I look down at my feet, my toes long and distorted in the water. “Yeah? Are you into her?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “She kissed me the other day, when we were all out at a party.”
She says this like it’s no big deal, like she’s always out at parties being kissed by girls.
I squint up at the sun. “You went to a party the other day?”
“Yeah, Ranthu had some people over,” she says. I don’t feel jealous, or even left out, but for a moment I wonder what it must be like to live her life, or anyone else’s but mine. I’ve always known that I can’t have the same things as other people my age—boyfriends, normal friendships. Letting myself want them would only make me miserable, so I convince myself that I don’t want them at all.
“So what happened?” I ask. “After she kissed you.”
“Nothing, really.” Mirabae shrugs. She flips onto her back, bringing her arms above her head, clasping her fingers together. “I could be into her. She’s smart and funny and she’s super hot.”
We swim back to shore and stretch out in the sand. Zo lies beside me. Braxon is perched high above us in the branches of a tree. Cailei and Akia sit together, imagining all the different planets where they might be placed for service.
“What about Pesna?” Akia asks. “Everyone says it’s a beautiful planet.”
“Too cold,” says Cailei. “Too many mountains.”
“Narin?”
“I could do Narin.” Cailei nods. “You know everyone there is really tall, like twice our height? It’s crazy.”
Ryn steps out of the ocean, onto the sand, his skin glistening with beads of water. Mirabae nudges me, watching me watch him.
“Hey!” she calls out. “Ryn! Come talk to Li!”
“Mir, stop!” I hiss. “We barely know him.”
“This is how you get to know him,” she says with a laugh.
He comes over and sits down next to me. He runs his hands through his hair, shaking the water out. I trail my fingers in the sand slowly, trying to think of something to say.
Before I can start a conversation, Braxon leaps down to the ground, landing in front of us.
“So,” Braxon says, towering over me. “I heard you’re gunning for officer.”
I look over at Zo. She looks down guiltily, avoiding my eyes. I shrug.
“Me too,” Braxon goes on, looking me over. He has the kind of arrogance that comes from being the best at everything and knowing it. “Good luck.”
“You too,” I say shortly. I don’t want to get caught up in any more competition than I have to, especially with someone like Braxon, who thrives on it.
He flashes me a tight, unreadable smile, then turns to look at the group. He points to the cliffs above. “I dare you all to jump!”
“You’re on!” Cailei shouts back. She and Akia race toward the cliffs, kicking up sand as they go.
“What about you, Li?” Braxon asks, a challenge in his eyes. “Think you can handle it?”
My heart beats in my chest, pressing up against my lungs. The cliffs rise a hundred feet in the air, higher than I’ve ever climbed before, farther than I’ve ever jumped. They curve around the water’s edge, jagged and steep. A climb like this is nothing to everyone here. To me it could be deadly. I feel my pulse speed up, the blood rushing through my veins. I have no good excuse, no valid reason to say no.
“Li can handle anything,” Mirabae says.
Braxon laughs. “I bet she can,” he says. He turns and walks to the cliffs, stretching his arms up to the sky.
Zo looks at me with a flicker of fear in her eyes. We shouldn’t have come here, her look says. This was a mistake. We both know how high that jump is, but if I leave now, it will only be suspicious.
“I’m in,” Mirabae says, standing up and slipping her top back on. She looks at me and winks. “Come on, Zo. Let’s do this.”
Before Zo can say anything, Mirabae grabs her hand, pulling her toward the cliffs, leaving me alone with Ryn. I stare out at the water, up at the sky, looking anywhere but at him. He leans in closer to me.
“I’ll jump if you do,” he says. I look up at the cliffs; I look at the way his lips curve when he smiles.
“Okay,” I say, not sure what else to do. We stand up and head to the cliffs, his hand brushing mine, just once, as we walk.
We line up alongside everyone else. I press my hands against the cliff, searching for cracks in the stone. I can do this, I remind myself. I’ve trained my whole life to do what’s practically impossible. Braxon crouches in the sand, then leaps up and grabs hold of the cliff. Cailei, Akia, and Mirabae follow. Ryn reaches up and lifts himself off the ground, climbing quickly, easily. Zo swings herself up, glancing down. She looks scared to see me behind her, but she can’t say anything without the others hearing her. I force myself to smile at her, to hide the panic rising in my chest. She turns without a word, climbing effortlessly, as though her body weighs nothing at all. I raise one arm, then the other, scaling across fault lines, moving higher and higher away from the ground.
The cliff stretches out endlessly around me. Water drips down fissure lines. All I see is stone. I feel the rush of adrenaline, the exhilaration of height, every muscle in my body moving at once. Everyone else is far above me, their strength boundless compared to mine. I wish I’d gone straight home, the way I always do. I don’t know what I was thinking coming here at all.
I reach up, stretching my arm as far as it can go. My hand slips. My legs swing out from under me. I hang off the side of the cliff one-handed. There’s nothing to keep me from plummeting. I picture myself splayed on the rocks below, bloodied and lifeless. A shiver of fear runs through me.
Keep going, I think. Just keep going.
I grab hold of the cliff with my other hand, pulling my legs back up underneath me. The bottoms of my feet scrape against the stone. Zo and Mirabae are already at the top. I watch them jump, flying through the air, their bodies arched toward the water. My legs shake, my lungs burn, but I can see the top of the cliff. I’m so close to reaching it. I finally grab hold of the ledge, swinging my legs up over it.
Stones break loose under my feet. They skitter down the side of the cliff, disappearing into the air. I look down at the ocean, so far below. Behind me, Akia shouts. Cailei throws her over her shoulders and runs toward the ledge, leaping off the cliff. Akia flips away from her in midair. They slice through the water with barely a splash. They look like minnows, their bodies tiny and dark.
“You scared?” Braxon asks, and I turn around to face him. I doubt he knows what fear even feels like. Ryn watches me, his face quiet, unreadable.
“Nothing to be scared of,” I lie.
Braxon walks to the edge of the cliff, lifting himself up onto his toes. He flips off, sailing backward through the air, spinning in circles, slipping under the waves. Ryn comes up next to me and we are the only ones left. There’s no way out of this now.
The ocean stretches out for miles around us. Coral reef decays in the water below, a sprawling graveyard across the sand. Rocks jut up from the shore. My breath catches in my throat. My heart pounds so fiercely it could break me. There’s only one thing for me to do.
“Ready?” Ryn asks. I close my eyes. I bend my knees.
“One,” he says.
I press my toes against the earth.
“Two.”
He slips his hand into mine.
“Three.”
We jump.
Everything blurs together as we fall—the gray cliff, the green leaves, the gleam of light off the ocean. The world around us is vibrant, breathing. I spread my arms like wings, and then I’m flying through the air. I forget where I am; I forget everything except this feeling. Then the curve of the ocean rises up to meet me.
Water shatters around me like glass. The current shifts, dragging me under the waves. I spiral through the water, my body spinning until I don’t know which way is up. I thrash my arms and legs, but I can’t break free from the wa
ves crashing over me.
The weight of the ocean presses down on me, a thousand pounds of pressure. The sky shimmers, but I’m too far down to reach its light. This is what all my training was for, but I can’t summon it now. I sink to the ocean floor, the sand rising around me. I’m breaking open, I’m splitting apart, I can’t hold my breath any longer. Water rushes into my lungs. My mind goes blank. The world goes dark.
Beams of light break through the water. The sky wavers above me, so far away, and I raise my arms as though I can reach it, as though I can save myself.
Fight, Li, my father’s voice echoes in my head.
I almost died once, when I was nine. It was late. I was standing on the wires tied between the trees behind our house. My father had strung them there, woven like a spiderweb, a maze for me to work my way through.
It was beautiful in the forest that night, magical even. Mist hung in the air. Moss covered the ground. The line swayed with the weight of my body. I was high above the earth, small against the vast expanse of the sky. My father stood below me, urging me to go higher.
My hands reached for the wires. I swung myself around, twisting in and out. I leaped forward and let go of the wire I was holding and landed on the one below. Then my feet slipped out from under me. My neck snapped back. I fell, flying through the air. My skull cracked against the ground. I tasted the blood as it dripped down to my mouth, then I drifted under, far away from it all.
I woke up with a concussion, my ribs sore, my head pounding. My father later told me he was certain I was going to die. That fear never left me—my life is so fragile, my body something that could betray me so easily.
Now I close my eyes. I let the ocean take me. All at once, I feel the press of arms around me, pulling me up through the waves. I surge above the water, gasping; then I hear Ryn’s voice.
“Breathe,” he says quietly. “Everything’s okay.”
It all flashes back to me—our jump off the cliff, our dive into the water, the way the ocean devoured me whole. Panic floods me, bitter in my mouth.
My mind races, my thoughts confused. Of course my gills didn’t work. He just saved me from drowning. He knows, I think. He knows. I pull in breath after breath, trying to slow the rush of blood in my veins.
“Ryn,” I whisper. He holds me close, his skin against my skin. I press my head against his chest, feeling the steady pulse of his heart. He tucks my hair back, his fingers brushing against my neck, and it’s then that I realize what I’m doing, just how close to him I am. I twist away from him, slipping out of his arms, and swim back toward the shore.
“Li! Wait!” Ryn shouts, but I keep swimming, my arms slicing sharply through the water. I can barely think, barely breathe, but I don’t stop until I’ve reached the shore. I step out of the water and onto the sand, my body swaying slightly. I close my eyes to steady myself. Desperation swells inside me. My eyes fill with tears, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t lose control, not now, when there are so many people around. I look into the distance, willing myself to hold it together.
Zo stands on the shore, talking to Braxon. He leans close to her and says something I’m too far away to hear. She tips her head back and laughs. She puts her hand on his arm, her eyes shining. I take one shaky step after another until I’m standing beside them.
“Zo,” I say, “let’s go.”
She turns to me and her face lights up. “Hey. You made it.”
I wrap my fingers around her wrist and pull. “We’re leaving. Now.” The smile on her face quickly disappears. She bites her lip, then turns to Braxon.
“I guess we’re out of here,” she says lightly. “See you around.”
Zo and I head toward the trees. I look back to the water, watching for Ryn. In the low light of the setting sun, his features look sharp, almost lupine. I watch as he dives under the waves, vanishing before me, like he was never even here at all.
* * *
—
Zo and I go back through the depths of the forest, the sun setting quickly now, the sky growing darker with each step we take. Zo walks along the length of a fallen tree, her arms spread out for balance.
“I saw you, you know,” she says quietly. “I was waiting for you to jump before I swam to shore. When I saw you and Ryn surface, only then did I start talking to Braxon.” She grins at me. “He’s really cute.”
“Zo, I need to tell you something,” I say, my voice shaking.
“I’m so happy that we came here today,” she says, as though she hasn’t heard me. “For once we got to do something normal. And—surprise!—we survived.” She looks down at me from her perch on the log. “What were you going to say?”
“I’m going to tell you something,” I say carefully. “And I need you to not get upset.”
She’s silent, watching me, waiting for me to say more.
“Something happened back there,” I say. “When I jumped into the water, I hit some kind of whirlpool, and I got trapped underwater. I almost drowned, and Ryn, he saved me.”
“Li!” Zo gasps. All the color leaves her face. “Saved you how?”
“It felt like I blacked out, and when I woke up, Ryn was pulling me to the surface.” Just saying the words out loud is enough to make my lungs feel like they’re filling up with water, like I’m back beneath the waves. “He told me to keep breathing and that everything was going to be okay.”
“You felt like you blacked out or you did black out?” Zo asks sharply.
“I don’t know,” I lie, my voice breaking. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Anything coming close to losing consciousness is abnormal.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I try, but Zo shakes her head fiercely, interrupting me before I can say anything more.
“This is serious, Li,” she insists. “What if you’d gotten hurt?” Earth used to have doctors to take care of people when they got sick. But the Abdoloreans don’t get sick. They don’t hurt themselves. If I got hurt, there would be no one to go to. No one to examine my body, no one to heal me.
“Zo, please,” I say, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“We can’t keep something like this a secret,” Zo whispers, her eyes darting around the forest. “You have fake gills, Li. And now Ryn knows it!”
“Zo!” I cry out. “Really, it’s fine. I’m fine. Ryn doesn’t know anything. He didn’t act weird at all.” I let out a clipped laugh. “What’s he going to think, anyway? That I’m human?”
She stares at me as though she’s trying to see through me. Nothing even happened, I repeat in my head, over and over, as though thinking it can make it true.
“If you tell Dad, you’ll get in just as much trouble as me,” I warn her. “You know how angry he’ll be. At both of us.” I shrug. “And what’s the point? I’m okay.”
Her eyes flash with hesitation. Our father will blame me for being careless, but he’ll blame Zo for letting me go.
“You know I’m right,” I say, and her shoulders sink, resigned.
“Fine,” she says tightly. “We won’t say anything. But you have to promise you won’t do something so stupid again. And if Ryn even suspects…” But we both know there’s no point in finishing that sentence.
The sun sinks below the horizon. The first stars of the night appear in the sky. We move through the trees, neither one of us talking. Soon we reach the city, walking quickly to the station. We ride the train in silence. I avoid Zo’s eyes, looking out the window at the world around us. The city lights fade behind us as we move over the tracks. It’s not until we’re off the train, walking through the streets to our house, that the pressure in my chest fades and I feel myself breathe evenly.
“What did it feel like?” Zo asks quietly. The moon slips behind the clouds.
“What did what feel like?” I ask.
“To drown,” she says.
Zo has always been curious about my humanness. What it felt like to twist my ankle or cut my finger peeling fruit o
r get a bloody nose. There are so many differences between our bodies. I try to find the words to explain my fallibility in a way she can understand.
“Like I was stuck under a landslide,” I say. “It felt like I was being buried alive.”
The moon reappears, bathing us in light. We emerge from the trees, the sky sparkling above. We turn down street after street, keeping to the shadows until we reach our house. The windows are dark, the whole house still. We walk around the curve of the cliff. Zo reaches for the door, about to open it, then stops, her hand hovering in midair.
“You’re sure, Li,” she says, staring at me hard. “You’re sure Ryn doesn’t…I don’t know. Suspect anything?”
I look up, my eyes tracing the shapes of the constellations until I find the one I’m searching for—the girl filled with stars, alone in the sky.
“Li?” Zo says again, and I turn to her. I think of Ryn’s arms around me, his eyes in the light.
“I’m sure,” I say, lifting my hand to the door, and my voice sounds steady and clear.
* * *
—
I move around the kitchen, getting dinner ready. I cook squash and peppers, carrots and eggplant, searing them quickly on the electric blue light of the stove. Zo and I eat in our own settled silence. We have our own rhythm, one that can only be found by sharing a life. Zo clears the table, humming as she washes the dishes. She’s a year younger than me, but she’s already as tall as I am, something I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. After she’s done cleaning up, she sits back down at the table, her chin in her hand, and studies my face.
“Let me sketch you,” she says impulsively. “The light on you is amazing right now.”
“No way,” I say. My mind is still buzzing from the jump. All I can think about is Ryn and what he might know.
“Come on,” she presses. “How else am I going to remember what you look like after you leave?”
She’s joking, but her voice is tinged with sadness, so slight I might miss it if I didn’t know her so very well.
I relent, turning toward her in my seat.
The Last Girl on Earth Page 3