The Cure for Sleeping

Chapter Sixteen

We take a different route back to Haven. Neither of us wants to try the Brooklyn Bridge again, to weave Dot through the Insomniacs with our hearts in our throats.

We drive without speaking, our hands joined over the glove box. Noah kneads my palm gently. I don't think he realises that he's doing it. He's looking out the window as we roll onto the Manhattan bridge.

"I thought that she'd bitten you." Noah says quietly. His thumb traces a path over my palm.

"She didn't." I keep my eyes on the road. Noah's voice is soft, whispered like a confession.

"You fell down and I couldn't get up the stairs in time. I saw her teeth, Avery. She was so close to you." Another moment and I would have been dead. It isn't something either of us is willing to say. Noah leans his head against the glass, his breath turning to fog.

"I'm fine, Noah. No blood, no bite. She didn't get me." His fingers still.

"I thought I'd lost you."

I drag my gaze off the road, look at him. There are shadows under his eyes, and his hair is curling with condensation. His glasses have a crack in one lens, just like the dead researcher. The sky is only giving off grey light, casting his skin in pale tones. He looks like a ghost.

"You didn't. We're still both here, both breathing, both alive."

Quiet. And then: "It doesn't always feel like life. It feels like a dream. You know, where you're moving through fog, running but getting nowhere."

"I know. That's all it felt like before the chemist."

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Noah smile. "What a day that was. I beautiful girl knocking the wind out of me, running for our lives from a gang and then watching you disappear like a mirage."

I pull my eyes back to the bridge ahead of me, smiling at the wheel. He thinks I'm beautiful. He lives with ethereal, fiery Thea, has spent days around the model-pretty Caroline, and he thinks I'm beautiful.

"You're not too bad, yourself." I steer around an overturned bus.

Noah laughs, a sudden, bright sound that makes me jump. "You're like a spark. You walk in and the world goes up in flame. I feel like you could have toppled cities, before. Could have laid the world at your feet. Now, you're a survivor. You see horrible things that would permanently screw up someone else, and you keep moving. Keep lighting the way. A spark."

He's looking at me, now. His eyes are steady in the low light, unwavering.

"You're still here, too, Noah. Not everyone can say that. But you draw them, keep their memory. I'm not sure if I could stand that, spending hours recording the people I love, just in case something terrible happens. But you do. And if that's not survivor behaviour, I don't know what is." My hand is tight against the wheel. "I'm grateful for that day in the chemist. For everything that came after. Because I'm here with you." My cheeks flush. I quickly add, "And with Thea, and Hazel, and Josh."

Noah's thumb resumes kneading my hand. "I'm glad I'm with you, too."

We stay like that, smiling to ourselves, and cruise off the bridge, into the edge of Manhattan.

Noah rips his fingers from mine. "Pull over!"

I start, swerving off the road and nearly hitting a streetlamp. Dorothy is still rolling to a stop when he opens the door and lunges out, leaving his gun on the car seat. He sprints, across to the railing guarding the East River, and leans over. He pauses here for a moment, hands tight on the metal. Then, he climbs over and jumps in.