Chapter 5 - The Glass Boy
Noah came home four days later.
We didn't take him back to our old house in Raleigh. We couldn't bear the thought of him returning to a place haunted by the memories of his sudden absence, nor could we stand the media vans camped at the end of the cul-de-sac. Instead, my parents took Lily to a rented cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, while Caroline and I brought Noah to an isolated cottage on the coast of North Carolina, rented through an agency under an assumed name.
He walked with an unnatural, cautious gait, his bare feet sliding along the floorboards as if he were constantly testing the stability of the ground beneath him. He hated bright overhead lights; we had to replace the bulbs in every lamp with amber twenty-watt filaments, keeping the rooms cast in a perpetual, warm dusk.
For the first week, he barely spoke.
He would sit on the edge of his bed, his eyes fixed on the baseboards, his hands clenched tightly in the pockets of his sweatpants. Whenever someone closed a door with too much force, his entire body would go rigid, his breath hitching in his throat until Caroline or I knelt in front of him and laid our hands flat against his palms.
“You’re here, Noah,” we would tell him. “The door is open. Look at the latch. It isn't locked.”
One night, around three in the morning, I woke to the sound of rhythmic, muted tapping coming from the living room.
My heart seized. A cold terror gripped my spine as I threw off the duvet and rushed down the short hallway, dreading what I might find.
Noah was sitting on the hardwood floor near the front sliding glass doors that looked out over the dark Atlantic Ocean. He was wearing his gray socks, pressing his ear against the glass, tapping three times against the pane with his knuckles, waiting five seconds, and tapping again.
“Noah?” I said softly, keeping my voice low so as not to startle him.
He didn't pull away. He kept his cheek against the cold glass. “Daddy,” he whispered.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Is the ocean locked up too?”
I sat down on the floor beside him, crossing my legs, and pulled him gently into my lap. His body was still so small, so fragile. “No, Noah. The ocean isn't locked. It goes on forever. All the way to the other side of the world.”
He stared out into the black water, watching the white crests of the waves break beneath the pale light of the crescent moon. “Aunt Meredith told me that if I went outside, the air would make my skin turn black and fall off. She said the sky had holes in it now, and only the basement was safe.”
Rage, pure and sulfurous, flared in my chest, but I forced my voice to remain calm, smooth, like river stones. “She lied to you, Noah. She was very, very sick in her mind, and she told you terrible lies to keep you from running away. Look out there.” I pointed through the glass toward the dunes. “The air is clean. It smells like salt. Do you want to go out on the porch?”
He shrank back against my chest, his fingers bunching my shirt. “Will the door stay open?”
“I’ll take the door off the hinges if you want me to,” I promised. “It will never be closed again.”
He hesitated for nearly five minutes, his breath hitching, watching the gentle sway of the sea oats in the night breeze. Finally, he gave a tiny nod.
I unlocked the sliding door and pushed it all the way back into its pocket. The night breeze rushed in—cool, humid, carrying the deep, primordial roar of the surf. Noah gasped, pulling his hands to his mouth, but as the wind ruffled his overgrown hair, he didn't pull away.
He reached out one hand, feeling the moving air slip between his fingers, his eyes wide with wonder.
“It doesn't hurt,” he whispered.
May you like
“No, buddy,” I choked out, wrapping my arms around his narrow shoulders. “It doesn't hurt at all.”
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