“I thought it would get better,” she says, her voice quiet, and Amma feels her own throat grow tight.
She’s not like Brittany—crying doesn’t come easy to her, nor does it seem to help. Tears never leave her feeling relieved or soothed, just exhausted and vaguely ashamed, like she gave in to something she shouldn’t have. A guilty purge rather than a cleansing catharsis.
“It will,” she tells Brittany now. “I mean, we’re only on the second week of this thing. You have to give it time.”
Brittany steps away from her, scrubbing a hand over her face. “You sound like Dr. Amin.”
Amma knows she does, and she kind of hates that, but the leader of their grief group is the voice in her head at moments like these.
Give it time.
Nothing you feel is wrong.
There will always be a before and an after, and you have to learn to live in the after.
That was the one Brittany liked the most. “In the After” is tattooed in curling script on the inside of her wrist now, slightly hidden by the beaded bracelets she’s currently wearing. She’d gotten the tattoo just before they’d left on this trip, a pledge to enjoy life again.
That’s what traveling around Europe was supposed to be about: seeing new things, exploring new places, and cementing the bond between them with new memories. Otherwise, they were only friends because the same horrible thing had happened to each of them. They wanted to be friends because they’d chosen each other. They wanted to have a story they could tell that wouldn’t make people wince, their eyes widen, their lips wobble with sympathy or, worse, pity.
We’ll tell people we met in college, Brittany had said. Instant best friends.
In the same history class, Amma had added. Maybe a sorority. Did the backpacking thing our senior year.
They could almost see it, this fun house mirror version of themselves, where they were normal.
Now, Amma hugs Brittany again, wrapping her other arm around her. “Tomorrow is going to be better,” she says.
Brittany practically shoves Amma away as she says, “Jesus, did you just follow me out here to be a human fortune cookie?”
Another thing Amma is getting used to, these sudden shifts, as though every mood Brittany ever has is always right there at the surface, waiting to burst forth. Amma understands it, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t tired of it.
No, I followed you out here because you were crying like a lunatic again, and you’re the one with a fucking fortune cookie saying literally inked on your skin, so maybe take a seat, Britt.
The harsh words are right there on her tongue, so heavy she can almost taste them, and Amma imagines how good it would feel to say what she actually thinks—but it would only last for a few moments, and then the regret would set in. Besides, they still have two more weeks on this trip and one more country to get through together before they head back home to New Hampshire. A fight now would just ruin everything.
“I’m just trying to help,” Amma says instead, the words pale and weak, and Brittany sighs as she wraps her arms tightly around her body, hugging her elbows. Her skin is faintly blue in the moonlight, and once again, Amma wishes they’d stayed in Paris where they could ease this tension with a late-night drink or a mad dash through the city streets, finding boys named Etienne and Alexandre to flirt with in dim cafés.
Instead, they’re in the sad backyard of a sad suburban hostel, and when Brittany says, “I don’t think you can help. I don’t think anyone can,” Amma thinks to herself, This was a mistake.
She tells herself she means choosing the hostel.
But she knows better.
For such a small atoll, Meroe Island is overstuffed with legend. Named for the HMS Meroe, a frigate that was shipwrecked there in 1821, the atoll is, from the water, a veritable Eden, a child’s storybook ideal of an island. There is little hint of the dangers that await you once you have set foot on its sandy beaches. Impenetrable jungle and a dearth of fresh water are the first challenges, but there are others. The fish that swim in the lagoon are beautifully and brightly colored, yet poisonous, and therefore inedible. A small but deadly species of shark swims through the crystalline waters. Insects buzz and bite, carrying with them all manner of tropical fevers.
And yet for all that, perhaps the most dangerous element of Meroe is what the island seems to do to those who tarry there too long. A sort of madness sets in when one is away from society for too long, when one looks out to the horizon and sees only sea and sky.
—Rambles and Recollections: My Travels in the South Pacific by Lord Christopher Ellings, 1931