Fortunately, 72 remembered that Jake had written down his address and phone number. They couldn’t call—72 had stolen Jake’s phone, and besides, Lyra had never made a call before and, though she had often seen the nurses talking on their cell phones, wasn’t sure she knew how to do it—and so they started the process again of asking strangers how to get to 1211 Route 12, Little Waller, Florida.
A woman with hair frosted a vague orange color directed them to a car rental agency, but almost as soon as they entered, the man behind the counter began asking for licenses and credit cards and other things neither one of them had. Lyra got flustered again, upsetting a small display of maps with her elbow so the maps went fanning out across the counter. 72 got angry. He accused the man of shouting.
“I barely raised my voice,” the man said. “You some kinda freak or something?”
Quickly, 72 reached for his pocket, and Lyra was worried he was going for his knife. The man must have been worried, too, because he stumbled backward, toppling his chair. But instead 72 just put the paper with Jake’s address onto the desk.
“You have a map,” he said. His voice was low and tight, as if the words were bound together with wire. “Show us how to get here. Please.”
The man reached for a map slowly, keeping his eyes on 72. A TV in the corner reeled off the sound of an audience laughing, but otherwise it was so quiet that Lyra could hear the man’s lungs, like something wet caught in his chest as he took a red pen, pointed out the different bus routes they could take to reach Little Waller, less than an hour away. Lyra noticed his hand was shaking ever so slightly—and for the first time the idea of being a freak, of being a monster, made her feel not ashamed but powerful.
There were only two other passengers on the bus, including a man wearing several different layers of clothing who smelled like sweat and urine. Lyra and 72 took a seat at the very back. They sat so close their thighs and knees touched, and Lyra felt the warmth coming through the window like the gentle pressure of a hand. As the bus passed the water park, Lyra pressed her nose to the window, eager again for the sight of all those real human families. But the sun was hard in her eyes and she could see nothing but blurred, indistinct figures.
Then they were on the highway again, passing long stretches of vivid green space where there were no towns or houses, just trees crowning the roads, just growth and dark spaces.
72 was quiet for so long, leaning back with his eyes closed, she thought he’d fallen asleep. But then he turned to face her. The sunlight fell across his skin and made it seem to glow. When he spoke, she felt his breath on her ear and in her hair. “Can I ask you a question about your story?” he said. “About the little prince, and the rose?”
“Okay.” Lyra took a breath. She again had a sense of his whole body extended there in space, the miracle of all those interwoven molecules that kept him together.
His eyes were dark, and she could see herself inside of them. “You said the Little Prince lived on Planet B-612,” he said. “You pointed it out to me.” He bit his lip and she had the strangest desire to bite it too, to feel his lips with her mouth. “But all the stars look the same. So how do you know?”
“Not if you look closely,” she said. Her body was bright hot, burning. It was his breath on her shoulder and the feel of him next to her in the afternoon sun. “That’s what the Little Prince found too, on his travels. He thought his rose was the only rose in the whole universe at first. But then he came down to earth and found a garden of them.”
72 shifted and their knees touched again. The sun made his eyes dazzle, and the rest of the world was disappearing. “What happened then?”
She tried to remember the rest of the story. It was hard to concentrate with him so close. She kept imagining his skin under his clothing, and beneath his skin, his organs and ribs and the blood alive in his veins, kept thinking of this miracle, that he should exist, that they both should, instead of just being empty space. But what came to her was Dr. O’Donnell’s voice, and the way she’d leaned forward to read this part of the book, her dirty-blond hair falling out from where it was tucked behind her ears.
“He was very sad,” Lyra said slowly. “He thought the rose had tricked him. She wasn’t special. She was just like thousands of other roses. Identical to them,” she added.
“A replica,” 72 said.
“Exactly,” Lyra said, although it was the first time she’d made the connection, and understood, truly understood, why Dr. O’Donnell had given her that particular book. “Just like a replica. Only . . .”
“What?”
“Only the Little Prince realized his rose was special. She was the only one in the universe. Because he’d cared for her, and talked with her, and protected her from caterpillars. She was his rose. And that made her more special than all the other roses in the universe combined.” Lyra found the sun was painful and blinked. She was crying. She turned away and brought a hand to her face quickly, hoping 72 wouldn’t see.
But he caught her hand. And before she could ask what he was doing, before she could even be afraid, her body responded. It knew what to do. It sensed a question and answered for her, so she found herself turning to face him, placing her hand against his face so the warmth of him spread through her fingers. They sat there, looking at each other, on a bus suspended in space. She knew it was impossible, but she thought her heart stopped beating completely.
“Lyra,” he whispered.
“What?” she whispered back. His face was cut into geometric shapes by shadows, and he was a beautiful puzzle to her, mysterious and ever-changing.