The Ones We're Meant to Find(43)

I have an idea as to how.

“Let’s try something,” I say.

“What?” asks the boy.

“Turn toward me.”

He does.

“Close your eyes.”

He does—eyes flying open when I kiss him. Briefly. It’s more of a peck, for his sake. I know what I like. The boy, though? I giggle at the look on his face. He scowls; I make my expression serious. Not everyone is as touchy-feely as me, and I ask if he didn’t like it.

To which he responds, reluctantly, “I wasn’t expecting it.”

Not the same as not liking it, then. Grinning, I lean in and kiss him again. His lips are soft—softer, even, than when I traced them with my finger. A stir goes through me, not necessarily because I feel for him but because I simply feel. Him. I reach him. I say to him It’s okay and You’re not alone and We don’t have to overthink—we can simply live. Kissing is just another means of conversation.

And conversations can’t be sustained by one side, so when he doesn’t respond, I pull back. “Right, then. What were—”

Oh.

My eyes widen as he replies.

Recovering, I slide a hand up his chest. He questions by leaning in. I answer by drawing him closer by the collar of his sweater.

He bears us down into the sand.

We break apart only when we run out of breath. I keep on running out of breath as his mouth drifts to my neck. My hands knot in his hair, holding on as my insides melt, brim, spill. I am vast as an ocean, the only sea I don’t have to cross, and for the first time in a long time, I remember what it feels like to drown in myself.



* * *



We kiss until our lips swell. We speak in the language of tongues and teeth.

And then we speak more. I tell him about Kay, about my color-blindness, about my sleepwalking. He shares his cold, sterile dreams. I ask if he remembers being a doctor because he didn’t do a half-bad job on my shoulder. He thinks I could have been a boat builder after I tell him about Hubert. He asks me more about Kay and I tell him what I can remember, and when I run out, he asks me about me, and I tell him, too, though the words are less sure and more shy, tentative. We talk about nothing and everything, and it’s … nice, so nice that even when it gets colder, it’s warm enough with him here.

We fall asleep on the cove, in each other’s arms.

But my dreams take me far out, to the sister still waiting for me across the sea.





16


KILOMETERS OF SEA FLASHED BY as they neared the eco-city.

The ocean does not come poisoned.

Within the confines of the copterbot, Kasey glanced to Actinium.

People poison it.

Their eyes connected, black on black.

Not just the sea, but the land and the air. There are many in this world who live at the expense of others, and they need to pay.

Pay, Kasey had echoed on the pier, not sure if she’d heard right over the storm.

Yes. Actinium had met her gaze head-on, and in his, she saw herself—and the fire she was missing. For what they did to Celia and others like her.

She hadn’t known how to reply. Not at first. Then the ache in her chest had pulsed like a second heart. The heart said yes. Between them, they shared an ocean of loss. It was under their chins, threatening to drown them the moment they sank. And Kasey chose to sink. The world was ending. People were dying. But how many others were consuming more than their fair share when Celia could taste no more? Emitting carbon, when Celia, who’d never polluted in the first place, could exhale no more? The planet wasn’t a single-occupancy home. Those who trashed it and got away? Who profited off other people’s pain?

Save the deserving. Make the murderers pay.

She might not have been brave enough to poison herself, or sad enough to cry. But she was angry enough, and that made her feel alive.

As their copterbot waited in line to clear decontamination, Kasey linked into the video and audio feed of the P2C meeting taking place at the HQ conference room. She stayed on mute and listened as an eco-city 6 delegate spoke.

“All predictions remain in flux. But with ECAT, I reckon we can neutralize up to eighty percent of airborne microcinogens.”

“And how long will that take?” asked Ekaterina, standing at the front, David beside her like a potted plant. For once, it frustrated Kasey to see him so passive.

“Like I said, it really depends—”

“The question, Officer Ng,” Ekaterina cut in.

“Eleven months to two years. A lot can change—”

“And where, may I ask, are impacted peoples going to stay for a year?” A snap of Ekaterina’s fingers and holographs appeared, destroyed territory cities fountaining up in the center of the conference room. “Already, we have twenty million dead and ten million missing. More will succumb to the complications of prolonged exposure. A projected hundred million casualties are expected by the half-year mark. Territory hospels are failing. Their governments will follow.” Mutters, quieting when Ekaterina said, “We eco-cities are vulnerable too.”

Not to toxins, Kasey knew, but to hysteria. During the first wave of natural disasters, people had tried to claw their way into the eco-cities, forcing the adoption of a rank-based admission system. Who’s to say it wouldn’t happen again?

“Now,” said Ekaterina. “Does anyone have a better proposal?”