out loud. Write anything that’s keeping you from you. Write anything that’s keeping you from me.”
“Why?”
“So we can burn them up.”
I don’t mention the day I spent on the beach waiting for him, tossing shells and worries into the ocean. I’m too busy thinking there isn’t enough paper in that notebook or even on this island to write down everything that scares me or every bad thought that’s filling my mind.
He writes Grady on a sheet of paper, then rips it out and holds it over the fire. I watch as the paper starts to smoke and burn, dissolving away, one letter at a time.
He writes, I miss my brother, rips it out, drops it on the fire.
He writes, I want to live my own life, not someone else’s.
And I just want to be eighteen.
I write, I hate my dad.
I miss Saz.
Grady means nothing.
I’m sorry, Miah.
I will never trust anyone again.
For the next twenty minutes, we take turns writing things down and tossing them into the fire. I empty myself onto the paper until there’s nothing left.
When we’re finished, we sit on the sand. He smells like sunshine and fresh sheets, and I don’t know whether to touch him or not because it feels like I don’t have that right anymore. I sit with my hands in my lap and try to figure out what more I want to say to him.
And then he says, “I know what it’s like to be in a rough place.”
I look at him, and he’s looking at the fire. “That doesn’t mean I should have done what I did.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He makes this frustrated groaning sound and shakes his head at the ground. He closes his eyes. Opens them. “Shit.” He sighs. “But I get it. Sometimes you do things just to make it worse. Back when I was thirteen and life was at its absolute shittiest, I wanted something to numb the pain and I found it. It worked for a little while, but the problem is, you want more, you need more, and before you know it, you can’t feel anything.” He stares down at his hands. “But you know what I finally figured out?” He looks up at the fire again. “You have to feel it. You have to feel it even if you think it’s going to kill you.”
“I’m sorry. About Grady. So sorry.”
“I know. We don’t have endless time here, and I still want to hang out with you too. Like, really want to hang out with you.”
“But?” I brace myself because I know what’s coming.
“But it hurts. And I think I’m supposed to forgive you, because if I want to spend any time with you before we leave this island, I’m going to need to. And I want to do that, but we’ve been pretty honest with each other, and I’d be lying if I said…I mean, as much as you worried about Wednesday? I don’t know. The thing is, you got in there, Captain. You got way the hell in there.” And he’s talking about his heart, or maybe all of him.
“So what does that mean?”
“It means we need to be bigger than what happened with Grady. We’re bigger than Grady.” He looks at me then. “Well, I know I am.” Our eyes lock and the corners of his mouth turn up, and suddenly the dimples are there. Different, but there. “But I still feel shitty.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“I know.” Like that, the dimples disappear. His eyes move back to the fire.
There are a million things I want to say to him, but I don’t say any of them because I know they won’t help. So eventually I say, “Tell me about your brother. If you want to.”
It takes him a minute to answer.
“I never really felt like I got to know him, because by the time I was old enough, he was gone to basic training, Ranger School, his first tour, then another. He was tough, but funny. Whenever he came home, he’d wear those dumb-ass shorts, the ones you love so much. He’d say that after all that gear in the desert, wearing them was like ‘cradling your junk with a pillow of angels.’ It’s stupid, but when I put on those shorts, it makes me feel like he’s still here. Like it’s just him and me having adventures.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid.”
“Before Bram and Shirley, he was maybe the only person in my life who never let me down.