I withdraw my hand. “Finally,” I say with feigned cool, folding my arms over my ribs. My heart pounds behind them. “You’ve wasted my entire morning.”
Two seconds. That’s all the prep time I get before the torrent.
“Where am I? How did I get here?” His gaze darts—left, right, left again, then finally up, to the bedposts. “What—” He tugs on his arms; the nylon rope holds. “The hell? Why am I tied up?”
So many questions. Do I even remember how to answer questions?
Where am I? “In my bed.” How did I get here? “I carried you.” Why am I tied up? “I like it kinky.”
Maybe not.
“I’m kidding,” I say when the boy’s face pales at least three shades of gray.
First impressions, take two: He doesn’t look like a murderer, nor is he acting like one. But his voice is what sways me the most. Even panicked, it’s … music. The sound of the sea as it sighs across the sand. It almost doesn’t match his face, but as I’m thinking this, I find his face, paired with his voice, growing more beautiful before my eyes.
My takeaway? Voice-deprivation is real and could be the death of me if I’m not careful.
“Untie me,” says the boy. The bed creaks as he tugs on his wrists. I resist the urge to jump to his aid. How I lived before is not how I live now. The shiny things in my dreams—the glass elevators and the boys with their white smiles—don’t exist here. It’s just me and my body’s natural healing abilities. A beating heart trumps a soft one.
One wrong call is all it takes.
“Not until you prove your trustworthiness,” I say, sitting back down in the rocking chair.
“My trustworthiness?” More thrashing and jerking.
“Stop fighting and listen.” I wait for him. For several minutes, his breathing only ratchets up in speed. His distress rubs off on me, and I grip the arms of the rocking chair. The wood is slick under my palms by the time he finally calms down.
“We’ll begin with the question of why you’re tied up.” I start rocking at a grandmotherly pace, in hopes that it’ll put him more at ease. “Last night, you tried to strangle me.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I did n—”
I yank down the turtleneck of M.M.’s sweater. That shuts the boy up. “You did, even if you don’t remember. It was storming, too. You’re lucky I bothered bringing you into the house.” I tug the turtleneck back over the marks. “You’re welcome.”
I watch as the info sinks in. He’s trying to reconcile it in his brain—what he’s seeing versus what he believes. My truth versus his. I don’t think he’s acting forgetful, and I don’t rule out the possibility that his behavior on the beach was a one-off thing, triggered by whatever he endured at sea. It’s also worth noting that he seems scrawnier in the sunlight, and not nearly strong enough to choke me, and—no, I won’t make excuses for him. He can explain himself.
“Where did this happen?” the boy finally asks.
“Out there.” I nod toward the window. “This is an abandoned island. You’re currently staying in M.M.’s humble abode. No, she’s not around. No, I’m not sure where she is. It has been three years, though, so make of that what you will. For now, it’s just us. You and me.”
“Disagree,” says U-me from the doorway of the bedroom.
“And U-me, the bot.”
I wait for a reaction. Receive none. The boy says nothing for a long time. Then:
“How, exactly, did I get here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” I stop rocking and lean forward. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think harder.”
“I said, I don’t know!” As quickly as his voice rises, it also ebbs. “Please—can I just be untied?”
My heart steels itself against his plea. Remember your agenda. “You really can’t remember anything?” Naked and without memories—of last night and of his past. The boy and I may be more similar than I’d thought, which would be comforting—I’m not the only one—if I weren’t relying on him for answers to help me find Kay.
“Try,” I order. “Try to remember something. An image. A person. A place.”
The boy’s response is to tug on his wrists so hard that dark gray liquid wells at the rope.
Shit. I shoot up from the rocking chair as the liquid runs down to his elbows. “Stop that. Stop.”