me, his eyes locked with mine.
And then—
There is a moment where I actually do let go. It’s more like a letting go and a taking total control at the same time. I feel infinite. Free. It’s this perfect, beautiful moment, my body going heavy and light all at once. I hold on to it until I feel it melt away into the sheets and up toward the beamed ceiling and out through the windows, where it disappears into the ocean beyond.
* * *
—
His bed is up against the window, and from my pillow I can look up and out at the sky and the stars. He’s sleeping, his breath steady and even. I lie there watching him. The way his eyelids flutter. The way his bare chest rises and falls. The way his hand rests on my leg, keeping me close to him.
“I could love you,” I whisper. “I might already love you. I just thought I should warn you.” And then I close my eyes and drift away for a while before I have to go.
DAYS 12–14
It’s the middle of summer and I am thinking about sex a lot. When and where we can have it next, when and how I can sneak away with Miah. I walk down Main Road or along the beach and I feel taller and sexier, like this new Claude who feels completely at home in her own skin. I’m Captain Marvel and Black Widow and Domino and all my favorite superheroes rolled into one. I’m a wild-animal-wrangling, shark-teeth-collecting, freedom-dispensing warrior.
We do it everywhere—the truck, the beach, the carriage house at Rosecroft. I sneak into Miah’s house, into his bed, and we find each other in the dark. We whisper under the sheets until we kick them off, along with pillows and blankets and anything else that has the misfortune of being on the bed with us.
Every muscle hurts from the unaccustomed activity, and I feel excited and hungry and something else. Happy. I am so busy that I don’t go to the general store, not even to check messages.
* * *
—
The next two days are full of adventures.
We walk for miles in the mud on the marsh looking for treasure.
We follow the turtle tracks from the ocean and mark the nests.
We drive to Blackbeard Point and dig for pirate booty.
He takes me to what he calls the Love Is Love Tree, which is a live oak and a palm that have grown together, their trunks merged and intertwined into one.
At the beach by the island museum, we stand in the rain and watch a family of manatees. There are four of them. Gentle, snuffling creatures. Rolling and bobbing. Miah stands behind me and wraps his arms around me, and in the woods just beyond the museum, he shows me a cottage—part laboratory, part photography studio—that belonged to one of the Blackwoods. The windows are broken and the trees are reaching in, but other than that it looks untouched, as if they might come back any minute.
He says, “If we could stay here forever, I’d make this our studio. For you to write in and me to develop pictures.”
Through it all, we talk about everything.
He learns:
I once had imaginary friends named Ribbony and Dental Floss.
I used to play this game where I told myself my parents were getting divorced and I had to choose who to live with. I always chose my mom.
In fourth grade I called Jessica Leith stupid to her face, and I never forgot how horrible I felt when she started crying.
I hate my freckles and once tried to wash them off with fingernail-polish remover.
I’m afraid Saz and I will never be friends like we once were.
I worry that Mr. Russo is right and I will never be able to write anything deep or true.
I secretly wonder if I’m unlovable and that’s why my dad left us.
I learn:
He was eleven the first time he drank whiskey, and he used to hide alcohol in the crawl space under the house because that’s where his dad hid his.
When he first got to the island, he stole a boat from the inn but crashed it on the jetties of the north end and had to walk fifteen miles back to the house he lives in now. That was the moment everything changed for him and he decided to let the island in.
He has a lot of friends, but no one best friend, and no one really knows him.
Something heartbreaking happened to him