by Lydia Kang
But his clothes, his bags, his heart—gone.
I fiddle with the weather radio, but it discusses high pressure and sunshine. Not soothing.
I take the rock cairns from my bedroom and remake them, but their balance doesn’t pacify me the way they always have before.
I know what Mother is thinking. It’s better this way. Now I have November to myself. I have the cabin. Father will be back December 1 so we can hide on the island together until spring. He will bring with him packages and supplies to keep himself fed and taken care of. As for me, when I’ve tried not to kill in Novembers past, I’ve become wilder in some ways. Father says “less predictable,” which, for a creature like me, is simple chaos. But maybe I can control this.
There is only one way to know.
I go to the bedroom and take my nightgown off. In the drawer, I pick out the things that Father bought for me. Jeans, a little too tight, but they’re the only ones that fit me. A camisole, waffled long underwear, and a flannel button-down on top. Two pairs of wool socks.
I rush around the cabin, whose rafters practically hum with excitement at my activity. It’s used to having me sit for hours, meditating on a piece of lint, organizing cairns. Now I’m sweeping all the leftover camp food into a backpack. I stuff other things in there, like scissors and a fish fillet knife sheathed in a kitchen towel. I bring the big flashlight, Father’s store of batteries, soap, the remaining water purifier, and every box of matches in the kitchen drawers. Father has a tent rolled up in a sleeve of nylon, and I attach it and a sleeping bag to the back of the backpack.
I try to think like Father. What would he do to care for me? I make one last trip to the bathroom and put in toilet paper and the bottle of castile soap, and open the medicine cabinet. The bottles in there make my nose curl from their bitterness. There are so many that Father has needed—for pain that I never feel, for infections that I never get, for sleeplessness that doesn’t bother me. I scoop them up and add them to the bag, too. I put in four tubes of toothpaste and several toothbrushes.
Finally, I root out the radio from its nest by the fireplace. My good friend. It has never been outside these walls, and I wonder what needs it has. Perhaps like other cared objects, like human babies, it might need clothes. I swaddle it in a towel before packing it safely.
At the door, I put on Father’s warmest coat, three hats, two scarves, and hiking boots. The enormously heavy pack goes on my back, and I pause before leaving. The wind hisses from the outside. I ignore it.
I sniff the air, deciding on my path. I’ll find Hector. And we’ll go as far to the interior of the island as we can, away from the water. Mother will be quieter there, and her influence dulled. It will be much harder to tempt me back into the water this way, and I can concentrate on Hector. We’ve had a conversation that’s only just begun. And I’m finding myself anxious, for the first time in my life, to finish it.
The cabin beams at me. It will be lonely without human occupancy, but the door lightly bumps my lumpy backside, as if to say, Truly, the boy doesn’t understand what you’ve done. What you meant to do. Go fetch him, Anda.
So I go.
Chapter Thirty-Three
HECTOR
I take the Greenstone Ridge Trail toward the other end of the island, but I feel so awful that I can barely manage two miles before I have to stop and camp. I’ve already hiked close to six miles since this morning. I’ve eaten nothing all day. I almost died in the lake. My head is pounding, I’m dizzy and shivering, and my throat feels like I ate a dozen razor blades. I don’t know how much more I can take today.
Just off the trail, there’s marshland that’s too wet to camp in. I look warily up at the gray skies darkening from the coming twilight. If Anda were going to follow me, she’d have found me by now. I’m glad she hasn’t. I’ve tried not to think about her, and that dead guy, but it’s impossible. Finally, I find a little area on a rise that should do.
The ground is still wet and it’s going to make me miserable, because I don’t have a tent. The next formal camping ground is miles away. There might be wooden shelters there that would keep me off the ground, but I’m too exhausted to take another step. I just pray that it doesn’t rain tonight.
The wood and sticks around me are drenched. I won’t be able to make the roaring fire that my chilled body is desperate for. My hands shake when I set up the tiny camping stove tripod and light the white fuel underneath. I have to start over again when the whole thing falls because one of its tripod legs bent in my bag. The fuel canister spills half its contents onto the mossy ground.
Great.
I try again. This time, it’s stable. I put my hands around the flickering bluish-orange flame. It’s warm, but I need an oven to get warm, not this tiny stove. I take some water and cook up a packet of freeze-dried chili mac n’ cheese. It smells vaguely sour, like rotten cheese and old feet. I’m not hungry, but I have to try to eat.
When it’s done cooking, I take a taste. It’s actually not that bad, but it’s not good, either. I’ve eaten about half of it when I puke again.
This is not good.
If I can’t keep food down, I’ll get sicker. I can tell my temperature is higher because I’m shivering like a wet dog. I knew when I came to this island, there might be a chance I’d freeze to death, but not like this. There’s some Tylenol in my bag, and I pop that.
I get into my sleeping bag, boots and all, ten feet away from the messy, splattered pile of Hector puke. My teeth bang against each other like saved pennies in a jar. My mind is in a million places at once. What if I don’t make it to Rock Harbor, the most likely place I’ll find more supplies? What if Anda finds me and decides to drag me into the lake and finish me off? What if my uncle is out there right now, searching for me with the police?
I can’t go back.
I refuse.
I need to focus. I need to shut everything out.
The knife is still at my waistband, and I unsheathe it after a few fumbling attempts. Luckily, I don’t need steady hands for this. Good thing, since both my arms are trembling from the effort. My heart races in anticipation. I touch the blade to my left arm, near my oldest cigarette burns.
The pain is white-hot before it turns to a pulsating burn. My heart goes so fast that my eyes blur. The line of red on skin becomes harder to focus on. The knife drops to the damp soil next to me.
There is nothing but the pain.
It is a relief to have nothing but this one pure thing.
Chapter Thirty-Four
ANDA
It’s dark when I find him.
He’s lying in a sleeping bag just twenty feet off the Greenstone Ridge trail. The rank odor of regurgitated sick issues from nearby. The moon is low, rising quickly, as if to warn me that I don’t have much time. His backpack is open, its contents spilled out messily. Hector is not messy by nature. In our cabin, he left things in neat piles, always very careful not to leave traces of himself behind. It was the actions of the fearful, keeping himself restricted and contained for the sake of survival.
And then I see the blood.
Hector is lying faceup, his knife a few inches away from his open fingertips. The edge of the blade is darkened, and dried blood crusts on the skin of his exposed arm. A line seven inches long runs from midwrist up to the crook of his elbow. The blood rivulets show that the cut was deep.
No. Not again.
I drop to my knees next to him in the darkness, the rain-drenched soil seeping moisture through my jeans. His unconsciousness is so deep that his eyes are unmoving beneath closed eyelids, and he does not stir when I touch his face. The blood on his arm is dried. He stopped bleeding some time ago. His skin scalds with fever, but his hands are icy cold. I slip my hand under his shirt, against his chest. His heart patters against his rib cage, a hummingbird’s tap-tap-tap. It doesn’t beat with potency anymore.
I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but the island has taken its toll. Since the first day on the ferry, he’s
lost a lot of weight, maybe fifteen or twenty pounds. His cheekbones are sharper angles, his arms more spare and wiry. Malnutrition is making his skin color uneven, and there are ridges at the base of his nails.
The island has been consuming him.
I’ve been consuming him, and I couldn’t see for my hunger.
I made my choice in the water hours ago. I won’t have this happen. I’m used to getting my way, even with the alterations that Father has begged me for. But this time, it’s different. In turning my back on that part of myself, I have to do things differently. Hector’s way. Father’s way.
My heart starts to hammer inside my chest, almost as fast as Hector’s, because I have to fix him. I don’t have brews and potions, like the fairy tales say I do. I only know the natural order of things. Chaos. Disintegration. Rebirth.
I glance at the metal camping things near Hector’s tent; my mind goes blank. I don’t know what they are or what to do with them. Metal and mechanical things, if they’re not meant to be sunk, are not part of my language.
I rummage inside my pack and pull out bottle after bottle from our medicine cabinet.
Aspirin, 325 mg
Amoxicillin-Clavulanate, 875 mg/125 mg
Omeprazole, 20 mg
Triamterene-Hydrochlorothiazide, 37.5 mg/25 mg
I don’t know what any of them are or what they treat. I look at Hector, whose breathing has become more shallow even as I watch him. I look at the orange pill bottles whose tops I can’t manage to pry off, and the cooking camp set I don’t know how to use.
For the first time in my life, I am terrified.
...
It takes a while to make the fire. I don’t bother with the mysterious metal instruments for cooking. Instead, I gather several short branches, pile them together, and concentrate. I pull the moisture away until the wood becomes brittle, and then light a match to the curly pieces of bone-dry bark. A little wind gives the flames something to inhale, and soon the fire is crackling. I put a bowlful of water and salty beef soup powder on the center of the fire, upon two thick branches that won’t burn through quickly. When the soup boils, I let the air flow calm so the heat is steady. The smoke rises, and I make sure that the wind tows it away from our camp.
Hector still doesn’t stir. Food alone won’t help him, not with this fever. I decide that the pill bottle labeled “amoxicillin-clavulanate” must be an antibiotic, because it sounds like penicillin—a fungus-grown medicine. It makes sense to me. So many things in nature will kill other things to survive. How clever to use that viciousness to fight other wars.
I smash the pill bottle open because the top refuses to be pried off. It says “PUSH AND TWIST” but nothing I do makes it budge. It says childproof. It is witchproof, too, apparently. It says to take one pill every twelve hours. I take one chalky tablet and crush it to a powder using a titanium spoon, then mix in a portion of the broth.
“Hector,” I whisper. He’s still quite a bit larger than me, but I manage to pull him into my lap so his head is slightly raised. “Hector, drink this.”
His eyelids flutter, then shut. I take a spoonful of the liquid with the pulverized medicine and try to pour a few drops into his slightly opened mouth. It goes in. He doesn’t swallow. I pour a little more in. This time, he gags, coughs, sputters. He grimaces at the bitterness, but he swallows some of it. I wipe his chin and try again. Some of it ends up in his stomach.
A few hours later, when the moon is high overhead, I give him the rest. This time, he actually holds a trembling hand to the cup and drinks the whole cupful down thirstily before sagging back into my arms.
When the sun rises, I take a cloth and wipe down his face. His breath is rank, and a sickness seems to ooze from his pores when he sweats, but his heart is beating ever so slightly slower. I give him another half cupful of medicated soup. He drinks most of it this time, followed by water. The clouds linger overhead, watching us, but I shoo them away. When night comes again, he will have gotten three doses of medicine. I suspect it’s working, simply because Hector isn’t dead. At least, not yet.
I eat and drink, too, because I must do something about my growling stomach and dry throat. We are down to only three granola bars and one packet of freeze-dried chicken stew, but I try not to think of what this means.
On the second morning, he wakes without me urging him to drink. His eyes are not as sunken into his orbits as they were yesterday, and his lips are peeling. The cut arm has a proud scab covering the wound now. There is a slight bloom to his cheeks that wasn’t there before, and it’s not because of fever.
“Hector,” I say.
“Where am I?” he rasps, blinking sleepily.
“Here, with me.”
His lips tighten and stretch, either a grimace or grin, I can’t tell. The result is that his bottom lip cracks and a bead of red forms. Perhaps I answered the question wrong. He winces, and my nostrils flare at the scent of blood, but I push away the longing within.
“Anda…”
“I know you said never to touch you. But you were sick.”
“I…”
“And I know that you don’t want to be with me, but I wanted to help.”
He struggles to sit up. I’m afraid to read his face and his revulsion, what he must think of me. He blinks hard, trying to reconcile himself to being upright instead of prone for so many hours.
I was terrified of losing him thirty-six hours ago. Now I find that I’m terrified of the words he’s about to say. He exhales, as if there’s too much already to be said. Weariness holds his shoulders down. After a few minutes, he finally speaks.
“Anda…”
“Yes, Hector.” I look at him expectantly.
“I really have to piss.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
HECTOR
It’s not the most glamorous thing to say when you wake up in the arms of a stunning girl. A girl who does unspeakable things.
Anda leaves me so I can stagger to some trees and relieve myself. When I stagger back, I’m more than happy to be lying down again. My head swims and my mouth tastes like a dead fish, but I’m alive. Barely.
I close my eyes, and she sighs, as if relieved that I’m going back to sleep. But I can’t let it go.
“You sank that ship, didn’t you?” I say quietly.
She’s quiet for a long time. I wait. I have nothing but time, after all. Finally, she whispers her answer.
“Yes.”
“And that man, you drowned him.”
Another long pause. “Yes.”
“There was another person in the water, an old lady. What happened to her?”
“I let her survive. The Coast Guard rescued her.”
My eyes quickly snap to her face, searching. “You did? Why?”
Several emotions flit over her face. Panic is the overriding one. But sadness and confusion are there, too. Her mouth opens to answer, but she says nothing, instead picking up an aluminum mug at her side. “You should drink more water, Hector. It will make you feel well.”
I sag back onto my sleeping bag. There are a lot of things I want to say, but right now, none of them include asking Anda to go away. I love being alive too much for that. And as much as she may be a monster of some sort, she can’t completely devalue life, right? After all, she just saved this pathetic one.
The last time I got this sick was five years ago. Strep was going around and gave me a raging fever and throat that killed so bad, I couldn’t swallow anything solid. Dizziness forced me to stay in bed for days. I remember being fed oatmeal from a spoon. I remember the taste of the nasty, bubble gum–flavored antibiotic syrup, and my uncle on the phone with the pediatrician every day. He took a week off from work to make sure I didn’t croak.
I remember these things, but I don’t want to. Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something really wrong by running from him. But I have to run. All the other memories tell me to.
In the next few hours, my fever returns along with that warped
feeling in my brain. Anda makes me take an antibiotic pill and offers me bites of a granola bar between her fingers. There’s an aluminum cup of hot water, too.
I take the pill, but when she offers the food, I don’t open my mouth. I don’t touch the mug of steaming liquid.
Her face contorts with confusion, corrupted within my fever. It’s a grimace. Before Anda, I refused to take drinks or food from people. I didn’t trust them. Now I can’t trust her anymore.
“It’s only food, Hector.”
But I turn away, feeling the sweat drip off my temples.
Anda leans closer. “It’s not poisoned. Poisoning is complicated. There are far easier ways to kill people.” She looks down. “I won’t do that. It’s why I’m here. I came to help you and to get away from her.”
Her. I don’t know who she’s talking about, but I can sense that she means what she says.
“I don’t want to kill, Hector,” she says. “Not anymore.”
“I’m not afraid of dying,” I whisper, eyeing the mug of water.
“I know that. So what are you afraid of?”
I close my eyes.
...
My body is such a damned sellout. I get so delirious that eventually, I don’t turn away the food.
I’m so used to taking care of myself. Of making my own dinners (frozen, but still), of earning money, of making my own scars. Being completely cared for is altogether alien. And wonderful. And awful, all at the same time. Awful, because it doesn’t seem real, or that it will last. I keep thinking that at any moment, this will all disappear, and I’ll be back in Duluth.
Or that I’ll be back in that lake.
I dream of weird things. I see my father, my uncle, and my mother, all discussing me while sitting around the fireplace. When I yell at them to shut the fuck up, they ignore me. Even in my dreams, some things don’t change.