Chapter 5

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WHERE AM I?

Who am I?

What’s my name?

Cee.I smile in relief when I remember, eyes shuttering against the sun, white overhead.

Then I roll onto my stomach and vomit onto the sand.

My relief sours to panic. No. No, no, no. I can’t have my taro and chuck it up too. I need to hold it in. But the only thing coming out of me is a cocktail of seawater and bile. No taro. Not in me. All in the ocean, dissolved to slime. Months’ worth of taro, food for the fish.

And Hubert …

I wobble to my feet. My legs are already weakening, my vision zooming in and out of focus before finally stabilizing on an object farther down the shore.

A hull.

Or half of one, resting on a crescent of wet sand.

Hubert.

I thump to my knees and crawl to his remains. “Morning, Bert,” I manage.

And lose it.

I bawl until the tide rises, then, as I hold Hubert down so the sea won’t wash him away, I form my first truly coherent thought: I need to bury him. Give him a proper goodbye.

I drag him onto safe, dry sand, and stagger around to face whatever lies behind me.

And what do you know.

There’s a house on the rocks that looks suspiciously like M.M.’s.

Then there’s me. Standing. On a shore. The shore. After sailing Hubert seven days out into the sea, plus however much time has passed since, I’m back. Waterlogged but alive.

Which begs the question: How in the fucking world?

Did I swim? Did I cling to Hubert and drift on some lucky waves? And even then, shouldn’t I have thirsted to death?

I rack my brains, trying to remember something, anything, but all I’ve got are muggy memories of drowning.

Chasing after the hows drains me, so I focus on the shoulds. I should be ecstatic. I should be grateful I’m not a bloated body in the sea. I should rebuild Hubert. Try finding Kay again.

Instead, I feel nothing.

I’m back.

I’m fucking back.

I failed the greatest mission of my life, the one goal that kept me going day after day, and I couldn’t even die in peace. I’m back to exactly where I started: marooned, color-blind, memory-less. I’d be furious if I weren’t so fatigued.

“All right, Cee,” I mutter as the clouds move in—not enough to visibly dim the beach but enough to chill me. “So what if you’re back? You’re a pro. You know what to do. Climb the ridge. Find the pieces. Build. It’ll be easier than before. Trust me.”

The pep talk fails. I let out a strangled chuckle, self-pity tears leaking from my eyes. Who am I kidding? I spent months digging through rusted piles of junk, looking for a single propeller. There’s no workable metal left. Not enough for a whole boat.

Wiping my eyes, I look up, in the direction of the house.

No metal?

No problem.

“Strongly disagree,” intones U-me when she finds me crouched by the porch, prying at the wooden steps with my bare hands. “Strongly disagree. Strongly disagree.”

“For Joules’ sake, shut up.”

U-me goes silent.

I cover my face and exhale into my palms. “Sorry.” It’s an apology to U-me and to the porch. After everything M.M. has given me, this can’t be how I repay her. “I’m sorry.”

U-me doesn’t say anything, just rolls close.

Uncovering my face, I rise. “Stay,” I order, heading across the beach. U-me follows. “Really, stay! I’ll be back this time.”

But when I make it to the end of the sunken pier on the west side of the coast, I’m not so sure if I want to go back. Everything’s still gray, including the water lapping over the pier planks. I’ve stepped off the end before to swim. I don’t want to swim anymore. I want to sink. The memory of pain returns to my lungs, and I can almost feel them filling again. It’ll suck. A lot. But then things will go still. Tranquil. Easier than this.

Megajoules. What am I thinking?

I get to my knees and dunk my head into the water. The salt stings my lips. I part them to scream.

Nothing comes out.

No point in screaming if there’s no one to hear.

I say her name instead. Kay. I ask if she’s out there. If she knows I tried—really, really tried—to find her.

And if she’d forgive me if I don’t try again.

“Goodbye, Bert,” I say, releasing him.

The waves carry him out. For a second, regret fills me like wind in a sail. It blows me deeper into the water, after Hubert. I’ve changed my mind. I want to bury him. Keep him near, in case his other pieces wash up.

The ocean reclaims him before I can.

I stumble to a stop. Foam rises around my knees, pulls away. Sand slips out from under my feet. I keep my footing. I stay until the gulls circling me lose interest. They go home and I do too.

The fifty strides from shore to house feel closer to a hundred. My calves burn as I climb the sandy steps to M.M.’s porch, and as I clutch the rail for support, I find myself eye level with the tally marks, all 1,112 of them.

Now 1,113. I gouge it in with the metal scrap, drop it. It plinks onto the porch.

1,113 days.

Three years, and then some, on this island.

Now back to square one.

“This calls for a renaming of an era,” I say as U-me joins me. But life-after-life-after-Hubert sounds uninspiring, and frankly, not much has changed. The kitchen is the way I left it: empty jar on the counter, broken taro biscuits on the scuffed floor. I pick up the pieces, de-fluff them of mold, and begin refilling the jar. Don’t know why—pretty sure I can sicken and die from eating mold just as easily as not eating, but it’s something to do, and when I’m done refilling the jar, I wipe down the dust covering the countertops and check the water tank. The pipes run under the house and draw salt water from the sea, which is then passed through a solar-powered boiler that traps the steam and condenses it to fresh water. The system failing would seriously throw a wrench in my whole I-will-survive thing, so I’m relieved, as always, to find it still working. I turn on the valves and head to the bathroom to run a bath, shrug out of my sand-caked sweater and cargos as I wait for the porcelain tub to fill.

The water isn’t hot, but it’s warmer than the sea. Sighing, I slide under. My hair lifts from my scalp, buoyed. My thoughts jellify, and in the clear, semisolid silence, I find a memory.

“We shouldn’t,” Kay says under her breath. We’re standing in a glass elevator, facing forward, sandwiched between six other people. Light—dark—light—it flickers over our faces as we sink through the ground of one neighborhood and into the sky of the next. At each level, we stop, the curved doors hiss open, and people trickle off.

After a certain point, no one gets on.

People don’t know what they’re missing. As for the ones still on the elevator, I bet they’re all in their heads, reading the news in their minds’ eye or messaging colleagues. What’s the point of traveling somewhere in person if your brain is elsewhere?

But I shouldn’t judge so harshly. I know Kay would be devastated without her Intraface. I turn to her now that the elevator is emptier. “You’ve got to see it, love.”

She’s still in her school uniform, hair bobbed and unstyled. Freckles spangle her cheeks. Her mind is a diamond—unbreakable, and dazzling from every angle. Unlike me, she doesn’t need sequins to shine. Doesn’t need people or places to entertain her.

And now I can tell, from the slight wrinkle of her nose, that she doesn’t need this adventure, either. “I’ve seen the stratum,” she says.

“No, the ocean,” I quickly correct, then add, “Up close. It makes a world of difference.”

I’m worried Kay will think the idea is vapid.

The elevator comes to a stop.

Kay sighs. “All right. Just this once.”

Water streams down my temples. I squeeze my eyes shut and hold on to the image of Kay’s face, her mouth set straight like her bangs, her eyes black like coffee. I’d forgotten that.

Forgotten she had black-brown eyes.

And the ocean. In the memory, it felt like it was a stone’s throw away. Maybe it was right outside our door. Or city, floating above the sea like it does in my dreams.

I might be closer to Kay than I think.

My jaw tightens, my determination renewed. Tonight, I’ll rest. I’ll regroup. But tomorrow at the crack of dawn, we resume. Whatever it takes—another boat, another year—I’m going to find my sister. I can’t fail until I give up.

Water sloshes off me as I rise from the tub. I dry off with one of M.M.’s threadbare towels, monogrammed like so many other items in the house, and put on a chunky sweater with just two moth holes in the right sleeve. My stomach growling, I start for the kitchen before remembering I probably shouldn’t risk my second-chance-life on a moldy biscuit.

“Sorry, U-me.” She follows me into the living room. I tuck up onto the lumpy gingham couch beside the window, the carpet beneath it repurposed as my throw blanket. “We’ll have to make do without dinner tonight,” I say, swaddling myself in the coarse fabric. “I know it’s your favorite meal to watch me eat.”

“Agree.”

There might still be a couple of taro plants out back. Will have to check on them tomorrow, when I have the energy to worry about starving.

I settle in as night falls, resting my head against the couch arm with the window for a headboard. The blanket reeks of feet. Gross, but it reminds me of people, and when I’m lulled to sleep, I dream of them. Their voices fill the house, their laughter ringing, and over all the noise comes a knock. I open the front door.

Kay stands on the porch.

The dream is more vivid than usual. It’s like my brain knows I need the pick-me-up, and I curse when I’m jerked out of it—by what, I’m not sure, until lightning blinds the room. Thunder follows, rattling the house. Shadows, as if shaken loose, unfurl back over the walls.

I sit up in the darkness and wipe the drool off my chin. Can’t sleep anymore—can’t risk sleepwalking out into a storm. It’s pummeling the roof and pouring down outside when I look. The sea seethes, swollen and reaching for us. But we won’t be touched. I send my grateful regards to whoever designed M.M.’s house as thunder booms and my hand trembles, planted on the window. I lift it, palm chilled, and rub at my handprint with a sweater sleeve.

Freeze.

Bringing my nose to the glass, I squint through the smudge, and recoil at the next flash of lightning—not because of it, but because of what I’ve seen. It’s still there, even when the beach plunges back to black.

A body on the sand.