by Joan He
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.
THE COPTERBOT LANDED ON THE gray sands of the shore.
This was it. The island. There was the house up on the rocks, looking no different than it had since the sisters’ last visit four months ago. It just felt like a lifetime, and Kasey a changed person.
Or so she thought. Her vision of how this would go—starting with having the grief-stricken courage to expose herself—vanished like the fantasy it was when the copterbot door opened on Actinium’s side and her brain defaulted to logic mode. She caught his arm. “The radioaxons—”
“It’s safe.”
Safe. You’re safe with me, Celia had said, her expression harrowingly similar to Actinium’s as he went on to say, “I wouldn’t put you in danger,” before his gaze fell to Kasey’s hand, still on his arm.
She knew what he had to be thinking: She hadn’t reached for him when he’d cut himself. Hadn’t seemed nearly as concerned. But that damage was visible. Repairable. Radio-axon poisoning was neither and all the more dangerous for it.
Still, she forced herself to release him. Watched, helpless, as Actinium stepped into the open air in nothing more than the black button-down and jeans they’d purchased on stratum-25. He turned back to her, offering a hand. She didn’t take it. She told herself it was because of his bandages but in reality, she was afraid he’d feel her fingers shaking in fear for her own life despite losing one so much more vibrant than hers.
By herself, she climbed down, disoriented, as always, to enter a new world. That’s what Landmass-660 felt like to her. It didn’t technically belong to any outside territory, but it was as far “outside” as Kasey had ever gone, and nothing like the eco-city. The ground here was alive, sand shifting under her feet. The sky above was mold-gray and far deeper than the ninety meters allotted per stratum, and wind existed, exploding in erratic, sneeze-like bursts. Was it spreading radioaxons? Suppressing the thought and the panic it sprung, Kasey looked to the house on the beach as a figure emerged on its porch, waving at them. Actinium waved back, leaving Kasey no choice but to lift an arm too, trying to wave but not quite able to because this wasn’t right. She should have been here with Celia.
Waving at the woman in the iron-on pug sweater with Celia.
They’d met Leona upon docking Hubert at the pier. She’d shown them around the island, from the cove to the levee, a holdover from pre–arctic melt times, even though she’d been under no obligation to do so, or to treat the girls like her own. Yet she had, and as she jogged toward them, the sand beneath Kasey’s feet liquified and her mind sank. If it hadn’t been for Leona, Celia might not have returned to the island. Might not have snuck out, poisoned herself again and again—not that Leona could have known, which only angered Kasey more, to see the grief on the woman’s features when ignorance still protected her. She started to back away, but then Leona’s arms were around her, her voice by her ear—“Oh, Kasey”—and Kasey’s vision darkened, a memory dragging her under. Midnight. A knock on her door. A whisper—Still up? Her sister’s heartbeat against her brow. You belong here.
“The boat,” Kasey managed to choke out.
A nod against her shoulder. Leona released her, and Kasey noticed something troubling about the scene other than Celia’s absence from it.
“Where’s your mask?” Not just that, but antiskin. Goggles. Leona was wearing no protective gear.
“Didn’t Act tell you?” asked Leona. “The island’s safe.”
Act. The familiarity of the nickname did not slip by Kasey unnoticed, nor did the ease with which Leona took them both by the arms. As they walked down-shore, Kasey thought back to all the times Leona and Celia would chat on the couch while Kasey fiddled with Leona’s teachbot—a gift, Leona explained, from her sister. Had Kasey missed news of Celia and Actinium’s relationship then? Or had Celia deliberately kept it from Kasey because she knew Kasey’s shameful secret—that she had trouble remembering Celia’s boys?
Which was it? she wanted to ask Leona, followed by How is the island safe? But whatever questions she had were blasted away when they reached the cove and Kasey saw it.
On the rocks before they curved into the cove. Tugged out of the tide’s reach.
The boat hadn’t made a lasting impression before. Now the sight of it speared Kasey. She stopped in her tracks, her inner world grinding to a halt as the world outside continued to roar with the wind and the sea. A squeeze of her arm—“Take as long as you need; I’ll be in the house”—and Kasey found herself left by Leona. Alone with Actinium.
“I can wait at the house too.”
Kasey shook her head. Last time, she’d said Celia would have wanted him here, but the truth was, Kasey did too, needed Actinium here to remind her that love was pain, and pain was approaching the boat when all she really wanted to do was retreat from it. With every step over the brine-slick rocks, she realized she was no better than the people at her party. She half expected Celia to spring up from the hull and say “Surprise!” until the very end, when Kasey was practically upon the boat, the unequivocally, indisputably empty boat.
She crouched beside it. She refused to think of it by its painted name. To her, this was a thing, the hearse that’d delivered Celia to her watery grave. If it were sentient, she’d want to hurt it, but it wasn’t, and it was already damaged, bow dented and gunwale half gone, evidence of the abuse it’d suffered at sea. Had Celia suffered? Had she known hunger? Thirst? Or had it been quick? Kasey hoped it was. Hoped it was the death Celia had wanted, as foreign as the concept seemed. As the waves shattered on the rocks around her, she felt Actinium’s presence at her back. He remained standing. Kasey appreciated that. If he knelt too, and contributed his grief to the space, she’d actually drown.