his head in his hands, presses his palms against his eyes until he sees stars, and wonders if he can fix this, just this, if he can become the version of Henry that Bea sees, if it will make the frost in her eyes go away again, if she, at least, will see him clearly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the space between his knees and chest.
He feels her run her fingers through his hair. “For what?”
And what is he supposed to say?
Henry lets out a shuddering breath, and looks up. “If you could have anything,” he says, “what would you ask for?”
“That depends,” she says. “What’s the cost?”
“How do you know there’s a cost?”
“There’s always give and take.”
“Okay,” says Henry, “if you sold your soul for one thing, what would it be?”
Bea chews her lip. “Happiness.”
“What is that?” he asks. “I mean, is it just feeling happy for no reason? Or is it making other people happy? Is it being happy with your job, or your life, or—”
Bea laughs. “You always overthink things, Henry.” She looks out over the fire escape. “I don’t know, I guess I just mean I’d want to be happy with myself. Satisfied. What about you?”
He thinks of lying, doesn’t. “I think I’d want to be loved.”
Bea looks at him, then, eyes swirling with frost, and even through the mist, she looks suddenly, immeasurably sad. “You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
Henry’s mouth goes dry.
She’s right. Of course she’s right.
And he’s an idiot, trapped in a world where nothing’s real.
Bea knocks her shoulder against his. “Come back in,” she says. “Find someone to kiss before midnight. It’s good luck.”
She rises, waiting, but Henry can’t bring himself to stand.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You go.”
And he knows it’s the deal he’s made, knows it’s what she sees and not what he is—but he’s still relieved when Bea sits back down, and leans against him, a best friend staying with him in the dark. And soon the music dims, and the voices rise, and Henry can hear the countdown at their back.
Ten, nine, eight.
Oh god.
Seven, six, five.
What has he done?
Four, three, two.
It’s going too fast.
One.
The air fills with whistles and cheers and wishes and Bea presses her lips against his, a moment of warmth against the cold. Just like that, the year is gone, the clocks reset, a three replaced by a four, and Henry knows that he has made a terrible mistake.
He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.
“It’s going to be a good year,” says Bea. “I can feel it.” She sighs a plume of fog into the air between them. “Fuck, it’s freezing.” She stands, rubbing her hands. “Let’s go in.”
“You go ahead,” he says, “I’ll be there soon.”
And she believes him, her steps clanking as she crosses the fire escape and slips back through the window, leaving it open for him to follow.
Henry sits there, alone in the dark, until he cannot stand the cold.
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