“Does that mean you’ll stay here in the twenty-first century?” she asked him.
Instead of answering her right away, he leaned his temple on her head and breathed, in and out. Once, twice, three times…
“I know that after living amongst such fantastic wonders like little devices that play the most beautiful music upon request—” he laughed softly, then muttered almost too low for her to hear, despite her closeness—“I think I would miss that the most.”
Her heart stopped. She stopped hearing what else he was saying and let his previous statement reign supreme.I think I would miss that the most.He would miss her Echo the most because he wouldn’t be here.
She felt sick. She might faint. He hadn’t answered her when she asked him if he would stay here. He was going to return. He was going to ask her to go with him. Words echoed between her ears, resounding like drums.
I’ll never forget this.Her words at first, speaking of her father when she saw him walking.He was given a death sentence and now he’s alive and well.
And his tender reply.It sounds a bit how life left me until I met you.
And then her thoughts ended as she finally fell asleep sitting up in his arms.
*
“What did yousay this behemoth was called?” Gray asked her with wonder giving music to his voice.
“A train.”
“And what powers it?’
“Electricity, I think,” Aria told him, smiling at his face as he stared, astounded, out the window.
The train came to the next stop at Ocean Parkway and Aria grasped Gray’s wrist and they hurried off.
They walked toward Coney Island though Aria thought they might never get there with the number of times Gray stopped to “talk” to leashed dogs on the way. Thankfully, they all told Gray they were happy and loved their humans. A few, like a terrier here and a setter there would rather be hunting rats or staring down birds…namely pigeons.
Aria thought, for the first time since knowing Gray, that it might be a terrible burden to be able to communicate with animals. Going to animal shelters would be so difficult to leave without adopting everything in them. What would zoos be like? Pet shops? She shivered thinking of it.
Today, they would forget the past and have fun. And what was more fun than an amusement park?
The Cyclone roller coaster in the Coney Island Amusement Park to be exact?
After a quick stop at an ATM, Aria paid for the tickets for the Cyclone and hurried to get them seats in the lead car. The ride started with all its rickety crackling, metal scraping against metal as the cars rolled across the track. One second into the first incline, a woman began to scream and hardly stopped after that. Not Gray. His hands were lifted high above his head and his laughter gave music to the air.
Aria knew he would enjoy the daring rides. She hoped he was getting a taste of how fast this life was. That night she took him to see a movie. He seemed happy enough, especially when her father gave them his blessing the next night at dinner.
By the time the weekend was over, they had been on the Circle Line around the Hudson and on a helicopter ride at the pier, and every night, no matter how tired they were, they visited the school and danced together. But Aria still couldn’t jump. Though she’d done it leaving Dartmouth and Gray had caught her, she wasn’t ready yet. Gray didn’t push.
On those nights when they danced at the school, Mrs. B. didn’t show up. But on the third night, Harper did.
“Grandmother was right,” she said to Gray when she opened the door and stepped into the studio from the hallway. “How did you do it? How did you travel on your own?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Ask Thoren Ashmore.”
“But you did it on your first try,” Harper continued. “And you didn’t lose Miss Darling.”
Aria coiled her arm through his in an almost instinctive gesture. She never wanted to let him go. “He also brought us to twenty-twenty-two, before—”
“We know. That’s why it took our grandmother a little longer to find you,” she told them, then turned back to Gray. “She’s the only one who can locate others, and she can only find certain people. You’re one of them.”
Because Aria was holding onto him, she felt him go as taut of an overwound guitar string.
“Why are you doing her bidding, Harper?” he asked with a note of sadness tainting his voice. “Why did she send you, without bothering to come herself?”
“I wanted to come,” the woman who’d raised him confessed. “I begged her to let me see you again, and to let me be the one who tells you.”