“They changed their minds,” Nia said. Lucian’s chest muffled her voice, but he still understood what she meant.
“Oh, Nia,” he said. He rested his cheek on her head and rubbed his hands up and down her back. “Oh, Nia, fuck. We’ll find a way to make this work. I’ll be your bathroom bodyguard if I have to, dude.” He pulled her away, slung his arm over her shoulder, and smiled. She wiped her eyes and sniffled, her face so puffy she could barely see. “I heard one of the techies snuck in some booze.”
“Yeah?” she said.
“Wanna see if they’ll share?” he said. She leaned against him as they made their way across the lawn to the barn, where the techies went to smoke cigarettes. They were on their way back to the fire in a matter of minutes, two shots of vodka searing through Nia’s blood, making her feel . . . well, not better, exactly, but more willing to tolerate her misery. She was looking at the moon, following Lucian and trying to find a silver lining, when he stopped suddenly.
“What do you want?” he said.
Nia looked down, and there, standing at the edge of the fire with her blue eyes shining and brittle like glass, was Lexie, her knees together and her phone held like a priceless relic. She held it out like it was some kind of peace offering.
“I think I can make it up to you,” she said. Nia looked from the phone to her and sniffed. Lucian nudged Lexie’s hands back and shook his head. “Just record me while I talk.”
“Go away, okay?” he said. “We can talk on Monday.” The corner of her mouth twitched, she nodded, and she started to walk away, but Nia reached out and took the phone from her before she could.
“I want to hear what she has to say,” Nia mumbled. She worked out how to open the camera and sat on a nearby log with empty space, watching Lexie through the screen as she strode into the firelight, her steps strong, her chin high, such a dramatic departure from the girl she had seen on the news, the girl she’d held in her arms only a few minutes before.
“Everyone,” she said, “I’m sorry to interrupt the party, but I have something to say.” All eyes turned to her, and in that moment Nia saw the strength hiding just beneath the identity Lexie had papered over herself. The last year of Nia’s own life had been a long exposure of something similar, and she was filled with admiration and affection like warm water, flowing through the spaces her tears had left empty. Lexie gave her a signal, so she hit Record and focused the camera.
“My name,” she said, her shoulders squared, “is Lexie Thompson. I was featured on a WJRP news report recently where I said that I disagreed with one of my fellow students, a transgender girl named Nia, being allowed to use the girls’ facilities.” She tilted her head and touched her heart. “I was wrong. I repeated things I’d been told to think because it was easier than speaking up. I said what I was told to say because it made my life easier.” She swallowed, closed her eyes, and balled her fists. “Because I myself am gay”—the cast and crew, already enthralled by this, shared shocked glances—“and because throwing her under the bus made it easier for me to stay hidden. But I don’t want to hide anymore. I take back my previous statement, and I stand in solidarity with my classmate.” The nervous girl returned for just a moment in a wavering, insecure smile, but then she was gone again with a resolute nod. “Thank you.”
Nia stopped the recording and handed the phone to Lexie once she’d rejoined them. She sat next to Nia and, while Nia watched, she uploaded the video first to YouTube, then to her social media accounts, and then, after a quick search for their address, sent a link to the same news station she’d spoken to before. When she was done, she let out a long breath, and Nia couldn’t help noticing how badly Lexie’s hands were shaking. Before she could think twice, Nia slid her hand into Lexie’s. Lexie smiled, then fixed her gaze on Nia in a way that made her feel at once like the center of the universe and a moth pinned to a board. A flurry of text notifications erupted from Lexie’s purse and she winced.
“No going back now I guess,” she said. Nia noticed in the abstract that the party still hadn’t resumed, that the only sounds were the pop-sizzle of the fire and the hiss of the wind in the trees, and that a dozen sets of eyes reflected a dozen pinpoints of fire at them as they watched one another.
“Holy shit,” Nia said. “You really did that.”
“Yeah,” she said, squinting and biting her lip. “I feel like I should be freaking out, but like—”
“—yeah—”
“—and I mean.” She squeezed Nia’s hand. “Can I just say, and I hope this isn’t weird, but you look just like this model I like, and your skin feels really soft, and you smell good, and even before we met I actually admired you a lot, and I’m glad we—”
But before she could finish Nia leaned in and kissed her. Lexie let out a single, surprised squeak, but after that all she heard was applause.
The Way We Love Here
— — — — — —
DHONIELLE CLAYTON
THE PEOPLE WHO live on the Isle of Meridien are born with red strings coiled like copper wire around their ring fingers.
I shouldn’t call it a string. Or red, even. It’s more like a tattoo that mixes with your skin tone, and turns all shades of brown and black and white and everything in between. The coils look a little like wedding rings stacked one on top of the other.
Momma would make me write fifty lines for saying that again. “Trivializing the work of the gods, Vio, will land you straight at the bottom of the sea with the rest of the sinners.” But when I was younger, I just thought it was a clever birthmark.
An accident. Of sorts.
But everyone who lives on the island has one. It marks us as belonging to this place.
This is how we find love here.
— — — —
I cover my face with my hand, then let my fingers open slowly to invite the rising moonlight to creep between them. Sometimes when the light hits just right, the red coils scatter across my finger like a constellation of stars. “A love blueprint,” Papa used to always say.
I bury three mason jars in the sand. Nestled inside the glass are flickering candles. They surround me like little fires. At the Saturday markets, I sell them alongside my watercolors and Momma’s produce. Then I flatten my back against the sand, and the fine grains embed themselves into my tight curls. The waves tickle my feet as I wait for whatever the moon can show me.
This is my nightly routine before Momma starts buzzing so loud about night chores that I can’t think anymore. Guests from the island will come soon. As the warm season begins and the islanders stop working, the inns on the leeward side of Meridien will fill. The rest of the vacationers must venture over to us at the Strings of Happiness Inn. They won’t be happy, but they’ll be here in our squeaky beds, with our mismatched plates, listening to the wind. Momma will be glad to be busy again.
I squint up at the moon. I let my fingers find its light again. Some say that if you look hard enough, the coils will briefly take the shape of the one you’re supposed to end up with. A pair of eyes. The outline of a face. The glimpse of a smile. That the gods etched this person’s face in the ink that circles our fingers.
I try to see something, anything. I want to be prepared. My sister cried when she met her beloved. She’d just turned nineteen. Her eyes puffed up for weeks, and her honey-brown skin held a flush that turned quickly into bruises. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want the coils to disappear from her finger. She wanted to stay with Momma and run the inn forever. Without Papa there to help, she knew it’d quickly fall into disrepair because I wasn’t as good as she was at knowing what needed to be done. But her love showed up, and now she’s gone to the leeward side. We won’t see her and her new husband again until the snow comes.
I listen to the waves now, and for Papa, wondering if the gods told him who I’d fall in love with; if they told the dead those sorts of things about the living.
I want to know how much time I have.
I don’t like su
rprises.
“Papa, you there?” Right after Papa drowned, I used to sit here and wait for him to wash up like a seashell; his broad shoulders and tall frame and big hands spit out by the ocean. But he never came back. The ocean never released him, though sometimes at night, I think I can hear him calling me to join him out at sea. “Do you know anything?”
There’s no answer.
I’ve never really given a thought to boys or girls or falling in love with them. I’ve watched couples check into the inn and hold hands as they climbed our rickety staircase or took strolls on the beach or kissed at the dining room table. I’ve wondered what love feels like. Another person’s hand in yours. Another person’s mouth pressed to yours. Another person who has permission to touch you. Momma said people are like streams, and when you meet your beloved, you become a single river flowing in one direction; currents, waves, ripples, indistinguishable from one another.
I don’t know if I want that. The thought of having to lose myself in another, shape myself around the form of someone else makes my heart beat too fast, and not the good, excited way. We love so early here. And it feels like there isn’t enough time to do all the things I want to do before I have to do the things I’m supposed to do.
I raise my hand again. I have five coils left. I started with ten, and when I only have one left, that’s when I’ll find my love. Sometimes I wish they’d come back, signaling that the gods had changed their minds, and maybe they’d skip over me. I don’t think I’d mind that. I’d gladly sleep in my window nook forever, letting the sun warm my legs, or find a way to leave this island so I can paint a different sunrise and sunset. They say there’s nothing beyond our island, but I have to believe there’s more. That there’s a world where coils don’t exist, where I get to choose my own love—or not to love at all.
I watch the sea, anticipating hearing Momma’s voice soon, calling out from the wraparound porch, beckoning me to come back inside and help.
The waves bob up and down and crash forward into the sand as the tide comes in. A shoe washes up. Then a jacket. I stand and walk closer to the water. My heart begins to beat faster. Something is out there. I can feel it. Another wave crashes down, and then the tide washes up something heavy.
It’s a boy.
For a moment, surprise holds me in place. But when another wave races in and licks at his legs, the spell is broken. I run over and drag him farther out of the water. His black hair is too long, Momma would say, and the wind catches it, slapping it across his face. He’s slender and long; all gangly arms and legs and too-large hands and feet. His arms and legs are covered in bruises like he’s just survived a fistfight.
I frantically press my hands on his chest and push the water out. Nothing happens. The bones of his ribs feel thin and fragile. I keep pushing down, praying to the gods for him to awaken, until finally he jerks upright. The water comes out of his mouth in sputters and coughs. He rolls over into a wet ball.
I scramble backward.
His eyes pop open and find me. And they’re lovely. The kind that curve in the corners like they’ve been frozen in a perpetual smile. He’s very paintable.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Who are you?” he says through a series of coughs. His white cotton shirt clings to his chest like it’s part of his too-pale skin. He doesn’t have the usual coloring of a Meridien person. He hasn’t been kissed by the sun gods.
“I’m not the one who almost drowned.”
“I didn’t. See?” He props himself up on his elbow, but then keels over again in another fit of coughs. His face pinkens. “I’m all better now,” he says, out of breath.
“I should call for help.”
“No, don’t. Please.” He pulls himself up into a seated position. “I don’t do doctors.”
I frown at him and hope he can see it. “Where are you from?”
I wonder for the briefest second if he’s from out there, from whatever lies beyond. But then he lifts his left hand. His ring finger glows like a stick of fire. He belongs to Meridien. He smiles up at me, and it’s a nice one, I hate to admit. “I heard that if you stayed underwater for three minutes, you’d be able to see who you’ll end up with.”
“Did you?” I count the coils on his finger. Five. Like me. It means that there’s a chance he could be one of my matches; people with the same number of coils are potential mates. And when the tattoo fades to one final ring, it creates a unique pattern that is identical to your beloved’s.
A queasiness settles into my stomach.
He shrugs. “I didn’t last long enough. I’m not a strong swimmer.”
I hold in a laugh, but it bursts out. “Then it was probably a bad idea to try that technique.”
“And what are you doing out here?” he asks.
“I live here.”
“In the sand?”
I don’t allow his comment to make me smile.
“My family owns the inn on this side. And it’s private property—”
“My mother says there’s nothing in this world that’s really private, and you can’t own land. The gods didn’t intend for us to divide it up like the food on a plate.” He beams with pride like what he’s just said is the cleverest thing in the whole world. He stands and stretches out his long and lanky limbs. They make popping noises. He starts coughing again.
“You should go to the hospital.”
“It won’t help. Aren’t we all, like, two steps from death anyway?”
“No,” I reply.
He plops down next to me and buries his feet in the sand. “You’re trying to see, aren’t you? I heard the thing about the moon, too. Maybe I should’ve chosen that one instead of almost drowning.”
“Yes,” I say. “You probably should’ve.”
“I’m Sebastien Huang,” he says with a head nod.
The name lands. “Wait. Aren’t you—”
“Yes. I’m the person who tried to leave this island in my aerobird flying machine, which the papers wrongly called a makeshift plane.”
“But there’s nothing out there.” I repeat the words I struggle so often to believe. The words Momma wants to sink into my skin and down into my bones to quiet all the questions I ask.
“How do you know?”
“People have tried to sail away, only to have to turn around because they couldn’t find any other land.”
“But you don’t know for certain. Maybe people haven’t sailed far enough. Maybe they give up too soon, and another world is just a little farther ahead.” He eyes me.
“You probably shouldn’t wish for things that aren’t there,” I say, and cringe a little because I sound like Momma.
“What’s your name again?”
“I’m Viola, but everyone calls me Vio.”
“Nice to meet you.”
A silence stretches between us as the waves crash in. We don’t get the casual wandering visitor. I want to know why he’s here on our beach. I want to know what else he’s done to find out who his true love is. I want to know why he wants to leave the island. I’ve never met anyone else with the same curiosity as me.
The island is small enough to know most people, but big enough to be missed if you want to. And Momma always wanted us missed out here on this side. She taught me and my sister to read and write and didn’t bother sending us to the school because she thought we’d be ostracized like she was. She said the rest of them would find us when it was time for love.
“I thought I saw a pair of eyelashes,” he says. “They could’ve belonged to anyone, or anything, even a cat.”
“The gods wouldn’t pair you with an animal.”
“I doubt it’d be that bad.” He shows me his finger. “Can I see yours?”
I lift my hand to allow him to inspect it. “Looks like you’re close, too,” he says. “We could be soul mates.”
I scrunch my nose at him. “Probably not,” I say, even though I’m not sure.
“Maybe the ocean put us together. Maybe the water
god knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I could’ve washed up farther down shore.”
“It’s this”—I wiggle my ring finger at him—“that pulls people together.” I want to add that I don’t know if I even believe in fate or these coils or love itself. I think of Momma and Papa and how they seemed smashed together like two strong rocks placed too close to each other when they desperately wanted nothing but ocean between them. I can still hear their fights when I close my eyes. It’s the reason I first started coming out to the beach at night. Watching the two of them felt like the gods had made a mistake. How had the strings linked two people so wrong for each other?
“But I’m hoping the gods skip me,” I say. “Maybe they’ll leave me be.”
“A life without—”
“Love is impossible,” I finish the line we’ve been taught since birth.
We both laugh.
“Want to come back into the water with me and give it another try?” Sebastien asks.
“Do you have a death wish?”
“My mother thinks so. And the doctors. She’s always threatening me with how long I might have left if I don’t take better care of myself.”
I bite my lip to keep from being nosy and asking what’s wrong with him. “Why don’t we try something equally dangerous as swimming when you can’t?”
“Like what?”
I rub my hands together. “We’d have to touch. Hold hands.”
I’ve never held hands with anyone outside of Momma, my sister, and Papa. The elders of Meridien say that this type of intimacy is reserved for blood relatives and beloveds. They warn us about the dangers that could happen: falling in love with the wrong person, ending up alone, altering the will of the gods, confusing the senses, and losing our fingers. The newspapers print cautionary tales about young teens who disregard the warning. They make sure to include their sad pictures. I’ve never done it. Then again, I’ve never had a boy with whom to try.
“You mean . . . ensnaring?”
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