The Giver - Lois Lowry [31]
They reached the building and braked their bikes.
"I really think I'll like it better than school," Fiona confessed.
"Me too," Jonas agreed, wheeling his bike into its place.
She waited for a second, as if, again, she expected him to go on. Then she looked at her watch, waved, and hurried toward the entrance.
Jonas stood for a moment beside his bike, startled. It had happened again: the thing that he thought of now as "seeing beyond." This time it had been Fiona who had undergone that fleeting indescribable change. As he looked up and toward her going through the door, it happened; she changed. Actually, Jonas thought, trying to recreate it in his mind, it wasn't Fiona in her entirety. It seemed to be just her hair. And just for that flickering instant.
He ran through it in his mind. It was clearly beginning to happen more often. First, the apple a few weeks before. The next time had been the faces in the audience at the Auditorium, just two days ago. Now, today, Fiona's hair.
Frowning, Jonas walked toward the Annex. I will ask The Giver, he decided.
The old man looked up, smiling, when Jonas entered the room. He was already seated beside the bed, and he seemed more energetic today, slightly renewed, and glad to see Jonas.
"Welcome," he said. "We must get started. You're one minute late."
"I apologi—" Jonas began, and then stopped, flustered, remembering there were to be no apologies.
He removed his tunic and went to the bed. "I'm one minute late because something happened," he explained. "And I'd like to ask you about it, if you don't mind."
"You may ask me anything."
Jonas tried to sort it out in his mind so that he could explain it clearly. "I think it's what you call seeing-beyond," he said.
The Giver nodded. "Describe it," he said.
Jonas told him about the experience with the apple. Then the moment on the stage, when he had looked out and seen the same phenomenon in the faces of the crowd.
"Then today, just now, outside, it happened with my friend Fiona. She herself didn't change, exactly. But something about her changed for a second. Her hair looked different; but not in its shape, not in its length. I can't quite—" Jonas paused, frustrated by his inability to grasp and describe exactly what had occurred.
Finally he simply said, "It changed. I don't know how, or why.
"That's why I was one minute late," he concluded, and looked questioningly at The Giver.
To his surprise, the old man asked him a question which seemed unrelated to the seeing-beyond. "When I gave you the memory yesterday, the first one, the ride on the sled, did you look around?"
Jonas nodded. "Yes," he said, "but the stuff—I mean the snow—in the air made it hard to see anything."
"Did you look at the sled?"
Jonas thought back. "No. I only felt it under me. I dreamed of it last night, too. But I don't remember seeing the sled in my dream, either. Just feeling it."
The Giver seemed to be thinking.
"When I was observing you, before the selection, I perceived that you probably had the capacity, and what you describe confirms that. It happened somewhat differently to me," The Giver told him. "When I was just your age—about to become the new Receiver—I began to experience it, though it took a different form. With me it was ... well, I won't describe that now; you wouldn't understand it yet.
"But I think I can guess how it's happening with you. Let me just make a little test, to confirm my guess. Lie down."
Jonas lay on the bed again with his hands at his sides. He felt comfortable here now. He closed his eyes and waited for the familiar feel of The Giver's hands on his back.
But it didn't come. Instead, The Giver instructed him, "Call back the memory of the ride on the sled. Just the beginning of it, where you're at the top of the hill, before the slide starts. And this time, look down at the sled."
Jonas was puzzled. He opened his eyes. "Excuse me," he asked politely, "but don't you have to give me the memory?"
"It's your memory, now, It's not mine to experience any longer. I gave it away."
"But how can