The Dead-Tossed Waves

by Carrie Ryan

  I jump forward, grabbing him. He pushes me back, his hands on my shoulders. “Please,” he says. “Please. I can’t take it if something happens to you.”

  I stretch out my fingers for his face but my arms aren’t long enough. I can’t reach him.

  “I’m going to take care of you, Catcher.” The fear in my voice burns into anger. “You should know that by now. I’m not giving up on you.”

  He closes his eyes, his breathing shallow, and I wonder if I should call out to the others for help. Or for a weapon.

  Finally he nods and I peel his shirt away from his body. I have to clench my teeth as the smell of blood hits the air. I tense, waiting for the Mudo on either side of the fence to react. Waiting for their moans to pitch higher, their scrambling to intensify. But nothing happens. Another reminder of how different Catcher is.

  How he can pass as one of them.

  I grab the canteen and dribble a few drops of water onto a scrap from my skirt and dab at his wounds. Then I hold the water to his lips and watch his throat as he drinks.

  “It’s the best I can do for now,” I tell him, wishing I could do more. Not just for the cuts on his back but for the pain I can see in his eyes. The guilt and self-loathing. “You have to promise me you’ll eat and sleep. Stop pushing yourself so hard. Stop punishing yourself.”

  He reaches out and touches my cheek, the pad of his thumb skimming the path of the tears I didn’t even realize I was crying. We stare at each other, all the eroding possibilities flickering between us.

  And then he pushes himself to his feet, wobbling just a bit but already looking stronger. I hold out a hand, press it to his chest to steady him. I suck in my breath as the heat of him invades my flesh. The familiarity of how hot his skin is, how his touch scorches. I can’t resist curling my fingers against him.

  He leans closer and my body mimics his until the barest of nothing separates us. The fire of him spreads through me. I raise my other hand to his chest and move it down and around to his side, feeling the ridges of his ribs. His muscles twitch under my touch.

  “Gabry.” His voice is low, a warning. I know he wants me to be the strong one; the one to step away and leave him behind. But I’ve never been the strong one.

  I press myself closer to him. Wanting to remember what it was like before. That moment—the instant—before everything changed.

  He raises his fingers to my lips. He traces them slowly. I reach out my tongue, touching his thumb. He groans surrender low in his throat and reaches his hand to the back of my neck, grabbing me and pulling.

  But then he stops just as his mouth almost reaches mine. He breathes through clenched teeth, panting with effort. We stand that way, so close to a kiss but the distance impossible. He whimpers but doesn’t come any closer. “Gabrielle,” he says, this time my name a plea.

  I close my eyes at the sound of it, at the feel of his anguish. I push my hand up his chest and along his throat and then I tilt his chin up, pressing my lips along his jaw. I want to prove to him that he’s alive. That he’s not a monster. That he’s still who he’s always been.

  He catches his breath again and again as I touch my mouth to his skin. It burns against my lips, the heat between us almost unbearable.

  He trails his own finger down my back, along the edge of my shoulder blade, trailing a line under my arm and along my chest.

  I close my eyes and press myself against him. “Catcher,” I whisper. Our hearts beat against each other, the blood rushing through our veins. I feel light and dizzy, as if the world’s spinning fast enough that it can change time—take us back to the before.

  Back before the Forest and Elias and my mother and Daniel and the Recruiters and Cira. Just one memory—one reminder—of what could have been.

  Suddenly his arms wrap around me, pulling me tight, his mouth at my throat, at the edge of my shirt, along my collarbone, at my ear.

  And then his lips almost close over mine but he stops. I lean in, trying to erase the space between us but it’s as if there’s too thick a wall of air between us. I can almost feel the outline of his lips; I can just barely feel their heat. But I can’t touch them.

  A wail begins to build inside me. We’re so close. We’re almost there. Just this once I want to kiss him the way we did before. Please, why can’t he understand this? That if our lips can just touch, if we can just replay that moment, that maybe we can close the gap between then and now. That we can take it all back.

  In that moment we are almost Catcher and Gabrielle, standing at the base of the coaster at the amusement park. There’s no infection. There was no change. I want to cry with the want and the need of it all, just beyond my reach.

  But then he pushes me away, snapping the possibility of the moment. He gasps for air as he stumbles backward. I feel the need, the overpowering desire begin to break through me. His face is awash with horror and shame. He raises his hand to his mouth, pushes his fingers to his lips. Lips that my mouth never touched. His other hand he holds out as if to ward me off. He’s shaking his head, tears already falling from his eyes, already burning down my face.

  “No,” he says as if he can take it all back.

  “Catcher,” I say. I step toward him, desperate. “It’s okay.” Please, I just need him to be who he used to be. Because that means I get to go back to being who I used to be as well.

  “No!” he screams. I wince at the sound of it. At the meaning of it. The finality. Birds explode from a bush in the Forest and he stares at them as they twist into the air. “It’s not okay,” he yells at me. “It will never be okay!”

  He lunges toward me and a spike of fear digs into my spine. He’s never been violent with me. He’s never raised his voice and I feel little and small and nothing in the face of it.

  He grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me against him, his face hovering over mine. I cringe, no longer sure of what he will or won’t do.

  “Don’t ever touch me again, Gabrielle,” he growls. The intensity in his eyes terrifies me. He shakes me and then pushes me back and I fall to the ground, dazed. He stands over me, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

  I throw an arm in front of me and cringe, his rage so palpable that I’m afraid he might lash out. He’s like a horrifying monster, nothing like the person I know. “Catcher, don’t!” I cry out, hoping that my voice will break through whatever’s happening to him.

  Catcher stops. His face drains of color. He takes a step back, his eyes dazed as if he’s just woken up. His mouth opens and closes. “Gabry,” he breathes. He shakes his head, the moment of vulnerability gone. His eyes go flat, empty. The muscles along his neck tremble as he swallows again and again.

  “You have to go tell the others,” he finally says, his voice soft. Everything from before—the rage and pain—gone. “The Recruiters are coming closer. They’ll make it through the village.” And then he turns and runs down the path, pushing against the fence for support when he stumbles.

  I sit on the ground feeling ashamed and alone and stupid and miserable. It tunnels inside me, spreading darkness like a cloud over the ocean. I want to drown in the feeling, curl up in it and let it pull me away. To wallow in the absolute emptiness. To know that I can’t be drained anymore, that I can’t be hurt. Because there’s nothing left.

  It’s not that Catcher can’t be with me. It’s that he doesn’t want to be with me. He used to make me feel like the most amazing person in the world and now he makes me feel like the worst. Like I’m not worth anything at all.

  Sobs suffocate me until I press my arm over my mouth and bite into my flesh, trying to hold it all in. But I can’t and I strain at the hurt of it all.

  I can’t go back to being who I was before. To wanting what I wanted before. It will never be the same. Catcher will never be better. He’ll always be infected. Cira will always be Mudo. I will never know my birth mother. Elias will always be elusive. Even my mother now has Harry.

  This stupid world keeps spinning and there’s nothing I
can do. And so I sit in the middle of the path and sob while the Mudo push against the fences moaning at me.

  “Catcher says the Recruiters are still following us,” I say as I approach the others. Harry and my mother stand in the middle of the path talking, my mother’s hand resting on Odys’s head. He leans against her leg with his tongue lolling. “So we should keep moving,” I add. I don’t tell them anything else about our encounter but Elias tilts his head and narrows his gaze at my red and puffy eyes.

  He kneels on the ground sorting through supplies and I walk past him, leaning down and grabbing my pack. He starts to reach a hand toward me but I sling the bag over my shoulder and evade his grasp. I don’t want him to see me like this: hurt and raw.

  “Gabry?” my mother asks, her voice filled with concern. But I just shake my head and keep going, needing to be alone inside myself. I don’t bother to wait for them to follow me. The morning sky breaks overcast, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. It doesn’t take long before the rain starts, turning the path to mud and causing the rocks to become slippery.

  I welcome the drudgery of it, the pinprick stings of raindrops on my face. It seeps through my clothes, trickles down my back like sweat. I wish it would wash me away. During the heavier spots of rain the Mudo wander away from the fences, their senses dulled by the water-laden air. I breathe a sigh of relief, not caring about the mud and the slosh of it so long as I get a reprieve from the endless moans.

  During the morning Elias tries to offer small kindnesses and I rebuff them all. He holds out his canteen when I reach for mine and I ignore it. When I stumble over a fallen branch in the middle of the path he holds out his hand to steady me and I don’t thank him. I can’t look at him or anyone else. I just focus on my feet, on moving forward. I try not to let the waves of desolation from this morning pull me under.

  The path begins to steepen as we near mountains and we slip in the mud as we climb our way up, always looking over our shoulders wondering how far behind the Recruiters are. How soon until they’ll catch up. Odys presses tight against my mother’s legs, his head hunched and coat dripping.

  We reach the top of the mountain only to find another, the path splitting and breaking and us pushing farther and farther. The dull afternoon turns dark early, the rain pounding harder and making it even more difficult to navigate. We slide down the hill and start climbing again. Gradually the rain slows and clears, the clouds drifting apart to show stars. With the rain stopped, around us the Mudo moan and wander back to the fences. Thick rivulets of water trickle down the path.

  The tenth time I trip over roots hidden by the dark and fall on my hands and knees in the mud, I don’t get up. Elias reaches to help me and I swat his hand away.

  “Gabry,” he says. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  I shake my head, damp hair clinging to my cheeks. I’m exhausted. Emotionally and physically.

  He reaches for me again. “We have to keep moving.”

  “Why?” I demand, so tired of caring.

  “The Recruiters, they’re still back there and—”

  “So what?” I’m still staring at the ground, at my fingers clinging to the muck. I want to give up. “Let them find us and take us. We can’t just keep running, following this path forever. We don’t know where it goes. We don’t even know if this path leads anywhere at all.”

  Elias starts to say something but then I hear him shift away. And I realize that a small part of me wanted him to demand that I push harder. Hoped that he’d give me a reason to keep going. I wonder numbly if he’s stopped caring about me as well. If today both men who meant something to me have decided I’m not worth it.

  Elias and Harry continue up the path a bit and my mother kneels next to me. “Come on, Gabrielle,” she says softly. “Elias is right, we should keep moving forward.” She places a hand over mine. “Trust me, we’ll be okay. We’ll find a way out of this.”

  I turn to look at her. “I’m not like you,” I tell her. “I can’t just keep going not knowing. I can’t just take it on faith like you did.”

  She opens her mouth to protest but I cut her off. I need her to know this about me. I need her to stop thinking of me as something I’m not. I’m tired of her thinking the best of me when I’ve done nothing to deserve it. “No,” I tell her. “You’ve always been like that. You’ve always known what you wanted.”

  I take a deep breath. “And I haven’t,” I finish weakly. I feel the tears pushing behind my eyes and I let them drip down my face, fall from my nose and chin. “I don’t know anything,” I tell her. “I used to know and then it all changed and you left me and I couldn’t figure it out.”

  I turn away, squeezing my eyes closed. “I wish I were like that,” I whisper. “I wish I could be like you.”

  She pulls me to her and I resist until she pulls harder and I fall into her lap, her arms tight around me. “I never knew,” she says, her lips moving against my temple. “I never knew what I wanted. I was always terrified.” I feel her body shudder as she draws in a shaky breath. “I was always confused and my mother was gone too and I didn’t know what to do without her.”

  “Then why did you leave me?” I ask. “If you knew what it was like why did you leave?” I pull my legs to my body, curling into a tight ball.

  She’s silent for a long time. Around us water drips from branches and slides down leaves. On the other side of the fence Mudo slip through the night, their moans heavy. “Because I’m not perfect, Gabrielle,” she finally says. “I make mistakes too. I made the mistake of leaving my friends behind in the Forest. I made the mistake of being selfish. I should have gone back for them earlier. I should have fought harder to find out where you came from.” She shrugs and I realize that I’m holding my breath.

  “You don’t have to try to be perfect, Gabrielle. And you need to stop thinking that I can’t make mistakes either. It’s exhausting to have everyone around you expecting you to be perfect. And it’s not fair that you put that pressure on yourself.” She reaches out and grabs my head in her hands. “You’re human, Gabry. We’re both just human. Nothing more. But also nothing less.”

  I nod, letting her words sink in. It’s as if she’s somehow given me permission to forgive myself, let go of my mistakes and fears. It’s a terrifying thought—I’ve held on to them for so long that it feels like a part of who I am.

  She smiles, the lines around her eyes crinkling. “Sometimes it’s the mistakes that turn out to be the best parts of life,” she says. “If I hadn’t made mistakes I would have stayed in the village when I was your age, I would have married Harry. I would have never found the ocean or traveled.”

  “Was it worth it?” I ask. “Was it worth leaving to find the ocean? Wouldn’t you have been happy if you’d stayed in the village? If you’d had your mother and been with Harry?”

  “Oh honey,” she says, her voice sounding desperate. “I can’t compare the lives I could have lived. One would have been comfort and security. But the other …” She sighs. “It was the most love and the most pain and the most wonder I could have ever known.”

  “But nothing changed in the end,” I protest, twisting until I can see her face. “You’re still here in the Forest. You’re still with Harry. It’s as if everything else—the ocean and me—never happened.”

  She smiles. “I used to think the ocean would be this untouched place,” she says, a note of regret in her voice. “Where there wouldn’t be death or Unconsecrated. And then when I got there and saw the dead on the beach …”

  She lifts one shoulder. “I realized that I had to accept the world the way it was. I realized that I had to move on.”

  “Did you?” I ask.

  She’s quiet a moment, thinking. “I don’t know. Eventually I did. Sometimes I still think back to that feeling, seeing the ocean spread out before me that first time. Knowing it was real and that I’d believed and it was true.

  “It changed everything, Gabrielle. Who I am changed. Who Harry is. If we had been
together from the beginning … it would be different. I don’t need Harry to complete me anymore, I just need him to be with me.”

  I turn my head until I can see the stars through a gap in the clouds, not sure I understand the difference.

  “You can’t give up, Gabrielle,” she says, her voice softer than the air. “Not on any of it. The path, your friends.” She pauses. “Your family.”

  I pull away from her, wrapping my arms around my legs and squeezing them against me. “You mean Annah,” I say.

  She leans forward. “I mean me,” she says. “I’m not a perfect person, Gabry. I’ve made mistakes and I’ll keep making them. Just like you’ll make mistakes. And so will Harry and Elias and Catcher.”

  I stare at my fingers, twisting them around each other, pushing at my nails and watching them turn white. I think about Elias and how he still blames himself for losing me. How he blames himself for losing Annah. How he seems so afraid of messing up with me again. And how I’ve been afraid to really let myself go with him. Terrified of making the wrong decision.

  My mother places her palm flat against mine. “It’s never been a perfect world. It’s never going to be. It’s going to be hard and scary and, if you’re lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring. But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good.”

  “What if there aren’t good parts?” I ask her, the tears creeping back up my throat. “What if I’ve already lived the good parts and there’s nothing left?”

  She laughs, throaty and deep. “Trust me when I tell you that there is plenty left,” she says. “You just have to take the risk sometimes in order to find them. Step outside what’s comfortable and safe.”

  I swallow, feeling my pulse flutter at the possibility of her words. “What if I’m too scared?”

  She looks at me for a long time. “I grew up hemmed in by fences. Everything we learned and knew was restricted. The Sisterhood knew there was a world outside our village but made us believe we were the last ones. They regimented every part of our lives—convincing us that to believe anything different from what they taught was to endanger our very existence.”