Chapter 15

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MY FIRST THOUGHT IS THATI’m not dead.

My second is that I’m hanging without a rope halfway down the ridge, clinging to it by a rock, and I’ve almost certainly dislocated my right shoulder and I’m still dead because there’s a long way left to fall and my fingers are slipping and oh Joules, what a shit way to go.

“Strongly disagree.” Pressure—under my left foot, alleviating some of the strain in my arm.

U-me.Her fans whir as she supports me with her head. Whatever she was designed for, it wasn’t this. We’re both going to end up as rubble below if I don’t do something fast.

Think, Cee.My eyes roll from side to side, then down.

The rope.

Part of it is a neon-orange puddle on the ground, but the other part still dangles down the ridge face, no longer tied but caught in the hands of the boy, his figure backlit at the top.

“Tie it!”I’ll take the two of us over if I grab it now. Surely he knows that. “Snap out of it!” I scream when he doesn’t move. “Come on! Be a—”

Acid shoots up my throat.

“—hero!” I choke out.

“Hero,” intones U-me dutifully as rocks tumble out from beneath us, free-falling to the ground with a telltale pock-pock-pock. “A person who is admired or idealized…”

I can’t hear the rest. My vision is spotting and it’s impossible to see the boy’s features, let alone figure out what the hell is going through his mind as he just stands there, rope in hand. Meanwhile, the pressure is back on my fingertips. Pain sizzles white-hot down my arm. This is it. The cords in my neck tense. My lips part for one final shout—

—and close when the rope brushes my cheek.

It moves as the boy moves. He’s a blob to me at this point, but I think he’s making tying motions with his hands, and if he’s not, I’m dead anyway, so I seize the rope, pincer my knees, and worm down its length as much as I can before my arms give out.

Sky. Air. Ground.

The impact jettisons the breath out of my lungs.

I don’t know how long I lie there, on my back, before a face eclipses the yellow sun.

The boy’s.

“Cee, can you hear me?” He sounds distant. “What hurts?”

“My shoulder.” And everything else.

The skin on my arm burns as the boy slides up my sweater sleeve. He slips one hand through mine and holds my elbow with the other.

“Okay,” he breathes, almost to himself. “This will hurt before it gets better.”

“What—”

The boy tugs on my arm. Someone screams. I think it’s me. I claw at him—Make the pain stop make it stop—while my muscles flex against the pressure, the tension in my shoulder mounting until it feels maxed out—

The ball slides back into the socket.

The boy helps me sit up. When I’m ready to stand, he drapes my good arm over his shoulder and uses his body to support me. Either I’m shaking, or he’s shaking, or we’re both shaking. Our first few steps almost send me sprawling back on the ground.

The rest of the walk is a slow, silent hobble.

Halfway through, U-me suddenly speaks without prompting.

“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”

I feel the boy stiffen under my arm.

“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”

The sun descends from its midday summit.

“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”

Hours later, we finally reach the house. The boy guides me to the couch, then takes off without a word. I have don’t have the mental or physical capacity to wonder where he’s going. My head lolls back, and I stare at the ceiling, tie-dyed violet from the sunset.

Joules.

What a day.

Yes, I gained a shit ton of memories. Yes, I’m also seeing in color. That may explain why I was careless in my climb, but it doesn’t explain the untied rope. I haven’t had such a close call since I perfected my knot technique two years ago.

I try to think back to the scene right before the fall. U-me was at the bottom of the ridge. The boy was at the top.

I didn’t see him untie the rope.

I wasn’t looking at him either.

What am I thinking? If killing me was his goal, he could have done it while I was flat on the ground. A rock to the temple. It would have been over in a second. Instead, he hovered over me, his face shining with sweat and worry, and maybe he could have faked the emotion, but he couldn’t have faked the pounding of his heart. He fixed my shoulder, half carried me back, and now nothing adds up. Not the untied rope, or the way he froze at the top while I hung on for dear life.

Unless it was just that: He froze up. It’s not every day you have to be a hero.

I know one thing for sure: I don’t want to believe the boy had anything to do with my fall. He’s become more to me than a visitor or a guest. He’s a friend. And as his friend, I drag my ass off the couch when he doesn’t return by night.

He’s not on the shore, or at the sunken pier, awash in the midnight tide.

The same tide rushes into the cove, a secret place tucked past the rocks west of M.M.’s house. The sand glows with all the colors of mother-of-pearl in the moonlight. The boy, a mere blip against the waterline, is indigo.

He doesn’t turn as I approach. I sit beside him. For several minutes, the only sound comes from the surf, shushing the night as it tumbles in.

“It’s my fault.” His voice is low and dark with shame. “Back on the ridge, when I saw you fall … My whole body…” His pain is palpable and I find myself rubbing circles onto his back. His muscles bunch under my hand. “Locked.” He lets out a frustrated breath. “Except that’s not the right word.”

I might be battered and bruised, but he sounds scarred. And who wouldn’t be? He’s not like me, hardened by the brutality of island living.

“Hey,” I say gently. “No hard feelings. You managed in the end.”

“But what if I didn’t?”

“You did. That’s all that matters.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t have any memories. I don’t have a name. All I have are my current thoughts, the things I feel and think and want. If I can’t even act on those, then…”

He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to. His unspoken words live in my heart. They’re the same ones that keep me up at night, when I worry Kay’s face is fading. I worry who I would be without her. Just some girl on an abandoned island, with no past to draw on, no future to live for.

Who am I?he wants to ask. I can’t answer that.

But I can offer something. “Hero.”

“What?”

“You do have a name. Hero.”

The boy breathes in. “That’s—”

“U-me’s pick. And mine, too.”

Some names are found. Others are earned.

This one is both.

The boy, Hero, frowns. “It’s cheesy.”

“Well, it’s either that or Dmitri. Cheesy or hunky. Take your pick.”

He sighs. Not calmed. Not comforted. I’m all for exploring emotions, but his are a swamp right now. They’ll only suck him down. I need to distract him. Pivot his mind.

I have an idea as to how.

“Let’s try something,” I say.

“What?” asks the boy.

“Turn toward me.”

He does.

“Close your eyes.”

He does—eyes flying open when I kiss him. Briefly. It’s more of a peck, for his sake. I know what I like. The boy, though? I giggle at the look on his face. He scowls; I make my expression serious. Not everyone is as touchy-feely as me, and I ask if he didn’t like it.

To which he responds, reluctantly, “I wasn’t expecting it.”

Not the same as not liking it, then. Grinning, I lean in and kiss him again. His lips are soft—softer, even, than when I traced them with my finger. A stir goes through me, not necessarily because I feel for him but because I simply feel. Him. I reach him. I say to him It’s okay and You’re not alone and We don’t have to overthink—we can simply live. Kissing is just another means of conversation.

And conversations can’t be sustained by one side, so when he doesn’t respond, I pull back. “Right, then. What were—”

Oh.

My eyes widen as he replies.

Recovering, I slide a hand up his chest. He questions by leaning in. I answer by drawing him closer by the collar of his sweater.

He bears us down into the sand.

We break apart only when we run out of breath. I keep on running out of breath as his mouth drifts to my neck. My hands knot in his hair, holding on as my insides melt, brim, spill. I am vast as an ocean, the only sea I don’t have to cross, and for the first time in a long time, I remember what it feels like to drown in myself.

And then we speak more. I tell him about Kay, about my color-blindness, about my sleepwalking. He shares his cold, sterile dreams. I ask if he remembers being a doctor because he didn’t do a half-bad job on my shoulder. He thinks I could have been a boat builder after I tell him about Hubert. He asks me more about Kay and I tell him what I can remember, and when I run out, he asks me about me, and I tell him, too, though the words are less sure and more shy, tentative. We talk about nothing and everything, and it’s … nice, so nice that even when it gets colder, it’s warm enough with him here.

We fall asleep on the cove, in each other’s arms.

But my dreams take me far out, to the sister still waiting for me across the sea.