A woman leaned over her crib, reaching for her again and again, her hands passing through Alex’s body. She wept, silver tears that fell on Alex’s chubby arms and vanished through her skin.
Hellie had hold of Alex’s hand. She was pulling her along the Venice boardwalk. She slid the Nine of Wands from a tarot deck. Alex already had a card in her hands. No way I’m getting that inked on me, said Hellie. Let me draw again.
Len took one of the leather bracelets from his arm and fastened it around Alex’s wrist. Don’t tell Mosh, he whispered. His breath smelled like sour bread, but Alex had never been so happy, never felt so good.
Her grandmother stood in front of the stove. Alex smelled cumin, meat roasting in the oven, tasted honey and walnuts on her tongue. We’re eating vegetarian now, Mira said. At your own house, said her grandmother. When she comes here I feed her strength.
In the garden, a man lingered, pruning the hedges that never changed, squinting at the sun even on cloudy days. He tried to talk to Alex, but she couldn’t hear a word.
One by one, Alex felt the memories plucked away like threads, caught on the spikes of Belbalm’s teeth, unraveling her bit by bit. Belbalm—Daisy—wanted them all, the good and the bad, the sad and the sweet, all equally delicious.
There was nowhere to run. Alex tried to remember the smell of her mother’s perfume, the color of the couch in the common room, anything that would help her hold on to herself as Daisy swallowed her down.
She needed Hellie. She needed Darlington. She needed… what was her name? She couldn’t recall, a girl with red hair, headphones around her neck. Pammie?
Alex was curled up on a bed. She was surrounded by monarchs that became moths. A boy was behind her, nestled against her. He said, I will serve you ’til the end of days.
Belbalm’s teeth sank deeper. Alex couldn’t remember her body, her arms. She’d be gone soon. Was there some relief along with the fear? Each sadness and loss and mistake would be wiped away. She’d be nothing at all.
Belbalm was going to crack her open. She was going to drink Alex dry.
A wave rose over the stone plaza of Beinecke; a beautiful dark-haired boy was shouting. Let all become mid-ocean!
She could drift into the Pacific, past Catalina, watch the ferries come and go.
The wave crashed over the plaza, carrying away a tide of Grays. Alex remembered cowering on the floor of that beautiful library, tears streaming down her cheeks, singing her grandmother’s old songs, speaking her grandmother’s words. She’d been hiding from the Grays, hiding behind… Darlington, his name was Darlington… Darlington in his dark coat. She’d been hiding the way she had her whole life. She’d sealed herself away from the world of the living, for the sake of being free of the dead.
Let all become mid-ocean.
Alexandra. Belbalm’s voice. A warning. As if she knew the thought as soon as it entered Alex’s head.
She didn’t want to hide anymore. She’d thought of herself as a survivor, but she’d been no better than a beaten dog, snapping and snarling in any attempt to stay alive. She was more than that now.
Alex stopped fighting. She stopped trying to close herself off from Belbalm. She remembered her body, remembered her hands. What she intended was dangerous. She was glad.
Let all become mid-ocean. Let me become the flood.
She threw her arms wide and let herself open.
Instantly she felt them, as if they had been waiting, ships on an endless sea, forever searching the dark horizon, waiting for some light, some beacon to guide them on. Throughout New Haven she felt them. Down Hillhouse. Up Prospect. She felt North climbing his way back from the old factory site where the death words had thrown him, felt that kid forever looking to score tickets outside the vanished Coliseum, felt the Gray running wind sprints outside Payne Whitney, felt a thousand other Grays she’d never let herself look at—old men who had died in their beds; a woman pushing a crumpled pram with mangled hands; a boy with a gunshot wound to his face, reaching blindly for the comb in his pocket. A desiccated hiker limped down the slope of East Rock, dragging her broken leg behind her, and out in Westville, in the ruined maze of Black Elm, Daniel Tabor Arlington III drew his bathrobe tight and sped toward her, a cigarette still hanging from his mouth.
Come to me, she begged. Help me. She let them feel her terror, her fear burning bright like a watchtower, her longing to live another day, another hour, lighting the way.
There was no end to them, flowing over the streets, past the garden, through the walls, crowding into the office, crowding into Alex. They came on in a cresting wave.
Alex felt Belbalm recoil and suddenly she could see the room, see Belbalm before her, arm outstretched, eyes blazing. The Wheel still encircled them, bright blue flame. They stood at its center, surrounded by its spokes.
“What is this?” Belbalm hissed.
“Call to the missing!” Alex cried. “Call to the lost! I know their names.” And names had power. She spoke them one after another, a poem of lost girls: “Sophie Mishkan! Colina Tillman! Zuzanna Mazurski! Paoletta DeLauro! Effie White! Gladys O’Donaghue!”
The dead whispered their names, repeated them, drawing closer, a tide of bodies. Alex could see them packed into the garden, halfway in and out of the walls. She could hear them moaning Sophie, Colina, Zuzanna, Paoletta, a rising wail.
The Grays were speaking, calling out to the scraps of those souls, a murmur of voices that rose in a broken chorus, louder and louder.
“Alexandra,” snarled Belbalm, and Alex could see sweat on her brow. “I will not relinquish them.”
It wasn’t up to her anymore.
“My name is Galaxy, you fucking glutton.”
At the sound of Alex’s name, the Grays released a unified sigh that gusted through the room. It ruffled Alex’s hem, blew Belbalm’s hair back from her face. Her eyes went wide and white.
A girl seemed to emerge from inside her, peeling away from Belbalm like a pale onion skin. She had thick dark curls and wore the apron of a factory worker over a gray blouse and skirt. A blonde in a plumed hat appeared, skin like a faded apricot, her plaid dress high-necked, her waist cinched to an impossible size; then a black girl, shimmering in a soft pink cardigan and circle skirt, her hair pressed into shining waves. One after another they pulled themselves from Belbalm, joining the crowd of Grays.
Gladys was the last and she did not want to come. Alex could feel it. Despite all of the years she’d spent cowering within Daisy’s consciousness, she was afraid to leave her body.
“She doesn’t get to keep you,” Alex pleaded. “Don’t be afraid.”
A girl emerged, barely visible, a scrap of a Gray. She was a far younger version of Belbalm, slender and sharp-featured, her white hair bound in a braid. Gladys turned to stare at herself, at Belbalm in her black tunic and rings. She held up her hands as if to ward her off, still frightened, shrinking back into the crowd as the other girls gathered her to them.
Belbalm opened her mouth as if to scream, but the only sound that emerged was that high teakettle whistle Alex had heard the dean make.
North was beside Alex now; maybe he’d been there all along.
“She isn’t a monster,” he said, begging. “She’s just a girl.”