He managed to speak, which came as a surprise even to himself. He said four words with as much force as he could muster: “Leave me. Protect yourselves.” Then, so quietly it was as if he were speaking to himself, he said two more: “Jonah. Zoe.”
He began to lose consciousness then, and darkness poured in from every side. He heard one last exchange. The boy said in wonderment: “He knows our names, Mom! How does he know our names?!” And the mother answered—though it was not truly an answer but an exhausted kind of prayer—“I just wish I knew what I was bringing into my house.”
It took Zoe and her family ten minutes to devise a plan for ferrying X inside. As he waited, he drifted in and out of consciousness, like a boat that couldn’t decide whether to sink or float. Each time he came to, he begged them to abandon him. He could not make them understand the dangers. Finally, Jonah and his mother left to fetch something from the house. X and Zoe were alone.
Even in his fever, X could feel the awkwardness of the moment. He felt Zoe’s eyes flit over his face again—his hair, his lips, his eyes—and again he was ashamed to think how he must look to her. He’d seen others like her from a distance before, and they’d never stirred anything in him. But Zoe … He could feel her gaze on him even when he turned away—even when his eyes were closed. Her face gave off such warmth that it was a kind of light. No amount of horror or hatred could make an impression on X anymore—but loveliness and kindness laid him flat.
“Who are you? What are you?” said Zoe, after an agonizing silence. She paused, and laughed to herself. “Do you skateboard?”
“Do I—?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I have a blurting problem.”
Again the awkwardness was everywhere. X wanted so badly to speak to her, to make her comfortable, to let her see something in him that was not wretched.
“I do not … skateboard,” he said.
She laughed for some reason, shook her head, and put her face in her hands. She stared out into the darkness to see if her mother and Jonah were on their way back. They were not.
“Zoe,” said X, wondering if he had the energy to speak the words swarming in his head. “You must abandon me. I am not like you. You have seen what I am capable of—and creatures even more dangerous will come after me soon. They will demand that I recapture Stan, and they will destroy anyone whose shadow falls across their path. Zoe, truly, I can offer you nothing but peril.”
She knelt by his side.
The closer she came, the more his fever cooled. He had never experienced the phenomenon before.
“You saved my brother and me,” Zoe said. “And I can handle a little peril.” She smiled faintly. “What’s your name? I don’t even know your name.”
“I do not have one,” he said.
“That’s messed up,” she said. “Okay, listen, whoever you are, we are not going to let you freeze to death out here. You helped Jonah and me when you didn’t have to, and you didn’t kill Stan when you could have—and that’s when I saw what you are capable of.”
“Zoe, I beseech you—”
“No. There will be no beseeching.”
Her voice was stern now. He feared he had angered her, but saw that she was struggling with many emotions.
“My family’s had a shit year,” she said, then stopped to gather herself.
“You need not speak if it brings you pain,” he said.
“No, I want to,” she said. She started again, speaking slowly, carefully: “We’ve had a shit year. There was nothing we could do about it, but there is something we can do about you. So we’re going to help you, no matter what you say—or how weirdly you say it.”
X searched her mind to see if her will was as strong as it seemed. He moved slowly, feeling his way into her thoughts, like he was parting branches. Almost immediately, she shivered and shot him a warning look.
“Stop it,” she said. “There will be no mind-melding—or whatever that is. You have to promise. Not with me or my family.”
“I give you my word,” he said. He added—he was not sure if he should—“And I have never been able to do it with anyone but you.”
This seemed to surprise her, and she smiled.
The awkwardness was lifting, dissipating like smoke.
“What will you call me?” he said.
“I’ll think of something,” she said.
The front door slammed in the distance—a dead sound with no echo. X turned to watch Jonah and his mother cross the drive. Jonah ran excitedly. He was carrying a round, red sled. He was holding it in front of him, like a shield.
Together, they pulled X to the house. With every bump and jolt, he arched his back in agony. Once inside, they maneuvered the sled through the kitchen, then the living room. Zoe and her mom tugged at the rope, while Jonah cleared the path and shouted frantic, sometimes contradictory, instructions.
At the bottom of the staircase, they managed to get X to his feet, like a team of workers lifting a statue. Zoe and her mother held his arms to steady him, and Jonah shoved as hard as he could from behind to prevent him from toppling backward. After five nerve-wracking minutes, they reached the landing. Jonah wanted X to sleep in his room with him, and when his mother hesitated, he began chanting, “Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!” In the end, it was decided that X would sleep in Jonah’s bed, even though it was small and shaped like a ladybug. The Bissells would all share the floor. The mother didn’t want her children alone with him.