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A pause.
He said, “‘How you do anything is how you do everything.’”
“Don’t give me all that annoying Zen shit. The Commandments are only about training.”
He said, “Right.”
A long silence.
“Part of why I left was to … dunno, find myself. I know, sounds stupid. But what if there’s nothing new to find?”
“Meaning what?”
“I mean, I was trained as an Orphan even if I never finished. But what if that’s all Icando? What if I’m really supposed to be a killer li—”
She halted, but he knew where her words had been headed:like you.
“I get it,” she continued, regrouping. “I’m just sixteen. But I’m also, like,waymore badass than the majority of so-called adults. Did they make Mozart wait till he was eighteen to let him play the piano?”
“He wasn’t killing anyone with his sonatas.”
“That’s not the point.”
“There are places that you can’t get back from.”
“You’ve gone there. Why shouldn’t I?”
“The cost,” he said.
This silence was even longer.
“I’m so screwed up right now, X. Just fuckingdamaged. All the time.”
“‘The wound is the place where the light enters you.’”
“Snappy. You come up with that on the spot?”
“Nah, a thirteenth-century Muslim poet. It’s been kicking around about a thousand years.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Poetry nevermeanssomething. It evokes.”
“Fine. What’s itevoke?”
“If I could describe it, it wouldn’t be poetry.”
“Super helpful. So, like, what am I supposed to do?”
“Either let it go,” he said, “or you sink with it.”
“The pain?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“The notion that the pain makes you unique.”
