So how do I know? How do I know it’s a girl?
Well, for one, she ain’t no Spackle. Spackle looked like men with everything a bit swelled up, everything a bit longer and weirder than on a man, their mouths a bit higher than they should be and their ears and eyes way, way different. And spacks grew their clothes right on their bodies, like lichens you could trim away to whatever shape you needed. Product of swamp-dwelling, according to another Ben-best-guess and she don’t look like that and her clothes are normal and so there ain’t no way she’s a Spackle.
And for two, I just know. I just do. I can’t tell you but I look and I see and I just know. She don’t look like the girls I seen in vids or in Noise and I never seen no girl in the flesh but there she is, she’s a girl and that’s that. Don’t ask me. Something about her shape, something about her smell, something I don’t know but it’s there and she’s a girl.
If there was a girl, that’s what she’d be.
And she ain’t another boy. She just ain’t. She ain’t me. She ain’t nothing like me at all. She’s something completely other else altogether and I don’t know how I know it but I know who I am, I am Todd Hewitt, and I know what I am not and I am not her.
She’s looking at me. She’s looking at my face, in my eyes. Looking and looking.
And I’m not hearing nothing.
Oh, man. My chest. It’s like falling.
“Who are you?” I say again but my voice actually catches, like it breaks up cuz I’m so sad (shut up). I grit my teeth and I get a little madder and I say it yet again. “Who are you?” and I hold out the knife a little farther. With my other arm, I have to wipe my eyes real fast.
Something’s gotta happen. Someone’s gotta move. Someone’s gotta do something.
And there ain’t no someone but me, still, whatever the world’s doing.
“Can you talk?” I say.
She just looks back at me.
“Quiet,” Manchee barks.
“Shut it, Manchee,” I say, “I need to think.”
And she’s still just looking back at me. With no Noise at all.
What do I do? It ain’t fair. Ben told me I’d get to the swamp and I’d know what to do but I don’t know what to do. They didn’t say nothing about a girl, they didn’t say nothing about why the quiet makes me ache so much I can barely stop from ruddy weeping, like I’m missing something so bad I can’t even think straight, like the emptiness ain’t in her, it’s in me and there ain’t nothing that’s ever gonna fix it.
What do I do?
What do I do?
She seems like maybe she’s calming down. She’s not shaking as much as she was, her arms aren’t up so high, and she’s not looking like she’s about to run off at the first opportunity, tho how can you know for sure when a person’s got no Noise? How can they be a person if they ain’t got no Noise?
And can she hear me? Can she? Can a person with no Noise hear it at all?
I look at her and I think, as loud and clear as I can, Can you hear me? Can you?
But she don’t change her face, she don’t change her look.
“Okay,” I say, and I take a step back. “Okay. You just stay there, okay? You just stay right there.”
I take a few more steps back but I keep my eyes on her and she keeps her eyes on me. I bring my knife arm down and I slide it outta one strap of the rucksack, then I lean over and drop the rucksack to the ground. I keep the knife in one hand and with the other I open up the rucksack and fish out the book.
It’s heavier than you think a thing made of words could be. And it smells of leather. And there’s pages and pages of my ma’s–
That’ll have to wait.
“You watch her, Manchee,” I say.
“Watch!” he barks.
I look inside the front cover and there’s the paper folded in just like Ben said. I unfold it. There’s a hand-drawn map on one side and then a whole buncha writing on the back but it’s all a big block of letters which I ain’t got the calmness of Noise to even try right now so I just look at the map.
Our house is right at the top and the town just below with the river Manchee and I came down off to one side leading into the swamp and that’s where we are now. But there’s more to it, ain’t there? The swamp keeps going till it starts being a river again and there’s arrows drawn along the riverbank so that’s where Ben is wanting me and Manchee to go and I follow the arrows with my fingers and it leads right outta the swamp, it leads right to–
WHUMP!! The world goes bright for a second as something clubs me up side the head, right on the sore spot where Aaron punched me, and I fall over but as I’m falling I swing the knife up and I hear a little yelp of pain and I catch myself before I fall all the way down and I turn, sitting down on the ground hard, holding the back of my knife hand to the pain in my head but looking at where the attack came from and it’s here that I learn my very first lesson: Things with no Noise can sneak right up on you. Sneak right up on you like they ain’t even there.
The girl is on her butt, too, sitting on the ground away from me, holding on to one of her upper arms with her hand, blood coming from twixt her fingers. She’s dropped the stick she hit me with and her face is all collapsed in on itself with what she must be feeling from that cut.
“WHAT THE HELL D’YOU DO THAT FOR?” I shout, trying not to touch my face too hard. Man, am I sick of being hit today.
The girl just looks at me, her forehead still creased, holding her cut.
Which is kinda bleeding a lot.
“Stick, Todd!” Manchee barks.
“And where the hell were you?” I say to him.
“Poo, Todd.”
I make a “Gah!” sound and kick some dirt at him. He scrabbles back, then starts sniffing at some bushes like there ain’t nothing unusual going on in the world. Dogs got attenshun spans about as long as a matchstick. Idiot things.
It’s starting to get dark now, the sun really setting, the already dark swamp getting even darker, and I still don’t have no answer. Time keeps passing and I ain’t sposed to wait here and I ain’t sposed to go back and there ain’t sposed to be a girl.
Boy, that cut really is bleeding on her.
“Hey,” I say, my voice shaky from the charge running through me. I am Todd Hewitt, I think. I am almost a man. “Hey,” I say again, trying to be a little calmer.
The girl looks at me.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” I say, breathing hard, just like her. “You hear me? I ain’t gonna hurt you. As long as you don’t try to hit me with no more sticks, all right?”
She looks at my eyes. Then she looks at the knife.
Is she understanding?
I lower the knife away from my face and bring it down near the ground. I don’t let go of it, tho. With my free hand, I start looking thru the rucksack again till I find the medipak Ben threw in. I hold it up.
“Medipak,” I say. She doesn’t change. “Me-di-pak,” I say slowly. I point to my own upper arm, to where the cut is on her. “Yer bleeding.”
Nothing.
I sigh and I start to stand. She flinches and scoots back on her butt. I sigh again in an angry way. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.” I hold up the medipak. “It’s medicine. It’ll stop the bleeding.”