Chapter 11

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“AND THIS,” I SAY, CONCLUDINGthe tour of the island, “is the ridge.”

We stand under its elongating shadow. I make it a rule to never scale the ridge past sundown, and so finding new boat parts will have to wait. My accomplishment for today? Placating the boy beside me.

He’s dressed now, in a sweater of his choice and cargo pants that reveal a little too much ankle. His hair spills back as he cranes his head. “You actually climb this thing?”

“Sometimes every other day.”

“Why?”

He asks it like I’m out of my mind, and I get it. The wall of rock seems impossibly steep in the gathering dark. Just the sight of it causes my shoulders to spasm with phantom memories of pulled tendons and popped sockets. Once, I fell off about halfway up and saw my life flash through my eyes. I’m not exaggerating—before blacking out, I heard my skull crack and thought, That’s it. I’m dead. I’m still not sure how I woke up sometime later with a killer migraine but no brains on the ground. My brain does die a bit now, at the idea of doing it all over again.

But the alternative—staying on this island, forever separated from Kay—is a fate worse than death.

I turn away from the ridge and its imposing height and start heading back shore side. “I’m looking for my sister,” I say as a breeze snaps in, briny and cold. It sends a rustle through the skimpy shrubs clinging to the rock scape. Ripples flash across the rainwater ponds.

“I thought you said this island was abandoned,” the boy calls after me.

“It is.”

“Then where’s your sister?”

He’s falling behind, the snail. Wait for him—but I won’t let him slow me down.

“Out there.” I nod as I walk, tilting my chin toward the land before us, the shale that will eventually turn into gravel and gravel into sand. The island is small enough that if I concentrate, I can hear the waves, breaking upon the shore. “Somewhere across the sea.”

“And you know this how?” asks the boy.

Turns out he isn’t funny or sarcastic, and now that he’s recovered from being scared out of his wits, he’s starting to annoy me. “Where else can she be, if she’s not here?” I say, splashing through a shallow pool of rainwater.

“She could be dead.”

I stop in my tracks. The breeze stills. The island’s gone quiet, deathly so. I can’t even hear the ocean anymore. “She’s not dead.”

“How do you know?” asks the boy, finally catching up. His voice is even more attractive breathless. His eyes, a limpid gray to me, gleam with some emotion. I think it’s concern.

I’m both indignant and touched. He asks because he cares. His questions are legitimate and important.

I just can’t afford to face them.

How do you know?I have neither the evidence nor the facts Kay would require. Only a conviction in my heart, a hope that thrives more on some days than others, a living thing I must protect at all costs.

I tear my gaze from the boy, point it forward, and walk. “I just do.”

“So this ridge,” he huffs, trying to keep pace. Slow down—but I go faster. Dusk creeps over the island, darkening the rock beneath our feet like rain. “What’s on the other side?” he asks as we reach a shelf of shale, small enough to walk around, unlike the ridge.

I clamber over it. “Supplies for boats.”

“You”—the boy struggles behind me—“build them?”

“No. I rent them from a shop on the beach.”

“Have you ever reached land when you sail?” asks the boy, ignoring my sarcasm. Or not picking up on it. Which? I want to ask. Joules, am I really that out of practice?

“What if there’s nothing out there?” the boy presses when I don’t answer.

His question rushes through me like the wind.

“Why would you say that?” I demand, then inhale sharply. “Do you remember something?”

The rocks have diminished in size as we’ve covered more ground, but now they loom, shadows bleeding out from their bases, and the land, always so flat, appears pockmarked like the surface of some alien planet.

“No,” admits the boy, sounding truthful.

“Look, love,” I say as we finally reach gravel and I can see the back of M.M.’s house, silhouetted against the waterline by the dying light. “I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I’ve held up just fine these years on my own. I am going to get myself off this island, and I don’t expect you to help. But you’re not ruining my mojo. That’s all I ask of you.”

“Your mojo—”

“Uh-uh.”

“—could kill you,” finishes the boy.

“It wouldn’t be the first thing to try,” I say without breaking stride.

We don’t speak for the rest of the walk.

---

For dinner, we have dandelions and eight-pointed-tree leaves. It’s not exactly the best of introductory meals to island cuisine, and the boy pushes it around on his plate, appearing seasick. “You’ve survived on this?”

“No.”

“Then what do you normally eat?” asks the boy.

“Taro.”

“What happened?” asks the boy.

“I lost them to the sea.”

“How?” asks the boy.

I lay down M.M.’s fork. Was talking always this tiring? “I packed all the taro I’d grown when I sailed to find my sister. But we ran into a storm.”

“We,” echoes the boy.

“Hubert and me.”

“Hubert,” echoes the boy.

“He’s not around anymore.”

Silence.

I lift the fork again, but don’t eat. My stomach gurgles—no doubt with indigestion—as I wait. Wait for the boy to start spewing more questions, for his skepticism and incredulity.

“The taros,” he says at last. “Are there any left?”

Finally. A question where the answer is literally in M.M.’s backyard.

I push my chair away from the table. “Let’s find out.”

We emerge onto the porch, into my favorite kind of night. Windless. Calm. The moon is just as white as the sun and the sky is a richer shade of gray than it would be during the day. I love the day too, but at night, when the beach is silver and the ocean obsidian, I feel like I’m missing out on less by not being able to see it in color.

Nights on the island are also cold, though, and I rub my arms as we head down the porch and around to the back of the house, where taros grow in a small plot of dirt. I squat by a row of them. Judging by the size of their leaves, none are ready to be harvested for their starchy tubers.

The boy squats as well. His body radiates heat, warming my right side even though we’re a body-width apart. “The soil looks depleted,” he says, and I glance to him. The moonlight contours his face, bringing out angles I didn’t see before. “You should fertilize it.”

I clear my head. Focus on the plants. “With what?” I don’t exactly have bags of nitrogen compounds lying around.

“What do you think?” says the boy.

Oh.

“Ew.” I shudder. Joules, no.

“Ew?”

“Yes, ew. That’s gross.”

He coughs. Suspiciously.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“You just seemed so gung-ho about this survival thing,” he says, absentmindedly rubbing at his wrists. “I figured you’d be okay with making your own fertilizer.”

“Nope. Definitely not.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

Don’t look at him. Don’t make eye contact.Because it’s over the moment we do.

U-me rolls out to see what’s wrong. What’s wrong is that I’ve regressed to cracking up at potty jokes. But I can’t control it. The laughter keeps on coming, wave after wave.

“Do you remember anything?” I finally gasp, cheeks cramping and chest burning, my body alive with the adrenaline I usually only get from climbing the ridge. “Something from your past?”

The boy falls silent. I immediately miss the sound of his laugh. “Should I?”

“Sometimes I find a memory when I rediscover things I know.” I nod at the taros. “You seem to know gardening.”

“I don’t remember gardening.”

“Where did that stuff about the soil come from, then?” To me, it all looks gray, and I tamp down on my jealousy when the boy acts like it’s no big deal.

“I just do,” he says with a shrug. But something about the gesture seems off, as if there’s more weight on his shoulders than he’s letting on. Seconds later, he rises and heads for the house.

Wait, I almost call after him, before checking myself. Boys come running to me. But it’s chilly without him here. I rub my arms, the residual heat on my right side already cooling, then head back to the house as well.

---

I have to cross the ridge today, no excuses.

I’m up before the sun and head into kitchen for breakfast. The leaves somehow taste worse after watching the boy struggle to eat them. I chew on one as long as I possibly can, then spit the wad of fibers out the sink window.

The boy’s asleep in the bed. I made the right call in insisting he take it. He looks dead, hair splayed over the pillow, eyes still beneath their lids. The only movement to him is the rise and fall of his chest. The rhythm hypnotizes me, and like a creep, I watch him sleep. Then I ease the bedroom door shut. Pad softly through the house, swiping a kitchen knife on my way to the porch, where U-me’s waiting. She knows the routine. Grab M.M.’s fanny pack and go.

But today, I stop on the deck.

Do I trust the boy enough to leave him unsupervised?

He hasn’t tried to kill me again—tall order, I know—but my throat’s still tender. And though we shared a moment in the taro garden last night, this side of the island is my territory. Home. Out there, past the ridge, in the gray meadow with all the little shrines, even I feel like an intruder. I don’t need an uninvited guest creeping around too.

“Stay here,” I say to U-me. “Make sure he doesn’t leave the house.”

“Strongly disagree.”

“Then what do you suggest I do? Tie him up again?”

U-me whirs.

I rephrase my question into a declarative statement. “I should tie him up again.”

“Strongly agree.”

“No, I can’t do that,” I mutter, half to myself. I can still see his panicked face, the whites of his eyes exposed with fear. He’s not an animal, but a person. A person like me. “I can’t do that,” I repeat, this time to U-me.

“Neutral.”

“I’ve made the climb without you before.”

“Agree.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Disagree.”

“Paranoid.”

“Paranoid: unreasonably anxious, suspicious, or mistrustful, adjective.”

Yeah, that’s not me. “Be a darling,” I say to U-me, “and stay here.”

Then I tuck the kitchen knife into the fanny pack and hop down the porch steps.

I’m not lying when I say I’ve climbed the ridge without U-me before. It just so happens that those were also the times I nearly fell to my death. But I have two years of practice under my belt, and I manage to make it up mostly intact, leaving behind only the skin on my palms. I tie the rope to the top; the descent is easier. I drop to the ground, stepping out of my makeshift harness and leaving the rope in place for when I return.

I weave through the meadow quickly, past the shrines, and reach the beginnings of the forest. The pines are too bushy, so I find a nice eight-pointed tree and start hacking at the base of the trunk with my kitchen knife.

Two hours and a dozen blisters later, the tree falls over. One down. I trim off the branches and start chopping the second. The sky darkens as I work. The air grows clammy.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I glance up to the trees ahead. They’re dense, but it’s almost as if they’re not there. The Shipyard beyond looms up in my vision, calling my name.

Cee.

Cee.

Cee.

Right. Still on the island. Still losing my mind.

I lunch on some leaves, then fell one last tree. I tie the three trunks together with twine from my pack, strip down to M.M.’s holey camisole, and fill her sweater with rotting leaves and pine needles. That should do for fertilizer. The boy won’t be expecting it. I smile a bit at the thought of surprising him.

The walk back through the meadow takes longer than usual, probably because I’m dragging three trunks topped off with a sweater-sack of mulch. By the time I transport everything to the top of the ridge and lower them down the other side, the clouds have thickened. It starts to drizzle as I lug everything across the rock scape, back to the house. I unload the trunks on the porch, prop the sack of mulch by the door, and head in.

I almost don’t recognize the kitchen. The floors are polished, not a speck of sand in sight. The counters are clean. The old pitcher by the sink is filled with dandelions.

“Wow.” U-me is either malfunctioning or self-actualizing.

“Wow,” says U-me, rolling out from the living room. “Expressing astonishment or admiration, exclamation.”

“Aw, U-me. You didn’t have to—oh.” I stop between the kitchen and living room, the half door separating them swinging into the back of my calves. “It’s you.”

The boy sits back on his bare heels, a monogrammed towel in his hands and a pail of water beside him. His cheeks darken as he catches sight of me, and his gaze shoots down to my clogs. “You’re tracking in mud.”

Huh.I assume he’s blushing, but I can’t begin to imagine why. “How did you sleep?” I call as I go back to the porch to kick off my clogs. It’s only his second day on the island. All in all, he’s holding up rather well—better than me, on any given day, if he has the energy to clean.

“How do you feel?” I ask, returning to the living room.

“Fine,” says the boy, terse.

“I brought back some mulch for the garden.”

A grunt of acknowledgment. Glum today, I see.

Crouching beside him, I notice that his eyes are puffy and his nose is darker than the rest of his face, the shade of gray closer to that of his cheeks. Has he been crying? My heart twinges, and I squash the urge to ask if he’s remembered something. The question killed the mood last night and created unnecessary friction. It’s a sore spot for him, not having memories, like not being able to see in color is for me.

“You don’t have to do this,” I say instead as he tackles a stain in the wood that looks like it’s been there since the beginning of time.

“It’s filthy.”

“It’s fine.”

He keeps scrubbing.

Sighing, I grab a towel from the bathroom and join him on the floor. Our elbows bump; he jerks away. Then he stills.

“Your hands.”

I wince as I dunk the towel into the pail of what turns out to be salt water. “It’s nothing.”

His fingers close around my wrist.

At first, I let him inspect my pulpy palms. Then the warmth of his touch spreads under my skin, making me more aware of it—and of the holey camisole barely covering it, turned sheer by the rain and revealing bits of me that would mean nothing to U-me, but the boy is not U-me. The boy can see—has seen, judging by his cheeks—and now I’m blushing too, which is ridiculous. I’m perfectly comfortable showing off my body, at least in my memories. What’s different?

For one, past-Cee was much better groomed. I tell myself that my embarrassment has nothing to do with the boy, who gives me his solemn diagnosis. “Infection could set in,” he says as I tug my hand out of his.

“I’ll heal.” I grab the towel and attack the stain, stopping only to insist “really” when he doesn’t join me. He’s unsatisfied by my reply; I can tell from his expression, the same as yesterday’s when I explained my plan to find Kay. I have proof of healing, though, and from injuries much worse than this. I’d just rather not get graphic. Cleaning seems to be more the boy’s speed, and eventually he returns to it. We work in silence, the rain on the roof quieting as we finish. He goes to the garden, and I head outside, taking advantage of what cloudy daylight remains to cut the trunks into rough log shapes for Hubert 2.0. I’ll have to name him. Or them.

Or her. Leona. The name pops into my head. It sounds fierce. I’m going to need fierce if I want to get off this island on a raft. Because frankly, that’s what Leona’s going to be. A raft. I have neither the skill to craft a proper boat, nor three more years to spare.

Too soon, the last of the light fades, forcing me back into the house. I soak off the day’s grime in the tub. As I’m drying off, a mouthwatering aroma wafts into the bathroom. I follow the scent to the kitchen, where, on the table, rests a bowl. The steam rising from it smells like mashed potatoes …

… swirled with butter and sprinkled with chives. The flavors melt across my tongue, as if they’re real. I know they’re not, but what is real is the smile Kay gives me from across the table …

… the edge of the table pressing into my stomach as I lean in, drooling, until I see the bowl’s contents.

Taro, not potato.

The door behind me opens. I whip around as the boy walks in. “You harvested them?”

“Just two,” he says, washing his hands at the sink.

“Just?”Joules, there are only twelve plants in all.

The boy turns off the tap. Plip-plop-plip. The last droplet falls. “I’m not going to let us starve.”

Even before he faces me, I can imagine his expression. I draw it from his voice—from the preemptive edge to it, as if he senses my hackles are raised.

He’s not wrong. “It’s not about us.” I eat only what I need and stockpile the rest. I bake unappetizing biscuits because they will keep. Mashed taros? That’s a luxury I can’t afford. “I need to ration for the journey,” I say, and catch the look on the boy’s face, a flash so quick I would’ve missed it yesterday but already, I can read between his lines. The thinning of his lips? That’s his skepticism.

What if there’s nothing out there?

The softness in his eyes? That’s pity I mistook for concern.

She could be dead.

He thinks I’m delusional, and that angers me. Scares me—what if he’s right?—and when we’re trapped in a tiny kitchen together and he’s a meter away, I’m breathing in his doubt and I need to push it out and so the words leave my mouth before I can think any better of them. “Unlike you, I have someone waiting for me.”

And then I can’t see his face, or what my words do to it, because all I can see is Kay’s, blurred through my tear-chafed eyes. Hers are dry. She’s whole; I’m broken, I shouldn’t be—Mom was barely in our lives—and I wonder what’s wrong with me but that’s not what I say.

What’s wrong with you?I ask Kay, and the memory shatters. The boy is gone and I’m alone now, back in M.M.’s kitchen. My hands grip the table. Droplets dot the wooden surface. I wipe them off. Wipe my face. Sniff. In the memory, we were young, but was the last thing I said to Kay just as regrettable? Did I get to tell her I love her, and if not, will I ever be able to?

I will. I have to. I lift the bowl of mashed taro, appetite gone, but food is food and can’t be wasted so I taste it. It’s good. Sea-salted. A feast for my guilt.

I stomach what I can and leave behind more than half for the boy. For when he returns.

If he returns.

I keep watch by the kitchen window until night falls, then curl up on the couch, feeling dejected and pathetic for it.

“I hurt him,” I lament as U-me rolls over, stationing herself before my knees.

“Agree.”

“He’s never coming back.” Melodramatic, I know, but I can’t help it.

“Disagree.”

“You sound confident,” I mutter, laying my head down on the couch arm beneath the windowsill, my eyes fixating on the ceiling above. I guess we are on an abandoned island with limited real estate. He’ll have to return eventually. No guarantee we’ll be on speaking terms, though. I’ll miss his voice, I think, and groan, covering my eyes with an arm. I wish I could share my emotions with U-me and have her tell me I’m being irrational. Kay would. I’ve known the boy for, what? Two days? Three years without a human fix and two days later I’m addicted. Past-me would laugh at current-me, unable to sleep and heart leaping when finally, sometime around midnight, a sound comes from the porch. Whine of the front door, then creak of the half door separating the kitchen from the living room. Footsteps, soft.

And him. His outline fuzzes through my lashes as I pretend to be asleep, stirring only when I hear him stop by the couch.

“Cee?” His voice is a murmur of moonlight. I am the sea, pulled toward it. I don’t fight my reaction or act on it. Just let it swell, welcoming the physical yearning after so lengthy a drought.

“Mm-hmm?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” says the boy, still whispering. I open my eyes fully. He stands at the other end of the couch, in a slant of moonlight coming from the window behind my head. His face is pale. Tired, but not upset.

I’m tired too, and too relieved for pretenses. “I wasn’t actually asleep,” I admit, sitting up. “I was waiting for you.”

A beat of silence, slightly awkward. Too honest? Maybe. Well, better say what I’ve been waiting all night to say. “I’m—”

“Sorry.” The boy steals the apology from my mouth. “For making you wait. And for earlier. I may not understand your way of life, but I can respect it. As for the taros…” He begins to explain how the tubers multiply as they grow.

I cut him off. “I trust you.”

The words feel right, even if they surprise me. They seem to surprise the boy more. His lips stay parted for a second. Then they close. He looks away. “You know nothing about me.”

His silence says the rest. I know nothing about me.

If only I could take back my words from before or give him some of my memories. But all I can offer is, “I know you’re good at cooking and cleaning and gardening, and probably a whole lot else. And I’m sorry too.” My throat grows thorny and I look to the window, the glass reflecting my face. “I say things I don’t mean sometimes, when I’m scared.”

“Do I scare you?”

“No.” His questions only watered the uncertainties already seeded within me.

“Even though I tried to kill you?” asks the boy. “Supposedly,” he adds, grudgingly as ever.

That makes me smile. “What can I say?” I turn away from the window. “I enjoy living on the edge.” I lay myself back down, stretched out like how I was before except I feel more vulnerable now, less like part of the couch and more like a flesh-and-blood body as our gazes meet.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I murmur. Not that I’d wish this island life upon my worst enemy, but I think he knows what I mean.

I wonder if he’s glad I’m here, too.

If he is, he doesn’t say so. Only, “You should take the bed.”

“I like it better here.”

Silence.

Stay with me, I think as the boy takes a breath.

And says, “Good night, Cee.”

“Night.” I watch as he goes, something yawning open in my chest. It hurts like a wound, even though I’m used to being alone.

Except I’m not alone. Alone is an island. It’s an uncrossable sea, being too far from another soul, whereas lonely is being too close, in the same house yet separated by walls because we choose to be, and when I fall asleep, the pain of loneliness follows me as I dream of more walls—this time between me and Kay. I can feel her in my mind, but I can’t feel her, and so I break the wall, tear it apart with my bare hands, to find nothing on the other side but whiteness, blindingly bright, and the cry of gulls.