Endgame Novella #2 by James Frey Read Free Book Online Page A

Eternal Life, and they are all sworn to secrecy. These strangers, who live in her city and go to her school but don’t know this most basic fact about her—they don’t see her at all. To them, she is only Shari Jha, the solitary girl with sadeyes who rarely speaks.
    The knowledge of Endgame is considered so powerful, so dangerous, that it’s safer to keep it limited to a trusted few. The others know only that there are things they don’t know, and that they are better off. Sometimes, Shari wonders what it might be like to be among the ignorant, to imagine that her world would continue on without end. Sometimes, she envies them.
    Shari knows what it is to have a friend, but only through watching others: She watches her little brothers and sisters laugh easily with the children they bring home from school, fighting with sticks or chasing peacocks. She sees her older siblings strut proudly through the marketplace with their throngs of friends; she sees them fall in love, go starry-eyed and weak-kneed, court and marry and build a home.
    She thinks: Not for me, not now.
    She thinks: Maybe someday, when I have lapsed.
    She does not think: If only . . . or I wish . . .
    Shari has trained her mind to follow her every command. It does not stray without her permission, and she does not permit it foolish hopes or imagined lives.
    She focuses on her training, physical and mental. She does her daily calisthenics, studies her books, hones her memory, meditates, waits.
    Then, one day, a voice breaks into her meditative fog. This voice is different—neither hostile nor curious. It doesn’t interrupt her focus but instead, somehow, adds to it, as if the voice is speaking from within.
    Also different from the other voices, which whisper and giggle and wonder about her. This voice speaks to her.
    â€œI don’t know how you do it,” he says, his voice pleasantly reedy, like the sound of wind humming through the birch trees. He has a strange accent, not the Nepali-inflected English of her homeland, but not quite foreign either. It shifts and flows as he speaks, as if each word and syllable is deciding for itself to whom it belongs. “Thirty secondsand I’m already bored.”
    Shari can tune out anything.
    But for reasons that escape her, she doesn’t want to tune out this. She opens her eyes.
    An unfamiliar boy smiles back at her, his grin rakish and inviting, like he’s eagerly waiting for her to ask what’s so funny, so he can let her in on the joke. He’s a couple of years older than her, and though she knows everyone in this school—everyone in this city, it sometimes seems—she doesn’t know him.
    â€œDidn’t mean to interrupt you,” he says, running a hand through unruly black hair. Maybe he intends to smooth it, but he has the opposite effect, and Shari has the strange impulse to reach over and flatten his cowlick. A blush reddens his umber cheeks. “Well, actually, I did. So I guess . . . mission accomplished?”
    â€œCan I help you?” Shari asks. She speaks formally, though without hostility.
    The boy shrugs. “You always look so peaceful over here, figured I would try it too, but . . .” He casts an amused glance down at his knee, which is jiggling against the ground. “Guess I’m not really built for peaceful.”
    â€œIt can take practice,” Shari says, smiling as she remembers the first time her grandfather taught her to turn inward, how she managed to clear her mind for about 30 seconds before she heard Tarki screeching and was already halfway across the yard in chase of the peacock before she remembered she was supposed to stay quiet and still.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” the boy asks.
    She doesn’t answer personal questions as a general policy. But something about this boy tempts her to make exceptions. “I didn’t really learn to meditate until I realized I should practice in a room where I