Locked

by Parker Witter

  “I have something for you,” he told me. Without letting go of my hand, he gave me the package. It was small, wrapped in brown paper. I opened it and felt something catch in my throat. It was a glass bottle. Inside was a single scroll.

  “It’s a love letter,” he said.

  I turned the bottle over in my hands. I stuck my pinkie in the opening—too small to pull the paper back out.

  “I can’t read it,” I said.

  Ed put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “You don’t need to,” he said. “I’m always going to be here to tell you.” He kissed me then, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, the glass bottle dangling from my fingers.

  “What does it say?” I asked, my lips still on his.

  “That you are the most intelligent, kind, sweet, beautiful person I have ever met and that I love you.”

  I smiled. I kissed him. Sometimes, when I was with Ed, I would see myself through his eyes, and it would feel like the most spectacular, magnificent high. Like living at the tippy-top of a roller coaster, the whole world below me.

  “This is a crappy present,” I told him.

  He raised his eyebrows, his arms still around me. “I thought it was romantic,” he said. “But if you hate it, I’ll just—” And then he took it and tossed it out to sea. I watched the splash of water as it landed.

  I hit him. “Ed!” But he was smiling, and so was I.

  “It wasn’t really for you,” he said. “That was just a gesture of my love. But this is.” Then he took a small tissue-paper parcel out of his ginormous shirt pocket.

  I unfolded it in my hands. Inside was a necklace with a bottle cap attached as a charm.

  “So you’ll always remember,” he said, “that somewhere in that giant, wide ocean is the story of how much I love you.”

  I looked up at him. He was beaming.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, because I didn’t know what to say. I just remember, in that moment, feeling like I didn’t deserve this. Like I didn’t deserve him.

  He motioned for me to turn around, and then he slipped the chain onto my neck. It was cool, and I touched the bottle cap where it landed, in the little pocket between my collarbones.

  I’d worn it every day since he gave it to me, but the cap fell off in the crash. It’s somewhere in the ocean now. I keep touching the empty gold chain. It feels heavier than it used to—even though there is something missing.

  Sa-we and Asku and I make food together—they have taught me how to create that patty out of millet and wheat. Food is scarce. Asku has told me, through Noah, that the island is struggling. The population is dwindling. He and his wife are trying to have a baby, and can’t. Asku is teaching me some of his native tongue while I teach him English. We start small and simple. I name an object, and then he does the same. He laughs when I say both the words he does, and the English versions. “Bowl,” he repeats after me, and then bursts into giggles.

  At night, Noah and I sit underneath the stars. Tonight is warm, and the moon is so full the beach is lit up. It reflects against the water until the entire ocean looks like liquid silver. I’m stretched out in the sand, and Noah lies next to me. I can feel his breathing, catch the rise and fall of his chest. We’re talking about family, and I ask about his parents. He’s never told me before what really happened. Ed was the one who said Noah’s dad was drunk, that his parents swerved into oncoming traffic.

  “I just remember being at Ed’s,” he said. “And his parents telling me I couldn’t go home.”

  I flip up onto my elbow to face him. His blond hair has gotten longer since we’ve been here and is now in even stronger contrast to the tribesmen—a difference made possible by his blond-haired, blue-eyed mother. “Everyone always said I took after her,” Noah told me last week. “Ironic now, huh?”

  “I don’t remember it,” I say. “The accident. I mean, we knew each other then.”

  “We were young,” he says. “Ten. It was a long time ago.”

  “You never talk about it,” I say.

  “I don’t really know what to say. Sometimes I feel like I never even knew them.”

  I think about my mom. How cancer made her different in the end. How it wasn’t really her anymore. It’s hard to remember what moments to hold on to. “I know,” I say.

  Noah rolls over to face me. “It’s the past,” he says.

  He holds my gaze and something passes between us—the knowledge that he’s not talking about just our parents, but maybe everything. Our whole life might be there now, too. In the past. A place we can no longer get back to.

  “Ed would always tell me not to talk to you about it,” I say. “He wanted to protect you.”

  Noah smiles, but it’s small, sad. “He was always doing that. Even when I didn’t want it. He wanted to protect both of us. He thought he could.”

  I nod. I think, again, about the fight I saw the two of them have, but before I can ask Noah about it, he reaches his hand across to my shoulder. My breathing stills. My whole body feels like it’s on red alert.

  “Can I ask you something?” he says.

  I swallow.

  “Why weren’t you sitting with him?”

  It takes a moment for me to realize that he’s talking about the plane. How Ed was up front, next to Maggie, and I wasn’t with them. I flip onto my back. His hand falls. I look up at the stars. “We got into a fight,” I say. As the words come out, I feel the familiar knot in my stomach, the one that winds like a rope all the way up to my heart. “It was my fault.”

  “What happened?” Noah’s voice is at my ear. Soft. Understanding.

  “He want—” I catch myself, not sure which tense to use. “He wants to go to the same school, and I—” I exhale. I blink back tears. “I didn’t want to talk about it then.”

  I sit up. Sand pours off my back. “You know Ed; he’s such a planner. He has everything figured out.”

  Noah smiles. His blue eyes light up in the sand. “I know,” he says. “He always goes after what he wants. Do you remember class president?”

  I laugh, thinking about how Ed went after the leading office the second we got to high school. EDUCATION, as the flyers read. There was no question he’d win, but there was a moment when it got really close. Kendall Highdell started giving out candy and promising open pool parties at her parents’ summer house. It was hard to top that, especially when she made the offers in a crop top. But Ed wasn’t about to give up. He spent the entire week before the election figuring out how, and then he pooled his savings and bought a Starbucks cart for campus the day before and the day of the election. Kids like candy, but there is nothing like a Frappuccino to really seal the deal.

  I remember the three of us—Ed, Noah, and I—sat on the steps of the quad after he won, hopped up on caffeine and his victory.

  “He loves you,” Noah says, sitting up. “He always wanted you to know it.”

  “I did,” I say. I shake my head. “I do.”

  Noah reaches across and takes my hand. “You’ll see him,” he says. “Both of them. I’ll get us off here.”

  He squeezes. I squeeze back.

  I suddenly remember the night Ed and I got together. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it a lot, I have. I’ve been thinking about it practically since it happened. It had been a rocky few months. My mother died, then my dad remarried. Ed was there for me, and Noah, too. I’ve never said this to anyone before. I don’t even admit it to myself anymore. But the night Ed came to me, Noah was with him, and I thought, when I opened the door, that Noah was coming to tell me he wanted to be more than friends.

  It wasn’t until Ed opened his mouth and said we had to talk—that he wanted to tell me something—that I knew where it was headed. Where we all were.

  It was stupid to think otherwise. Noah would never have brought Ed. Noah wouldn’t have made it about the three of us. “I want this to be okay between us all,” Ed had said. Noah had stood there, a stiff smile on his face, gripping the flowers Ed h
ad given him to hold.

  “What are you thinking about?” Noah asks me now.

  “Nothing,” I say, but I’m remembering the way my chest deflated right down to my feet. I’m remembering how, even when I was falling in love with Ed, it felt like my heart was breaking because it wasn’t Noah—Noah didn’t love me.

  He leans in close, and for a moment I think about spilling, about telling him everything. But then he says, “Should we go to sleep?”

  “Sure.”

  We stand up and dust ourselves off. We walk up the sand trail to the house. I rinse my feet off in the basin by the door and hand the ladle to Noah when I’m done. We go inside. It’s so dark here, so quiet. So still. There is absolutely nothing except the sound of our own breathing.

  I’m walking around him to the bedroom when my arm brushes up against his back. Neither one of us moves until I spin, slowly, to face him. I can see just the outline of his features inside—the moonlight isn’t nearly as bright when it’s blocked by canvas.

  Without even thinking, I trace my hand down his arm. The need to be close to him is so strong, so palpable, that I can no longer fight it with my own thoughts. I feel him suck in his breath. “August…” he says. The same way he did in the car after sophomore formal.

  But something is different this time. Ed isn’t at a conference; he’s in another universe, maybe even dead. And the reality of that, of how isolated we are, makes me feel closer to Noah than ever before.

  “I need you,” I say. “I just…”

  His arms come down hard around me and then he’s lifting me off my feet. My hands loop around his neck, and I feel my chest on his—heart to heart—separated by so much and so little. He presses his lips to my ear. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m not leaving you. I promise.”

  I inhale him close to me. My hands reach for him, to pull him closer, but I feel his resistance. He sets me down. In the moonlight I can see how much effort it takes. How fast he’s breathing. “Not now,” he says. It’s firm. Definitive. “You should sleep.”

  My body is vibrating, buzzing so loudly from the shock of his lack of contact. Blood pounds in my temples so strong that I can’t even form a retort. I can’t try to convince him.

  And then he walks down the hallway and into the living room. I just stand there. Caught between the past and this—whatever this is. Him.

  Chapter Seven

  My body feels awake and alive before I even open my eyes. I pop out of bed and pull a canvas sarong over me. I go into the living room, then out onto the deck, but Noah is nowhere to be found.

  I grab an apple from a basket and sit out in the sun. The apples are rosier than they have been—maybe Noah healed them yesterday. There are green beans there, too, and I take a handful, snapping off the ends and stuffing them into my mouth. They taste decadent. Like chocolate. I laugh out loud and then hear movement behind me.

  I turn to find Noah, two spears in hand. A wide smile on his face.

  “Come on,” he says. “It’s time you put yourself to use. I’m going to teach you how to fish.”

  “Seriously?” I say, but I know I’m doing a terrible job of hiding my delight. Spending the whole day with him sounds like heaven.

  Noah gives me a lopsided smile. “I think it’s time you chipped in. I’m tired of doing all the heavy lifting. It has been a week, and you have not once killed what you’ve eaten.”

  I roll my eyes and dust myself off. “Let me just change,” I say.

  I put on my shorts from the plane. Luckily my bra had nearly no damage, and I slip it on under a canvas top. No shoes, but my feet are adjusting to the rocks. The first few days they were tender and sore and bruised, but I think they’re developing an extra skin—leathery, thick.

  I’m just about to meet him outside when I realize there are no mirrors here. I haven’t seen my reflection in what feels like forever. Strangely, I don’t miss it.

  “Ready,” I say as I round the corner.

  Noah’s eyes trace up my legs, and I feel my whole body flush with the memory of last night—his arms. His breath on my neck. The low hum of his voice as he promised not to leave me. Then: how he said “Not now.” For the first time, I realize it wasn’t a no.

  I can’t help but feel a little dizzy. And I know it’s not just the sun as we walk. Noah moves quickly, but this time I can keep up. He takes me back to the river we climbed to our first day here. The one I got sick at. Immediately he bends down and scoops up water, drinking deeply. I scream out.

  “What?” he says, racing over toward me, water dripping off his chin. “What happened?”

  “Noah,” I say. “We can’t drink from there. It almost killed me.” I check his face frantically. Already one foot ready to find Asku and get those herbs.

  “Oh,” Noah says. “That.” But he’s biting his lip, a half smile on his face.

  “What?”

  “That wasn’t the water. That was…me.”

  “You?” I cross my arms over my chest.

  “You had a bad reaction to my healing powers.” He makes air quotes around the last two words. “Apparently I did not do it entirely right. I’m learning now.” He looks at me sideways.

  “Thanks for almost killing me,” I say, charging past him and into the stream.

  “Saving you,” he corrects, following me.

  The water is shallow, only coming up to my knees, and it’s crystal clear. I dangle my fingers in it, bring a cup up to my lips.

  “I promise,” Noah says, seeing me hesitate. “The water is fine.”

  I drink and remember how it felt that first night, right before I got sick—delicious, chilled heaven.

  “Here,” Noah says. He holds out a long spear—a sharpened stick with a piece of metal at the end of it.

  I shake my head. “I’m not going to be able to do this,” I say.

  Noah told me how hard fishing is. How few fish there are. He’s only caught two in a week and has been going every day.

  He cups my elbow with his palm. It’s cool from the water. “You will,” he says. “Trust me.”

  He sets his pack down on the rocks and takes off his shirt. I notice the outline of his torso—the way his muscles move like waves down his back.

  “You ready?” he asks, turning to me.

  “Yeah.”

  He stands perfectly still until the water stops moving around him. He holds a spear out in his hand—hovering there, like a bird about to dive for prey, and then he plunges it into the water. I gasp, jump back. The stream heaves and sighs with movement and then he pulls out the spear, and sure enough, stuck to the end, is a foot-long silver fish.

  “Impressive,” I say.

  Noah smiles. “I’ve been practicing. There are more every day.” He glances at me when he says it, then back at the water.

  I think about all the days this week he’s spent with the tribesmen, the chief. Learning how to be one of them. I think about how things are changing here. Something flares in my stomach—some specific fear—but I push it back down where it came from.

  Noah hands me the spear. “Your turn.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I’m looking at the fish’s bloody carcass. “I think maybe this isn’t my thing.”

  “Is eating your thing?”

  I roll my eyes and take the spear. Noah comes around behind me. “Here,” he says. He places his hands on my waist. His touch feels electric, and my knees buckle under the contact. “Hold it this way.”

  He takes the spear and reorients it in my hand, then mimics the motions. Whoosh.

  “You have to be sharp,” he says. “Quick movements, or you won’t catch them in time.”

  His hand finds my back. “See that?” he whispers, pointing downward. I try, but it’s hard to focus on anything with him this close to me.

  I follow his gaze to our feet under the water. Three fish swim by lazily. I nod. “Yeah.”

  I hold the spear low, and then plunge it down when the fish angles left. I close my eyes, bu
t I feel nothing at the end—just space and rocks.

  “Good try,” Noah tells me. He takes his hand off my back and comes to stand next to me. “I think you’re hesitating,” he says. “When you see him, you gotta go for it. One split second of fear, and he’s gone for good.”

  “I don’t blame him,” I say under my breath, and Noah eyes me.

  “Just focus,” he says. He takes a deep breath; I follow. Exhale. “Good,” he whispers. “Now what do you see?”

  I look down. About two feet over from me is a large silvery fish, about twice the size of the one Noah caught. I don’t think. I just lift my spear up and stab. But this time the tip is not met with space and rock. I feel it make contact with something spongy. And then the spear starts to shake in my hand. The fish is trying to squirm away. I’ve caught one.

  “I have him!” I scream. Noah and I both look down at the fish. His tail is thrashing furiously, the spear stuck in his side. I have a flash of myself on the beach—the piece of metal in my ribs.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Noah. I pull the spear out gently, and the fish swims away, a trail of blood behind him.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Noah says. He turns to me, his hands on his hips. “There goes dinner.”

  I point to his two fish on the rocks. “What about those?”

  “Hey,” he says. “Don’t you think it’s kind of unfair I have to be the one who kills, while your soul remains untarnished?” He tilts his head to the side, and I can see him smiling. I’ve forgotten how much we used to laugh together. Before things got so serious. Before my mom. Before Ed.

  Noah was never a super-easygoing guy—not to the outside world. To the outside world he had to keep it together. He had to look out for himself. But with us he was different. He could relax. Once, a few years after he started living with his aunt—we must have been about twelve—we were all over at Ed’s house. We were watching some movie; I don’t remember what. All I remember is that Noah kept doing an impression of the main actor. He had us crying with laughter. And after, when we regained our breath, Ed had said, “I wish other people knew you.”