Finally I let my shoulders drop. “She’s gone,” I say. “She went back into the Forest and I let her go without me.” My voice feels hollow.
He doesn’t move, just stands there staring out at the horizon.
“She’s gone. My best friend and everyone else my age I knew are all being held and are about to be handed over to the Recruiters. And Catcher …” I almost choke on his name. “He’ll be gone too. Everyone will be gone and I’ll be alone,” I tell him. Admitting it makes the fear seem real and it squeezes at me.
Sand shifts under my feet as he closes the distance between us. I feel his hands in my hair and then he pulls me to him. I resist at first but then I realize that Elias is the only one I have left right now. He’s my only ally. I’m not sure if I should trust him, if I can trust him, but I feel as though I have no other choice unless I want to be utterly alone and I’m not sure I can handle that right now. If I can stand losing everything so quickly.
He holds me tight, his hand pushing my cheek against his shoulder as if he can keep my shattering pieces together. As if he understands what’s happening to me. I don’t want the feeling to go away.
“Please don’t go back,” I beg him. I think of the darkness, of being alone in the lighthouse with the night closing in. “Please don’t leave me alone here. What if more wash ashore? Please stay.”
His voice cracks when he answers. “I can’t, Gabry, I’m sorry.”
“Please,” I whisper. I don’t want to be alone, am not sure I can be alone. I never have been before—the thought of it terrifies me.
“You’re the only one I have left,” I say, looking up at him. I let him see my pain and vulnerability, hoping that he’ll realize how much I need him. How much I’m begging to trust him. I feel naked in this moment and I almost think he’ll say yes, his face betraying his emotions. But then he turns his gaze back to the ocean.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks.
I take a deep breath, wondering why I ever allowed myself to trust anyone in this world. How much easier it would be if I didn’t care.
For a heartbeat I wonder if this was my fate when I was left in the Forest as a child, after I was lost and before my mother found me. If this helplessness and solitude has been so ingrained into my life that it’s all I can aspire to, all I should expect.
I survived then, I must be able to survive it now. I have no other option.
I stare into the side of Elias’s face and can sense his hesitation in the way he holds his body so tight. I feel his conflicted emotions heavy in the air between us but also his resolution.
There’s nothing I can say or do to keep him here. He’ll leave just like everyone else. I feel stupid for even having asked him to stay. He’s a stranger—someone I barely know. Someone who clearly has as little reason to care about me as I do about him.
And so I push softly away from him, letting go of his comfort and warmth, and walk back into the lighthouse, leaving him behind to stare at the waves.
It’s cooler inside the lighthouse, the darker air a refreshing change as I climb the stairs. The door to my mother’s room is cracked, slants of light soaking the scarred boards of the landing. There’s a single bed pushed against the far wall under the window; it’s neatly made up, an old faded quilt stretched taut across it.
The sun glares through the window, the stretch of water the only thing beyond. Leaning against the pillow is a photograph of my mother and me. We’re standing in the ocean; she’s behind me with her arms wrapped around me. I’m just a child, laughing as the waves crest around us.
I remember when it was taken. An old man with an even older photobox had come to Vista willing to trade housing and food for a photograph. The town wanted to turn him away but my mother took him in.
He stayed with us a week, snapping two photos on the last day. I remember the water was cold, the tide quick and waves tall. But I was safe and warm in my mother’s arms. If I look closely I can see the shadows that haunt her face. As if she is lost in that picture, lost in the blur of water and sky and I am the only thing holding her firm.
Beside the photo is the book my mother was holding this morning when she asked me to go with her into the Forest. I pick it up, run my fingers along the edges, wondering if I can still feel the heat of her touch.
I sit on the bed, the mattress sinking under my weight, and flip through the book, the words on the page as familiar as walking.
When I was a little girl my mother took a knife and carved bits of the poems into the doorjambs of the lighthouse, spots she always touched with her fingers when she entered or left rooms. I asked her once why she did this but she’s never been able to explain it to me. I think about the one she carved into the lantern room last night, of her reminding me that the light will always take me home.
And I wonder if she’s out there now, waiting for that light to appear on the horizon, showing her that I’m strong enough to move forward without her even though I’m not sure I am.
Though I’ve been dreading it, I go to visit Cira at the end of the day. The Council moved everyone into the jail in the basement of the Central Hall, and the Militiaman standing guard says nothing to me as I walk down a short flight of stairs into a closed dank room divided in half by thick vertical bars.
A few families press against the bars, their fingers twined around the hands of their jailed children, eking out every moment together they can before being sent away. I have to stop when I see it. I swallow, the scene so similar to the Mudo pressed against the fence on the beach last night.
I want to run back aboveground but I force myself forward. Cira rushes to me, laces her fingers through the bars. “Catcher?” she asks, breathless with anticipation. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks pink. So hopeful and alive. “Did you find him? Is he okay?”
How did I not prepare myself for this? How did I not think of a lie, think of some way to break this to her? But in my silence she understands, her face slipping into despair. “No,” she whispers. “No.”
“I found him.” I lean in close so that those around us can’t hear. “He’s in the ruins past the amusement park.”
Hope flashes through her and I shake my head. “He’s infected, Cira.”
She stumbles back. A few of the others crowd around her. Blane takes her hand and Cira leans in to her. They glare at me.
I realize then that she’s not mine anymore. That we’ve taken two separate paths and they’ll never join again. She’s with them, she’s with the others bound for the Recruiters. And I’m left behind. The one who ran away.
Just two days ago she was the one I would have told about my mother’s revelation about where I came from. The one I’d have gone to after my mother left for the Forest. Together we would have figured out what to do, how to move on. Two days ago she was my best friend and not a stranger.
I want the feeling back again. That feeling that there’s someone in the world who knows me as well as I know myself. Someone who won’t let me go through all this alone.
“I’m going back to see him,” I tell her, stepping forward, needing her to hope. “I promised him I’d be there.”
Her eyes are red-rimmed. Everything about her is limp, as if she’s already given up and those around her have to keep her standing.
She looks thinner than before, even in only two days, and her skin is gray from being locked inside. “Cira, are you eating? Are they bringing you food and water?”
She doesn’t respond. Just stares through me as if I’ve disappeared. I wait for her to say something. I look toward Blane, pleading with my eyes. “Is she okay?” I ask her.
Her hatred is palpable. “What do you care? You’re the one who left Cira behind,” she says. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what it is to be a friend.”
I press my lips together and focus on the floor where cracks spider-web through the concrete. I try to take a deep breath but I’m too shaky. I want to tell Blane that I tried to get Cira to come with me, I tried to get her to run away as well. But the words taste bitter in my mouth because I know I could have tried harder.
I blink rapidly, praying that I don’t cry in front of this girl. “Please make sure she’s okay,” I finally say. She nods before turning away, leading Cira toward a bench against the far wall.
I stand there a little longer, a small part of me hoping that Cira will look up at me. That she’ll see my pain and come and take my hand and tell me what’s wrong. But she just folds in on herself, taking a cup of water from Blane with shaking fingers but not drinking.
Finally I slink back through the door and up the stairs, leaving my best friend behind.
Chapter 15
Everything seems muffled as I walk back home to the lighthouse. The sounds of the town, of people constructing platforms and erecting decorations for the arrival of the Recruiters. Even the feel of the late setting sun is dull against my skin.
At the beach the waves are sluggish, unable to budge the carcass of a large decapitated Mudo on the sand. But when I step into the house it’s as though everything sharpens into focus and the air is alive with the sound of emptiness.
And then it hits me with full force: My mother is gone. She’s left me. Our conversations from last night and this morning spin around me in the silence, piercing against my skin and boring into my skull. I’m the one who convinced her to remember. I’m the one who told her that forgetting is useless.
I’m the reason she’s gone. She could be hurt out in the Forest. She could be Infected and it would all be my fault. Because I made her go alone, too scared to go with her.
I press the palms of my hands into my eyes and bend over, a wave of nausea rising in my throat. I’m so tired of feeling useless and weak and alone. I’m tired of messing up and putting the people I love in danger.
I’m tired of being afraid, of allowing fear to hold me back. I clench my fingers into fists. I have to find Catcher. I have to talk to him, explain what’s happened and ask for his help.
Elias’s face flashes in my mind, the memory of him holding me this morning prickling along my arms and legs. But I force those feelings away and try to remind myself that he’s a stranger. That he turned me down when I needed him. He doesn’t know anything about me and never will.
Strapping the knife Elias gave me around my hip and slamming the door to the lighthouse behind me, I stride to the beach. I don’t care what the risks are: I promised Catcher I would be there, and I need him as much as he needs me.
But when I look at the rack where we stored the boat last night, I realize that it’s empty.
Elias must have taken it when he left, and with it the only way for me to get back to the ruins safely. I want to scream out my frustration at how everything seems to be falling apart so quickly and there’s nothing I can do to keep up.
I kick at the sand but the wind throws it back against me, biting at my skin. I race to the waves and am up to my thighs in the water, my heart pounding, when I realize where I am and what I’m doing. There’s still a whiff of daylight, sunset blinking on the horizon.
I gasp when I think about it. Can I really do this? Can I really swim my way to the ruins, to Catcher?
The idea tantalizes me, makes me believe I can be strong and invincible. But I know that if I spend any time thinking about it or reasoning through I’ll never do it. I’ll find a thousand reasons why this is stupid, why I should turn back.
I push deeper into the ocean. I promised Catcher I’d come back. I promised him I’d be there. He wouldn’t be infected if I’d been able to kill Mellie. If somehow we’d been able to stop the Breaker earlier none of this would have happened.
I slice my arms through the water, my feet lifting away from the bottom. I try not to think about the darkness creeping in, about the dead that could be in the depths. I try not to think about what I’m doing.
One thought pushes me forward: Catcher. I must get to him before he turns. I can’t let him die alone and turn into a Mudo. I can’t stand the idea of him becoming a monster. With the world spinning and unraveling around me, being there with him is the only thing I can control, the only thought that can ground me. I have to prove to myself I have the strength to follow through on this one thing.
What’s the worst that can happen? I ask myself. There could be Mudo in the water that aren’t downed. I could get bitten, infected and pulled into the deepest parts of the ocean, turning Breaker almost instantly. I sputter and press myself forward, tamping down fear that crawls up my throat, squeezing my lungs harder the farther away from shore I get. With my eyes closed the sea feels like an endless pit.
I pull back above the surface and start to swim, angling out to where I know the tip of the jetty should be, at the line of boulders that separates the town from the amusement park and ruins. I’m almost there when I feel something brush against my foot and I scream, choking on water.
Something like hair tangles in my hands and I rear above the surface. I try to rip my fingers free as I kick out at everything I can’t see. My mind shrieks with thoughts of arms grabbing me, teeth sinking into my flesh.
I flail, beating at the water and pulling myself to the jetty, slipping on the slick rocks. I crawl over the jetty as fast as possible, gulping air. I look down at my hands, my arms shaking and heart screaming. Wrapped around my fingers are lengths of seaweed, glistening under the moon.
I glance down the jetty to where it meets the Barrier wall, tiny lights of the Militiamen flickering in the night. It won’t be long until the patrol moves closer, until they’ll be able to see my shadow hulking among the boulders.
