Uncharted(50)

Beck catches me as I fall. Without a word, his arms shift and he scoops me up against his chest. Cradled like a child, I rest my head on his shoulder as he carries me away from the gravesite, eyes on the glorious morning sunshine that stains the clouds with silver linings. The last thought I have before they slip closed is of Ian.

Goodbye, sweet friend. I miss you already.



I think he’s going to carry me back to camp, but he brings me to the hidden pool instead. I’m glad for it — I don’t think I could keep it together if I had to look at the spot where Ian took his last breath. Not yet, anyway. I need a little distance.

Beck seats us by a bend on the soft bank, near the sun-dappled shallows. The water is so clear I can see straight to the bottom. He steers my limbs without resistance, reclining me back against the firm planes of his body. My toes skim the water’s edge.

I feel hollow, heart cleaved from my chest. No vital signs. Scoured clean of everything that’s ever mattered, like the seashells I’ve spent so many hours collecting since we arrived here a month ago.

A month.

Has it only been that long? The tallies I scratch into the tree trunk each day concur with that timeline, but it feels vastly inaccurate. I have aged at least a thousand years since we arrived. By all rights I should be wrinkled and arthritic, an old crone bent at the waist as she walks the beach, barely able to remember the life she lived before.

Back home, they’ll be celebrating Independence Day in less than a week, ringing in the true start of summer with backyard barbecues and screaming bottle rockets. Mom will be especially devastated I’m not with her. I turn eighteen on July 4th and, before this trip, we’d always planned to spend the day riding around in her Jeep Wrangler with the doors off and that Jason Mraz song blasting from the stereo.

'Cause you were born on the Fourth of July, freedom ring.

We’d eat lunch by the lake, then Mom would take pictures to record the moment as I legally purchased my first scratch ticket. After winning MegaMillions, in accordance with tradition, she’d recite the story of my birth… and the way I got my name.

I held you in my arms at the hospital, watching the fireworks explode in the distance, and as they lit off a whole series of purple ones, your little hand curled around my finger for the first time. I looked over at your father and he looked straight back at me and we just knew.

Violet.

Our little firecracker, right from the start.

My eyes press closed, as if to hold onto the memory a little tighter, until it’s burned into my brain. Her face is still clear in my mind. How long until it fades? How long until I can no longer recall the sound of her voice or the cadence of her laugh?

I tremble, and Beck’s arms tighten around me. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t attempt to console me. We both know there’s nothing he can do to lessen the steady ache beneath my ribcage.

The sun climbs higher in the sky, but even the harshest midday beams are hard-pressed to find us in this secret, shady place. Looking around, it’s easy to believe the world outside this ring of trees does not exist.

The mud on my cheek itches as it dries. When I scratch at it, chunks of dirt fall like snowflakes onto Beck’s arm. Moving slowly, he shifts to dunk one cupped hand into the water. Half-sprawled in his arms, I crane my head back to watch as he brings it close to my face. His eyes are startlingly green as he lets the handful trickle across my cheek. The water droplets pour down my neck, pool in the hollow of my throat, curve across my chest.

Handful after handful, he removes the dirt from my skin in slow degrees, washing away the grime of the past two weeks and with it, some of the lingering ghosts of this morning. He is so cautiously tender, so tenuously sweet, I can hardly stand it. I sigh and close my eyes, a cat stroked into compliance with careful hands.

Eventually I fall asleep, propped half-upright against him. I’m too tired even for dreams. When I wake, I can tell by the sun’s position overhead that several hours have passed. We’re horizontal on the bank, tangled together in a single form, our sandy limbs totally intertwined. Beck’s chest moves rhythmically at my back, his heart as steady as a drum beating in my ear. I do my best not to wake him as I untangle my body from his and drag myself to the edge.

I feel marginally better after a few swallows of cool, crisp water.

Chasing the sensation, I wade into the shallows on my knees, until my dress floats up around me. I keep going until the surface covers my breasts. My neck. My mouth. Until it closes overhead completely.

My hair drifts around me as I sink, numb, toward the silt bottom.

There’s comfort in the darkness. It calls to me with a siren song. In that broken moment, I don’t care whether I ever breathe air again. I don’t care about anything, except escape.

My chest tightens, lungs beginning to scream for air. I ignore them, fascinated by the black spots that have begun to dance in my visual field.

Fireworks.

Two hands close over my forearms and heave me bodily from the depths. Spluttering, I’m dragged ashore and practically thrown down against the earth. Beck towers over me, hands curled into fists, jaw clenched tighter than I’ve ever seen it. He’s seething with rage. The violence brewing inside him is boiling over.

“What the fuck, Violet!”

I stare at the ground. It’s too hard to look at him.

“What the hell were you doing in the water?” he growls, voice shaking with such fury I think he might spontaneously combust.