were thrilled we’d finally get to see the city.
But once we arrived, I realized that I knew too much to enjoy this the way my new friends did. The Forum would have been glorious 2,000 years ago; what I saw when we finally visited it was a ruin not unlike ones I’d seen my whole life. Tour guides acted like the Colosseum was just the world’s oldest sports stadium, instead of a place where thousands upon thousands of people and animals were slaughtered. Even the pizza wasn’t as good as it was at Vincenza’s in Falls Church. Instead of having some magnificent, enriching experience, I spent my days wondering which was hotter—Rome in July, or the surface of the sun.
A knock on the hotel room door startled us both. Audrey slid her iPod under the sheets. Mrs. Weaver called, “Ravenna? Are you awake?”
“Just a second.” I threw off the sheet to get out of bed while Audrey tucked herself in and tried to look like she was sleeping. Despite the darkness of the room, I could see her mouth the words What did you do?
Nothing, I mouthed back, as though I had no idea what was going on.
But I did. I knew. With my brother, I always knew.
I cracked open the door to find Mrs. Weaver standing there in a pink plaid bathrobe she couldn’t have wanted any of us to see. I said, “Is Cairo okay?”
She blinked, maybe in surprise that she didn’t have to tell me what was going on. But she didn’t ask any stupid questions. “He seems to have had . . . a nightmare or an upset of some sort. We’ve tried to calm him down, but—”
“He’ll be okay. Just let me talk to him.”
Mrs. Weaver led me down the long corridor of the hotel. Behind various doors, I could hear giggling or talking, everyone else breaking curfew to gossip or make out. As we reached the end of the hall, I saw Cairo’s roommate, Jon, a jock assigned to room with him at random. I used to think Jon was beautiful with his carved muscles and white-blond hair—until I got to know him.
As I reached the door, Jon muttered, “Shut that freak up, will you?”
“Go screw yourself.” Nobody got to call my brother a freak but me. Before Mrs. Weaver could scold us for that exchange, I went inside.
This hotel room looked just like mine, except that it had been trashed. The covers were crumpled in one corner, the sheets in another, and the mattress had been flung up against one wall. Curled next to it, shaking, hands over his ears, drenched in sweat, was Cairo.
“It never stops,” he whispered without looking up. My brother always knew it was me. “I can’t sleep and I can’t think. It never, ever stops.”
“Shhhhh.” I sat next to him, careful to keep us from touching. My presence soothed him, though, just as his presence did for me. Maybe it reminded us of the time before our memories began, when we knew nothing of the world but each other.
We looked like negatives of each other: both thin to the point of being bony, with big, dark eyes and too much blue-black hair to control, but me with Dad’s pasty Irish complexion and Cairo with Mom’s deep Indian skin tone. The two of us shared accents nobody could ever place, fluency in five languages, a sense of belonging everywhere and yet nowhere, and our ridiculous names (Cairo’s for the place Mom and Dad met, mine for the city where they spent their honeymoon).
I always thought we would share everything. Then, a few months ago, these . . . episodes . . . began.
The signs were subtle, at first: Cairo would go very still and quiet, and his normally deep concentration would shatter to distraction. Nobody besides me could even tell something was really wrong, and even I was unsure exactly how to react. But slowly the episodes became longer. More intense. He would bolt from wherever we were, whatever we were doing, to isolate himself. His skin became sweaty and cool. Despite the lack of any rational explanation for it, he acted like a guy in severe pain.
Between episodes, it was like nothing had ever happened. Which was maybe why he never talked about it, and why I never made him talk about it.
We hid it from Mom and Dad, always tacitly, never admitting even to each other what was going on. The first time, at school, we claimed Cairo’s behavior was a reaction to some medication. The next few times at school he was able to cover by hiding in the guys’ bathroom and accepting the tardies. The only time it happened at home, Dad was at the store and Mom was puttering around in the yard—I got him calmed down before either of them came back inside.
I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t like the fact that there was anything about Cairo I couldn’t understand. Or anything that he didn’t want to share with me.
That night, as we huddled together in his wreck of a hotel room, I decided to finally press for answers.
“What’s going on with you?” No answer at first. “When you—when you get like this, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know. What you feel.”
He rocked back and forth, trying to calm himself. “I feel . . . what everyone else feels.”
“Huh?”
Cairo breathed out raggedly. “Audrey’s scared Michael has a crush on you. He doesn’t, but she ought to be worried, because Michael isn’t really into her. He’s just into her feet. Only the feet. He thinks about her doing things with her foot that I’m not sure are actually physically possible.”
I tried not to picture exactly what Michael would want Audrey to do with her feet. “How do you know this?”
“I just know. Just like I know Mrs. Weaver kind of has a thing for Jon—”
“Ew.” Mrs. Weaver was at least forty.
“She’d never do anything about it, but she fantasizes about Jon constantly. Tegan’s afraid her parents are splitting up. Marvin’s afraid he’s gay, which he is. Lindsey hates herself— everything about herself. She goes through her whole body over and over, hair to bones to skin, and hates each part of it in turn.”
I didn’t understand why he was inventing stories about all of our friends, which was weird enough without it having this strange effect on him. All I understood was that I wanted to shake him to snap him out of it. Yet I knew, without being told, that any contact would feel like broken glass to him now—nothing but pain. “You don’t know these things. You’re imagining this weird stuff about people, and it’s—messing with your mind. We’ve never spent a lot of time around kids our own age, and maybe it’s just getting to you. It gets to me sometimes.” Never like this, I thought but didn’t say. “After this trip, we’ll have some time to ourselves. We’ll go hiking. Make some music. You won’t be surrounded by people anymore.”
“It’s worse when I’m surrounded by them, but—it’s getting stronger. This new . . . ability.” His dark eyes found mine, and in the dim light from the city beyond our window, I could see the glimmer of unshed tears. “Ravenna, I know you don’t understand. I know because I know what you’re thinking. What everyone’s thinking. I can . . . I can read minds.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move.
He said, “You think I’m going insane, don’t you?”
I
