We Can Only Save Ourselves: a Novel by Alison Wisdom

Author:Alison Wisdom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

WESLEY MADE THE sun shine. Wesley made it rain. Wesley steered the winds. He never told Alice he was responsible for these things, but she began to see patterns emerge—the sunlight was yellow and warm on days when he woke up happy; if he was sick, it might still be sunny, but the light would be weak, as if it were fighting to make itself shine. On moody days, the weather turned, leaves drifted down, brown and curled. Wesley would grind them with his boot heel.

“I’ll always call to you if we’re apart,” he told Alice once. They were lying in two sleeping bags zipped together out in the backyard. She had slipped her underwear back on and was wearing a T-shirt, but Wesley’s hand was under her shirt, tracing the outline of her shoulder blades. It made her shiver.

“Why would we be apart now that we’re finally together?” she asked, looking up at the stars. It hadn’t been long, she hadn’t meant to add the “finally,” but time was moving differently here, the days and years leading up to this moment had been moving slowly, and only now that she was here did she see that time moved as we always said it did: fast.

“I don’t know,” said Wesley. “But there’s always a chance people will try to tear us all away from each other.” Finger down her shoulder. “This is where your wings would be,” he said.

“If we’re apart,” Alice said.

“I’d move the earth to call to you,” he said. “I’d tell the ocean to give you a message. If you’re listening, it whispers to you.” He leaned closer, made a quiet shushing noise in her ear, tickling her and making her laugh.

The sun, the wind, the flowers, the leaves. Water listened to Wesley too. It rarely rained, so when it did, they welcomed it. The dry ground drank up the moisture, and the girls slept late because no light streamed through their windows in the morning. “It’s raining!” Alice said.

“I know,” said Wesley, grinning, and there was something about his catlike, knowing expression that made Alice think he’d ordered it up for them.

This, Wesley told them, was why they didn’t need to worry about where they would go or what they would do when everything ended. He didn’t come right out and say it, but Alice knew—they all seemed to know—that Wesley was intrinsically connected to the events of the end, that his hand might be the one to shake the ground, his mouth to drain the sea, his gaze to start the fire that would never stop burning until everything was consumed by it.

On the day it rained, he said, “Come on, let’s go outside.” And they all went, huddled together under the cover of the porch, but Wesley leapt down the steps and out into the rain and tilted his head back, spread his arms out wide. No one else on the street was outside, though the dog next door was barking, and then

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