My fifteenth birthday came four days after our visit to the dentist. I didn’t say anything to Major Knott about it, so he must have found out from the information that was written down during my physical.
To tell you the truth, I tried not to think about it at all. A birthday has a way of making you condense everything that’s happened in a previous year into something like a small pill, and then it forces you to swallow it. It had been one year since I playacted the part of Pierrot for my classmates and later hid inside a refrigerator after the slaughter at the schoolhouse.
On my fourteenth birthday, exactly one year earlier, I believed it was a miracle that I was alive.
On my fifteenth, I wasn’t so sure that it was anything other than an accident, Max.
But on that morning Major Knott and the entire staff of the UN administrative building came into the break room while I was sleeping. Major Knott carried a cake with fifteen candles on it, and everyone sang to me.
I had never seen a cake like that, Max. Also, the singing terrified me. Think of what it was like for me—I was asleep, wrapped in heavy blankets, and then suddenly I was assaulted by all these noisy grown-ups carrying something that was in flames.
It took me a while to figure out that what was happening wasn’t a nightmare. And when I did, I felt so sad for all the things I had left behind in my first lives. That’s a funny thing to admit to, isn’t it? But you can’t expect to be pulled from one life and emerge into another and carry along anything with you besides all those stories that never go away.
Major Knott could tell I was overwhelmed. After they finished singing to me, he put the cake down on the table where we played chess every night.
Major Knott rubbed his hand in my hair and said, “Happy birthday, Ariel.”
I looked at him, then at the fiery cake.
“Thank you.”
“You’re supposed to blow out the candles and make a wish,” Major Knott said.
It was very confusing, Max. And I couldn’t think of anything to wish for, either. What else could I possibly want?
There was so much to think about, and yet everything I considered was something I did not want. It would only make me feel worse to contrive a wish that could never come true—to go back home, to make things revert back to the way they used to be, to never have come to the city of tents in the first place. But I got up from my couch-bed, stood over the burning cake, and blew the life out of all those little candles. Then people clapped, and we all had cake and coffee for breakfast.
It was nice.
And after everyone left and we were alone, Major Knott told me he was going to take me to America to live with a new family, they were going to adopt me, and that I would have a brother who was my age. Well, sixteen days older, but you already know that.
Happy birthday to me, right?
Major Knott seemed surprised that I didn’t look happy. He asked me, “What do you think about this, Ariel?”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to think about this. There was an awful lot for me to think about. I didn’t want to leave. I know at the time it was a foolish sentiment, but I wanted to stay there and live in that small break room forever, until it was safe to come out—just like the refrigerator. But I had an overriding sense that it would really never be safe to come out, right? And I didn’t want to go away from Major Knott, either. I was so tired of being saved and saved again and again. Couldn’t I just stay in one place—frozen there forever?
It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
I sat down on the couch and looked across at the remains of the cake.
“Is something wrong, Ariel?”
I shook my head. It was all I could do, but the effort fell far short of convincing Major Knott that things were perfectly fine.
I didn’t want to answer him because I felt so sad about everything. I thought about all the terrible stories I’d been carrying with me, and it was suddenly too much. I didn’t believe I could carry anything else with me—at least, I did not want to try. I knew I would start crying if I said anything, and that would be unfair to Major Knott. He had done so much for me. He was too nice and didn’t deserve my making him feel bad. But who am I to say what people do or do not deserve?
I shook my head again and looked down at my feet, the gray socks they’d given me, sliding this way and that way on the cool slick floor of the break room.
Major Knott pulled a chair around from the table and sat down right in front of me.
“I understand this is going to be a drastic change in your life, Ariel, but you just don’t see how fantastic everything is going to be for you from now on.”
There’s a word for you: fantastic.
Think about what it really means: unreal, imagined. Why would anyone think fantastic was a good omen of my future?
I realized I was pouting. My chin was down and I wouldn’t look Major Knott in the eye.
He put his hand on my knee and said, “You’ll like the Burgesses. Jake Burgess works with me, in West Virginia. I’ll take you to his house and you’ll see. His wife is named Natalie, and their son—your new brother—is named Max. He’s a funny kid, Ariel. You’ll have a good life there. It’s a beautiful place, and I live quite close to them—your new family.”
“You do?”
Major Knott nodded and smiled.
“We’ll see each other often. I promise, Ariel. And the Burgesses have a very clever pet—a crow, named Alex.”
So what do you think, Max? Maybe they should have changed my name to Alex, too—all things considered.