He rolled over in bed so he was facing me. But we were still miles of bed apart.
“The starlings,” I said.
“What about them?”
“Did you write that?”
He nodded.
“You wrote most of it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Jonah was always better in person. At least when he was feeling good. I’m better online, I guess.”
“Why did you stop?” I asked. “I didn’t get any messages for a week or so before he actually died.”
“After that day in the Public Gardens, I couldn’t do it anymore. I think the truth of everything finally became clear to me. It wasn’t a game. Jonah was a real person, and something was seriously wrong with him.”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted.
“What?”
“You didn’t write as him after the Public Gardens?”
“No,” said Daniel.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Positive. Why?”
I sat up and opened Daniel’s laptop. I signed into my e-mail. I should have known from the beginning, I thought. The problem was that Jonah didn’t send too many e-mails by the end. It was rare. But, still, I should have known that this one wasn’t Daniel’s. I searched my messages and finally came upon it, alone in a sea of advertisements and Quaker school newsletters. I opened it and handed the computer to Daniel.
“Did you write this?” I asked him. “You have to be honest.”
It read:
Hello, Tess Fowler,
The Internet tells me that the swans in the Public Gardens are named Romeo and Juliet, but that they’re actually both female. People like a good love story on their terms, I guess. The swans there are mute swans, but that just means that they’re “less vocal” than other kinds. Part of the way they communicate is through the fluttering of their wings in flight. I wish I could do that, don’t you? I think I might like it better than talking. There are so many things I like better than talking.
It’s odd that we never saw each other after that night in Iowa. I make so many plans, Tess Fowler. I see them soclearly in my head. The way they’re supposed to go. You and me are in there, in one of the plans. We’re walking along somewhere and it’s really nice and casual and everything is so easy like it was when we were talking that night. It takes so much energy to make things easy for me. I have to go a thousand miles an hour to make it seem like I’m going ten.
The new plan, the one I’m making right now, is a retroactive plan. When we meet at the farmhouse, this time I wake up the next morning and I miss my ride to the airport in Des Moines. I miss my flight back to Boston. And instead I stay with you a couple days. I live in your dorm like a stowaway and you smuggle me food from the cafeteria. I only come out at night, and no one else knows but you. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. But it seems like enough. Doesn’t it, Tess?
Yours,
J.
I read the e-mail along with Daniel, and we stopped around the same time. Daniel looked at the desktop of his computer, a swirling galaxy of tiny white stars.
“I didn’t write it,” he said.
“Don’t bullshit me,” I said.
Instead of defending himself again, he just got quiet.
“I can’t believe it,” he said.
“What?”
