A splash arose from the pond. Eureka ducked—then saw that Ander had risen with it. He stood atop a towering, starlit waterspout like he was a magnetizing moon.
He had dragged much of the water from the pond under him. As her canoe grazed the bottom, Eureka saw the muddy ghost of the path that had once connected Solon’s cave to his neighbors’. This was what it had looked like before Eureka’s tears. She tried to memorize every detail of the unflooded land below, imagining a past Poet and Filiz walking through it on their way to work, the Poet picking a bud from a drowned olive tree. She didn’t see the gun.
Ander’s waterspout subsided gently, refilling the valley with tears until he was level with the pond. Then he was hovering on a small wave alongside Eureka’s canoe.
“Were you talking to someone?”
“My mom. Old habit.” She held out her hand and he climbed into the canoe.
“I never wanted you to find out like this,” he said.
“You didn’t want me to find out at all.”
“When you didn’t know, I could pretend it wasn’t happening.”
Eureka shivered and looked around. The clouds had covered all the stars and Brooks was nowhere. “Everything is happening.”
She searched Ander’s face for signs of aging. She wouldn’t mind him having wrinkles or gray hair, but she refused to be the cause of his old age. Falling more deeply in love would drain Ander’s life away. They shouldn’t even have let it go this far.
“I trusted you,” she said.
“You should.”
“But why don’t you trust me? You’ve known my secrets longer than I have. I don’t know any of yours. I don’t know if you’ve been in love before. I don’t even know your favorite song or what you want to be when you grow up or who your best friend is.”
Ander looked at his rain-blurred reflection in the water. He thought for a long time before saying, “I used to have a dog. Shiloh was my best friend.” He smashed a fist into his reflection. “I had to let him go.”
“Why?”
“It was part of my Passage. Until recently, I aged like any other boy, day by day, season after season, adding inches and scars to my body. But on my eighteenth birthday, I was inducted in a family ceremony.” He gazed up, remembering. “I was supposed to repudiate everything I cared about. They said I’d live forever. When Seedbearers do something cruel, our bodies grow younger, like we’re traveling back in time. I gave up Shiloh, but I couldn’t give up loving you because it’s all I am.”
“I thought love was supposed to make a person more alive,” Eureka said. “Your love is … like I used to be—suicidal.”
“Love is an endless drive on a winding road. You can’t see everything about another person all at once.” Ander leaned forward in the swaying canoe and inhaled. When he let out his breath, Eureka felt something warm curl around her body. He’d generated a gentle Zephyr that pulled her toward him. Her hands slid up his arms, then clasped around his neck. She couldn’t deny how good it felt being pinned against him. She absorbed the tension in his muscles, his body heat, and, before she knew it, his lips.
But then a feeling crept over Eureka like ivy. Somewhere in the darkness Brooks and Atlas were watching them.
“Wait,” she said.
But Ander didn’t. He held her close and kissed her deeply. Her body was wet and Ander’s was dry and not even the rain seemed to know what to do when it touched the places they overlapped. She gave in for a moment, felt his tongue touch hers. Her heart swelled. Her lips tingled.
She forced herself to pull away. She didn’t care what Atlas saw, but she didn’t want Brooks watching her kiss a boy like she hadn’t flooded the world, like her best friend was not possessed. She pressed her hand against Ander’s chest and felt his heartbeat. Hers was racing—with fear and guilt and desire.