Текст книги "The Archived"

Автор книги: Victoria Schwab

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FOUR

BEYOND THE BEDROOM, the apartment is still, but as I slip into the hall I see a faint line of light along the bottom of my parents’ door. I hold my breath. Hopefully Dad just fell asleep with his reading light on. The house key hangs like a prize on a hook by the front door. These floors are so much older than the ones in our last house that with every step I expect to be exposed, but I somehow make it to the key without a creak, and slide it from the hook. All that’s left is the door. The trick is to let go of the handle by degrees. I get through, ease 3F shut, and turn to face the third-floor hall.

And stop.

I’m not alone.

Halfway down the corridor a boy my age is leaning against the faded wallpaper, right beside the painting of the sea. He’s staring up at the ceiling, or past it, the thin black wire from his headphones tracing a line over his jaw, down his throat. I can hear the whisper of music from here. I take a soundless step, but still he rolls his head, lazily, to look at me. And he smiles. Smiles like he’s caught me cheating, caught me sneaking out.

Which, in all fairness, he has.

His smile reminds me of the paintings here. I don’t think any of them are hung straight. One side of his mouth tilts up like that, like it’s not set level. He has several inches of spiked black hair, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing eyeliner.

He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall as if to say, I never saw you. But that smile stays, and his conspiratorial silence doesn’t change the fact that he’s standing between me and my brother, his back where the Narrows door should be, the keyhole roughly in the triangle of space between the crook of his arm and his shirt.

And for the first time I’m thankful the Coronado is so old, because I need that second door. I do my best to play the part of a normal girl sneaking out. The pants and long sleeves in the middle of summer complicate the image, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, and I keep my chin up as I wander down the hall toward the north stairs (turning back toward the south ones would only be suspicious).

The boy’s eyes stay closed, but his smile quirks as I pass by. Odd, I think, vanishing into the stairwell. The stairs run from the top floor down to the second, where they spill me out onto the landing of the grand staircase, which forms a cascade into the lobby. A ribbon of burgundy fabric runs over the marble steps like a tongue, and when I make my way down, the carpet emits small plumes of dust.

Most of the lights have been turned off, and in the strange semidarkness, the sprawling room at the base of the stairs is draped in shadows. A sign on the far wall whispers CAFÉ in faded cursive. I frown and turn my attention back to the side of the staircase where I first saw the crack. Now the papered wall is hidden in the heavy dark between two lights. I step into the darkness with it, running my fingers over the fleur-de-lis pattern until I find it. The ripple. I pocket my ring and pull Da’s key from around my neck, using my other hand to trace down the crack until I feel the groove of the keyhole. I slot the key and turn, and a moment after the metallic click, a thread of light traces the outline of the door against the stairs.

The Narrows sigh around me as I enter, humid breath and words so far away they’ve bled to sounds and then to hardly anything. I start down the hall, key in hand, until I find the doors I marked before, the filled white circle that designates Returns, and to its right, the hollow one that leads to the Archive.

I pause, straighten, and step through.

The day I become a Keeper, you hold my hand.

You

never

hold my hand. You avoid touch the way I’m quickly learning to, but the day you take me to the Archive, you wrap your weathered fingers around mine as you lead me through the door. We’re not wearing our rings, and I expect to feel it, the tangle of memories and thoughts and emotions coming through your skin, but I feel nothing but your grip. I wonder if it’s because you’re dying, or because you’re so good at blocking the world out, a concept I can’t seem to learn. Whatever the reason, I feel nothing but your grip, and I’m thankful for it.

We step into a front room, a large, circular space made of dark wood and pale stone. An antechamber, you call it. There is no visible source of light, and yet the space is brightly lit. The door we came through appears larger on this side than it did in the Narrows, and older, worn.

There is a stone lintel above the Archive door that reads

SERVAMUS MEMORIAM

. A phrase I do not know yet. Three vertical lines, the mark of the Archive, separate the words, and a set of Roman numerals runs beneath. Across the room a woman sits behind a large desk, writing briskly in a ledger, a

QUIET PLEASE

sign propped at the edge of her table. She sees us and sets her pen down fast enough to suggest that we’re expected.

My hands are shaking, but you tighten your grip.

“You’re gold, Kenzie,” you whisper as the woman gestures over her shoulder at a massive pair of doors behind her, flung open and back like wings. Through them I can see the heart of the Archive, the atrium, a sprawling chamber marked by rows and rows and rows of shelves. The woman does not stand, does not go with us, but watches us pass with a nod and a whispered, cordial “Antony.”

You lead me through.

There are no windows because there is no outside, and yet above the shelves hangs a vaulted ceiling of glass and light. The place is vast and made of wood and marble, long tables running down the center like a double spine, with shelves branching off to both sides like ribs. The partitions make the cavernous space seem smaller, cozier. Or at least fathomable.

The Archive is everything you told me it would be:

a patchwork

…

wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

But you left something out.

It is beautiful.

So beautiful that, for a moment, I forget the walls are filled with bodies. That the stacks and the cabinets that compose the walls, while lovely, hold Histories. On each drawer an ornate brass cardholder displays a placard with a neatly printed name, a set of dates. It’s so easy to forget this.

“Amazing,” I say, too loud. The words echo, and I wince, remembering the sign on the Librarian’s desk.

“It is,” a new voice replies softly, and I turn to find a man perched on the edge of a table, hands in pockets. He’s an odd sight, built like a stick figure, with a young face but old gray eyes and dark hair that sweeps across his forehead. His clothes are normal enough

–

a sweater and slacks

–

but his dark pants run right into a pair of bright red Chucks, which makes me smile. And yet there’s a sharpness to his eyes, a coiled aspect to his stance. Even if I passed him on the street instead of here in the Archive, I’d know right away that he was a Librarian.

“Roland,” you say with a nod.

“Antony,” he replies, sliding off from the table. “Is this your choice?”

The Librarian is talking about me. Your hand vanishes from mine, and you take a step back, presenting me to him. “She is.”

Roland arches a brow. But then he smiles. It’s a playful smile, a warm one.

“This should be fun.” He gestures to the first of the ten wings branching off the atrium. “If you’ll follow me

…

” And with that, he walks away. You walk away. I pause. I want to linger here. Soak up the strange sense of quiet. But I cannot stay.

I am not a Keeper yet.

There is a moment, as I pass into the circular antechamber of the Archive and my eyes settle on the Librarian seated behind the desk—a man I’ve never seen before—when I feel lost. A strange fear takes hold, simple and deep, that my family moved too far away, that I’ve crossed some invisible boundary and stepped into another branch of the Archive. Roland assured me it wouldn’t happen, that each branch is responsible for hundreds of miles of city, suburb, country, but still the panic washes through me.

I look over my shoulder at the lintel above the door, the familiar SERVAMUS MEMORIAM etched there. According to two semesters of Latin (my father’s idea), it means “We Protect the Past.” Roman numerals run beneath the inscription, so small and so many that they seem more like a pattern than a number. I asked once, and was told that that was the branch number. I still cannot read it, but I’ve memorized the pattern, and it hasn’t changed. My muscles begin to uncoil.

“Miss Bishop.”

The voice is calm, quiet, and familiar. I turn back toward the desk to see Roland coming through the set of doors behind it, tall and slim as ever—he hasn’t aged a day—with his gray eyes and his easy grin and his red Chucks. I let out a breath of relief.

“You can go now, Elliot,” he says to the man seated behind the desk, who stands with a nod and vanishes back through the doors.

Roland takes a seat and kicks his shoes up onto the desk. He digs in the drawers and comes up with a magazine. Last month’s issue of some lifestyle guide I brought him. Mom subscribed to them for a while, and Roland insists on staying as much in the loop as possible when it comes to the Outer. I know for a fact he spends most of his time skimming new Histories, watching the world through their lives. I wonder if boredom prompts him to it, or if it’s more. Roland’s eyes are tinged with something between pain and longing.

He misses it, I think; the Outer. He’s not supposed to. Librarians commit to the Archive in every way, leaving the Outer behind for their term, however long they choose to stay, and he’s told me himself that being promoted is an honor, to have all that time and knowledge at your fingertips, to protect the past—SERVAMUS MEMORIAM and all—but if he misses sunrises, or oceans, or fresh air, who can blame him? It’s a lot to give up for a fancy title, a suspended life cycle, and an endless supply of reading material.

He holds the magazine toward me. “You look pale.”

“Keep it,” I say, still a little shaken. “And I’m fine.…” Roland knows how scared I am of losing this branch—some days I think the constancy of coming here is all that’s keeping me sane—but it’s a weakness, and I know it. “Just thought for a moment I’d gone too far.”

“Ah, you mean Elliot? He’s on loan,” says Roland, digging a small radio from a drawer and setting it beside the QUIET PLEASE sign. Classical music whispers out, and I wonder if he plays it just to annoy Lisa, who takes the signs as literally as possible. “A transfer. Wanted a change of scenery. So, what brings you to the Archive tonight?”

I want to see Ben. I want to talk to him. I need to be closer. I’m losing my mind.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I say with a shrug.

“You found your way here fast enough.”

“My new place has two doors. Right in the building.”

“Only two?” he teases. “So, are you settling in?”

I trace my fingers over the ancient ledger that sits on the table. “It’s got…character.”

“Come now, the Coronado’s not so bad.”

It creeps me out. Something horrible happened in my bedroom. These are weak thoughts. I do not share them.

“Miss Bishop?” he prompts.

I hate the formality when it comes from the other Librarians, but for some reason I don’t mind it from Roland. Perhaps because he seems on the verge of winking when he speaks.

“No, it’s not so bad,” I say at last with a smile. “Just old.”

“Nothing wrong with old.”

“You’d know,” I say. It’s a running line. Roland refuses to tell me how long he’s been here. He can’t be that old, or at least he doesn’t look it—one of the perks is that, as long as they serve, they don’t age—but whenever I ask him about his life before the Archive, his years hunting Histories, he twists the topic, or glides right over it. As for his years as Librarian, he’s equally vague. I’ve heard Librarians work for ten or fifteen years before retiring—just because the age doesn’t show doesn’t mean they don’t feel older—but with Roland, I can’t tell. I remember his mentioning a Moscow branch, and once, absently, Scotland.

The music floats around us.

He returns his shoes to the floor and begins to straighten up the desk. “What else can I do for you?”

Ben. I can’t dance around it, and I can’t lie. I need his help. Only Librarians can navigate the stacks. “Actually…I was hoping—”

“Don’t ask me for that.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to—”

“The pause and the guilty look give you away.”

“But I—”

“Mackenzie.”

The use of my first name makes me flinch.

“Roland. Please.”

His eyes settle on mine, but he says nothing.

“I can’t find it on my own,” I press, trying to keep my voice level.

“You shouldn’t find it at all.”

“I haven’t asked you in weeks,” I say. Because I’ve been asking Lisa instead.

Another long moment, and then finally Roland closes his eyes in a slow, surrendering blink. His fingers drift to a notepad the same size and shape as my Archive paper, and he scribbles something on it. Half a minute later, Elliot reappears, his own pad of paper at his side. He gives Roland a questioning look.

“Sorry to call you back,” says Roland. “I won’t be gone long.”

Elliot nods and silently takes a seat. The front desk is never left unattended. I follow Roland through the doors and into the atrium. It’s dotted with Librarians, and I recognize Lisa across the way, her black bob disappearing down a side hall toward older stacks. But otherwise I do not look up at the arching ceiling and its colored glass, do not marvel at the quiet beauty, do not linger, in case any pause in my step makes Roland change his mind. I focus on the stacks as he leads me to Ben.

I’ve tried to memorize the route—to remember which of the ten wings we go down, to note which set of stairs we take, to count the lefts and rights we make through the halls—but I can never hold the pattern in my head, and even when I think I have, it doesn’t work out the next time. I don’t know if it’s me, or if the route changes. Maybe they reorder the shelves. I think of how I used to arrange movies: one day best to worst, the next by color, the next title…Everyone in these stacks died in the branch’s jurisdiction, but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be a consistent method of filing. In the end, only Librarians can navigate these stacks.

Today Roland leads me through the atrium, then down the sixth wing, through several smaller corridors, across a courtyard, and up a short set of wooden steps before finally coming to a stop in a spacious reading room. A red rug covers most of the floor, and chairs are tucked into corners; but it is, for the most part, a grid of drawers.

Each drawer’s face is roughly the size of a coffin’s end.

Roland brings his hand gently against one. Above his fingers I can see the white placard in its copper holder. Below the copper holder is a keyhole.

And then Roland turns away.

“Thank you,” I whisper as he passes.

“Your key won’t work,” he says.

“I know.”

“It’s not him,” he adds softly. “Not really.”

“I know,” I say, already stepping up to the drawer. My fingers hover over the name.

BISHOP, BENJAMIN GEORGE

2003–2013

FIVE

I  TRACE MY FINGERS over the dates, and it is last year again and I’m sitting in one of those hospital chairs that look like they might actually be comfortable but they’re not because there’s nothing comfortable about hospitals. Da has been gone three years. I am fifteen now, and Ben is ten, and he’s dead.

The cops are talking to Dad and the doctor is telling Mom that Ben died on impact, and that word—impact—makes me turn and retch into one of the hospital’s gray bins.

The doctor tries to say there wasn’t time to feel it, but that’s not true. Mom feels it. Dad feels it. I feel it. I feel like my skeleton is being ripped through my skin, and I wrap my arms around my ribs to hold it in. I walked with him, all the way to the corner of Lincoln and Smith like always, and he drew a stick-figure Ben on my hand like always and I drew a stick-figure Mac on his like always and he told me it didn’t even look like a human being and I told him it wasn’t and he told me I was weird and I told him he was late for school.

I can see the black scribble on the back of his hand through the white sheet. The sheet doesn’t rise and fall, not one small bit, and I can’t take my eyes off it as Mom and Dad and the doctors talk and there is crying and words and I have neither because I’m focusing on the fact that I will see him again. I twist my ring, a spot of silver above black fingerless knit gloves that run to my elbows because I cannot cannot cannot look at the stick-figure Ben on the back of my hand. I twist the ring and run my thumb over the grooves and tell myself that it’s okay. It’s not okay, of course.

Ben is ten and he’s dead. But he’s not gone. Not for me.

Hours later, after we get home from the hospital, three weak instead of four strong, I climb out my window and run down dark streets to the Narrows door in the alley behind the butcher’s.

Lisa is on duty at the desk in the Archive, and I ask her to take me to Ben. When she tries to tell me that it’s not possible, I order her to show me the way; and when she still says no, I take off running. I run for hours through the corridors and rooms and courtyards of the Archive, even though I have no idea where I’m going. I run as if I’ll just know where Ben is, the way the Librarians know where things are, but I don’t. I run past stacks and columns and rows and walls of names and dates in small black ink.

I run forever.

I run until Roland grabs my arm and shoves me into a side room, and there on the far wall halfway up, I see his name. Roland lets go of me long enough to turn and close the door, and that’s when I see the keyhole beneath Ben’s dates. It’s not even the same size or shape as my key, but I still rip the cord from my throat and force the key in. It doesn’t turn. Of course it doesn’t turn. I try again and again.

I bang on the cabinet to wake my brother up, the metallic sound shattering the precious quiet, and then Roland is there, pulling me away, pinning my arms back against my body with one hand, muffling my shouts with the other.

I have not cried at all, not once.

Now I sink down to the floor in front of Ben’s cabinet—Roland’s arms still wrapped around me—and sob.

I sit on the red rug with my back to Ben’s shelf, tugging my sleeves over my hands as I tell my brother about the new apartment, about Mom’s latest project and Dad’s new job at the university. Sometimes when I run out of things to tell Ben, I recite the stories Da told me. This is how I pass the night, time blurring at the edges.

Sometime later, I feel the familiar scratch against my thigh, and dig the list from my pocket. The careful cursive announces:

Thomas Rowell. 12.

I pocket the list and sink back against the shelves. A few minutes later I hear the soft tread of footsteps, and look up.

“Shouldn’t you be at the desk?” I ask.

“Patrick’s shift now,” says Roland, nudging me with a red Chuck. “You can’t stay here forever.” He slides down the wall beside me. “Go do your job. Find that History.”

“It’s my second one today.”

“It’s an old building, the Coronado. You know what that means.”

“I know, I know. More Histories. Lucky me.”

“You’ll never make Crew talking to a shelf.”

Crew. The next step above Keeper. Crew hunt in pairs, tracking down and returning the Keeper-Killers, the Histories who manage to get out through the Narrows and into the real world. Some people stay Keepers their whole lives, but most shoot for Crew. The only thing higher than Crew is the Archive itself—the Librarian post—though it’s hard to imagine why someone would give up the thrill of the chase, the game, the fight, to catalog the dead and watch lives through other people’s eyes. Even harder to imagine is that every Librarian was a fighter first; but somewhere under his sleeves, Roland bears marks of Crew just like Da did. Keepers have the marks, too, the three lines, but carved into our rings. Crew marks are carved into skin.

“Who says I want to make Crew?” I challenge, but there’s not much fight behind it.

Da worked Crew until Ben was born. And then he went back to being a Keeper. I never met his Crew partner, and he never talked about her, but I found a photo of them after he died. The two of them shoulder to shoulder except for a sliver of space, both wearing smiles that don’t quite reach their eyes. They say Crew partners are bonded by blood and life and death. I wonder if she forgave him for leaving.

“Da gave it up,” I say, even though Roland must already know.

“Do you know why?” he asks.

“Said he wanted a life.…” Keepers who don’t go Crew split into two camps when it comes to jobs: those who enter professions benefited by an understanding of objects’ pasts, and those who want to get as far away from pasts as possible. Da must have had a hard time letting go, because he became a private detective. They used to joke in his office, so I heard, that he had sold his hands to the devil, that he could solve a crime just by touching things. “But what he meant was, he wanted to stay alive. Long enough to groom me, anyway.”

“He told you that?” asks Roland.

“Isn’t it my job,” I say, “to know without being told?”

Roland doesn’t answer. He is twisting around to look at Ben’s name and date. He reaches up and runs a finger over the placard with its clean black print—letters and numbers that should be worn to nothing now, considering how often I touch them.

“It’s strange,” says Roland, “that you always come to see Ben, but never Antony.”

I frown at the use of Da’s real name. “Could I see him if I wanted to?”

“Of course not,” says Roland in his official Librarian tone before sliding back into his usual warmth. “But you can’t see Ben, either, and it never stops you from trying.”

I close my eyes, searching for the right words. “Da is etched so clearly in my memory, I don’t think I could forget anything about him even if I tried. But with Ben, it’s only been a year and I’m already forgetting things. I keep forgetting things, and it terrifies me.”

Roland nods but doesn’t answer, sympathetic but resolute. He can’t help me. He won’t. I’ve come to Ben’s shelf two dozen times in the year since he died, and Roland has never given in and opened it. Never let me see my brother.

“Where is Da’s shelf, anyway?” I ask, changing the subject before the tightness in my chest grows worse.

“All members of the Archive are kept in Special Collections.”

“Where is that?”

Roland arches an eyebrow, but nothing more.

“Why are they kept separately?”

He shrugs. “I don’t make the rules, Miss Bishop.”

He gets to his feet and offers me his hand. I hesitate.

“It’s okay, Mackenzie,” he says, taking my hand; and I feel nothing. Librarians are pros at walling off thoughts, blocking out touch. Mom touches me and I can’t keep her out, but Roland touches me and I feel blind, deaf, normal.

We start walking.

“Wait,” I say, turning back to Ben’s shelf. Roland waits as I pull the key from around my neck and slip it into the hole beneath my brother’s card. It doesn’t turn. It never turns.

But I never stop trying.

I’m not supposed to be here. I can see it in their eyes.

And yet here I am, standing before a table in a large chamber off the atrium’s second wing. The room is marble-floored and cold, and there are no bodies lining the walls, only ledgers, and the two people on the other side of the table speak a little louder, unafraid to wake the dead. Roland takes his seat beside them.

“Antony Bishop,” says the man on the end. He has a beard and small, sharp eyes that scan a paper on the table. “You are here to name your

…

” He looks up, and the words trail off. “Mr. Bishop, you do realize there is an age requirement. Your granddaughter is not eligible for another”

–

he consults a folder, coughs

–

“four years.”

“She’s up for the trial,” you say.

“She’ll never pass,” says the woman.

“I’m stronger than I look,” I say.

The first man sighs, rubs his beard. “What are you doing, Antony?”

“She is my only choice,” answers Da.

“Nonsense. You can name Peter. Your son. And if, in time, Mackenzie is willing and able, she will be considered

–

”

“My son is not fit.”

“Maybe you don’t do him justice—”

“He’s bright, but he’s got no violence in him, and he wears his lies. He’s not fit.”

“Meredith, Allen,” says Roland, steepling his fingers. “Let’s give her a chance.”

The bearded man, Allen, straightens. “Absolutely not.”

My eyes flick to Da, craving a sign, a nod of encouragement, but he stares straight ahead.

“I can do it,” I say. “I’m not the only choice. I’m the best.”

Allen’s frown deepens. “I beg your pardon?”

“Go home, little girl,” says Meredith with a dismissive wave.

You warned me they would resist. You spent weeks teaching me how to hold my ground.

I stand taller. “Not until I’ve had my trial.”

Meredith makes a strangled sound of dismay, but Allen cuts in with,

“You’re. Not. Eligible.”

“Make an exception,” I say. Roland’s mouth quirks up.

It bolsters me. “Give me a chance.”

“You think this is a sport? A club?” snaps Meredith, and then her eyes dart to you. “What could you possibly be thinking, bringing a child into this

–

”

“I think it’s a job,” I cut in, careful to keep my voice even. “And I’m ready for it. Maybe you think you’re protecting me, or maybe you think I’m not strong enough

–

but you’re wrong.”

“You are an unfit candidate. And that is the end of it.”

“It would be, Meredith,” says Roland calmly, “if you were the only person on this panel.”

“I really can’t condone this

.…

” says Allen.

I’m losing them, and I can’t let that happen. If I lose them, I lose you. “I think I’m ready, and you think I’m not. Let’s find out who’s right.”

“Your composure is impressive.” Roland stands up. “But you are aware that not all Histories can be won with words.” He rounds the table. “Some are troublesome.” He rolls up his sleeves. “Some are violent.”

The other two Librarians are still trying to get a word in, but I don’t hear them. My focus is on Roland. Da told me to be ready for anything, and it’s a good thing he did, because between one moment and the next, Roland’s posture shifts. It’s subtle

–

his shoulders loosen, knees unlock, hands curl toward fists

–

but I see the change a fraction before he attacks. I dodge the first punch, but he’s fast, faster even than Da, and before I can strike back, a red Chuck connects with my chest, sending me to the floor. I roll back and over into a crouch, but by the time I look up, he’s gone.

I hear him the instant before his arm wraps around my throat, and manage to get one hand between us so I don’t choke. He pulls back and up, my feet leaving the ground, but the table is there and I get my foot on top and use it as leverage, pushing up and off, twisting free of his arm as I flip over his head and land behind him. He turns and I kick, aiming for his chest; but he’s too tall and my foot connects with his stomach, where he catches it. I brace myself, but he doesn’t strike back.

He laughs and lets go of my shoe, sagging against the desk. The other two Librarians sit behind him looking shocked, though I can’t tell if they’re more surprised by the fight or Roland’s good humor.

“Mackenzie,” he says, smoothing his sleeves. “Do you want this job?”

“She does not truly know what this job

is

,” says Meredith. “So she has a mouth on her and she can dodge a punch. She is a child. And this is a joke—”

Roland holds up a hand, and Meredith goes quiet. Roland’s eyes do not leave mine. They are warm. Encouraging. “Do you want this?” he asks again.

I do want it. I want you to stay. Time and disease are taking you from me. You’ve told me, made it clear, this is the only way I can keep you close. I will not lose that.

“I do,” I answer evenly.

Roland straightens. “Then I approve the naming.”

Meredith makes a stifled sound of dismay.

“She held composure against

you

, Meredith, and that is something,” says Roland, and finally his smile breaks through. “And as for her fighting, I’m in the best position to judge, and I say she has merit.” He looks past me, to you. “You’ve raised quite a girl, Antony.” He glances over at Allen. “What do you say?”

The bearded Librarian raps his fingers on the table, eyes unfocused.

“You can’t actually be considering

…

” mutters Meredith.

“If we do this, and she proves herself unfit in any way,” says Allen, “she will forfeit the position.”

“And if she proves unfit,” adds Meredith, “you, Roland, will remove her yourself.”

Roland smiles at the challenge.

I step forward. “I understand,” I say, as loud as I dare.

Allen stands slowly. “Then I approve the naming.”

Meredith glowers for a moment before standing too. “I am overruled, and as such, I must approve the naming.”

Only then does your hand come to rest against my shoulder. I can feel your pride in your fingertips. I smile.

I will show them all.

For you.