“Cruz told me.”
Malik said nothing.
“I don’t know what to call the thing I do,” Francis went on. “I can go sort of . . . around things. Through things.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Normal words don’t work.”
Words don’t work so well in describing you, either.
Malik turned to look at her. She was just a kid. Kind of tough-looking. Dirty, secondhand clothes, but with some style, some panache.
“Try,” he said.
“Well, it’s like . . .” She took her time thinking about it. “Okay, it’s like if you’d never seen blue and I was trying to describe it. Only this isn’t colors, it’s shapes. Things that should be solid aren’t. Things that should be square, like a wall, are kind of . . . flat. That’s kind of it. It’s like I’m still me, but everything else is flat. And I can see inside things. It’s kind of gross, actually. I mean, when I see a person I see everything at once, their face, their eyes, but also their lungs and their guts and, well, everything.”
Malik stared hard, his game forgotten. “You see inside people?”
“Inside, outside, all at once. I know they’re people, I see their faces, but at the same time it’s like they’ve been turned inside out.”
No, Malik, no excitement, not yet. No hope. Nothing . . . yet.
Malik said, “Cruz. Can I borrow your Moleskine?”
Cruz hoped someday to write. She did at times, bits of this and that, which she noted in neat handwriting in her purple Moleskine.
“Don’t read my stuff,” Cruz warned, handing over the Moleskine open to a blank page.
Malik drew a square. He drew two eyes on the edge of the square. “His name is Frank. Flat Frank.”
“Okay,” Francis said cautiously, like maybe Malik was nuts.
“Frank is two-dimensional. He can’t see us because we are ‘up’ and he doesn’t have an ‘up.’ But we can see all of him at once. His edges and his inside.”
“Right.”
“Real people are three-dimensional. But a four-dimensional person would see inside of us as easily as we see inside of Frank. A 4-D person would see your face and your brain, your body and your heart.”
“Ah. Okay. So . . . when I do the thing I do, I’m like a 4-D person?”
Malik looked at her.
No, Dark ones, I won’t push her away.
“When you morph, how do they feel to you?” Malik asked.
“They?”
Malik felt something. Hard to name it. It was like the feeling of a jigsaw puzzle piece snapping into place. The feeling of something fitting.
“The Dark Watchers,” Malik said. “When you morph.”
“I don’t . . .” She frowned, half convinced he was teasing her.
“When you morph, when you change, when you are able to go through solid objects, do you feel like you’re being watched? Like there’s someone in your head that isn’t you?”
The old Pink Floyd lyric came to him. There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.
Francis shook her head and her frown deepened.
Malik felt his heart skip, flutter, then settle. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Malik.