The Ones We're Meant to Find(45)

Honestly? Leona was just a raft. Losing her doesn’t hurt nearly as much as losing Hubert. But I could explain Hubert; I saw his remains with my own two eyes.

I can’t explain this. Rafts don’t walk.

Unless they do here, where sleep-swimming is also a thing. I’ll blame the island. I have to. Because if I don’t …

Again, rafts don’t walk.

But people can.

Me or him. Me. It had to be me; I’ve done some strange shit while unconscious. But when I look down at my hands, I find no marks. No sign that I dragged a raft to the sea before I nearly died in it. I press my palms over my eyes, press harder when I see his face. It fades, but then I remember the heat of his mouth on mine, the sand damp beneath my shoulders, the stars light-years above us, the moment everything went wrong because I was happy. Happy without Kay. Hell, give me a few more nights like that one, I might not even be upset over losing Leona.

Which means I’m done. Done thinking about boys, done with delays. I need to find Kay now. I need to build a boat now.

I can build a boat now.

The solution’s been staring at me this whole time. I just hadn’t been desperate enough to see it.

I dash into the house, tripping around U-me and knocking my bad shoulder into the bedroom door on my way in. Barely wincing, I beeline for the bed, flinging off the comforter and sheets, chucking pillows to the ground until I’ve stripped the mattress down to its hunter-green polyurethane casing.

I step away and dust off my hands.

Meet Genevie the mattress boat, my ticket off this island.

Genevie thwacks onto the floor after I heave her off the bed frame, then thumps sideways as I push her upright to fit her through the narrow doorway.

“Strongly disagree,” says U-me as I’m dragging the mattress through the living room.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” I grunt, aiming a kick at the couch. The pathway widens, and Genevie unsticks herself as I tug.

Getting Genevie out onto the porch is the hardest part. The rest is a breeze. Using the kitchen blowtorch, I melt the bottoms of several storage bins and attach them to the head and foot of the mattress, constructing what looks like a backless armchair. I then wrap rope over the tops of the storage bins, forming a makeshift rail that runs lengthwise down either side of the mattress. It’ll be something to grab on to in case it storms, which I dearly hope it won’t.

I fill the bins with my supplies—an extra sweater, mason jars of water, as many taro biscuits as I can afford to take without letting Hero starve—and then drag Genevie out on a test float. The sun is setting by the time I’m done. Hero still hasn’t returned. I sit on the porch in wait while keeping watch over Genevie. When he finally appears, I jump to my feet. “Where have you…”

I catch sight of what’s in his hands.

He offers me the oar. I inspect it. The handle’s cut smooth. The paddle is flat and thin. “You made this?”

“No, I rented it from the shop on the beach.”

It’s an echo of what I said to him before, when he asked if I’d built Hubert and I tried testing my sarcasm on him, with no idea if it landed. It did, apparently, and he remembered, and suddenly the oar weighs a ton in my hands.

“You…” didn’t have to. But I leave it at you. Hero. The boy who is trying so hard to be someone, someone I don’t want to suspect for Leona’s disappearance, especially when I notice the dirt on his sweater and the scratch running up his forearm and disappearing under his rolled-up sleeve. He must have crossed the ridge for wood.

Slowly, I tie the oar to Genevie. So much for my contrived dilemma. Just nights ago, I was debating the ethics of leaving Hero to set sail first. Now I see my true, self-centered colors. Hero, meanwhile, has seen them all along. Joules, he’s made me an oar to send me off.

“Look,” I start. “If I make it—”

“You will.”

He speaks with a quiet, steadfast conviction I would have craved before. Now it makes me feel like a bad person. My gaze drops to the sand between our feet. “You weren’t nearly as confident two weeks ago,” I mutter. “What happened to doubting my mojo?”

“You happened,” he says simply, and I glance back to him, see our too-short time together in his eyes. We’ve made do, come to know each other the best we can. Imperfectly, incompletely, our conversations like crumbs and yet these are flavors I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget the night we listened to each other’s fears, and the more recent one. As if recalling too, Hero’s cheeks pinken. “Your heart is set.” He shrugs, and like that night in the garden, the gesture reveals the very tension he tries to hide. “I don’t see how you could fail.”

Waves crash on the shore nearby. My voice is small in comparison. “I’ll come back for you.”

For a moment, Hero doesn’t reply. “I don’t think you will.”

There it is. That maddening honesty of his. “You don’t know that.” It hurts to hear him say it. A lot. Hurts more when he doesn’t refute me. When he offers me a hand, I don’t take it.

“Walk with me?”

I don’t respond.

“Please, Cee,” and I hear what he leaves unsaid. This might be it. Our last night.

I bite my lip and glance at Genevie. I don’t want to let her out of my sight.