The Becoming of Noah Shaw

The scars you can't see are the ones that hurt the most.

She’s a rock I want to break myself against.

This is what people who have never wanted to die don’t understand: the worst thing for those of us who do is feeling like we have to live when we don’t want to. That we have to be when we don’t want to, exist where we don’t want to. What we want is nothingness, numbness, because that has to be better than the life of quiet desperation we’re living. Mara’s hand is in my hair as I lean my head back against the cracked leather seat, eyes closed, mind ruminating. The others…they weren’t missing what I’m missing, is the thing. They didn’t exist because they had no other choice. They didn’t see the world through a lens in which every scene contains a door marked exit, a door I’m forever unable to open. They lived because they wanted to. Until the end, when something, or someone, made them stop wanting. And I need to find out what.

I know how you love endings, so I will write one for you.

Morning” “God is dead.” “Coffee?” “Fuck you.” “Again?

For the lost boys, and the girls who find them.

The first time I heard her, I never wanted to listen to anyone else.

I’m starved for her, all the time, even now—I want every part of her, to devour her, to inhale her, but I also want her slowly.

I waged my heart on you and lost, again and again and, but still I would do it. I could never bet on anyone else.

I love the person I am with you. You recognize somebody in me who I want to be, who I wish I were, and I am him when I am around you.

Fate is bullshit. Destiny doesn't exist. If I want a happy ending, I'll have to write it myself.

You have her smile,” people said, and I remember looking into the casket at her face, wondering if that meant I’d taken it from her, and the wave of guilt descended on me.

I’m mourning the loss of someone who never existed.

No vegetarians round the table, I trust?” Goose asks. Jamie tips his head at me. “Shaw only eats pussy—“ “Fuck off.

The way she sounds, the way she’s always sounded—like one discordant note, twisted just enough to affect the notes surrounding it, is impossible to ignore.

I want her to split me open, to dig her fingers in and pry open my ribs, lick my heart and my blood and my bones. Pick open my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to be devoured by her. And she wants to devour me just as badly. It’s in every look, every movement, every smile.

The bullies never remember, but the bullied never forget.

Mara takes my hand. “Noah Shaw, will you impregnate me immediately?

And as I watched her dying, I don’t remember the look of surprise on her face or the fear in her eyes, or seeing any sadness in her at all. I remember seeing relief there instead.

Ah,” Jamie says. “We have reached the Brooding YA Hero section of the book.” “The first of them,anyway” I say. “I could brood forever.

I kiss the inside of each knee and up, farther, the roughness of my cheek raising redness on her skin.

A thing I loved about her immediately, though, she looked back at me completely without pity.

I’m rather sentimental about the ruins—as a child, I halfheartedly attempted suicide there now and again, always returning from post-tourist-hours expeditions with knees winking with cuts, and the occasional fracture or two.

Unable to sleep, I clear the untouched mess left in the wake of the inquisition on my own and am in the kitchen burning toast and making tea when Mara descends the stairs at dawn, desultory. The sun fades in through the windows, pale and weak. ´Morning,` I say. ´God is dead.` ´Coffee?` ´Fuck you.` ´Again?` She folds her arms on the counter and lets her head fall.

I stare at her above me and want her to pry me open, to crack my ribs, lick my heart, break my bones and suck out the marrow. I want to live inside of her.

I’ve seen her in the middle of the night and the middle of the day, with makeup and without, with her hair done up and when it’s been unwashed for days. I’ve seen her in jeans and in silk and in nothing. I would gladly spend the rest of my life just looking at her.

I’m getting high on the scent of her, when she says, “We’re home.” If I’d been standing, her words would have brought me to my knees.

She hitches up onto the bed, her fraying denimed legs dangling from crossed knees. “You know I know you like to watch.” I reach her. Uncross those legs. “I do.” “So watch.

When someone is hiding a secret in a house, something changes in the air. Unspoken words, half finished smiles, eggshell steps—they distort reality, they muffle truth.