Locked

by Parker Witter

  I open my mouth to say something, protest further, but before I can, he’s stood up. “Get some sleep,” he says. “The roof is fixed.” He smiles at me, but it’s small, sad. “I’ll be right here.”

  I turn, walk back into the bedroom, and climb into bed. I can’t sleep, though. I just toss and turn thinking about Noah in the other room. How a few hours ago he was here, with me, and now we’re further from each other than we ever have been before. And for the first time since we got here, I feel 100 percent completely and positively alone.

  Chapter Eight

  I wake up early, before sunrise. Or I should say, I give up on sleeping then. I creep out of the room and look down the hall—Noah is in a corner, curled up, sleeping soundly. I walk past the kitchen, onto the balcony. The sun sets in this direction, so I know I won’t see it rise. I’ve learned that the sun rises in the east, and I know that we’re facing west. What are we looking at? What is here that we can’t see? And then: How close is the shore?

  I drop my legs over the ledge of the balcony, let my feet dangle. The blanket I left last night is almost completely dry, and I pull it off the rail and slide it around me. I look down to the beach. The light is only beginning to sneak into the day, and everything is so still, so quiet. So incredibly beautiful.

  “Why don’t you want me here?” I whisper, but there is no answer. The trees rustle slightly in the wind. The waves continue to come—slow, steady, eternal.

  I think about everything beyond the horizon. Maggie. Ed. If they’re even still alive. And what if they did survive? What if they were rescued unharmed? What do they think now? Are they still looking with crews in the sea? Are they still trying to find my body floating among the pieces of metal?

  Thinking about Maggie is almost too much to bear. If she’s alive, I’ve left her alone with Dad. What will she do? Who will she go to when she meets a boy? When she falls in love? Who will hug her when she gets an A or has a bad dream? Dad isn’t like that. She doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve to be alone.

  I hear the door open and footsteps on the deck. I know Noah is standing behind me, but I don’t turn around. I’m suddenly angry—it’s irrational, but he saved me, he brought me here. And now he’s leaving me alone on this island. He’s leaving me alone even though he’s right here with me.

  He clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. “You’re up early.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I say. The sun is coming up now. Things are beginning to be illuminated around us.

  He comes to sit down. I feel him next to me and close my eyes against the memory of last night—his lips on my neck, his chest pressed up against mine.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “There are just some things I have to figure out.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I hug my knees into my chest. “I got that part.”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shake him off. “Don’t,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” I turn to face him. “You’re not serious, right?”

  He holds his gaze to mine. “August, I can’t hurt you.”

  “You don’t get it,” I say. I swing my legs around. I stand up. “This is hurting me. Your leaving is hurting me.”

  Noah stands. He puts a hand gently on my jaw and tilts my face up so I have no choice but to look into his eyes—liquid. Warm. I want to fall into them and stay there forever. “I’m right here,” he says.

  My eyes well up. I can feel the tears begin to fall—hot and salty as they skim down my cheeks. “No, you’re not,” I say. I’m crying now. The sobs get stronger, until I’m shaking. Noah wraps his arms around me, and I fold into him.

  “It’s okay,” he keeps saying. “I promise I’ll get us home.” But I know now, for the first time since we got on this island, that they are just words. He can’t. He’s right: He doesn’t have the power.

  I cry until there are no more tears left, and then I wipe my eyes, go inside, and begin forever.

  Alone.

  Chapter Nine

  I don’t know how long we’ve been here, or how long we’ve been apart, but it feels like forever. Months, maybe more. In reality, it has probably been no more than a few weeks, but time slows down, spreads out, when you’re stuck on a deserted island. There isn’t any TV to fill the days. No school. No homework. No friends or family.

  Some days I think my sister and Ed didn’t make it. That they crashed in the sea just like us and drowned or, more mercifully, were killed on impact. But some days…

  Some days I let myself think about them being alive. I think about the coast guard coming to get them. I think about Maggie—scared, small, and Ed helping her. I think about my little sister—all alone at home with a disconnected dad and a stepmother who doesn’t even know her middle name. And some days? Some days not being able to be there for her, not being able to save her either way—from death, or a life without support at home—makes it difficult to get out of bed. She wasn’t even supposed to come on that trip. If I hadn’t insisted we spend spring break looking at schools…if I hadn’t convinced Dad to make the school let her come…she wouldn’t have been on that plane. She wouldn’t have been dragged around looking at colleges that had nothing to do with her own life. She was only a freshman. She should have been home painting her nails with her friends and going to the movies and shopping with Dad’s credit card. She should have been lying out on our sundeck and watching movies and making popcorn and blowing off studying. She’s fifteen years old. She shouldn’t be dead.

  Noah is so distant. I hardly ever see him for more than a few minutes at night. He’s gone in the morning before I wake up, and if he’s around during the day he’s silent. He won’t touch me. He will barely even look at me. This notion that the island is keeping us apart starts to feel crazier and crazier. It’s Noah; it has to be. Noah doesn’t want me. He’s the one who doesn’t want us.

  Or maybe it’s Ed. Like Maggie, he’s always on my mind. I can’t get past our last conversation, that the last words I said to him were that I didn’t know. It was a lie; I knew. I loved him. I wanted to be with him. Why didn’t I tell him that?

  “You’re like a piece of modern art,” he told me a week before we left on the trip. We were sitting on my bed, finishing up some homework, I don’t remember what. We had stopped to make out. He had his hand on my stomach and was drawing some circles there, above my tank top.

  “Modern art?”

  Ed smiled. He kissed my cheek. “It’s so hard to figure out what’s going on with you.”

  I pushed his hand off and laughed. “There’s nothing going on with me.”

  Ed blew some air out of his lips, ran a hand through his hair. “You are,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like…”

  “What?” I put my hand on his back, right below his shoulder blades. Ed was always a little bit more sensitive than me. He didn’t love me more than I loved him, I don’t think, but I guess you could have looked at it that way. Thinking about it now, maybe he did.

  “Like you’re somewhere else even when you’re here.”

  I reached for his cheeks. I turned his face to mine. “I’m not,” I said. “I promise. I’m right here with you.”

  I was. And maybe I still am. Because Ed wouldn’t do what Noah is doing. Ed wouldn’t turn me away.

  “I need to talk to you,” Noah says that night. Asku has just left. We’ve been making woven baskets from leaves. Every resource is in abundance now. I can’t deny that under Noah’s guidance, presence, whatever, the island is coming back to life. We have more vegetables. The fruit is ripe and not rotted. We cook with spices that Asku gathers.

  We’re also learning to communicate better every day. Some days he even brings his wife. She’s a shy girl—she barely looks older than me—and she always keeps her head bent low. Today he told me they’re expecting a baby. I threw my arms around him. They were both smiling so wide.

  I’m still in a good mood, washing some ceramic plates in the water basin
in the kitchen. Noah comes up behind me. I can feel the air charge between us—static electricity that increases in voltage the closer he comes. “Okay,” I say, not turning around, “talk.”

  I hear him exhale. “I know you’re mad.”

  I let the plate slide out of my hands in the water. “I’m not mad,” I say. I keep my back turned.

  “It’s not easy for me, either.” I hear him behind me, edging closer, until I can feel the warmth of his body inches from mine. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I squeeze my eyes shut. I will myself not to respond to him this way.

  “Then why are you doing this?” I ask.

  In the next moment he reaches out and touches my neck. I feel his fingertips on my skin. They ignite there—so striking I think he might have just set my skin on fire.

  “Because I need to protect you,” he says. I can hear how hoarse his voice is.

  I turn slowly to face him. I put a palm on his cheek. It’s wet, and some water slides down his skin like tears. I watch his eyes reflexively close. “You can protect me by being with me.”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” he says, his eyes still closed. “I’ve known it since I first met the tribe. Maybe when I first pulled you out of the water, but it was too terrible to think about.”

  “What?” Whatever he has to say cannot be worse than what already is. It cannot be worse than being here with him and not being allowed to talk to him, touch him.

  He opens his eyes. They’re cold. The blue has crystallized all the way down to ice. “The plane crashed because I was on it,” he says. “The island didn’t just open to save me. It opened to pull me in.” He puts a hand over his forehead. Holds it there. “All of this. Ed. Your sister. The reason you’re here. It’s all because of me.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t move. I know he thinks I should be angry. That I should hate him. “It wasn’t your fault,” I say.

  “How can you say that?” His face is in so much pain. I want to touch him, to smooth his frown lines down with my fingers.

  “Because it’s true,” I say. “You did not call yourself back here. You did not rush the cockpit and force us into the ocean. Your birthright was not your choice, Noah. And I won’t sit by and watch you punish yourself for something you couldn’t control.”

  “It might not have been my choice,” he says. “But it is my destiny.”

  “Noah…”

  He smiles at me. It’s small. Hopeless. “I’ve done so much damage already. I’ve hurt so many people.…”

  “No,” I say.

  “August, listen. I can’t take back what happened. But I can make other things right. The chief wants me to be their Healer. He wants me to ascend to the position.”

  My hands are still dripping water, and I wipe them on my dress. “Ascend? You’re not a king, Noah.” Something flashes across his face, but it’s slow enough that I can catch it. “Are you?”

  “It’s a high position,” Noah says. “The highest in the tribe. Higher than chief. My people believed—”

  “Your people?” I shake my head. Now I’m angry. Angry at Noah for learning all this without telling me. Angry that while we’ve been moving around this cabin like strangers for the past few weeks he’s been building a life here, one I’m not a part of.

  “August,” Noah says. His voice is soft. “If I accept my role, I can help. I can do good. I can set the balance back. You see how the island is changing already with me here. They’re dying, August. Without me, they won’t last another ten years. If I stay. If we stay—you and I can…” He looks at me, and then down at the floor.

  “We can what?”

  He holds his eyes to meet mine. “Be together. The Healer sets the natural order of the tribe and the island. If I step into the role, things will be the way they should. I can control that. It wants you to go because it thinks you’re going to take me with you.”

  “And then what?” I say. “So you have a purpose here and I’m just—”

  “With me,” he says. He steps closer to me and places his hands on my waist.

  “Is that what you want?” I ask.

  “I want you to be safe,” he says. “I want to do what’s right.” He moves his thumb back and forth over my hipbone. I want to take his hands in mine, but I don’t. I stay still. Because I can tell he’s not done talking. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  “Again? Noah, I’ve been right here. You didn’t lose me; you turned away from me.”

  But I see his face, and I know that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s referring to something else, something that happened long before we landed on this island. All at once I see Ed and Noah on my doorstep. I feel the flowers in Noah’s hands. I see his eyes—shining, but hopeless. I hear Ed’s confession—“I came here tonight because I want to be with you”—and I feel the way I did that night: confused. Like it’s coming out of the wrong lips. Because it was.

  “The night Ed asked me to be his girlfriend,” I say. “You showed up first. You weren’t there for him. You were there for me.” I can hardly believe it but as I say the words I know they’re true.

  Noah exhales. “August…” he starts.

  “And that fight I saw you guys have a week before we left. You weren’t really fighting about college. You were fighting about me. I heard you. I heard you say ‘Maybe after this we’d be even.’ You let him have me. You traded me like a piece of property. I just don’t understand why.”

  Noah’s face clouds. “It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I didn’t—”

  “Tell me it’s not true,” I say, my voice rising. “Tell me you didn’t show up at my house that night two years ago because you wanted to be with me, too.”

  I think about everything before that and everything that came after. About how heartbroken I was. About how stupid I thought I had been to ever think it could have been different. That all of our history could have led to love on his side, too.

  “Yes,” Noah says. “It’s true.”

  We stare at each other for a moment, both afraid to blink.

  “Ed,” I say, my jaw tense. “I can’t believe he’d do that. I can’t believe—”

  “That he loved you, too?” Noah says. “Come on, you know he did. And he deserved you. I didn’t.” He shakes his head. “He was right. You were safer with him. I mean, look at us now. Look where we are. Look what I’ve brought into your life.”

  “No,” I say. “You’ve brought in good. You always brought in good.” I take his face in my hands. “There is nowhere else I should be than right here with you.”

  Noah pulls me close to him, and I bury my head against his chest. His arms wrap tight around me, and I feel the beating of his heart—fast and strong but steady, too. Solid. Safe.

  I pull myself back to look up at him, but he keeps his arms tight around me. “I wanted it to be you,” I say. “That night, I wanted it to be you so badly.”

  Noah glides his thumb over my cheek. Then he takes my chin in his hands and lifts my face up to meet his. Our lips touch, and when they do I feel myself falling into him. His lips taste like lemonade on the hottest summer day. They feel like relief. Immediately I grope for whatever I can—his hair, his back. I feel his hands anchor my sides and then he’s moving me so I’m pressed up against a wall. His hands are everywhere. On my neck. Down my arms. “Noah,” I whisper, and he pulls back just enough to look at me. “I thought we couldn’t,” I say.

  He presses his lips to my ear. His words come out in a growl. “I don’t care.”

  He lifts me up then and carries me into the bedroom. He sets me down gently like he did that night weeks ago. The night the roof caught on fire.

  His lips push all thoughts away—the island. Leaving. Maggie. Ed. And I know as he kisses me that this time is different. This time he won’t stop us.

  He lifts my clothing up and over my head and then I’m lying naked under him. It’s chilly in the room—there is a breeze coming through the cabin, and I
feel my skin prick with goose bumps.

  Noah lies down next to me and pulls the blankets over us. I peel his shirt off, and he helps me toss it to the floor. Then he gathers me to him, and I feel his skin against mine. His is warm, like a heater, and I press my torso against his. His hands are strong on my back, and his lips find mine, then my neck. I gasp and dig my nails into his shoulders. I see the flashes of gold and silver—trails of warm, metallic dust he leaves across my body as he touches me. They shine like stars in the night sky. I think, if I followed the trails, they’d lead me home.

  He rolls me underneath him gently and then sits up. He keeps a hand flat on my stomach, traces my navel with his pinkie.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I never thought—” His voice breaks off and he clears his throat. “I never thought I’d be here with you.”

  “Stranded on a deserted island?” I smile.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I nod. “I do.” I bring his lips down to mine, and when we kiss, it’s like nothing else in the universe exists. Not Ed. Not anyone. No past, no future. Only here, together.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. Breathless, half blind, but I hear him.

  “Yes,” I say.

  I pull him down and then we’re lost together—somewhere new and different and yet totally familiar all at once. And for the first time since we got here, I feel that if we never leave it will be okay. If I am just here, forever, it will be worth it because I’ll be here with him.

  We fall asleep tangled in each other, my head on his chest, his arms around me. When I sleep, I dream of nothing.

  Chapter Ten

  I wake up alone. I’m only half conscious, images of last night spiraling around my head. For a moment, with Noah gone, I think maybe I dreamed it, maybe it was all the makings of my foggy subconscious, but then I remember his lips on my skin, and how warm his body was pressed up against mine, and I know it really happened.