Chapter 16: March First

On the first of March I woke in 2B at three in the morning, and Perry was not in the bed.

He sat at the kitchen table in his undershirt.

He had a pencil in his hand and a sheet of plain paper in front of him.

The streetlight made his face look carved.

I stood in the doorway and said nothing for a while.

At the top of the page he had written March 3.

Under it he had written nothing at all.

"That's the Book," I said.

"It's not."

"You're holding a pencil."

"I know." He put it down as if it were hot. "I woke up and walked in here. My hand did it."

"Your hand did it."

"Eleven years, Dara. It knows the way."

I sat down across from him.

By then it had been six weeks since the night in the bath, and he had done everything right.

He had gotten my coffee wrong twice and right once.

He had learned the exact sound I made when I was close and had never used it against me.

He had also slept less every week, and the dark under his eyes had gone from gray to blue.

"What do you want to write down?" I asked.

"Everything that could happen."

"There's no list for that."

"There is. It's called the future. Everybody else has it."

He gave a short laugh and rubbed his face.

"I keep thinking, if I just knew where the front stairs would be at 11:40. Where you'd be standing. If I could stop it."

"You said you wouldn't use it."

"I won't," he said. "I'm only so scared that I want to."

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