Kylie slept fitfully, immersed in her dreams; try as she might, she couldn’t wake, but instead fell even more deeply into a twilight she couldn’t escape. In her dream she was in the garden at home sitting across from Jet, who had a book open on her lap. If you want to know the cure, Jet told her, all you have to do is turn the page.
Gideon left their bed so quietly, his long legs extended, that Kylie didn’t notice his absence. He pulled on his clothes and found an umbrella that had been stuffed into the closet. It wasn’t too late to go to the florist on Brattle Street. Kylie had been so sad and preoccupied ever since her aunt’s death, he wanted to cheer her up and present her with something beautiful, roses that would erase the gloom of the day. He knew she preferred yellow and hoped they were in stock. Yellow, the color of courage and hope, loyalty and joy. He did not think of its other meanings, jealousy and sickness and deceit. He thought only of how lucky they were to be at school together. How lucky to have found each other when they were so young. He might have had to go through a dozen people before he found his true love, he might have never found her at all, but instead he had spotted her on a soccer field when they weren’t yet thirteen. They both had a fierce dislike of sports, other than running, which they loved. On the day they met they’d walked toward one another with grins on their faces, their feet lifting off the grass, their hearts pounding, as if they had already run ten miles.
Let’s get out of here, was the first thing Gideon had ever said to Kylie, and her first remark to him was Yes.
Yes, I’ll love you. Yes, I’m yours. Now I’ve said it aloud.
He left Dunster House in the stinging rain, and headed over the wet pavement down Brattle Street, a fortunate young man who dreaded nothing more than Latin class. When he dashed across the street there was thunder and he looked up at the mottled sky when he should have been watching the traffic speeding down the road. He heard the horns blaring before everything around him was ashes, a world black as night.
* * *
When Gideon’s mother called, the shrill wail of the phone woke Kylie from her terrible bottomless sleep. The garden in her dream had been on fire, and she’d been running through the flames. The moment she woke, she saw a smoky cloud on the ceiling of the room. Kylie scrambled to get to her phone, her chest tightening. She knew something terrible had happened even before his mother began to speak, only she didn’t know how terrible until Mrs. Barnes began to talk about the accident. He’s been hit, she said, and Kylie felt her world come apart. She could feel the curse lodged beside her heart, a black moth that had been inside her chest all along, waiting for the moment when she professed her love and it could at last rise. She’d told him today that she loved him. She’d opened the door to whatever came next.
Gideon’s mother and stepfather lived in New York, and were heading for LaGuardia; they would be there as quickly as possible. But what was done was done. Gideon had been struck while crossing Brattle Street, while Kylie was dreaming. She flung his raincoat over her T-shirt and pajama pants, then jammed her feet into a pair of boots. The taxi ride was a blur, the hospital one corridor after another until she found him. Kylie scrambled into bed beside Gideon, slowing her breath to match his. She felt a rush of love for him, but for herself she felt only recriminations. She should have watched over him; she was meant to protect him and now here he was. There were wires and tubes and machines whose purpose Kylie didn’t understand. Gideon was ghastly pale, his scalp and face bruised and cut; he was both there and not there, in a world of his own.
Wake up, she told him. Wake up now, she whispered, and when there was no response she shouted, but he couldn’t hear her. She circled her arms around him and wept until his hospital gown was drenched. When the doctor came by, he told Kylie she could easily disrupt the electrodes attached to his skull; she had best leave him be. Do not be so close to the patient, she was told in a calm, measured tone. Caution was everything; courage was a fool’s errand. The team didn’t yet know how severe Gideon’s head injuries might be. When the doctor left the room, the nurse murmured that Kylie could stay where she was as long as she was careful. But how was one to be careful when the world was in ruins, when it was no larger than a hospital room and the thrum of the pump assisting with each of Gideon’s inhalations was so very loud she couldn’t hear his heart? Usually Gideon’s beating heart was all she could hear, whether they were in bed or on the street. She fancied she could hear it even when they were a hundred miles apart. Now there was nothing. As Kylie held his hand, which was limp in her own, she thought about her aunt Jet’s letter. All at once she knew what had happened to Gideon had been the work of the curse.