بخش 4 فصل 18

New York City

Winter 2014

XVIII

Henry gives up.

Resigns himself to the prism of his deal, which he has come to think of as a curse. He tries—to be a better friend, a better brother, a better son, tries to forget the meaning of the fog in people’s eyes, tries to pretend that it is real, that he is real.

And then, one day, he meets a girl.

She walks into the store and steals a book, and when he catches her in the street, and she turns to look at him, there is no frost, no film, no wall of ice. Just clear brown eyes in a heart-shaped face, seven freckles scattered across her cheeks like stars.

And Henry thinks it must be a trick of the light, but she comes back the next day, and there it is again. The absence. Not just an absence, either, but something in its place.

A presence, a solid weight, the first steady pull he’s felt in months. The strength of someone else’s gravity.

Another orbit.

And when the girl looks at him, she doesn’t see perfect. She sees someone who cares too much, who feels too much, who is lost, and hungry, and wasting inside his curse.

She sees the truth, and he doesn’t know how, or why, only knows that he doesn’t want it to end.

Because for the first time in months, in years, in his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn’t feel cursed at all.

For the first time, he feels seen.