. I’d never been a good flirt, too blunt and too impatient. And even when I’d gotten it right, flirting had been a negotiable power. A masquerade. Now that I’d felt what it was like to reach into a man’s brain and rearrange it into exactly what I wanted, there was something sad about trying to recapture this smaller manifestation of control. Like crawling after I’d learned how to fly.
“What do you think your mother would say, if she knew about your—your powers?” Tom asked.
“She’d probably be disappointed,” I said, my thoughts sliding and shimmering now. “She never wanted me to be different. You don’t raise your kid in Coeur du Lac if you want her to be special.”
“Nah,” Tom said, shaking his head. “You’ll never be a disappointment. Never.”
I leaned my head against Tom’s shoulder, and he tensed. “I’m disappointing you,” I said. “Not letting you write your book.”
His voice vibrated and hummed against my cheekbone. “It’s not about the book anymore. It was never—look, if you think this is all still for the story, I don’t even know what to—” He stopped, frustrated. “Josie,” he said, trying to start over. “Josephine Morrow. Girl One.”
There was something in his voice. We were so close, our mouths nearly touching, and I could see the calculations happening behind Tom’s eyes, how easy it would be to close the space between us. He was wondering what I’d say, what I’d do, and for a second I wondered too. I almost leaned in. His stubble had grown in lately, thicker and darker than the sun-kissed hair on his head, and I imagined pressing my mouth to his, our lips stinging with alcohol, beneath the funhouse glow of this bar lighting. I’d come to like Tom—I was friendlier with him, anyway, than any of the handful of men or boys I’d slept with before.
It would have been easy to give him what he wanted and wake up the next morning convincing myself I wanted it too. That tongue-tied, damp-eyed longing turned him vulnerable, transferring the power to me. I could’ve gone along with it the way I’d gone along with other sexual experiences. A why not? that wavered between clinical and carefree.
Cate. The way she’d described the difference in sleeping with someone real. Real. A heat settled low in my stomach, and I pulled away from Tom, worried he’d sense my sudden undertow of desire and mistake it as belonging to him.
“One last drink?” I asked, covering the sudden coolness I’d created.
* * *
I sat up. It was six in the morning. I recalled the previous night as a patchwork, isolated scenes badly merging. Too many gaps. I’d stumbled into this motel room with Tom, not wanting to wake up Cate and Isabelle. No—that wasn’t why. The real reason I was nervous to be around Cate was still there, refusing to dissolve.
Now I lay in the same bed as Tom. For a second I was gripped with a queasy curiosity, wondering what my body had done while I was away. But we were both fully clothed. Tom and I had turned from each other in our sleep, pushed far on opposite sides of the bed. All the times I’d woken next to Cate, the way she was always pressed against the crook of my shoulder or nestled into the small of my back like she belonged right there.
Tom murmured in his sleep, shifted. His shirt rode up on his back. I looked again, curious in spite of myself. The section of back revealed by his shirt showed a deep shadow following the shape of his spine. I hesitated, then reached over and tugged the sheets off his back, carefully lifted the edge of his shirt. The shadow continued. Almost without realizing it, I’d tugged the shirt high enough to expose his entire back. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.