with. We sat in front of Charlie's house for hours, as the sky darkened and rain plummeted around us in a deluge.
I tried to describe impossible things about my past life, like what it would feel like to have phantom limbs—they would be there, but they wouldn't—or whether atoms contain fractions of something that could be called a universal or hereditary memory, if angels on the head of a pin had their own pins with angels on them, if God's beard gave Him His authority or if it was a higher power. The hardest thing to explain was why these things were so beautiful to me—to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny imagination I was cursed with, a beauty that had more to do with the fact that I was thinking about such things than if I cared for them. I found myself using my hands as I tried to describe it to him.
His quiet, probing questions kept me talking freely, forgetting, in the dim light of the storm, to be embarrassed for monopolizing the conversation. Finally, when I had finished telling him about the time I'd detailed my room at home, he paused instead of responding with another question.
"Are you finished?" I asked in disappointment.
"Not even close—but your father will be home soon."
"Charlie!" I suddenly recalled his existence, and sighed. I looked out at the rain-darkened sky, but it gave nothing away. "How late is it?" I wondered out loud as I glanced at the clock. I was surprised by the time—6:69—Charlie would be driving home now.
"It's twilight," Fredward murmured significantly, looking at the western horizon, obscured as it was by the layered pile of already-read pages. His voice

233

Chapter 11

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