summer.’ ”
“Be serious.”
“I am. I don’t know what happens with us, Captain. I don’t even know what happens with me. Maybe I’m going, maybe I’m staying. Maybe five years from now I’ll be here in this exact same spot, ferrying back and forth between my mom’s house and here, bleaching the bones and thinking about the girl I knew one summer. Back when we were Claude and Miah. Wild-animal-wrangling, shark-tooth-collecting, freedom-dispensing warriors.”
“Don’t make a joke. Not right now.”
“Sorry.” He sits down on the top step of the porch, wet hands dangling off his knees. “Captain, we’re two people who didn’t expect to meet each other but did, probably years before we were supposed to.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you, either. I won’t again because I’m pretty sure there aren’t a lot of Claude Henrys running around in this world. But we can’t borrow trouble.”
“So what do we do with that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to you, and I can’t imagine a version of us where we call and text each other like we’re everyone else.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?”
I want it to be four weeks ago, with the summer stretched out before us. But it isn’t, and I suddenly have to go away from him, because I can’t just stand here and pretend to be in the moment when in my head it’s already time for him to leave and I’m watching him sail away from this island and me forever.
He says, “Come sit by me….”
“I have to go.”
“Don’t run away.”
“I can’t stay, because if I stay, I’ll lose it, and I don’t want to lose it. I want you to remember me like this.” I smile and then point to my smile like, Ta-da. “So I’m not running away from you; I’m running away from you leaving and me leaving. Just for a little while. Just long enough to catch my breath.”
And before he can say anything else or try to stop me, I run.
* * *
—
The beach is empty except for the gulls and the sandpipers. I walk across the sand, straight into the water. The wind is trying to push me back onto the shore, but I push against it, deeper and deeper until the drop-off happens and I go under suddenly, all at once, arms extending up toward the surface on their own, without any direction from me, reaching for air.
I force my body down, down, down, imagining what it would be like to live here in this other world. The anger burns so big and deep inside me that I’m surprised I don’t sink from the weight of it. Anger at my dad, my mom, Michelle, Saz, Yvonne, Grady, everyone, even Miah.
I hold my breath until my lungs are empty and I go light-headed and my body pulls me to the surface. The world tilts as I suck in air, and I think of the female loggerheads and how it must feel to be unable to stand, crawling up on shore, collapsing there, disoriented and lost.
I tell myself, Feel this. Feel every last terrible, uncomfortable, overwhelming part of it. You have to feel it to get to the other side.
I drag myself out of the water and drop onto the sand. I lie there and stare up at the sky and think about my cousin Danny. I think about all the things he will miss, all the things he will never get to see or experience. But there are other things he’ll never know—pain and secrets and the way it feels when your heart breaks in two.
* * *
—
I walk back to the general store, and now I am thinking about my parents. My dad telling me he loves me. My mom needing to be a mom. And then I picture saying goodbye to Miah next week. All of this is the reason I call Saz again to tell her I love her.
She answers right away. She says, “I love you too.”
“More than shark teeth and loggerhead turtles and blood moons.”
“More than pizza without pineapple and sleepovers and Yvonne. More than anything or anyone.”
I say, “What happens to your room after you go to school?”
“Nothing. My parents are keeping it the exact same for when I come home. Remember how when Mara’s sister went off to college, her parents immediately turned it into an exercise room? My mom was like, ‘I’ll go to the Municipool in a bikini before I do that to yours.’ ”
I