Unspoken

Jared laughed bitterly. “No. Really?”

“What I mean is it’s strange for now. All we have to do is get used to it,” Kami said, gathering conviction. She knew from years of listening to him that this was the kind of situation where Jared got too tangled up in his feelings to act. It meant that she had to control her own feelings and make a plan to get them through this. “We need to take this in stages,” she announced, spinning away from him. She went to stand on one side of the half-fallen wall.

“Kami?” Jared asked, sounding taken aback.

“Go stand on the other side of the wall,” she said, and peered through a chink in the wall until she could see the flash of faded blue cotton that was Jared’s T-shirt. “And now stoop, you ridiculously tall person.”

She saw him move, the glint of his hair as he sat down in the grass. She sat down too, feeling him reach out tentatively in her mind. She reached back.

His voice in her head was familiar and soothing. You’re just tiny. It’s probably why you’re so bossy.

“You know, Napoleon complexes are entirely misnamed,” Kami said. “Napoleon was actually average height. He just had tall bodyguards who stood behind him all the time. Also, we should probably talk out loud as part of the first stage of my plan.” She wasn’t happy about having to say that to him, not when he had talked to her in her head for the first time since the well. Kami laid her cheek against the crumbling, sun-warmed stone of the wall.

“So, what’s going on with you, Kami?” asked Jared, with an effort she could feel. It was a subtle difference, but his voice sounded rusty now, instead of rough, as if he wasn’t used to speaking this way out loud.

Kami’s mouth curved against the stone. “I’m kind of freaking out.”

“Yeah,” said Jared. “I don’t—I hate—” He stopped.

“Talking like this is very classical of us,” Kami suggested. “Think of Pyramus and Thisbe.”

Jared spoke again, sounding helpless, but less like he wanted to hit something. “I might, if I knew who they were.”

Kami hesitated. “You do read, don’t you?”

“I haven’t lied to you,” Jared said, and his voice was angry again. “I read. I just haven’t read that.”

“They are characters in a Roman myth who had to talk through a wall. Then there was a misunderstanding about one of them being eaten by a lion.”

“I hate it when that happens,” Jared said. “Also, considering the way things have been going, I am thankful there are no lions in England.”

There was a wall between them, but the wall of silence in Jared’s head wasn’t there anymore. Kami still did not quite dare to come to the place where their minds met, for fear of being shut out again. She skirted the edge of what he was feeling, and stretched out her hand so he could see it on his side of the stone wall.

After a moment, she felt the brush of Jared’s fingers against hers. The light touch of skin on skin made electricity crackle through her blood so that it burned and stung in her veins. She had never been so aware of anyone in her life, or so uncomfortable.

Jared’s hand closed around hers, their fingers linking. From a careful touch of fingertips, they were suddenly both clinging as if the other had fallen off a cliff and they had to keep hold or risk them slipping away. Jared’s hand was a lot bigger than Kami’s, fingers callused. It was just a boy’s hand, blood and flesh and bone, she told herself fiercely. It wasn’t such a big deal.

“I’m sorry I was a jerk,” Jared ground out, sounding as if someone else had made him say it against his will. “I just—I hate this.”

Kami ventured, not quite meaning to, I thought you were going to say “I hate you.”

It was like being back in the lift again. She did not have to try to sense what he was feeling: he threw it at her and she could not hold back the storm that enveloped her.

“I don’t hate you,” said Jared, and I do. I hate this, I want this to stop, how are we supposed to live with this, and how am I supposed to walk away? You’re real and I hate you for it.

“Stop,” Kami whispered, her forehead pressed against the stone, her hand gripping his so hard her bones hurt. She was shaking. “Calm down. There has to be something we can do.”

“What?” Jared demanded, through gritted teeth. “What can we do? How can we fix this when reality is the problem?”

Feeling was rushing through her like a tidal wave, something dark and ferocious that might knock her off her feet and drown her without even meaning to.

There weren’t words anymore, just a rush of hate and love and rage and such fear, the black terror that had overwhelmed Jared in the lift, the fact that she had never been real and it had been unbearable and now she was real and it was just as unbearable. The thought that someone who existed in real life might betray you.

You were always on my side, said Jared, putting the dread into silent words. And now …

Kami felt it too, the horror of someone knowing all her secrets, every petty insecurity and small meanness she had ever felt. She felt the dread of Jared as an independent person, of what he might do, what he might think of her, and that she would have to live with those thoughts in her head. Kami wrenched her hand out of his, though he tried to hold on.

Then Kami slid her hand along his arm, her touch light, trying to be reassuring. His breathing had gone harsh and almost panicked. The soft rustle of grass and the sound of her own heart beating were loud in her ears. Her palm traveled over his elbow, followed the tense curve of his bicep, and hit the pulled-taut material of his T-shirt sleeve. She leaned forward and left the shelter of the wall.

Then there was nothing but them, unprotected and real together, both on their knees. She clenched her fist in his T-shirt, put her other arm around those too-broad, too-real shoulders. When he tried to pull away, she held on tight. Kami felt the surrender in his mind a moment before he laid his face in the curve of her neck. The whole world was so real it hurt.

Kami whispered into Jared’s hair: “I’m always on your side.”

Chapter Nine

Real Now

On Monday morning, Kami sat in the newspaper headquarters, scribbling a quick list of the articles she had planned for the week. Angela was reading out the interview she’d done with the school nurse.

“So in all circumstances, she just hands students a pain pill and says to tell her if they’re having hot flashes,” Kami observed.

“Pretty much,” said Angela.

“How about that time Ross Philips fell out of the window in the gym and cracked his skull and broke his arm?”

“Ross wasn’t having hot flashes.” Angela smiled. “I like Nurse Tey’s style.”

Kami hummed in agreement and wrote herself a note that said INFIRMARY EXPOSÉ! Then she resumed writing her list. She was chewing the end of her pencil over article number nineteen when Jared threw open the door, strode into the room, and announced, “We should date.”

Kami bit her pencil in two.

Angela rose from her chair like the wrath of God in a red silk blouse and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“Hey, Angela,” Jared said without sparing her a glance. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and continued, glaring at Kami’s desk. “I was thinking.”

“I see no evidence of that, Jared,” Kami said. “Sorry, Angela! He’s crazy! Excuse us, we have to go talk in the hall.” She pushed her chair back from the desk so fast that it toppled over. As she came toward him, Jared gave her a little crooked, awkward smile.

“I’m not going to let you go talk to some lunatic alone in the hall,” Angela said furiously. “Who are you?”

“Jared Lynburn,” said Jared.

Angela slipped out of her chair and circled Jared like a panther.

Kami intercepted the prowl and patted Angela’s red-silk arm. “I’m off to go do an interview with him in the hall.” She patted Angela again. “Trust me. I will explain everything.” She made shepherding gestures to get Jared out of the door without touching him.

Jared let himself be shepherded, glancing at her over his shoulder as if he was uncertain she was coming with him.

You idiot, she said fondly. She saw his mouth curve before he turned his head. Kami followed him out the door, which she shut and then sagged against. “Now tell me,” she said. “What the hell was that?”

In addition to leaning against the door, Kami was also keeping a firm grip on the doorknob. It was reassuring to have a firm grip on something. Jared stood in the echoing hallway as if his presence in the world was perfectly normal. Which it was, and she was going to have to get used to it.

Jared watched Kami. He was wearing the same blue T-shirt he’d been wearing in the garden, and the sight of it made her additionally uncomfortable. She wished again that he wasn’t quite so tall.

“I said, we should—” Jared began.

“I heard what you said!” Kami yelped. “I guess I was hoping I’d got it wrong and you hadn’t said the crazy thing you said. Since you did say the crazy thing you said, do you mind explaining it to me?”

Jared set his jaw and stared at the floor. “We should date,” he repeated obstinately. “Because this whole being-in-each-other’s-heads thing, there has to be a reason for it, doesn’t there?”

“There has to be an explanation,” Kami conceded. “Yes.”

Jared glanced up, taking this as encouragement. In this particular slant of light, his strange eyes were so pale they seemed colorless.

If it wasn’t for that, Kami might have called his look almost shy. She clenched her hand into a fist. One of them had to be reasonable, or they would ruin everything.

“And we’ve found each other,” Jared continued. “So this is, like, fate. Isn’t it? Soul mates. Isn’t it?” Every word seemed to be dragged out of him, but now he was looking at her steadily.

Kami’s voice came out calmer than she expected. “Let me get things perfectly clear. You want to date?”

Jared nodded cautiously.

Kami took a deep breath and stepped toward him, her fingers uncurling to reach out. Jared flinched, and she drew her hand back.

“As in boyfriend and girlfriend?” Kami pursued. “Sweethearts? Who canoodle?”

Jared nodded again, even more cautiously.

“Well, mi amore, this is awesome news! Let’s get right on that,” said Kami, and began to undo the buttons of her blouse. She looked down at the red buttons slipping out one by one from the black fabric of her shirt. She only had eight buttons, and there went the fourth.

Jared sucked breath out of a horrified void and shouted, “Stop that!” He angled himself to protect her from the eyes of a crowd that was not there. He hesitated, possibly because now he had a view directly down into shadows and curves.

Kami glanced up. Jared looked at the wall.

“Here’s the thing,” said Kami, doing her buttons up fast, trying to keep things casual. “I don’t think that people who are freaked out by each other’s physical existence should date.”

“I cannot believe you just did that,” Jared said. “Are you crazy?” He still looked shaken, which Kami found irritating. She was sure other girls received far more enthusiastic responses when they started with the undressing.

“Well, I can’t believe you walked in and said that,” she shot back. “In front of Angela!”

“I had to work myself up to it,” Jared said. “I may have lost my head.”

“I was acting on an impulse!” Kami said. “I still feel it was a sensible impulse.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’re both crazy,” said Jared. “Well, this is going to be fun.” He risked a glance down, and the tension eased from his shoulders when he saw Kami was fully buttoned. The corner of his mouth went up again.