Yes. Tom relates. It’s enough to make him want to climb to the top of the barn and scream hallelujah. The world isn’t made up of people who only think like Malorie. The world isn’t made up of people who only live by the fold. Not everybody will remind you, over and over, to wear your blindfold and your hoodie and your gloves when you’re the one who ought to be reminding them since you were the one born into this world in the first place.

“YES!”

He’s said it too loud. He doesn’t care. Let Mom come blindly flailing, feeling for the outer walls of the barn. Let her come shuddering into the night, this night, his night. There are people out there who think the way he does! There are people who understand that sixteen years could easily become thirty-two, then sixty-four, and…and…and an entire lifetime gone, sucked up into the paranoid rules of the Goddamn creatures.

He wishes Athena Hantz was his mom.

He flips the pages, wants to keep reading, doesn’t need to sleep. He’s sixteen years old, he’s hungry for a new life, he’s wide awake under a night’s sky that’s no different than day’s to him. He thinks of the train, wants it to exist as badly as Malorie does. He imagines people like the people of Indian River riding that very machine. He imagines like-minded strangers discussing more than just black fabric.

He brings the pages closer to his nose.

He hears footsteps coming around the side of the barn.

He turns off the light.

Huddled beneath the blanket, his first instinct is to keep the papers close to his chest. He realizes, with sudden clarity, that it’s more important to him to hold on to these pages than it is to warn Malorie and Olympia that something is near.

He closes his eyes.

He listens.

Whatever it is, it’s close. It moves slow. He doesn’t think it’s an animal, but it’s hard to tell in all this open space. Inside a house there’s an echo, dimensions, a blueprint.

Outside it’s different.

Whatever it is, it steps closer. Tom doesn’t want to feel afraid, but that’s what he is. He wants the fear within him to pour out, to leave him, to flow back toward the road, back to Camp Yadin, back to the school for the blind, back to the house he was born in.

Another step in the grass. It’s a creature. He knows this now.

The sky is silent; his mom and sister breathe steady on the other side of the wood wall. He slowly removes the blanket from his head. The cool night air chills him, and he doesn’t want to tremble in the presence of a creature.

We’re allowed, he thinks.

Yet he shudders.