“I think you’re the opposite of an idiot,” Gansey said. “I don’t mean to imply otherwise. I just meant …”
Everything Ronan had ever said about Adam restructured itself in Gansey’s mind. What a strange constellation they all were.
“I’m not going to mess with his head. Why do you think I’m talking to you? I don’t even know how I …” Adam trailed off. It was a night for truth, but they both had run out of things they were sure about.
They looked out the window again. Gansey took a mint leaf out of his pocket and put it in his mouth. The feeling of magic that he had felt at the beginning of the night was even more pronounced. Everything was possible, good and bad.
“I think,” Gansey said slowly, “that it’s about being honest with yourself. That’s all you can do.”
Adam released his hands from each other. “I think that’s what I needed to hear.”
“I do my best.”
“I know.”
In the quiet, they heard Blue and Ronan talking to the Orphan Girl in the kitchen. There was something quite comforting about the fond and familiar murmur of their voices, and Gansey felt that uncanny tugging of time again. That he had lived this moment before, or would live it in the future. Of wanting and having, both the same. He was startled to realize that he longed to be done with the quest for Glendower. He wanted the rest of his life. Until this night, he hadn’t really thought that he believed that there was anything more to his life.
He said, “I think it’s time to find Glendower.”
Adam said, “I think you’re right.”
Depending on where you began the story, it was about Henry Cheng.
Henry had never been good with words. Case in point: The first month he’d been at Aglionby, he had tried to explain this to Jonah Milo, the English teacher, and had been told that he was being hard on himself. You’ve got a great vocabulary, Milo had said. Henry was aware he had a great vocabulary. It was not the same thing as having the words you needed to express yourself. You’re very well-spoken for a kid your age, Milo had added. Hell, ha, even for a guy my age. But sounding like you were saying what you felt was not the same as actually pulling it off. A lot of ESL folks feel that way, Milo had finished. My mom said she was never herself in English.
But it wasn’t that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.
So he had no real way to explain how he felt about trying to befriend Richard Gansey and the members of Gansey’s royal family. He had no words to articulate his reasons for offering up his most closely guarded secret in the basement of Borden House. There was no description for how difficult it was to wait to see if his peace branch was accepted.
Which meant he just had to kill time.
He kept himself busy.
He delighted Murs in history with his focused study on the spread of personal electronics through the first world; he aggravated Adler in administration with his focused study on the disparity between Aglionby’s publicity budget versus their scholarship budget. He screamed himself hoarse at the sidelines of Koh’s soccer match (they lost). He spray-painted the words PEACE, BITCHES on the Dumpster behind a gelato parlour.
There was so much day left. Was he expecting Gansey to call? He didn’t have words for what he was expecting. A weather event. No. Climate change. A permanent difference in the way that crops were grown in the northwest.
The sun went down. The Vancouver crowd returned to Litchfield to roost and receive marching orders from Henry. He felt 20 per cent guilty for longing to become friends with Gansey and Sargent and Lynch and Parrish. The Vancouver crowd was great. They just weren’t enough, but words failed him to say why. Because they were always looking up to him? Because they didn’t know his secrets? Because he no longer wanted followers, he wanted friends? No. It was something more.
“Take out the trash,” Mrs Woo told Henry.
“I’m very busy, aunt,” Henry replied, although he was clearly watching video game walk-throughs in his underwear.
“Busy carrying these,” she said, and dropped two bags next to him.
So now he found himself stepping out the back door of Litchfield House into the gravel lot in just a Madonna T-shirt and his favourite black trainers. The sky overhead was purplegray. Somewhere close by, a mourning dove swooned dreamily. The feelings inside Henry that had no words rushed up anyway.
His mother was the only one who knew what Henry meant when he said that he wasn’t good with words. She was always trying to explain things to his father, especially when she had decided to become Seondeok instead of his wife. It is that, she for ever said, but also something more. The phrase had come to live in Henry’s head. Something more explained perfectly why he could never say what he meant – something more, by its definition, would always be different than what you already had in your hand.
He let the feelings out with a breath through his teeth and then minced across the gravel to the trash bins.
When he turned around, there was a man standing in the door he had just come from.
Henry stopped walking. He did not know the name of the man – wiry, white, self-possessed – but he felt he knew the sort of man he was. Earlier he’d told Richard Gansey about his mother’s career, and now, hours later, he faced someone who was undoubtedly here about his mother’s career.
The man said, “Do you think we could have a chat?”
“No,” Henry replied. “I do not think we can.” He reached for his phone in his back pocket before remembering, partway through, that he was not wearing trousers. He glanced up at the windows of the house. He was looking not for help – no one inside knew enough about Henry’s mother to even suspect the kind of peril he was in, even if they were looking right at it – but for any cracked windows that might allow RoboBee to come to him.