I nibble my rough cuticles. Boxes. I think of what it’s like to place parts of myself in them. My need to shatter, submerge, bleed. I think of how my warring sides of agony and relief bring more balance to the seasons. How that balance only happens when I allow myself the mercy of death, every November. How I weep for weeks in springtime, when living things on the island emerge to exist with excruciating pain, only to be relieved by death.
And then I think about licking butter off my fingertips. Of melting chocolate on the roof of my mouth. The delight of Hector’s weight crushing me when we tumbled in the cabin that bashfully regarded us. I look at Hector’s handsome, worried face and think of his hungered kisses—a completely idiosyncratic human action that means nothing in the clockwork of nature. His kisses had been an opiate for me—the girl, Anda Selkirk—and I returned them just as ravenously.
Can I redraw a line that’s cut me in two for so long?
“Look, I’m no expert. I’m still trying to figure it all out,” Hector says after a minute of silence. “So what are you fighting, exactly? I don’t understand.”
“If I told you, you would run away again.” I frown. The insects and worms have since left the earth around me and once again, I’m alone. I can’t stand the idea of Hector leaving, too. “I’m so tired,” I say. “I’m not used to being tired.”
Hector pauses. “You said you’d tell me a fairy tale sometime. This is what you were talking about, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” I hesitate. “I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.”
Hector bristles at my words. He turns away from me and goes to the tent. “I’m pretty tired, too.”
I furrow my brow. His words have no relationship to my last words.
Ah. This is evasion.
I stand up and crawl inside the shelter. It’s so small, this tent. It’s a nylon tomb. Next to Hector, the whole sides of our bodies might touch. But there is only one sleeping bag here. A small clip light hangs from the peak in the roof, casting a dim glow inside. I look up at him, and he’s poised to walk away.
“Listen,” he says. “It’s not as cold as I thought it would be. So I’ll sleep outside, and you can sleep inside.”
Oh. Sometimes, I’m too good at what I do. I loosen my fist, ever so gently. The wind picks up immediately and brings with it the real temperature I’ve kept at bay, somewhere around thirty degrees of good, late October Isle weather. It hits Hector square in the back and he shivers violently.
“Whoa. Brrrr. Holy cheezits, where did that come from?”
I open the door to the tent a little wider and smile. “Come in. There’s just enough room for the two of us.”
Wicked witch, I am.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
HECTOR
She can’t possibly be inviting me in for that. Memories issue forth, as if they happened a million years ago—from the first night we kissed. A lot of kissing. Is this what she’s inviting me in for? Turns out, what she wants is way more intimate.
She wants me to talk.
She’d asked me about my dad while we were walking. And now that we’re squished in side by side, she asks again. “Tell me about your father.”
I don’t know why she cares. All I know is that the reason I’m here is so that I can leave him, my uncle, and my mother behind. Far, far behind. I can choose to talk about them on my own terms, or never ever again. Which is why I’m pissed that she’s insisting on this. I don’t want to be the thing that distracts her from herself. I don’t want to be the magical, broken boy who heals all her own problems. Maybe it’d be better to be in the freezing cold out there.
I stare at the tent seams, being puffed tight by the wind outside. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” she says, which is also infuriating. Satisfying her idle curiosity is not my responsibility. I already told her enough as it is, about how I’m constantly feeling torn by who and what I am. I cross my arms and close my eyes, hoping she’ll drop it, when she says, “No, I do know. Because you’re wearing this thing, like a cloak. It’s so heavy. Sometimes, it looks like you can’t even breathe.”
Silence, and then…
I exhale loudly.
The silence cracks with hoots and laughs, from both of us. After we catch our breaths, she sighs.
“I won’t hurt you.” She pauses and thinks. “I won’t hurt you like that,” she adds. God. What does she mean? That she won’t tear me to pieces or drown me in my sleep? Or psychologize me to death? She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve no right to ask. I’ve no right.” She turns onto her side to face me, and the curve of her hip makes her sleeping bag rise in the middle. She uses her hands, palms together, as a pillow. Just like a child. “Good night, Hector.”
“Good night, Anda.”
Her breathing becomes regular, and I feel the warmth of her body next to mine, while the bitter cold seeps in through the wall of the tent on the other side. A weird gradient of death and life.
And in the middle of it is me. One guy, trapped on an island with a beautiful girl who’s willingly one millimeter away, and he’s just given her the emotional Heisman for the night.
I suck.
...
“Come with me.”
“Wha—?”
I only now realize I finally did fall asleep. It’s still dark out. Pitch-black. Anda is nudging my ribs insistently and tugging at my wrist.
“Come,” she says again. “The clouds are leaving. I want to show you something.”
My body feels like it’s been squashed by a Mack truck. My legs are sore, and I’m still so exhausted. After all, I’m barely over being sick, and we just hiked all day. But Anda won’t take no for an answer. She tugs and tugs, and I wipe my sleep-heavy eyes and crawl out of the tent, groaning. She leads me slightly out of the campground to a higher elevation. She’s taking me to the peak of Sugar Mountain at what, midnight?
“Look,” she says. Her head is back and she’s gazing at the sky. I look, too, but it’s still wispy with a film of gray.
“It’s cloudy.”
“Oh, wait.”
She sweeps her arm overhead, as if she were polishing the sky with her palm. When I look up again, it’s clear. Holy shit, not just clear.
A wave of incandescent green and purple is smeared across the sky in a thick ribbon.
“Is that…?”
“Yes. The aurora borealis. It’s caused by a collision of solar wind and magnetospheric-charged particles in the thermosphere.”
“Right. That.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once,” I say. “When I was a kid.”
We just stare at the unearthly color for a long, long time. She slips her fingers into mine, and I tighten my grip on her hand. It’s so small, so thin. She shivers a little, and I pull her closer. Seeing this thing reminds me of how alone I am. Of how alone I could be, if I wanted.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the aurora shift. It reaches the horizon, and the ribbon of color changes just so. It looks like a figure, standing on the edge of the universe.
It’s absolutely stunning.
I glance at Anda, wide-eyed, giving her an Are you seeing what I’m seeing look.
Anda sees it. She frowns. It’s not beautiful to her, whatever it is. When I look back, it’s just the same thick ribbon of light in the sky again. I rub my eyes. What the hell?
“Did you—” I begin, but she cuts me off.