“Watch.”
Reluctantly, he does.
Nelle’s skin knits itself back together over the open gash.
James runs a hand through his sweaty hair, bracing himself against the wall. A firefly bobs near the trees. Another follows it. They float and blink, on and off.
“What ...areyou?” he asks. Oddly enough, he is not scared of her. Close to vomiting, yes, but no less enthralled. If anything, more so.
Nelle runs a fingertip along the windowsill. “I’m not a human.”
“Oh,” he says. “That’s not what I thought you’d say.”
“I’m an idea. A figment of someone’s imagination.”
James shakes his head. “You lost me. I don’t imagine people.”
“I didn’t say I’m a product ofyourimagination.”
She sounds real. She smells real. Sheisreal. James has always had a wild imagination, but never enough to manifest entire human beings. He didn’t even have an imaginary friend as a child.
“It started with Quill.” Nelle glances over her shoulder, as if listening for a noise behind her. “Twenty-one years ago, he started writing about a little girl. A baby. And one day he woke up, and she was there, with him. A flesh-and-blood incarnation of the character he’d created. Living in his house. Screaming in the same crib his daughter had left empty a year before. It was iron, so it didn’t burn with the first house.”
James’s head is a tornado. “I don’t understand.”
“Iamthat character. I’m Quill’s daughter because he made me his daughter.”
“So you’re not real?” James asks. This has to be a prank. A twisted joke.
“I am real. I can think, I can breathe, I shit and sing and cry. I have a heartbeat and organs. And a mind that thinks on its own. A mouth that speaks what it wants to speak.”
“How is that possible?” James asks. “I ... I don’t understand.”
“It just is.” Nelle hands him back his keys.
He studies her smooth palm.Impossible.
“It’s easier if you accept it.”
His shirt is drenched in sweat, and not from the humidity. “Am I going insane?”
“No.”
“Well, in that case, I havesomany more questions. Are you sure you can’t come out with me for a bit? We can drive around and talk. Quill will never know you left.”
She shakes her head, dirty-blond hair framing her cheeks. “I can’t leave. I think what I want and do what I want, but I can’t go where I want. I can only go where he writes me to go. And if he writes a specific command for me, then I have to do that, too. My body just ... reacts that way.”
“Seriously?” James asks, even as the pieces start clicking in place. “That’s why you had to run home the other night. You could only be out for a certain amount of time.”
Nelle nods. “And since he found out that I talked to you, he’s decided that I’m never allowed to leave the house again. I haven’t left my room since the day you came by, except to hide from the police. He’s got me caged in here.”
“Sorry for that, by the way.” James glances at the trees, the grass, the pine straw. The broken glass littering the ground. Reminders of the real world.
“Sorry for what?”
He laughs until his gut hurts. Something about the hilarity of the absolute insanity he’s found himself in. When he regains control, he says, “For calling the police.”
“You already apologized in your letter.”
