I grab him by the forearms, only to be startled by the warmth of his bare skin. A fellow human. Who’s now bleeding because of me. I thought washing ashore alone was bad, but how would I feel if I woke to some stranger interrogating me under duress?
I let go of him, my palms tingling where we touched. He tried to kill me. That still stands. But I’m alive. So is he. We’re the only two people on this island. Coexisting in peace would be better than our current setup. Maybe this is a mistake, but—
“I’m going to untie you,” I say, enunciating each syllable to buy time to think. Lay down the ground rules. “On the condition you don’t try to kill me again.”
Joules, save me—that’s the best I can do? I have no way of enforcing this, and certainly no way of punishing him from the grave if he breaks his word.
Thankfully, the boy doesn’t ridicule me. If anything, he’s taking this too seriously. “‘Again’？” he challenges. “How can it be ‘again’ if I don’t remember the first time?”
I don’t know. The semantics are beyond me. “Do you want to be untied or not?”
He nods. I wait. He catches on. “Fine. I promise.”
“Sincerity, please.”
“It’s not sincere if I can’t remember,” he protests.
“Picture this: you, me, on the beach. Your hands on my neck.”
The boy closes his eyes, a pleat between his brows. He’s earnest, I’ll give him that, and I take pity on him when he reopens his eyes and says, “I’ve never wanted to kill you, and I don’t think I’ll ever want to kill you, but I swear I won’t act on those urges if they ever seize me.” A pause. “Again.”
“Swear on your life.”
“On my life.”
Future-me had better not regret this.
I untie him—then realize I probably should’ve warned him that he’s got nothing on beneath the blanket.
“What … fuck!”
“Fuck,” repeats U-me. “To engage in sexual intercourse, verb; to mess with, verb; to deal with unfairly or harshly, verb.”
“Curse at your own risk,” I say as the boy scrambles back into bed, drawing the blanket around him.
“What did you do to my clothes?”
Ripped them off you. The words come reflexively. Maybe I’ve said them to the boys in my past, but I know better than to repeat them to the boy in front of me right now, his eyes stretched to the whites. “You woke up like this, love,” I say as gently as I can.
He shakes his head. “You did something to them!” He points a trembling finger at me, cheeks darkening—reddening, I assume. “You said so yourself! That y-you—you like it—”
“Joules, that was a joke.”
“My name isn’t Jules!” Emotions break over his face. I can’t decipher them as easily as I used to, but I think I see fear. Disbelief. Anger.
“That wasn’t what I was trying to say.” My head’s starting to swim. Just when I thought I’d pacified him, too. “Look, love. I’m sorry about your clothes. I know you don’t trust me, and you don’t have to, but you really did wake up like this. It’s okay, though.” I go to the closet, fling open the doors, and grab as many sweaters as I can carry. “We can dress you right now.” I pile the sweaters over his lap, then sit at the edge of the bed. “Have at it.”
The boy says nothing. Does nothing. Doesn’t move.
His silence scares me. I reach out to him; he flinches away.
Been awhile since I’ve faced any sort of rejection. “Why don’t you tell me your name?” I ask, hiding the sting of it. “Mine is Cee,” I offer, to pave the way.
“I don’t know my name.” Horror fills his eyes. “I don’t know…” His gaze drops to his hands, upturned in his lap. His voice hushes to a whisper. “… my name.”
He stares at his empty palms as if he was holding on to his name a second ago. I, on the other hand, stare at his wrists. The crisscross of dark gray lines. The crusted zigzag down his arm. I did that to him. My own wrists ache. I rub at them, and hear myself say, “I couldn’t remember mine, either.”
Slowly, the boy looks up. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm.” I don’t like revisiting that time, but for the boy, I do. First week here, I had a roof over my head, and clothes, but I didn’t know who I was or who I was living for. No one, it seemed, would miss me if I drowned, and so I almost did. In the tub. I fell asleep, and woke up with water in my nose and mouth but also a name like a heartbeat in my head.