Zoe turned away from X now.
“Then Jonah saw the blood on the end of the rope and all of a sudden he dropped the thing like it was a snake and started crying.” Zoe stared up at the sky. “I took the weight-lifter shake from Dallas and chugged the thing,” she said. “I ended up puking all over the place. Attractive, right?”
X could find no words to offer.
“Your father,” he said, when the silence had become uncomfortable. “He had fallen into the cave?”
“He must have stopped to take a picture while he was rappelling down,” said Zoe. “He probably wanted me to see some ice formation, or something. That’s actually the part that …” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “You know? Because he was doing it for me. And it would have been okay except that he used to wear this nerdy old helmet that had an actual flame for a light. That’s the way my dad was: he would do things because they were dorky. The flame must have burned through the rope. I used to love what a dork he was. But this time it got him killed.”
Zoe’s words hung in the air.
X put a hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched anyone that way. He wasn’t sure he ever had.
“The cops promised they’d go get my dad’s body, but they never did,” said Zoe. “They just fenced off the cave and left his body down there, all mangled or whatever. We had a memorial service in town, which was totally awful. Even the food sucked. Then my mom and Jonah and me had a little ceremony in our backyard. Jonah wanted to bury one of our dad’s T-shirts. He decorated a cardboard box with purple stars—that was, like, the coffin, I guess?—and put an old T-shirt in it that said Ninja Dad. We buried it under a tree that Jonah’d be able to see from his window. We couldn’t bury it very deep because the ground was too hard. Anyway, it was this whole big thing. Jonah wrote a poem, but he was crying too hard to read it, so we just passed it around. I could only read, like, two lines before I started losing it. The first two lines—seriously—they were like, ‘Now that Daddy Man and I are apart / I don’t know what to do with my heart.’”
When Zoe had finished her story, X felt desperate to tell her something about himself, but every thought, every memory, every feeling was stuck in his throat.
He told her this in his stumbling way.
She shook her head.
“I didn’t tell you all that because I wanted you to tell me something,” she said. “I told you because I trust you.”
“And I you,” said X. “Yet still I stand here, dumb as a stump. Everything I know about myself shames me.”
Zoe looked at him so sadly now that X feared he had only compounded her pain.
“Just tell me one thing about your mom and dad,” she said. “One tiny thing. It doesn’t have to be some huge deal.”
X considered this.
“I do not know who they were,” he said.
Zoe breathed in sharply. X felt a stab of embarrassment.
He told her about the Lowlands a little. He wondered if she would believe him. When he saw that she did, his shame at who—and what—he was kept spreading. Zoe seemed to know it. She stepped forward and hugged him. He was too stunned by the gesture to hug her back.
“It’s time we gave you a name,” she said when they pulled apart. “I’m thinking Aragorn—or Fred.”
Later, they climbed the hill back toward the Bissells’ house, the white drifts sighing beneath their feet. Zoe pointed out the willow where they had buried her father’s T-shirt. It was a slender tree, heavy with snow and bending so low to the ground it looked as if it were trying to pick something up. It struck X as a lonely sight. He stepped forward and took the branches one by one in his hand. He shook the snow off gently until the tree could stand upright.
He felt Zoe’s eyes on him all the while.
Back in the house, Zoe informed everyone of X’s new name.
Her mother laughed and said, “That’s not technically a name, but okay.” Jonah shouted, “I’m gonna call you Professor X!” And then immediately forgot to.
Zoe’s mother steered everyone into the living room, where an awkward silence fell. The silver bowl full of questions had migrated downstairs, and sat on the coffee table now. X cringed at the sight of it. He dreaded telling the Bissells even more of his story. They should have cast him out days ago, and once they knew who he truly was, they would.
Zoe was next to him on the couch.
“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” she said softly. “And no one will judge you.”
Zoe’s mother picked up the bowl and handed it to X.
“Time to find out who we’re dealing with,” she said.
She did not say it unkindly, but it stung.
X took the bowl and set it on his lap. Immediately, he felt anxious and unsettled, like there was an animal loose in his chest. Even if Zoe had told them everything she knew about him, they knew only the bare beginnings. But that was not the only reason he feared what was about to happen.
He stared down at the nest of papers.
He could not convince his hand to reach into the bowl. He sat paralyzed.
“Pick one!” said Jonah.
X pulled out a strip of paper. The bowl made a pinging sound as his knuckle brushed against it. He unfolded the strip and stared down at the words in his hand. The letters swam in every direction, as they always did.
He looked to Zoe, helplessly.