The Raven Boys

Outside, the Camaro idled in the parking lot, the uneven tripping of the engine echoing across the darkness. Adam got in.

"I’ll explain when we get there," said Gansey.

He put the car into gear, stomping the gas hard enough that the back tires squeaked on the asphalt as they left. From Gansey’s expression, Adam thought that something had happened to Ronan. Maybe, finally, Ronan had happened to Ronan. But it wasn’t the hospital that they drove to. The Camaro tore straight into the lot outside Monmouth Manufacturing. Together, they climbed the dark, creaking stairs to the second floor. Under Gansey’s hands, the door fell open, crashing against the wall.

"Noah!" he shouted.

The room stretched out, limitless in the dark. Against the windows, the miniature Henrietta was a false skyline. Gansey’s alarm clock beeped continuously, sounding a warning for a time that had long since passed.

Adam’s fingers searched unsuccessfully for the light switch.

Gansey shouted again, "We need to talk. Noah!"

The door to Ronan’s room opened, releasing a square of light. Ronan was silhouetted in the doorway, one hand curled against his chest, the raven foundling hunched down between his fingers. He pulled a pair of silkily expensive headphones from his ears and looped them around his neck. "Man, you’re back late. Parrish? I thought you were working."

So Ronan knew no more than Adam did. Adam felt a cold bit of relief over this, which he quickly extinguished.

"I was." Adam finally found the light switch. The room was transformed into a twilight planet, the corners alive with sharp-mouthed shadows.

"Where’s Noah?" demanded Gansey. He jerked the alarm clock’s power cord out of the wall to silence it.

Ronan took in Gansey’s state and raised an eyebrow. "He’s out."

"No," Gansey said, emphatic, "he is not. Noah!"

He backed into the center of the room, turning to look at the corners, the rafters, searching places no one would ever find a roommate. Adam hesitated by the door. He couldn’t figure out how this could be over Noah: Noah, who could go unnoticed for hours, whose room was pristine, whose voice was never raised.

Gansey stopped searching and turned to Adam.

"Adam," he demanded, "what is Noah’s last name?"

Before Gansey had asked, Adam felt as if he must have known. But now the answer slid away from his mouth and then from his thoughts entirely, leaving his lips parted. It was like losing his way to class, losing his way home, forgetting the phone number for Monmouth Manufacturing.

"I don’t know," Adam admitted.

Gansey pointed at Adam’s chest like he was shooting a gun or making a point. "It’s Czerny, by the way. Zerny. Chair-knee. However it’s pronounced. Noah Czerny." Throwing his head back, he shouted to the air, "I know you’re here, Noah."

"Dude," Ronan remarked. "You’re flipped."

"Open his door," Gansey ordered. "Tell me what’s in there."

With a graceful shrug, Ronan slid out of his doorway and turned the knob on Noah’s door. It fell open, revealing the corner of an always-made bed.

"It looks like a nunnery as usual," Ronan said. "All the personality of a mental facility. What am I looking for? Drugs? Girls? Guns?"

"Tell me," Gansey said, "which classes you share with Noah."

Ronan snorted. "None."

"Me neither," Gansey replied. He looked at Adam, who shook his head slightly. "Nor Adam. How is that possible?" He didn’t wait for an answer, though. "When does he eat? Have you ever seen him eat?"

"I don’t really care," Ronan said. He stroked Chainsaw’s head with a single finger and she tilted her beak up in response. It was a strange moment in a strange evening, and if it had happened the day before, it would’ve struck Adam that he rarely saw such thoughtless kindness from Ronan.

Gansey shot questions at both of them. "Does he pay rent? When did he move in? Have you ever questioned it?"

Ronan shook his head. "Dude, you have really left the reservation. What is your problem?"

"I spent the afternoon with the police," Gansey said. "I went out with Blue to the church —"

Now jealousy stabbed Adam, deep and unexpected, a wound that kept stinging, no less painful for him not being certain what, precisely, had inflicted it.

Gansey continued, "Don’t look at me like that, both of you. The point is this. We found a body. Rotted to bones. Do you know whose it was?"

Ronan’s gaze held Gansey’s, solid.

Adam felt like he had dreamt the answer to this question.

Behind them, the door to the apartment suddenly slammed shut. They whirled to face it, but there was no one there, only the fluttering of map corners on the wall to show that it had moved.

The boys stared at the subtle movement of the paper, listened to the echo of the slam.

There was no breeze. Adam’s skin crawled.

"Mine," Noah said.

As one, they spun back around.

Noah stood in the doorway to his room.

His skin was pale as parchment and his eyes were shadowed and unspecific, as they always were after dark. There was the ubiquitous smudge on his face, only now, it looked like dirt, or blood, or possibly like a hollow, his bones crushed beneath his skin.

Ronan’s posture was wound tight. "Your room was empty. I just looked in it."

"I told you," Noah said. "I told everyone."

Adam had to close his eyes for a long moment.

Gansey, if anything, looked finally back under control. What Gansey needed out of life was facts, things he could write in his journal, things he could state twice and underline, no matter how improbable those facts were. Adam realized that all along Gansey had not really known what he was going to find when he’d brought Adam back here. How could he have? How could anyone truly believe —

"He’s dead," Gansey said. His arms were tight over his chest. "You’re really dead, aren’t you?"

Noah’s voice was plaintive. "I told you."

They stared at him, just feet away from Ronan. Really, he was so much less real than Ronan, Adam thought — it should have been obvious. It was ludicrous that they hadn’t noticed. Ridiculous that they had not thought about his last name, about where he came from, about the classes he did or did not go to. His clammy hands, his pristine room, his unchanging smudgy face. He had been dead as long as they’d known him.