“I had a cat, too,” Alexa says after a moment. “He hated me. Still miss him, though.” She’s quiet for a beat, then adds, “I miss my grandmother’s piano. How she used to give lessons.”
I miss so much, too much. More than I’m ready to say out loud. “I miss chocolate,” I say. It’s a surface-level truth, a plant with deep roots. Really, I miss Dad making hot chocolate. I miss sharing it with Emma. With Birch.
Hope shifts, shivers. I peel my cardigan off, offer it to her. She stretches it out, wide enough so we both fit underneath. Alexa moves in closer, too.
“I hope Finnley’s okay,” Hope says.
Our whispers turn to silence under the infinite sea of stars. I’m the last to fall asleep, I think.
It’s the deepest I’ve slept in as long as I can remember.
TWENTY-ONE
IT’S THE FORGETTING that’s the hardest: those quiet, still moments just after waking, the blissful peace of a girl who never lost everything she ever loved.
It’s the forgetting that’s the hardest, because how could I forget?
The heavy weight that slams, faithfully, into me every morning—well, most mornings; some mornings I never feel peace at all—has become more peaceful than peace. Like it means I remember. Like I’m not the world’s worst daughter, or girlfriend, for feeling whole when I should be broken, calm when I should be frayed, warm when I should feel the cold air of their absence.
Should.
It’s the forgetting that’s the hardest. And the remembering, too.
TWENTY-TWO
BEFORE, I HARDLY ever woke up with the sun unless it was a Saturday to be spent on the water. In order to sail out to our favorite island for a lunchtime picnic, we’d have to head out by eight. We’d get up early, sometimes so early the thumbnail sliver of a crescent moon was still bright white, to put fruit and Goldfish crackers and peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches into Ziploc bags. Dad always prepped his fancy coffeemaker the night before with enough beans for each of us to fill our travel mugs to their brims.
The girl I was Before would not recognize the girl I’ve become.
The grasshoppers, for example. I’ve eaten six this morning—for a protein boost, according to the field guide—and I think they may still be alive inside me. Otherwise, the tickles and jabs in my stomach aren’t from wings, or antennae, or the spindly legs that felt like fish bones as they slid down my throat. And this is no Saturday morning picnic: we are on a mission. Our plan is to search for the temple until midday. Whether we find it or not, we’ll head back to our beach clearing after that. Hopefully Finnley will be waiting for us in one of those places.
We’ve been trekking since dawn, following along the stream in hopes of finding the temple. The ravine itself is too narrow for any sort of structure, but perhaps there’s at least an entrance, some easy way for its residents to access water. Sticking close to the stream helps with our water issues, too—when we’ve drained what’s left in our Havenwater bottle, we’ll be able to fill it one last time before the cartridge dies. We’ll boil and sterilize our freshly replenished canteen water as soon as we return to camp.
Alexa’s stomach growls so loudly it echoes from the cliff wall. She tries to reach into the yellow cardigan for an emergency bar, but Hope swats her hand away—we’re trying to eat grasshoppers while they’re in rich supply, since we won’t be in the ravine forever. Our stash of emergency bars isn’t endless.
Hope carries my yellow cardigan, knotted at the sleeves and corners, like we all used to carry Coach and Kate Spade purses. She slings it around and digs deeply into one of its pockets. “Grasshopper?” she offers, holding one out to Alexa.
None of our designer bags, on the inside, ever looked like: wallet, iPhone, lip gloss, sunglasses, pockets full of thoraxes.
Alexa wrinkles her nose. Again. This is the fourth time Hope’s tried to get her to eat, and the fourth time she’s refused.
“I’m just saying, you’ll feel a lot better if you eat one,” Hope says, popping one of the particularly lime-colored grasshoppers into her mouth. A hundred muscles in her face fight one another as she tries to make the experience look pleasant.
“Yeah. Right. I think I’m good.”
I take one for myself—because I should, not because I want to—and choke it down.
The ravine is mind-numbingly monotonous. Steep, pebbled cliffs stretch high above our heads, and the tree canopy stretches endlessly higher. The stream runs away from us, affirming my feeling that we’re heading toward the middle of the island and not the coast. Branches, shoots, and roots poke out from the cliff walls like the outstretched limbs of the thirsty and neglected. In an emergency, they’ll be our closest shot at an escape plan—the rock ledges aren’t consistently solid or close together. It isn’t exactly comforting.
“How much farther until we can turn back for the beach?” Alexa asks. She’s been mostly tolerable ever since Hope lashed out at her near the poison-moss rocks, but the day is wearing on her already. Her ankle’s tender, she says, but not so bad she can’t put weight on it. Personally, I’m impressed with how well she’s keeping up. All things considered, she could be complaining a lot more.
“Another hour or so,” I say, but that is no more true or untrue than if I’d just announced we would certainly find the temple before we turn back. I have no idea what time it is—Alexa’s watch was purely for show, and the sun is mostly obscured by trees. I’m basing pretty much everything on my somewhat unreliable internal clock. And the truth is, anyone can say anything, really.
We walk and walk, straight forever and then around a bend. Like yesterday, I can’t help but feel frustrated by how silent Dad was about the specifics of this place—for all his meticulous detail, he sure left out some important bits of information.
Unless he, too, was caught off guard by the strange things here. Maybe he never got the chance to write about them.
Maybe he discovered the cliff, and the ravine, exactly like Alexa did.
Maybe he wasn’t as lucky when he fell.
I shove the thought away. Focus on life, not death. On survival.
Four grasshopper snacks later, something bright and narrow stands out amid all the brown. I squint. “Is that . . . a bridge?” It’s still a long way off, and partially obscured by another bend in the ravine.
Hope and I pick up our pace. Alexa matches it, quick on her feet despite any lingering ankle strain. The closer we get, the more apparent it is that we have indeed come upon a bridge—but not just one bridge. It’s a whole system of them, angled like escalators, a way of getting out of the ravine. They look a bit rickety, all frayed ropes and jagged planks, with gaping holes where the worn wooden boards have fallen out like beggars’ teeth.