If he only knew how misguided his actions were.
So I eat very little. Unlike Hector, I don’t grow thinner as the days go by, and he consumes my leftover meals like a ravenous Isle wolf. And at night, he feeds from a different kind of hunger. We tangle ourselves on the floor by the hearth until inevitably, Hector gently pushes me away. The riotous noise of his blood is so loud in my ears, I can barely hear his voice.
“No,” he says, but I don’t understand what he’s saying no to. There’s an invisible wall that I can’t see, but he does, and apparently, we can’t walk through it. “No,” he repeats, before kissing me gently on the neck and walking outside, coatless and shoeless, to cool off his warm skin on the stone steps outside the house.
I don’t follow him. If I did, neither of us might return.
Chapter Twenty-Five
HECTOR
It has been the best and strangest week of my life.
We’ve been doing these ordinary things—cooking, walking, messing around every night until I’m almost seeing red from wanting her so badly. But I have to stop myself. I worry about what she understands. I mean, she can recite the geological history of the Great Lakes region like she’s got a PhD, but she doesn’t know how to make toast. Some nights, she stays awake, and I find her in the morning still standing by the window, watching the lake’s horizon as if she’s guarding something. And some days, she falls asleep in my arms like a child. So I can’t take our physical stuff further, because she never pushes for it, and I won’t. I would never.
She still spends hours listening to the weather radio. That NOAA lady’s voice is grating on my nerves, but only because she always seems so fucking neutral about everything. I’ve been listening to the radio, too. They don’t talk much about the St. Anne anymore. The excitement of the wreck has faded into a vanilla memory, like all horrible events in the news. I listen for any bulletins about my own runaway status before I remind myself I’m a runaway teenage boy who isn’t even white. Who the hell cares?
There’s one thing that isn’t fading into memory, and that’s survival. We’re quickly running out of food, despite my attempts to supplement with fish. Every time I go fishing, I try to scope out any other cabins that we could steal food from, but they’re either too hard to break into, or there’s nothing once I get into the tiny kitchens. Anda doesn’t know I do this.
I’m getting really worried and start making mental plans about hiking to another part of the island for food, maybe the hotel lodge at Rock Harbor. I’m starving all the time, though Anda isn’t bothered by hunger the way I am. And it’s taking a toll. My throat aches a little, and this morning I was chilled in my sweatshirt. Goose bumps arise on my arms, though I’m wearing two sweatshirts. I hope I’m not getting a cold.
Anda is on the floor, listening to the radio. I sigh, watching her. Because none of this—her, me, this island—is rooted in reality. At some point, I’ll have to leave. Or we might be discovered. Or her father might come back. At times, I wonder if all this is just one marathon dream, and I’ve been immersed in some raging fever since I rescued Anda.
I gather my fishing tackle and hoist on my coat. Anda doesn’t move as I head for the door. There’s something awesome about that. It’s not that I need kisses and sweetly packaged good-byes. It’s just Anda’s surety that I’ll be back and in her arms tonight that makes me satisfied.
Outside, a wind is rising. The sky is a gunmetal gray, and mist hangs in the air. Most of the leaves have already changed colors and fallen, so there are no lush gold and red views now. I guess the island doesn’t save them for trespassers like me, since I don’t deserve that beauty. Add it to the list of other things I’m unworthy of.
You don’t deserve what you have. A good house. Family. This from my uncle only one month ago, all coming after my grades were less than stellar, and after I got fired from Walmart. Sometimes it’s not words, just silence. A week’s worth of quiet fury can be worse than a bruise. At least the bruise heals, but silence digs into your bones for days on end. And then there’s the guilt. I’m doing the best I can, Hector. Can’t you see that? I never wanted this.
I know what he meant by “this.” Not the fighting. Not the unexplained, dark sickness that would overtake me almost every month. He meant just me. Only me.
It pisses me off that even now, he demands to be in my head, though I’m the one who left him behind.
I concentrate instead on the wild around me. It’s unforgiving and amazing, and I’ve got a hell of a newfound respect for it. I see one ray of sun shining on Washington Harbor behind me, and through the trees, Lake Superior’s wet horizon stretches widely.
In the middle of all this beauty, I think, this island is eating me alive, little by little. It’s winning, and I can’t lose this time.
The dark green of the pines and barren swaths of trees seem to be bracing themselves for the onslaught of winter. The mist transforms to rain, soft at first, before it starts to pelt me in the back and penetrate my jeans. Waves of chills run down my spine, and my sore throat is getting worse instead of better. A faint headache pulses under my temples. I’d better catch this fish, and fast.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ANDA
After Hector leaves, I look around the house. The sofa and the braided rug are empty and forlorn, wanting someone to touch them. The kitchen has crumbs on the counter from the granola bars we’ve eaten. A glob of jam smears the countertop, and I wipe it off with my finger and onto my tongue. The sticky gel of tart fruit and sucrose dissolves as I press it up against my palate. I close my eyes.
How could I have forgotten that I liked this? I mourn that I’ve forgotten.
While Hector fishes, I pace around the house. Something is amiss. What am I to do, to make this house into a home? I think of Hector’s mouth pressing against the crook of my neck. Yes, this. And no, not quite. Maybe more food. More blankets. I gnaw at a fingernail.
Father knows. He brings food and things that he believes I ought to like, such as broken geodes and rare pieces of beach glass. He thinks I’ll be bewitched by these pretty objects, by the lure of food laden with sugar or salt. Sometimes he brings flat, circular lake stones with holes he’s chipped into the middle. He thinks these will keep me safe somehow.
But none of it fits. He only knows the human way to care. I am made of storms and corpses, of granite and paper-white birch. Trinkets and morsels of food haven’t comforted me since I was a child.
I’m not the one who needs to be kept safe. It is everyone else.
Then why do you let this boy stay?
I don’t know.
Why do you need food now?
I don’t know that, either.