Chapter 18
Celeste insisted upon both spending another night in Wilmington and making the appointment with Roland herself.
She said that way the attorney would view Colin’s situation as separate from their investments.
Colin gave her Roland’s home number from memory, then listened as she talked.
She began by apologizing for calling on a Sunday afternoon, her voice very different from anything he had heard before.
She was very formal, her diction almost mechanical in its precision.
And something more. Celeste spoke with solemn authority.
There was no question in Colin’s mind that she was the individual in control.
That night he ate dinner with the other Sojourn House students, only he filled his plate according to Camila’s instructions.
The taste of vegetables and meat without gravy was not bad, just different.
He sat at the large table and pretended to follow the easygoing Sunday conversation.
But most of his attention was given over to analyzing his eating habits.
He realized he had been lazy, making choices that suited.
It shamed him that he could be so intensely focused on his mind and his algorithms and his investment instruments, and at the same time deny his body its requirements.
It wasn’t just the food, or the missed swimming lessons.
He had to learn a greater sense of balance.
For the first time in weeks, the path of his thoughts led him to his internal state.
Colin had been so intensely focused that the absence that defined his internal world had become little more than a whispered longing.
Now as he ate a silent meal, Colin wondered if this was how his entire life would unfold.
Never knowing a time when the absence did not define him.
As if in response, a series of mental images took hold. Mira and Lucas. For the first time, Colin viewed them as a beacon for his own tomorrow. Perhaps.
He was drawn from the hopeful reverie by a voice asking, “Is it true what they’re saying, you’re going to the university?”
The boy who spoke was a newcomer named Lenny, an African American youth of eight.
Colin had heard snippets of conversation about him.
Lenny was the new amazement. His near eidetic ability was capable of vacuuming up whatever text or information was put before him.
He was studying languages. All six offered at the academy.
And linguistics, the root foundations of human speech.
Colin replied, “I started this term.”
“What’s it like, being there with all those big people?”
“They mostly leave me alone.”
“They watch you, though, don’t they. Give you the eye. Make you feel smaller than you already are.”
He was a strange little fellow, with slightly mottled skin, like caramel and chocolate had not been fully blended. His eyes held a brilliant cast, an intensity that Colin liked. “I try not to let it bother me.”
“I hear you.” Lenny stirred his remaining beans and mashed potatoes with his fork. “That pretty much describes how it’s always been for me. Trying to ignore all the looks and the talk.”
Colin watched the boy form designs on his plate. Lenny’s arm was tiny, his wrist and fingers fragile, bird-like. “Do you plan on going there?”
“I expect I won’t be having that chance.”
Colin realized all the room’s other conversations had gone silent. “Why not?”
“They don’t see me living that long.”
The boy’s casual reply shocked him. “Who is ‘they’?”
“Pretty much everybody, near as I can figure. I’ve had fits since I was a baby. All the talk I’m not supposed to be hearing is about what it’s done to my head. You know. The cumulative effect.”
Colin sensed there was a purpose to the boy’s confession. Lenny was not making idle conversation. He was after something. “If you could, you know, go there, what would you want to study?”
He looked up from his plate, the feverish gleam hungry now. Desperate. “The metalanguage of linguistics. The maths of language structure. I’d like that a lot.”
“And Braxos …”
The boy went back to stirring the remnants of his meal into a series of geometric designs. “Braxos. Hunh.”
Colin felt the link strengthen. “What are you doing this summer?”
“I expect I’ll be staying right here. My momma’s gone. I heard my daddy tell the school he doesn’t know what to do with me.”
“We could study together, if you like. I don’t know the first thing about linguistics. But I do know maths.”
The boy looked ready to weep. “I’d like that better than just about anything.”
Colin rose from the table, carried his plate into the kitchen, and fell in with the others, doing his share of the Sunday evening chores. That done, he climbed the stairs to his room.
He slept and did not dream.