The Wire Hanger

Chapter Eleven

I expected to sleep fitfully that night – I had never slept anywhere other than my own bed, and Jezebel’s couch was lumpy and had a weird musty smell to it, as though it had been stored in a dark garage in lieu of a car. But I woke up at six to bright sunlight streaming across my face and no memory of dreams, for which I was grateful. In the weeks previous I had been dreaming of my mother’s face, which hovered in clouds or puddles of rain, so that when I reached for her the act of my touch made her dissolve. I’d wake up vaguely anxious and groggy.

            I had just finished folding up the blankets and placing them back on the couch when Noah came thumping down the stairs. For a skinny boy he walked more like an elephant. He ignored me and walked straight to the fridge.

            “Good morning,” I ventured.

            He nodded in my direction, opening the fridge door and pulling out a jug of orange juice. For a moment a crazy hope flared in my chest that it was real orange juice – they had real tomatoes, who knew what other wonders might appear in their tiny backyard – but of course it was the same concentrate, watered down just like the juice at home. I wondered what Esau and my father were doing. I should have left a note. They would think I’d gone missing just like my mother. Maybe I had gone missing just like my mother. Maybe she’d disappeared in search of something. But I couldn’t believe that she would leave us behind. Leave me.

            I pulled on my clothes under the blanket – I’d slept in a t-shirt and underwear, but needed the skirt and lumpy sweater to feel presentable in front of these virtual strangers. I kept half-watching Noah as he fussed about at the counter, making sure he didn’t turn around at the wrong moment, but he never did. He seemed to be concentrating fully.

            “Eggs?” he asked when I walked over.

            “You have real eggs?”

            “No,” he said, showing me the carton. “Sorry. We used to have a chicken, but it…didn’t end well.”

            I didn’t want to ask. “Any eggs are great. Thank you.” I noticed he’d set out another glass of orange juice on the table, but it felt awkward to thank him twice in a row, so I just picked it up and drank to save myself having to say anything.

            “You know what we’re doing today?” he asked, pouring the contents of the whisked bowl onto a sizzling pan.

            “Finding the Professor,” I said.

            “Sort of,” Noah said. He prodded at the eggs in the pan with a wooden spoon. “It’s not like he’s lost. It’s just sort of tricky to get there.”

            “Without being seen?”

            “Without being caught. We are guaranteed to be seen.”

            I felt the first flush of cold sweat break out under my arms. “But then what?”

            “Being seen isn’t the same thing as being seen,” he said, a little impatiently, like this was the third time that day he’d had to explain. I felt like I was running behind someone with much longer legs, struggling to keep up. “It’s in how you walk, where you look, what you wear. There are millions of people in this city and how many of them ever get noticed? You have to go through in plain sight.”

            “Who’s they,” I asked, “the Protectors?”

            “More or less,” said Noah. He scraped the eggs out onto two plates.