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Nine
Declan
I grind my teeth against the square of gum, relishing the hit of flavor and slight burn. Eclipse Polar Ice. Had a sleeve of eight that I found in my pocket. I’ve chewed three since she told me to fuck off.
That was coming up on two hours ago. I know because I can’t stop looking at my phone. Fucker’s got ninety percent battery, and I’ve got it on the power-saver mode, but still, I need to leave it face-down and forget about it.
Eighteen minutes after midnight.
Sun will rise at seven.
On the list of my worst fuckups, where does this one rank, I wonder as I sit beside the stream. Way below the biggest one, a cruel voice whispers. I inhale slowly and rub my aching eyes. I can’t think about that shit now.
I’d say this probably ranks below the time I was ninety feet under the ocean in the Maldives and lost my scuba tank. Earned myself a helicopter ride to a hyperbaric chamber. Below that…but probably above the Encierro three years ago, when I tried to jump up on a fountain in Pamplona to dodge a bull and ended up with nineteen stitches in my calf. Spent the Barcelona portion of that trip laid up, but being stuck inside a fucking cave is definitely worse. Siren’s right—it’s not even a cave; it’s like a fucking rabbit burrow.
I blow my breath out slowly, inhale through my nose.
Never been a fan of being stuck places. Not since…I shake my head.
Once, when I was fourteen, the mast broke off of a sailboat Nate and I had taken out on Lake Constance. The motors blew a fuse, so we drifted around for half a day before another boater came up on us. I’m not sure if this is worse than that. Too soon to say.
I look over my shoulder at the lump of Finley’s body in her sleeping bag. I’m pretty sure she’s bullshitting about the “tracker.” First, what is a tracker? She’d have to mean something with GPS, and that shit doesn’t work out here.
I splash some water on my face and turn around to face her. Before she went to sleep, she disappeared behind the rock pile with her dry clothes, and I came here to sit beside the stream, hoping it might make her feel more comfortable. When she came back around the pile, she stood and stared at me a minute before sliding back into the bag.
I walked over to her, wanting to reassure her somehow, but woman seemed to read my mind. She said, “Just don’t.”
I think of her somber face as I scrub my own, rubbing my temples before heading back to the bags. I don’t think she’s awake. Hasn’t moved in a while. She’s curled on her side so tightly she looks almost kid-sized. I can’t see her face, just a bunch of penny-red hair spread over a blow-up pillow.
What’s this do to her, I wonder. How does she feel about being trapped? I don’t know all that much about what happened while my dad and I were here last time; I was just six, and right after we left Tristan, he took me to Carogue, the boarding school where I grew up—so we didn’t really ever talk about it. But I know when we arrived, she was lost at sea in a small boat she’d been in with her parents. When they found her, near the end of our visit, she was alone.
I shak
e my head, wondering why we didn’t stay here longer that time. Normally, most visits last a few months because the ship that brought you doesn’t come back by until then. I think Dad and I left on a different ship than the one we came in on. I don’t know.
I knead my aching shoulder and slide into my bag. I don’t sleep with my back to anyone, not even pint-sized redheaded sirens, so I’m on my side, facing her. I’m looking at her hair, watching her shoulders rise and fall under the sleeping bag as she breathes. I can’t be sure, but I think maybe I can smell her. Something floral…roses, maybe.
Her hair looks soft. I lie there staring at it, thinking about touching it for what feels like eternity. I close my eyes and inhale the rose scent and let my mind drift, taking care to steer away from last time I was trapped somewhere. At what turns out to be 5:11, I break down and check my phone. After that, I set it down beside me, and Finley’s hips shift in her bag. I lay my hand out on the ground between us, and finally, I fall asleep.
* * *
Finley
I don’t want to laugh. In fact, I refuse to. But the Carnegie doesn’t make it easy.
I awoke sweaty and breathless, my fists clenched—because in the dream, I couldn’t reach the boat’s sides from under the bench, where I was huddled, and I needed something to hold onto. For the first few moments, that sensation—up and down, of being tossed by the waves—was so potent, I didn’t notice where I was. Then I sat up, and I saw him.
The Carnegie has pulled off his shirt, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s it tied about his head. And underneath it, smooshed against his dark hair, boots. He’s set his boots atop his head and tied his shirt around them. He looks like some sort of clothes bin monster, though not really; with his physique, he can look like nothing except what he is—a sort of living, breathing David. Edit that: an arse whose flawless body is a temple, for baseball, I suppose. Deep grooves line his bare back. Shadows flit about his muscles. As he moves, poking something long and stick-like into the top of the rock pile, muscles in his shoulders ripple.
I divert my eyes, and that’s when I notice my pack is open near the foot of the sleeping bags, and most of my belongings are strewn out.
“What the devil?”
He turns to me, and I straighten my spine. My gaze locks onto his hand. “I suppose you robbed my tent of one of its joints?”
He wipes at his forehead. “Poking through the rocks to see if I can get an idea of—”
“You didn’t think to ask me?”
