Page 30 of The Narrow

“That sounds hard to live with,” she says carefully, and I squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying.

“I was five when my parents started having me lock my door from the inside at night,” I say. “He’d get angry and go after whatever he knew would make my parents upset, and that was me. We couldn’t have pets. I couldn’t have friends over.”

“That’s why you came here?” Delphine asks.

“There was a point where I realized that if they had to spend their time protecting me, they wouldn’t have time to help him,” I say. “It was better if I went away.”

“So they got rid of you.” She says it so bluntly, factually, but it’s like a fist to my stomach.

“No. It was my idea,” I insist. Atwood has always been mine—my refuge, my choice. “And it worked. Luke got better. He worked really, really fucking hard at it, and he learned how to control himself and follow rules and he got clean. And then a year ago, it all fell apart.” It happened so fast. Luke met Dylan at a party and something about the older manclickedwith him. He wanted to impress him, wanted Dylan tolikehim in a way he’d never wanted with anyone in his whole life.

He had worked so hard to live with the hell that was his own mind, to choose his own path. Then Dylan whispered in his ear, and in less than a month, everything was in ruins.

“Do you love your brother?” Delphine asks.

I don’t answer. I don’t know if I know the answer. “He can be really sweet sometimes. He’s not an evil person. He’s always been amazing at picking gifts out for people. And some days, good days, he would work so hard to make me laugh. And he can be really protective. He never lets anyone pick on me. He’d hurt me, but he never let anyone else touch me.”

Until this summer.

And that’s the worst part. Not the sudden pain in my arm or the hand pressing against the side of my face, pushing it into the carpet, but the days before, the long hours of Luke sittingplacidly in his chair, chuckling in amusement when I slurred my words.

“I had a brother, you know,” Delphine says. “A twin. He didn’t develop properly. By the time I was born, they knew he had died.”

“That’s horrible,” I say. “Your poor mother.”

“Sometimes I think that’s why she’s done all of this. She started out by losing one of us, and she’ll do anything to keep from losing the other,” Delphine says. “So I can’t die. She’d be all alone, and all of this would be for nothing.” I hear her shift, her head resting against the door. We are invisible to each other, yet almost touching.

“That’s not the only reason not to die,” I say, but she doesn’t answer.

“Tell me something nice,” Delphine says instead.

“Nice? Like, your hair is really pretty?” I ask, and she gives a little laugh.

“No. Something that makes you feel good. Something true that isn’t awful.”

I think for a minute. “This is silly. But where I grew up, there aren’t any fireflies. I used to see them in movies and read about them in books, but I guess I sort of thought they were a literary device? But then my first year here, the very last day before my best friend left for home, we were sitting in the woods talking to each other, and these little lights started popping up. I didn’t even know what they were at first. And it was like magic. The kind of magic I’d stopped believing in a long time ago. For a few minutes, there was something brand-new in the world, and it lit up the dark.”

Veronica, who never missed an opportunity to tease me, let me have my wonder. We held hands as the stars rose up from the forest floor, the universe turned upside down just for us.

“Is that what you meant?” I ask Delphine.

“That’s exactly what I meant,” she says, and I can hear her smile in the words. It sends a strange, quick feeling through me to know that I made her happy, even for a moment.

“What about you? What makes you happy?” I ask.

“It’s stupid,” she says.

“Mine is bugs with glowing butts. What could be stupider than that?” I ask.

“Flowers,” she says. “I miss flowers. We used to have this massive garden, and I would sit out by the flowers and watch the bees bounce around between them. The dahlias were my favorites.”

“That’s not stupid at all,” I tell her.

She lets out a soft hum of sound. “I think I’m going to go to bed now,” she says. Her voice is tender, raw. I feel bruised, and I marvel at how such small truths can be so hard to share.

We stand and look at each other through the glass. Her breath traces the faintest fog in front of her.

“You can tell me anything, you know,” she says. “You can tell me anything and I won’t tell a soul.”

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