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When I think about the mainland, I picture an endless city, brick and concrete as far as the eye can see. I’m so glad to know it isn’t true, that there is a haven Landon visits, that I can visit as well.
“Your turn,” he says. “What would you be doing?”
“Swimming.”
“Swimming? In the ocean? In autumn?”
I laugh at his response. “I love to swim. It’s when I’m happiest.”
“What do you love about it?”
“Everything,” I say. “But the thing I love most is the way the entire world quiets when I’m underwater. It’s as if nothing can reach me there. No expectations or worries or insecurities. I get to just be.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that,” he says. “Will you show me?”
“Just name the time.”
“How about now?”
I look down at our clothing, at our outfits that make me feel like we’re playing dress-up, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than drench them in salt water.
“It’s cold,” I say.
“I can handle cold.” He unties his shoes and slips them off his feet, then pulls off his socks and helps me up.
“My mother will kill me for this,” I say, removing my shawl and dropping it to the ground. I shiver and catch the way Landon’s eyes linger on my bare shoulders.
“You can blame it on me.” Landon slips out of his jacket, then takes my hand and pulls me down to where the waves rush onto the shore.
“I will absolutely be blaming this on you,” I say, taking off my shoes and wading into the water. My heart begins to race, and I quickly scan the surface, looking for a moonflower, but there isn’t one. Being in the water with Landon in the light of the day makes the flowers seem so distant. Not real, somehow. And yet my questions about them still linger. I’m too scared to ask them aloud, to hear answers that don’t fit into my world. I don’t want to tell my mother about them and see how the information shifts her world, either. So I push it all out of my mind and focus on the person beside me, the person who matters far more to our way of life than a near-extinct flower does.
When we’re in up to our knees, Landon looks at me and says, “One.”
I smile. “Two.”
“Three,” we say together, diving into the water and swimming away from the shore. When we surface, Landon is breathing heavily.
“You weren’t kidding about the cold.”
“You’ll get used to it.” I swim next to him and take both his hands in mine. “Ready for the best part?”
“Ready.”
We both take large breaths, then descend below the surface of the water. I watch Landon as he opens his eyes, squinting at first, then getting more comfortable with the salt.
And then I see it—the exact moment he understands what I told him, the way he feels the quiet as if it’s a living thing.
His eyes widen, and he looks around with an awed expression on his face. His short brown hair sways on top of his head, and bubbles rise from his mouth as air escapes from his lungs.
We look at each other for as long as we can stand it, suspended in the perfect silence, hair and limbs spread out around us.
When my chest is aching, I let go of Landon’s hands and swim to the surface. I gasp for air when I pop out of the water, drinking it down like my mother drinks her wine.
Landon surfaces moments after me, and we tread water next to each other as our breathing slows.
Then we do it again, but something catches my attention as we move into deeper water. Seaweed rolls around, violently spinning until it’s pulled away, out into the middle of the Passage. The sand on the seafloor is stirring.
We have to get out of here.
